chaicka

In the last 5-7 years, I have seen large corporations and enterprises making the moves towards cloud-based applications (eg O365, Exchange on Cloud, Azure, ServiceNow instead of Remedy, and many many more) to create a platform neutral environment which in turn promotes BYOD or option of Windows/macOS laptop (eg IBM). It’s like all the stars are now aligned to make the time ripe for a big architecture change.

Google’s ChromeOS concept isn’t wrong. It is just the wrong timing due to many of the key attributes/elements haven’t fallen into the right place yet.

One thing Apple has always been good at is leveraging on its success factors (be it planned ones or unexpected ones). The success of iOS apps to the extend of majority of the softwares most audience needs/uses (eg Microsoft Office) are available on iOS. Apple didn’t perform a ‘back to the Mac’ porting from iOS every few years for fun. With iOS essentially a flavor of macOS which essentially is NeXT OS, keeping the difference marginal helps making it possible for unification of the core architecture one day down the road. It’s a continuous effort for readiness of that big day.

wozwoz said:

"Mac shifting to ARM may come as soon as ..."  ... ore more likely, it may not. 
It's a dumb idea that breaks the Windows compatibility that has been Apple's hook into bringing people over from the dark side, and will involve huge amounts of angst for everyone, with no 'noticeable' difference (other than your software won't work). By noticeable, it needs to run 40 times faster for anyone to care. 

Oh really... More and more applications/softwares no longer required to run natively on Windows machines over the last 5 years or so. In case you have not noticed, more and more software powerhouses are moving towards cloud and subscription-based applications. If so, is there seriously as heavy-dependent on Windows OS as it used to be?

Just quoting a yester-year concept - Thin Clients. That concept was too early but doesn't mean wrong concept. Now with subscription-based applications like Office 365, Adobe Creative suit, etc etc...It is now time to jump forward in that thin client concept and move away from cumbersome architecture which is not optimal and wasting energy for less usefulness. Seriously, how often do you even see you Intel multi-cores processor working pass 20% for 80% of time you are using the desktop/laptop? Yet have most people bothered to observe how much power consumption is a Intel-based desktop/laptop squandering away?

Honestly, I wish I am using an iMac or MacBook Pro (either of which I am using daily) which has the power efficiency of my iPhone or iPad and help reduce my ever growing electricity bill (due to tariff increases regularly every quarter or few quarters).

In my humble opinion, it is almost the right time to jump and leap frog away. The success of iOS apps is helping to make it possible to jump and leap frog away. The success of ARM-based processors which iOS/tvOS/watchOS apps are coded to run on is helping to make it possible to jump and leap frog away. And the new era of subscription-based softwares/applications further endorsed the fate of architecture change being inevitable within 1-3 years.

It’s interesting that nations or governments which are slow to innovate and move on to this era’s tech and biz, are championing such tax move to de-incentive nations which did innovate their biz to align with this era.

France is definitely one of those passé government. Always against everything about globalisation. Yet now champion this ‘pretentious’ harmonized tax.

Kudos to those nations who dare to stand up against these obsoleted nations.

Please get this launch internationally as swiftly as possible...

Interesting...I was there just few days ago and I didn’t know Apple Pay has not launch in the country. I have been able to use throughout the entire few days stay, dine, shop at Prague (Praha). Now I see why the cashiers look puzzled when I show them my Apple Watch displaying credit card.