[protomyth]

I don't think they'll produce their own ISA. They have an architectural license from ARM, so why bother.

But, Intel doesn't exactly produce chips that are helpful to Apple. Since Apple switch, Intel has gotten rid of third-party chipsets. This removed a lot of customization options and basically made life easier for Intel since they produce a fixed set of chips and you have to take them. Also, Intel's market differentiation of chip features probably doesn't help.

Apple wants to provide a custom experience, and Apple building their own PC-class ARM chips will allow that.

[edit: also Intel's paying people to produce Macbook Air clones probably didn't help]

[dlp211]

It will never happen. There isn't an ARM chip out there that could handle the x86 emulation needed to move off of the platform. The only reason Apple was able to move off of PowerPC is because they were able emulate the ISA on x86.

[protomyth]

I don't think that will be the limiting factor. I can see Apple saying the new machines will run only newly compiled software.

On that note, I get the feeling Bootcamp for ARM Macs would be interesting since it would be an ARM version of Windows.

[mrpippy]

The last time Microsoft made an ARM version of interactive/desktop Windows (Windows RT for the Surface/Surface 2), it didn't support legacy Win32 apps (native or x86 emulated). It was a huge flop; Win32 apps are still the overriding reason why anyone runs Windows.

And now that Intel has gotten its act together with low-power SoCs, I don't see desktop Windows coming back to ARM any time soon.

(yes, there is Windows 10 for ARM but only for IoT platforms, it doesn't support graphical apps)

[protomyth]

The Windows RT Surface was a big flop for a lot of reasons. Telling developers it had an iPad store model when the x86 version didn't was probably a bigger problem.