[caleblloyd]

Windows RT and ChromeOS have both supported ARM for a while. In the case of Windows, adoption is low because not all applications work on ARM. Apple would hit the same problem initially and would have to wait for application developers to distribute ARM versions.

[zimpenfish]

> would have to wait for application developers to distribute ARM versions.

Or they can switch to their bitcode bundles for Mac apps like the iOS apps and transcode for Intel / ARM on delivery. Plus they have previous form in this area with the "run PPC apps on Intel" via Rhapsody (IIRC.) It'll be a stumbling block, nothing more.

[caleblloyd]

I'm mainly talking about unmanaged apps, not apps distributed through the Mac App store. I don't think that x86 emulation is an option, that would be terribly slow.

[zimpenfish]

If they still have the Rhapsody tech, it's not strict emulation, it's more like transliteration / JIT; much like Transmeta were working on, IIRC.

[caleblloyd]

Ah, Binary Translation at the silicon level. That would be very interesting. Apparently NVIDIA's Project Denver was supposed to do this for x86 but they were unable to get the proper licenses, so they shifted it to do it for ARM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver