[ianai]

They could make an x86 daughterboard for the Mac Pro. Plenty of space for that and it’s been done decades ago. Or a third party could.

I wonder whether they’ve got any special killer apps in mind for the desktop and MacBook ARM machines. They could theoretically customize them greatly since they’re designing the architecture. Also wonder whether they view keeping the unix developer pipeline.

[philwelch]

iOS development and, potentially, better support for Catalyst are the obvious pluses I haven’t seen mentioned yet.

[ianai]

Or graphics algorithms tailored to many cpu cores instead of just gpus. Or have the Mac platform interoperate with their mobiles better, again.

[philwelch]

Graphics algorithms for what? Mac is still such a small market share that third party developers won’t take advantage of any weird architectural advantages. Sony tried and failed to pull this off with the PS3’s Cell processor, which was ironically PowerPC-based.

[ianai]

FCP, Adobe, etc. Apple has enough market power, cash, and know how to pull some combos and killer features off.

[jbverschoor]

Battery life