[bitwize]

This is Apple we're talking about -- and Apple is what other OEMs want to be when they grow up. Not only will the Apple-designed ARM CPUs perform at or above the level of a similarly-specced Intel machine, but the ISA transition will be seamless, with a nearly-invisible Intel binary compatibility layer that does on-the-fly JITing. Otherwise, they simply won't release it at all.

[pianoben]

I think you are over-estimating the quality of their software engineering. Maybe ten years ago I would have believed this, but with each macOS release the litany of unforced errors just continues to grow. The advantage Apple derives from owning the whole stack is a bit oversold, at least when it comes to their non-iOS products.

Of course this is anecdotal, but my macbook (made solely from Apple-supplied parts) seems to crash 3x as often as my cobbled-together-from-spare-parts Windows 10 desktop.

> Otherwise, they simply won't release it at all.

Do you think post-Jobs Apple retains that discipline? I'm not sure.

[saidajigumi]

> Maybe ten years ago I would have believed this, but with each macOS release the litany of unforced errors just continues to grow.

Apple, of all companies, is not a monolith. There are parts of the company who've been just killing it from a software perspective (Swift, SwiftUI, XCode preview for SwiftUI, etc.) Where they've had severe issues has effectively been quality management across the broader OS.

Also, I'll be very interested to watch what happens over the next couple of major release cycles. I think Apple got a major wake-up call with the shitstorm that was the iOS 13 / Catalina release cycle. I'm hoping that they'll be putting in place an outright culture shift to fix that long-term, vs. a one-off "Snow Leopard" tech debt paydown release.

[ksec]

>(Swift, SwiftUI, XCode preview for SwiftUI, etc.)

Time will tell, but right now I think Swift isn't the languages that I once hoped for. And objective-C, despite all of its problem, is still doing well.

[rmsaksida]

> Not only will the Apple-designed ARM CPUs perform at or above the level of a similarly-specced Intel machine, but the ISA transition will be seamless, with a nearly-invisible Intel binary compatibility layer that does on-the-fly JITing

Apple didn't bother with 32-bit compatibility for Catalina which would have been much easier to implement. You're being way too optimistic. Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility.

[danieljacksonno]

I think that might have been to prepare us for ARM. They did the same stuff with the headphone jack : Removed it one iteration sooner than needed, so the new design wouldn't catch flack for missing it.

If the ARM macs can run Intel 64 bit software, but not 32 bit, then removing it in Catalina makes perfect sense

[p_l]

Considering that they can't manage to not break foundational libraries in code paths that should require no changes (at least since the introduction of Aqua, with the actual code being used since 1988!) and considering how they broke even 64bit software in Catalina in subtle ways that are still impossible to figure out by developers...

Nah. It won't be seamless at all. It will be like touchbar macs - you buy it because last 3 generations were stuck in place with little improvement and you are forced artificialy to upgrade.

[philwelch]

I think this is a little optimistic. Apple doesn’t have the cachet it did ten years ago and their attention to detail on the Mac platform has slipped a hell of a lot. They would probably have an ISA emulation to support x86 apps, but that will likely be deprecated in a couple of years.

[damnyou]

Yeah, other OEMs want to grow up to have butterfly keyboards, don't they?

[snazz]

Other OEMs want to grow up to be able to make mistakes and still retain a loyal following.