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by bjpirt 2184 days ago
Having big flashbacks to the switch from PPC to x86 here. Rosetta worked relatively smoothly during that transition so fingers crossed it will be ok here too.

Though with Docker support on the mac already being a second class citizen to running on Linux I wonder if a lot of devs will stop using macs for dev

2 comments

Highly unlikely Apple would cede the software engineering market for a competitor to step in. Almost everyone in my company would prefer to have a MacBook vs a Thinkpad/Dell/etc if given the choice.
Highly unlikely Apple would cede the software engineering market for a competitor to step in.

If you're not specifically developing for iOS or macOS, Apple doesn't care about you. They'll take your money if you want to write Unix or web software, but they'll drop support in a heartbeat if that makes it easier to support their mobile and consumer segments.

Speaking solely for myself, I do not intend to go with this experiment after using Macs for 16 years and change. I have found that with a few rough edges, Windows 10 and WSL fulfills my dev needs, and except for the Apple apps Logic and Final Cut Pro, virtually all my software is cross platform. Besides, I can use Ableton and Adobe Premiere which I also already "own."
> I do not intend to go with this experiment

I’m sure they lost people when they switched off of ppc too but just like last time Apple is playing the long game. Intel just can’t keep up anymore.

Intel can't (maybe). AMD can. In fact right now, AMD doesn't even have to keep up, because it's substantially out in front.
AMD has worse thermals than intel does which is likely the reason Apple is switching in the first place
What % of your devs are running Windows vs Linux on those?
People weren't running PowerPC VMs (besides Classic which was dropped in 10.5) so they didn't notice the loss of that functionality. Many people are running x86 VMs today which won't work on ARM.