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by lmm 1789 days ago
Now that I'm using a Surface Book 2 as my primary computer, with a Surface Dock set up on my desk at home with screen/keyboard/speakers/etc., I'm more confident than ever that this future is coming eventually - but also confident that it will take a long time. Having a single device makes a surprisingly big difference from having two separate devices (home PC and travel laptop), but is also not worth sacrificing power for. The technical users who will become early adopters want a first-class home PC, so just as laptops only started to actually displace desktops once they had enough RAM etc. to match them, it'll be the same for phones, and they'll probably need to be x86-based phones for the sake of being able to run old programs.
2 comments
codetrotter 1789 days ago
Apple already made it possible on macOS to run x86_64 software on their ARM computers, with Rosetta 2.

Any company with enough resources could do the same if they felt so inclined.

And if Apple wanted to, Apple could make Rosetta 2 run on iOS devices. For now they want to keep them mostly separate, and are more about running iPad apps on macOS than the other way around. But there is nothing stopping Apple from running desktop software, whether compiled for x86_64 or for ARM, on iOS devices if they wanted to. And if convergence turns out to be the future then I think we may see them do that eventually. But I am not convinced that it will.

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AussieWog93 1789 days ago
>Apple could make Rosetta 2 run on iOS devices

From what I understand, M1 Macs have specialised hardware that allows them to emulate x64 with good performance. It's not just software.

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codetrotter 1789 days ago
Was not aware of that. But either way in that case they can do something similar in the hardware for future iOS devices, if they wish to.
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vineyardmike 1789 days ago
> they'll probably need to be x86-based phones for the sake of being able to run old programs.

Maybe its the other way around?

Maybe we need to wait until the old way of doing things is so forgotten we can accept the phone-way as a valid way. As long has people have their x86 applications, they'll want to use them. Once people stop caring - well then there is an app for that.

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