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by katbyte 1028 days ago
You are just speculating - having a 2 in 1 device is not as easy as “osx on an iPad” or “iOS on a Mac”

Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice
2 comments
hu3 1028 days ago
> Until the m1 is was 100% not possible.

Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could)

https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106

And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops

Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.

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Spooky23 1028 days ago
Sure, and they don’t sell particularly well. That whole segment of the Microsoft ecosystem is a dusty corner that doesn’t get a lot of respect.

Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.

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katbyte 1027 days ago
different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood.

ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut

Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device

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afavour 1028 days ago
Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it.

(before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)

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katbyte 1027 days ago
the os isn't the hard part, its the app ecosystem and navigating how do you ensure they all run properly on x86, and not with a huge performance or battery hit. i would be rosetta2 in reverse, and as great as rosetta2 is it has limitations & does come at a cost.

sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.

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afavour 1027 days ago
> how do you ensure they all run properly on x86

Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices.

> it would be rosetta2 in reverse

It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.

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katbyte 1027 days ago
You seem to be forgetting that every app in the App Store would need to be rebuilt.. and developers would need to buy in and do so
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afavour 1027 days ago
Make it a requirement in order to ship a new version, developers would do it in an instant. Just like they did with 64bit builds.

Sure, a small number of apps would fall to the wayside. But it’s not like Apple has hesitated to do that before.

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katbyte 1026 days ago
I think you are grossly underestimating the number of apps that no longer see regular updates/have active developers
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