> a legitimate business interest to further incentivize the adoption of Apple Silicon devices
Apple has never been about supporting legacy platforms with new features. And with over a quarter of revenue and two fifths of Apple's gross profits coming from services, one could argue the incentives run either way.
Enterprise ARM servers are still a niche product, and so are the ARM developer machines running Linux or Windows. Until this significantly changes, Apple will have to provide good x86 interop - or lose the developer market entirely.
Forcing people towards Apple silicon is of course an attractive approach when targeting the large portion of the market using their MacBooks as Facebook browsing machines, but (especially with the new MacBook Neo) what's going to happen when a large portion of the market for high-end MBPs disappears because it turned from the default no-brainer into a liability?
Rosetta 2. Rosetta was for Intel to emulate 68k, now if you could get Rosetta 2 to run under Rosetta, then you could run 68k, on an ARM, and if you could get the apple ][ emulator...
I started with System 3 on a Mac Plus with floppy disks back in the late 1980s, and ported original C code from around System 7 all the way through modern versions of macOS X. Apple has a long track record of deprecating basically everything, as part of its business model IMHO. That's why I don't target native macOS/iOS anymore.
Nobody is coming to save us. But I think that with AI, we have an opportunity to create a zero-cost runtime layer that provides something like Wine or SDL on all platforms. It could/should be the intersection of all mainstream OS features (a bit like the web), with the option to drop down to native components like how Cordova works.
I've been out of the game too long to know if something like this already exists, but would love to contribute.
Note that the thing to get to the thing is runway. With our currently broken open source software (OSS) funding model, we don't have a way to pay developers a stipend of perhaps $24-48k per year (minimum) for their OSS efforts. So they have to work pro bono. That leads to design-by-committee thinking that stands in the way of getting real work done.
So unfortunately we have to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. I hope to see the creation of a maker's guild someday, where membership provides the stipend, with proceeds coming from the 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 apps that generate a return on investment, to cover the commercial failures. Like Humble Bundle on steroids.
- digression -
Imagine a corporate model, but without gatekeeping, minimum hours or profit. A pure meritocracy working to manifest a gift economy for all.
I'm not aware of an automation-based (instead of artificial-scarcity-based) economic model like this. Solarpunk is more of a cultural revolution, but comes close. Some examples of how it might work:
- Abandoning patents, copyrights and other intellectual property rights in favor of a commons owned by everyone
- Funding drug research but giving away the resulting medication for the cost of production or free
- Universal Basic Income (UBI) or its cousin Universal Basic Capital (UBC) that provides the resources for labor to participate in the exponential gains of capitalism (the missing ladder that the wealthy currently pull up behind them)
China is well on its way to achieving these goals and more by 2049 under its Second Centenary Goal. Meaning that the US is/has been left behind. You can feel it in every way: widespread underemployment, the collapse of our social safety nets, the return of prejudice, our national debt higher than our GDP, CEOs getting compensated hundreds of times more than workers, the upcoming crowning of the first trillionaire. Times 1000 other injustices.
Solving the thing that gets to the thing is akin to solving all things.
Edit: I was wrong about intellectual property (IP) in China. It sounds like they will instead pursue high-value IP to fund their economy, a bit like the UBI funding model. I don't think that's an equitable path, so am suggesting something above and beyond what they're attempting.
Basically: they’ve moved on.