By: Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar), June 23, 2020 2:20 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Anne O. Nymous (not.delete@this.real.address) on June 23, 2020 1:58 am wrote:
> hobold (hobold.delete@this.vectorizer.org) on June 23, 2020 1:07 am wrote:
> > Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on June 22, 2020 11:57 pm wrote:
> >
> > > I've posted the wikipedia PPC->Intel transition page here like 10 times. I've explained
> > > many more times than that how this transition will follow that exact same script. And
> > > yet people refuse to listen up till the minute that the announcements occur.
> > >
> > Apple's history of transitions, both m68k -> PowerPC, and PowerPC -> x86, did follow the script
> >
> > 1. have a complicated and unreliable translator that works good
> > enough for stage presentations and very simple programs
> >
> > 2. quickly abandon the translation layer before it ever learns to deal with the hard cases
> >
> > Been there, observed that. Twice.
> >
> > You know how the saying goes: "Any sufficiently advanced
> > technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
>
> Yes, but with MS and Adobe on board (in addition to Apple's own software) to go ARM-native
> soon, quite a number of users will never ever have to actually use the translation
> layer, so that is great customer handling and management of expectations.
> I believe Maynards assessment of this is spot on. This is there to ease customer concerns pro-actively,
> just as the intel-for-several more years and universal2 announcement served to convince customers
> that apple's current x86 offerings are still worth buying today and tomorrow.
Already having some critical apps ported to ARM was what I felt was the biggest surprise. Not because it is surprising that they worked with them, but they apparently were able to keep it a secret - no leaked benchmarks of a macOS machine running ARM, no random Twitter accounts with a photo of "uname -a" output on it, etc. Considering how everyone always knows the full details of the new iPhone months before release it is somewhat surprising to me they managed to keep this under wraps while working with multiple outside companies.
Which is why I'm not surprised we are seeing these Macs this year instead of 2021 like I had predicted. I was assuming the third party porting work and testing would begin in July, but apparently it has already been going on for months now. I wonder how long the first ARM Macs have already been in the hands of third party developers?
I'm particularly curious what they may have been working on with Microsoft as far as helping out the Mac users who rely on Windows beyond simply porting.
> hobold (hobold.delete@this.vectorizer.org) on June 23, 2020 1:07 am wrote:
> > Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on June 22, 2020 11:57 pm wrote:
> >
> > > I've posted the wikipedia PPC->Intel transition page here like 10 times. I've explained
> > > many more times than that how this transition will follow that exact same script. And
> > > yet people refuse to listen up till the minute that the announcements occur.
> > >
> > Apple's history of transitions, both m68k -> PowerPC, and PowerPC -> x86, did follow the script
> >
> > 1. have a complicated and unreliable translator that works good
> > enough for stage presentations and very simple programs
> >
> > 2. quickly abandon the translation layer before it ever learns to deal with the hard cases
> >
> > Been there, observed that. Twice.
> >
> > You know how the saying goes: "Any sufficiently advanced
> > technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
>
> Yes, but with MS and Adobe on board (in addition to Apple's own software) to go ARM-native
> soon, quite a number of users will never ever have to actually use the translation
> layer, so that is great customer handling and management of expectations.
> I believe Maynards assessment of this is spot on. This is there to ease customer concerns pro-actively,
> just as the intel-for-several more years and universal2 announcement served to convince customers
> that apple's current x86 offerings are still worth buying today and tomorrow.
Already having some critical apps ported to ARM was what I felt was the biggest surprise. Not because it is surprising that they worked with them, but they apparently were able to keep it a secret - no leaked benchmarks of a macOS machine running ARM, no random Twitter accounts with a photo of "uname -a" output on it, etc. Considering how everyone always knows the full details of the new iPhone months before release it is somewhat surprising to me they managed to keep this under wraps while working with multiple outside companies.
Which is why I'm not surprised we are seeing these Macs this year instead of 2021 like I had predicted. I was assuming the third party porting work and testing would begin in July, but apparently it has already been going on for months now. I wonder how long the first ARM Macs have already been in the hands of third party developers?
I'm particularly curious what they may have been working on with Microsoft as far as helping out the Mac users who rely on Windows beyond simply porting.
