By: Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar), June 23, 2020 4:04 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
NoSpammer (no.delete@this.spam.com) on June 23, 2020 3:45 am wrote:
> Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on June 23, 2020 2:20 am wrote:
> > 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?
>
> Maybe an iPad Pro with mouse and keyboard is all you need for the
> first steps. Note that mouse support became public only recently.
It sounds like that's basically what the development platform in a Mac Mini case is. The actual form of what they were using isn't what matters, it is the fact it was running macOS and there were active efforts to port macOS software from x86 to ARM well before this public announcement that don't seem to have leaked.
They must have been able to keep the size of the Microsoft/Adobe/etc. teams very small to minimize the chance of leaks. When the pandemic forced Apple and everyone else to have employees working remotely this hardware must have been taken home by these employees instead of being tightly controlled like Apple surely would have wanted and STILL they managed to keep it quiet. Sure there were rumors about an ARM Mac but those rumors have been around for years and I sure never heard anything that made me think there were active third party porting efforts going on!
> Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on June 23, 2020 2:20 am wrote:
> > 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?
>
> Maybe an iPad Pro with mouse and keyboard is all you need for the
> first steps. Note that mouse support became public only recently.
It sounds like that's basically what the development platform in a Mac Mini case is. The actual form of what they were using isn't what matters, it is the fact it was running macOS and there were active efforts to port macOS software from x86 to ARM well before this public announcement that don't seem to have leaked.
They must have been able to keep the size of the Microsoft/Adobe/etc. teams very small to minimize the chance of leaks. When the pandemic forced Apple and everyone else to have employees working remotely this hardware must have been taken home by these employees instead of being tightly controlled like Apple surely would have wanted and STILL they managed to keep it quiet. Sure there were rumors about an ARM Mac but those rumors have been around for years and I sure never heard anything that made me think there were active third party porting efforts going on!