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Comment by endorphone | Hacker News Reader

Apple's software and hardware teams are absolute monsters compared to when they made the transition from PowerPC to x86. The toolset and maturity for cross-platform compilation is dramatically more advanced and mature. They could absolutely do this, and it seems eminently likely that they will in the near future.

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I would also bet the already have full macOS running on ARM internally. I think we are seeing the proof of this in the new libraries being released to support the iOS like apps (News and Stocks) on the Mojave.

When they transitioned to Intel they even said they had internal Macs running on Intel for years waiting for this day.

Did somebody here get one of these back in the days? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-development-trans...

AFAIK, they essentially "just" maintained the x86 port of NeXTSTEP throughout the entire migration from NeXTSTEP to Mac OS X.

I wouldn't be amazed if they supported big-endian PPC still for the sake of maintaining portability, though I feel that's less likely than little-endian ARM.

Why do you think they rewrote from scratch all the applications they acquired from 3rd parties like Final Cut, Logic?

You don't need to rewrite them from scratch. They've had those companies for years and it's a good bet that they've done work to make it more portable. It was already available back when Macs were using PPC, so the code is obviously somewhat portable.

Perhaps they didn't need to, but they did anyway

AppKit is now very old, and maintaining backward compatibility through annual release cycles is extremely complicated and challenging. And that complexity doubles when you add a new platform in the mix.

Porting AppKit to ARM is easy. It's another thing entirely to commit to supporting parallel versions of AppKit for the next 8+ years.

It would be a colossal waste of Apple's software engineering resources, which many people believe are already stretched too thin. And for what, a little better battery life? It's just not realistic.

And for what, a little better battery life? It's just not realistic.

Having entire vertical control, with the flexibility and profitability that entails. Apple is paying hundreds to thousands per processor to Intel, and worse (for Apple) they are beholden to Intel for their product map. This is the antithesis of what Apple is about.

Perhaps, but these are the same folks (for political reasons) who can no longer build a workstation tower or laptop for "professionals." If it wasn't for the iPhone rocketship business they'd be dead.

Imagine if Dell didn't have a competitive workstation/pro laptop in the lineup for five years.

You've got it the wrong way around. Apple is neglecting their Mac line becuase it's paltry compared to their phone business. It's just as much, if not more, work with a fraction of the profits. They would be negligent to do otherwise.

Wouldn't be very smart reasoning on their part, but let's assume true. Supports the up-thread assertion that they are not able to do it for political reasons however.

So given two jobs, you'll focus on the one that pays you the least per hour? Apple isn't just being smart, it has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns.

I'm not sure what you mean by "political reasons" but it does still make billions from Macs, and the Macs contribute in indirect ways to the phones and the overall brand. Maybe that's what you mean.

Does Apple have three employees? Of course not, so please stop with the false dichotomy.

Either support a product fully or end it, one of Jobs’ most important lessons.

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