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Comment by enragedcacti | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with Linus for a couple of reasons. The main one being that not every service in a product needs to be running ARM for it to be useful. There is nothing preventing heterogenous solutions in the cloud and if third parties vet their code on ARM then deploying your DBMS on ARM and your web server on x86 (or whatever services most of your business logic is in) is totally valid for cost or performance reasons.

Secondly, it seems likely that there will be ARM MacBooks by 2020, that kind of instant market penetration for arm in the dev space might mean the exact opposite of what he's saying; why would I deploy on x86 when all of my development is on my ARM machine already?

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Your second point is just re-enforcing what he said. If MacBooks move ARM, they will have solved developer piece. Since so many developers use Apple stuff, ARM will be native and servers would follow.

In the 90s you could see a shift from people having a SPARC workstation in their office for service development, to just using a x86 PC with Linux or Windows on. Then after while developing for Linux/x86 and deploying to Solaris/SPARC made little sense, so you just put it on Linux/x86 in the end. The thing is maybe 95% of things just work and you spend all your time sorting the other 5%.

At least for now, the ‘move to ARM’ is just wishful thinking by developers who think they can shovel phone apps onto the desktop. Unfortunately phone apps on the desktop stink so that’s not going to be a big thing.

Moving to ARM has nothing to do with moving phone apps to desktops.

Almost all iOS apps already run natively on x86 today. When developers use the iPhone simulator they are running natively compiled apps linked against an x86 version of the iOS framework. If all Apple wanted to do is allow iOS apps to run without any usability changes on Macs that would be easy (and ugly).

There are already x86 based Android devices.

> Since so many developers use Apple stuff, ARM will be native and servers would follow.

I think you overestimate the significance of some Hipster Developers. And I type that on a Macbook Pro as well.

> Secondly, it seems likely that there will be ARM MacBooks by 2020, that kind of instant market penetration for arm in the dev space might mean the exact opposite of what he's saying; why would I deploy on x86 when all of my development is on my ARM machine already?

Well, that is not the exact opposite of what he's saying! He actually mentioned that. That is merely one of his points and it is true.

Linux said: "Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it."

For your second point, Linus has already mentioned it here : https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpost...

Apple hasn’t touched the Unix parts of MacOS in a long time. I’d assume whatever they ship will be some sort of hybrid that may not make developers happy.

UNIX is not a synonym for developers.

Developers on the Apple eco-system care very little for those UNIX parts.

Yeah... 2019 is the Year of ARM On The Desktop. As is 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022...

It's totally happening for reals this time. Just look at .. like .. Raspberry Pi...

It would genius of Apple to simply own this phenomenon.

Want an iPod/iPhone like phenomenal opportunity?

Go all in on ARM chips and ship out MacBooks with next gen performance. Alongside, develop server grade ARM chips and make it easy for the army of devs weilding the shiny Macs to deploy straight to it. Impress with performance - you get to take the cake and eat it too.

I doubt an operation guy like Tim Cook will understand such a strategy.

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