Hacker News Reader

Comment by sjwright | Hacker News Reader

My prediction of Apple’s moves here are far less dire. These are just predictions mind you, but the point is Apple could do this without ruining the platform for enthusiasts.

1. They’re going to have some kind of breakthrough with x86 emulation where the Apple ARM CPU has a translator, or an accelerator, or a co-processor, or something that will make x86 run at decent speeds.

2. Apple will move to a long term two-CPU strategy with ARM on economy and low power SKUs, and Intel chips for the “Pro” SKUs.

3. As an alternative to 1 and 2, the direction might just be a killer next-gen iPad Pro and new iPadOS which substantially raises the bar for multitasking, trackpad, etc on that platform. I wouldn’t even dismiss the possibility of an “iPadBook” for want of a better name.

View on HN

> 2. Apple will move to a long term two-CPU strategy with ARM on economy and low power SKUs, and Intel chips for the “Pro” SKUs.

How is this going to work for developers or Apple? For how many years will everyone need to test and ship universal binaries?

Every iOS app is currently tested in x86 on the Mac simulator and then ARM on the device.

If you ship a Catalyst app that runs on iPad and Mac you are shipping and testing on x86 and ARM.

Apple already splits binaries in the app store and only downloads what is needed for your device (including resources for different device resolutions), so the end user would likely not see an increase in app size.

I see no issue with developers shipping universal binaries indefinitely. I don’t see what the issue would be with that, for most devs it’s just part of the Xcode build process. I suppose it would double the compile time for release builds.

Testing is a legitimate concern but I don’t think it’s as consequential as you imply. (For most developers.)

> 2. Apple will move to a long term two-CPU strategy with ARM on economy and low power SKUs, and Intel chips for the “Pro” SKUs.

That makes sense to me: a two-CPU strategy (ARM for laptops and x86 for desktops where power usage is less important) would lessen the Osborne Effect. Mac developers would have a strong motivation to support both laptops and desktops (and thus ARM and x86 macOS) so consumers would not have to fear buying a soon-to-be-obsoleted computer.

Shipping bitcode instead of ARM/x86 universal binaries would also mean that eventually Apple could drop x86 and those bitcode applications would be forward compatible with ARM desktops.

In my imaginary universe, it’s be ARM for MacBook Air and a “Mac nano” shortly followed by an economy spec iMac. If the performance is there, it could eventually extend to the entire iMac line, with a broadened iMac Pro line staying Intel.

It would actually be quite tidy if “Pro” Mac meant Intel, non-pro meant Apple ARM.

What would keep Apple from shipping machines with both ARM and Intel CPUs in them? The ARM CPU would run the OS and decide when to ship jobs over to the Intel CPU. I can’t imagine that the home-grown ARM CPU would add much to the total price of the computer.

Recall that at one point Apple shipped laptops with two GPUs; one for low power work that was more power-efficient, and a more powerful one that was turned on as needed.

They already ship ARM co-processors in Macs: the T2 chip.

An alternative possibility to my earlier musings is that the T2 chip gets expanded to take over more system functionality—perhaps to the point where the Intel chip looks more like an accelerator add-on card than the primary CPU.

While they might like to go that way, I would say the subpar UX of iPadOS with keyboards/pointing devices suggests that they will need to pour a lot of money into the effort.

I look at two things Apple did recently: giving iOS on iPad its own name, and releasing the Magic Keyboard. To me, both these things look like moves in preparation for Apple seriously scaling up iPad as a computing platform.

OSX on iPad would be a nice device. I’d buy it, and prefer it over iOS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com