Well, I think this is where Catalyst comes in. They’ve already started making it easy for iOS developers to take iOS apps and make them work more like native apps. Sure, some developers won’t bother, but there are always crappy developers. The Catalyst & Swift UI work is clearly where the future of Mac development lies, and I’m convinced that in a few years the frameworks will handle this well, so that when you write a well-behaved iOS app, it will naturally be a well-behaved macOS app as well.
1 Like
Absolutely. Apple isn’t just abandoning Intel overnight. They even said in their own press release they will be continuing to support and produce Intel Macs for years to come.
I also wonder what will happen with Windows support on Mac. One reason I love Intel Macs is being able to seamlessly dual boot between Windows and Mac OS. While there is Windows on ARM, who knows if Apple will allow for any sort of dual booting anymore – or if Microsoft would take any steps to support Windows on Apple’s chips. I know this ability to dual boot is an important factor for BYOD scenarios where people want to use the same computer for work and home. On the other hand, Windows on Mac via Bootcamp simply isn’t as good as Windows on commodity PCs so maybe it won’t be considered a major loss by many, but I consider it a really unfortunate thing.
I have no doubt there will be virtualization solutions for Windows on ARM Macs, but those always seem to have their own problems.
In any event, it will be interesting to see what happens. I am skeptical at this point, but Apple knows what it’s doing here and has gone down this road many times before so maybe it’ll be no big deal. I guess I’ll have to see what happens some 5 years down the road when I’m looking to upgrade my current Macbook to something newer.
3 Likes
Sure, I agree that’s the more difficult part. The point is that unlike when Macs ran PPC and it was a major investment for game engines to support it, the engines will already be making that investment due to iOS. And if a developer is already targeting desktop PCs, it shouldn’t be significantly more difficult to target Mac desktops as well.
I think the original comment was concerned about performance, and I do think that is a concern because it will matter how much effort developers put into optimization. I just happen to think that story got better, not worse.
Yeah, I’d expect support to be around for more than 3 years. They announced a 2 year transition, meaning they’ll still be selling Intel-based Macs for 2 more years. They’ll need to continue to support those Macs with software & security updates for at least a few years after that, my guess is you get a minimum of 5 years and more like 6-8 years of Intel-based OS upgrades.
Yeah. Apple by itself is barely a blip in Intel’s sales, but as a harbinger of things to come it should have them pretty worried. ARM has been working on the datacenter market for some time now, and while that market is change averse it is ultimately looking at the bottom line. If the performance and TCO is there, they will switch, and the big name operators here (google, facebook, amazon, etc) are all working with both ARM and AMD to get the tools they need to optimist their workloads for those platforms. Between that and they way AMD has cut into the also small but prestigious enthusiast / gamer market Intel should be pretty worried about now. Windows laptops are the only area where they are still really unassailable, but if the rest of the world switches to ARM that won’t be safe forever.
1 Like
Just realized you were talking about your existing library instead of new games. You might want to watch the keynote where they do some demos of existing X86 games - looked very solid.
Things are already doing pretty well here today. You have common engines, common technologies, and common frameworks that can make the once painful act of porting software to run across many platforms much less of an issue than in the old days. It seems like if anything it’s easier than ever to write something once and have it run anywhere (with the obvious caveat of having to adapt to different form factors). I do question how many developers really want to write the same app and optimize it for a bunch of different form factors, so who knows – maybe the entire vision of “one silicon platform to rule them all” won’t really work out unless you’re a huge development house like Adobe. We’ll just have to see what happens.
Microsoft tried to do this with its “Universal” platform and it went nowhere – mostly because nobody really cared about anything other than x86 Windows machines. Apple is going to go with the same approach but they will have full control over the silicon which should leverage a lot of those synergies (I hate that I just typed those words). If anybody can succeed here it’s Apple.
I remain skeptical but not dismissive.
1 Like
Maybe it will be something similar to Fujitsu A64FX:
If it has to compete with Xeons, 512 bit vector instructions are necessary.
2 Likes
I do exactly the same thing, but with a 2017 iMac with the best available GPU at the time. I also have a shiny brand new 2020 MBP, and that I expect to use for the next half decade at least, so I’m not so worried about my old library of games.
What I am worried about is that most OSX games are ported by Aspyr, I hope they are ready for this switch!
2 Likes
I’m no software or game developer but the lowest common denominator in the Apple ecosystem is the iPhone/iPad. If games are developed specifically for this ecosystem they’ll probably try to accommodate those iDevices. My not very extensive experience with iPad games is that they’re more of the casual kind and that’s exactly what I don’t want from games. I fear a future of more casual games for Macs and less/no ported games from the Windows ecosystem.
1 Like
And MS is in on the ARM push as well, just as they’re on a renewed PC gaming and cross platform PC and console kick. Along with the server side stuff Orenwolf is talking about.
So Apple isn’t standing alone on this. There’s a lot more incentive for 3rd party software to support ARM here than just access to MacOS.
For all the talk of compatibility modes, and ARM is the future predictions. That makes me think this is potentially viable in the the mid to long term more than anything else.
A decent sized chunk of software providers are probably already working on ARM versions. Depending on how into it MS gets that could start to happen in gaming.
1 Like
This! I want to play the next Total Warhammer or Civilization title on my Mac.
1 Like
That’s assuming that people are always using the most-recent versions of software. If someone has some older program that they’re used to or works better than a modern revamp, they’re SOL.
1 Like
I also lived and worked through the 68k->PPC and PPC->Intel transitions as a developer and user, and I didn’t have any major issues. Performance wasn’t great on some of the emulated apps, sure, but it was a limited period of time. My experience was different than yours, clearly.
2 Likes
I didn’t vote for Jared.
The forth was in the BIOS.
2 Likes
Yeah, my ‘14 MacBook Air is still my favorite computer of all time. I’ve been looking at refurbs of the last model with MagSafe and reasonable USB ports. MagSafe was one of the greatest innovations of all time. Can’t believe they just dumped it, especially knowing that it comes at the sacrifice of one of only two ports unless you want a bird’s nest hanging off the side of your otherwise portable device.
1 Like
Good God not this shit again.
I disagree that “Apple is good at this” they’re just good at throwing shit at the wall and if it doesn’t stick, they tell you to upgrade to the latest OS and kiss your old software goodbye. They’re bad enough with software surviving their OS upgrades, but hardware changes? Terrible.
Emulation always seems to fail for the software I need.
Nothing can be purchased outright anymore, so this effectively kills off any non-subscription model software.
Looks like I’ll be keeping my current Mac forevvvvvver.
3 Likes
I’ve never had a Mac last less than 6 years (with minor repairs). All of my iPhones carried me 3-4 years and were only upgraded because of either a screen so badly damaged that the upgrade cost was similar to the repair or… those glorious cameras. Hell, I was sporting a ca. 2008 Airport Express until a few years ago when hotel WiFi became ubiquitous and free.
1 Like
You have my sympathy. I bought the Power Mac G4 Cube literally less than a month before it was dropped from the product line. I liked it, but what can you do? Be pissed, I suppose, and I was for a long time.
Before I upgraded the OS in my iMac to Catalina, every Steam game I had was giving a warning that it would no longer work under that OS. That prompted me to fix my daughter’s old Windows computer and that’s dedicated solely to gaming and I use my iMac for work, media server, and general goofery.
Has that changed? Is Steam releasing Catalina capable games now?
1 Like
