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On the one hand, this is really exciting. The potential (read: performance) that could come out of Apple creating the silicon as well as the software in their Macs might just surprise us all. It would certainly shake things up in the industry, I think.

On the other hand, this could be a utter and total disaster if there isn't a method to seamlessly port x86 applications over to Mac. If developers are having to develop apps for Windows and Mac completely independently of one another, with absolutely no overlapping capabilities, I see this ending badly. I mean, Apple went AWAY from "proprietary" processors (PowerPC, not technically proprietary, but I digress) in 2005 when they switched to Intel after all.

zorinlynx said it well:
Using Intel CPUs maintains compatibility with the rest of the industry.
 
Well, so it's beginning. I wonder how many people will choose to move on from Apple due to lack of X86 support. I for one will not be buying a Mac that I cannot run windows on

Well, VT-x support might be achievable even on ARM64, Apple can work together with Microsoft on ARM emulation. It makes sense now that Apple will kill x86_32bit Apps in macOS 10.15. It allow them to make fat ARM64/AMD64 binaries.
 
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Well, so it's beginning. I wonder how many people will choose to move on from Apple due to lack of X86 support. I for one will not be buying a Mac that I cannot run windows on

I am not sure why anyone needs to use Windows on a Mac anymore? If you use MS Office it is better than it has ever been on a Mac. Also many other apps in the Windows world are now either on a Mac, web/browser based or have excellent alternatives. Example as a network engineer, I ran a Windows VM on my Mac just for Visio. Then I made the move to OmniGraffle Pro (Better than Visio IMHO) and killed off my VM.

If they do this slow enough then I can easily see most if not all of the Mac software vendors making the move. I have no doubt Omni would do it as they also have excellent iOS apps. Also MS Office is on iOS and porting their Mac version from Intel to something else would probably not be that hard.
 
Windows runs on ARM too. And even x86 programs work on it. (Sadly no x64 yet)

And i'm sure Microsoft will be eager to work with Apple to keep Bootcamp alive

The problem is that if you have x86 software, running it on ARM windows on a future mac won’t be too doable. You need some sort of x86 emulation or translation. And Intel likes to assert that you can’t make an x86 emulator without infringing its intellectual property.
 
Man, the peripheral nightmare will begin with drivers needing to be written for non-Intel code. There would definitely be a transition period while manufacturers write drivers to work with the new processor.

???? Drivers for hardware (printers etc) are written for the OS not the CPU.
 
Well, so it's beginning. I wonder how many people will choose to move on from Apple due to lack of X86 support. I for one will not be buying a Mac that I cannot run windows on

Who said you can't run windows? I am sure they will have a solution like Parallels that will smoke native speed ;)
 
I guess I should start making plans for my exit from the Apple ecosystem.

While I've been able to tolerate the closed nature of the iPhone and iPad, since I treat them mostly as appliances, I would not be able to tolerate the same thing on the Mac.

Using Intel CPUs maintains compatibility with the rest of the industry. I can run virtual machines on my Mac running Linux, Windows, or pretty much any x86-based OS. This is crucial to my usage of the platform.

It's unfortunate if this is true and I really hope it isn't.

They also sell an awful lot of Mac hardware to people who run just Windows, or Windows as well.

Maybe they've thought about this with an on chip compatibility layer or something - there's no word on if these would be ARM based like iOS devices - it'd be doubtful ARM isn't powerful enough to run top end systems.
 
Why not? should be rather interesting. They've had a good number of years in the iPhone and iPad scope to scale it to Mac, which with every macOS update is shaping into an iOS crossover.
 
They also sell an awful lot of Mac hardware to people who run just Windows, or Windows as well.

Maybe they've thought about this with an on chip compatibility layer or something - there's no word on if these would be ARM based like iOS devices - it'd be doubtful ARM isn't powerful enough to run top end systems.

If you are saying ARM isn’t powerful enough for top end systems, that’s nonsense. “Power” is a function of the chip design, not the architecture. Apple could easily add more cores to the A10, bump up the clock speed a bit, increase the size of some buffers and caches, and use a better thermal solution, and compete quite well with current high end intel chips.
 
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