by Jason Snell
What will the ARM Mac look like?
I really enjoyed this post by Gus Mueller about what’s likely to happen if Apple is indeed transitioning the Mac to ARM processors:
With all the recent rumors flying around about the Mac transitioning to ARM processors, I’ve seen some assertions about what this means for software going forward. I thought I could chime in on this as someone who’s been developing software for the Mac for a long time, including the last architecture transition from PowerPC to Intel.
I agree with all of Gus’s points. ARM Macs are going to be Macs, almost certainly running more or less all Mac software that currently runs on Catalina. ARM Macs won’t be iPads. They’ll be Macs.1
Who knows where the Mac will go after it makes the ARM transition? Between SwiftUI and Mac Catalyst, it’s entirely possible that Apple will lead developers on a years-long path to an entirely new method of delivering Mac apps. But there’s no point in the Mac existing if it’s just an iPad—and I think Apple agrees.
- I don’t want to pick on Steven Sinofsky, an incredibly smart and thoughtful tech commentator who was a high-level Microsoft exec for many years, but this is not his strongest work. ↩