Rumors of this started a long time ago.
Later that year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuosupported this rumor by his own prediction.
In February, Kuo saidARM-based Macs are coming in 2021.
In the 90s, Apple switched from Motorolas 68k chips to IBM and Motorolas PowerPC processors.
In 2005, Steve Jobs announced another transition to Intels x86 processors.
Its been more than a decade of Macs running Intel CPUs.
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When developers returned these kits, they got a first-gen iMac in exchange.
Jobs also announced Rosetta, a technology that allowed PowerPC-based apps to run on Intel-based Macs smoothly.
Apple started to pave the road for the transition last year when it announcedProject Catalyst.
So these apps may share most of the codebase, but the final compiled binaries are different.
I talked to a bunch of developers to find out how Apple expects to handle this transition.
Apps that share code with iOS already compile to ARM, so that part should be easy.
Theyll probably have to recompile their apps with the new version of Xcode.
Thomson believes most developers today work with modern codebases that can run on multiple types of processors.
App developerGuilherme Rambo also thinks on similar lines.
Reference Hardware
Theres the question of transition hardware as well.
There might be some rumors of an iPad being used as hardware for the shift.
But, John Gruber has waved that possibility offon his blog.
Or there might be a special reference Macbook in the offering.
What will big apps do?
There are still some questions as to how Apple might handle some heavy-duty stuff.
And even if Apple will provide an emulation mechanism the performance will not be up to the mark.
Former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky noted that Apple might release a new compiler that will handle the transition.
12/ So the question is really what app model/APIs will run on an ARM mac.
Apple has a new Mac with their own chips.
And they should have an incentive to do it for a large userbase.
We might not see an ARM-based Mac for consumers right away.
you could follow all our coverage on WWDC 2020here.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.”
