I am going to go out on a very short limb and predict that Apple does no such thing in the foreseeable future, say 3 or 4 years. In the past, Apple has only transitioned to a new architecture once it was so powerful that it could easily emulate older hardware. Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility as much as Microsoft on desktops but even they cannot release a new desktop/laptop that doesn't run existing software.

Although ARM processors are fast in certain benchmarks, they cannot compete with x86 for performance and certainly cannot emulate the instruction set at a speed users would find acceptable.

ARM makes great sense for low power devices and _maybe_ servers. Apple already makes tons of the former and seems uninterested in the later.

It should be about 4 years from now that the x86-64 patents have expired, so I wonder (not an expert on anything) if we might see Macs with dual-architecture features after that, whether full support for two instruction sets or just some mixture of software emulation and hardware acceleration for x86.

My iPad Pro is as fast on single-thread as all my Intel desktop machines, and 2/3 on multicore. In a non-thermally throttled enclosure, I would expect it to outperform.

https://browser.geekbench.com/user/122632

> My iPad Pro is as fast on single-thread as all my Intel desktop machines, and 2/3 on multicore

in Geekbench. That particular benchmark has been critized for years for not being comparable across platforms.

Right, but 1-2x perf is not nearly enough to naively emulate a system.

Rosetta was not a naive emulator. It was a dynamic, optimizing re-compiler.

There's two reasons to think that an ARM transition would be easier:

1. The endianness is the same. The PPC/Intel transition required processes to share memory while disagreeing on byte order.

2. Apple controls their ARM CPU designs. They can add whatever they like.

right, and

3. rosetta only emulated the actual app binary; eventually it called in to native libs, so performance for the most part held up really well iirc (for apps, not sure about games)

Apple is (gradually) transitioning to ARM as we speak, right before our very eyes: the T2 chip and Bitcode.

The A-series chips in the iPhone and iPad seem to compare pretty favorable to Intel processors in the low to mid end.

Now imagine a version of the A-series processor with more space, thermal headroom, and cores.

>the T2 chip and Bitcode.

BitCode is iOS only.

There's a plan for that.

https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20190518-Translatin...

That article is overly optimistic and only works for the very specific, tailored example application. However, Bitcode is essentially repackaged LLVM IR so it's not hard to see it coming to macOS.

I find it interesting that every Apple CPU transition has started at the top, but everyone and their dog seems to know that ARM will happen and this time start at the bottom.

Apple rumors are half prediction and half wish. I don’t disagree with your wish (10 year old performance is fine for me) but it’s really not Apple’s MO. They aren’t going to release a new pro workstation and then turn around and make cheap low-end hardware aimed at developers.

If I were to bet, I'd bet on the reappearance of the 12" Macbook with a ARM processor as the "Macbook Mini"

My guess is a developer-focused supercar of a Macbook. 16 cores, FaceID, maybe OLED?

Jet black, announced for preorder at WWDC. They wouldn’t be able to make enough, and now a boring, disruptive CPU transition is sexy.

There have been some weird rumors out of Asia about a Mac “gaming laptop” that could easily be misinterpreting a product like this.

Also, I think folks ITT are overestimating the difficulty of acceptable performance binary translation (not direct emulation) of x64->AArch64, especially when Apple controls and has experts at every level of the stack. 32-bit apps weren’t de-supported this year just to save some memory.

Something like Samsung xe303c12?

But Apple's CPUs are so powerful because they have lots and lots of cache compared to most ARM SoCs. I'm not saying they can't release a Mac with ARM under the hood (they probably will), but I don't see it setting a trend for ARM desktops elsewhere.

Apple can use a lot of cache in their CPU designs because they can charge a lot for their hardware (L1/L2 cache is very expensive). But the rest of the market can't since they're mostly selling commodity hardware — with commodity chips — and price is a very sensitive point there.

So Apple could in theory make and sell plenty of Premium ARM laptops with performant x86 compatibility for older software while being fast and cool for native apps while the Windows/Linux competitors will be still lagging way behind with a poor user experience.

Which would look a lot like an Apple TV but running macOS.

The Apple TV is more or less an iPad. It already supports bluetooth keyboards and other accessories, so you could really say that Apple already has an ARM desktop Mac, it just needs more user software.

So, the first Apple TV, then.