As a developer there is a nuisance of one more damn thing to test, but compared to the nuisance iOS developers go through to make sure it looks nice on all the different sized devices, testing on an ARM before release isn't bad.
Having developed through the 68k-to-PPC and the PPC-to-x86 and the x86-to-amd64 days I think I can safely say I never had a problem with any code in a transition¹². There are developers that will, if you have written optimized vector code or some such and you care to also be highly performant on the ARM you will be spending resources to make sure you map onto whatever the hardware provides, but you've been doing that for the various Intel instruction set changes anyway.
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¹ I'm not saying architecture doesn't matter, doing early ARM porting for Debian I can tell you having C "char" be unsigned was a huge pain in the codebase. But Apple has control top to bottom and has every incentive to make it easy for developers, if only for themselves.
²At least not any problems bad enough to leave a mark on my memory. I'm sure I had to learn about intptr_t sometime after it was invented and probably learned a lesson about size_t at some point.
If you run into this it can:
1. take a while until you aware there is a bug (as it likely only happens spurious potentially with different effects every time)
2. take quite longer to somewhat pin down
3. And if you have not atomic experience and the bug is in a library might be outside of your skill/payment level to fix requiring major rewrites. And all of this parallel to all the other work you have to do.
=> While this should be rather easy for many app for some it might be a nightmare which is combined with the regularly planed work might very well take many month, after customers start using it and run into the bug.
Ah, so just like the Catalina 32-bit Armageddon.
Uuuh, but they have a track record of terrible developer support, so I don't see this actually happening.
Just like they did with the mk86->ppc transition, just like they did with the ppc->x86 transition.
> I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos
Let's not confuse moving Macs to ARM processors with turning Macs into iOS devices. Apple has always treated the OS families differently and will continue to do so because they know more than anybody that they meet different needs.
Will they, though? Because Catalina seems like a giant step in the wrong direction if you’re thinking they’re acknowledging the developer - or even power user - need. Seems to me they’ve doubled down on the iOS approach to macOS.
I don't necessarily see it as trying to create a single OS for both desktop and mobile.
I, in fact, find the catalyst apps on macOS still needing work. And I’m talking the Apple ones: Music, News
Sure, the industry ended up following them on a lot of this, but that should be as much a cause for concern as the rest of it. An awful lot of the pro audio / video work that happens on high end Apple hardware could absolutely happen on a machine where the only software comes in via an app store.
sure, but all that functionality remained externally - just not as part of the laptop. locking down the laptop is fundamentally different.
I think what they did was they changed what it looks like to be a pro user. The average user gets a sleak experience while a "pro" user is going to have a docking station.
I actually like that they transitioned to the docking station approach. It means two things:
1. I have a lighter macbook pro for work travel 2. At my desk, one single cable: charges the computer; connects two additional monitors, ethernet, keyboard, mouse, sd card reader, high speed storage, and a scanner. I much prefer that one single cable vs the bundle of cables I used to have to plug/unplug each time I wanted to take or return my computer.
macOS is for everything, including Dev. They need that for the ecosystem. Look at the new Mac Pro ffs.
Can’t most apps just recompile to support new chip? We don’t need fat binaries right?
10 years from now, we'll probably be having the same argument, and people will be pointing to the latest release of macOS and complaining that surely this one means the end is nigh.
Remember how they turned their backs on the creative people that kept them alive for over a decade when everybody else had switched to windows? Similar story, similar ending.
I wouldn't be surprised if they just do that. Ship the lower end laptops with ARM and either an extended iOS or a constrained MacOS.
> Apple has always treated the OS families differently and will continue to do so because they know more than anybody that they meet different needs.
But the different needs part only really applies for the high end Mac Books and from apples POV might no longer be a think if you can develop Swift/Objective-C and similar on iOS.
Also don't forget that ARM has weaker memory ordering, so expect to see some fallout from not completely correctly written atomics/lock-free code.
I tend to think that Safari, iPhoto, iMovie iWork, Mail, Calendar and maybe Office support (initially) would be more than enough for that segment of users.
That precedent was set about a decade ago, and even here on HN there is a vast crowd of people who happily support(ed) that.
Hard to predict which path they choose, but I try to stay positive and assume that they have at least one manager capable of thinking rational and in favor of the pro users.
I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos (though I imagine they intend to) by restricting applications to only being available from the app store. That would set a terrible precedent for personal computing.