Originally Posted by itguy08
They announced it today
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/22/macs-custom-apple-silicon/ They showed off Office, Adobe, etc running. For those on 100% Xcode it's as simple as check this box to compile for ARM. The iOS apps running natively is also huge news.
It will probably work out well for them - the PPC -> Intel transition was relatively simple for those that were all in on modern Apple tools.
I'm in the Windows camp for now but this is interesting news and they could have a winner if they don't price their stuff out there. That's what had me back in Windows.
I didn't watch the keynote, but with Office, Photoshop, Lightroom and Maya already running in some fashion, it seems that the big developers are on board with the plan. Apple's own pro apps, will not be a problem, of course.
Rosetta 2 will support most x86 apps, but not virtualization apps, and dual booting is out the window, but on the flip side, iOS apps will run natively, and those developers will be able to offer their products across the whole spectrum of Apple's products -- iPhone, iPad, Watch, TV, and now Mac, all based on the same foundation. That has more upside potential, even if it may cost them the users who are tied to Windows-only tools somehow.
Three for three is looking pretty good.
Originally Posted by JHZR2
But how/why did office run?
Maybe it's easy for mIcrosoft and others to just check a box and provide software for many different Mac OSs. Also seems like a configuration nightmare, and worse for those folks who aren't tech savvy and now won't know why their download won't install.
But I'm sure they have lots of people thinking about interoperability.
This will be the third time Apple has made a transition from one hardware architecture to another, and it couldn't have happened if the company didn't make it a smooth process for developers, and users alike.
I'm not sure what the concern is over providing support for multiple architectures, when MS already does so for its products. There are three different versions of its OS, Windows (x86-64, x86, and yes, Arm, even if the last isn't quite as well advanced). There are different versions of Office for Windows, Mac, and Mobile.
It's the job of any software company to develop specific products for any market it wishes to be in, same as it is for the automotive OEMs to design and build products for each market, or even just simply LHD/RHD.
From the developer standpoint, simply checking a box may be oversimplifying things, and there will be some additional work needed, but beyond that, a lot of the heavy lifting will already have been done, if the developer has used the relevant IDE (CodeWarrior, for 68k to PPC, Xcode for Intel, and now ARM), and written clean code that calls upon supported APIs, and isn't encumbered by deprecated APIs, or legacy code. Dumping 68k wouldn't have been possible without CodeWarrior, and tools like it and Xcode relieve much of the pressure on the developer to worry about the low level architecture.
From a business standpoint, there are still unreleased Intel-based Macs in the pipeline, relatively new ones in the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro, as well as the current installed based, which will not disappear overnight, with some dating back ~12 years still in use. The just announced Mac OS 11/Big Sur supports machines up to 7 years old. It's not Windows in that respect, but it's also not the albatross that MS has had to bear, in supporting XP, and then 7 users, having to look back, as well as forward.
From the user standpoint, programs will be distributed in fat binaries that will run on both architectures, or in app slices through Apple's app store, so that will be transparent to the user.
And for the vast majority of them, ever since the smartphone became mainstream, the biggest question about the hottest new essential apps isn't whether they'll run on the desktop, it's whether it's available on both iOS and Android. By switching to ARM, Apple is making that hurdle easier to clear, at least for Macs.
Apple has done this twice before, and providing it executes according to plan, and makes it smooth enough for others to do so, then it will probably succeed again.