← Back to context

Comment by codeptualize

15 hours ago

I think their M chips are a good example. They ran on intel for so long, then did the impossible of changing architecture on Mac, even without much transition pain.

Obviously that was built upon years of iPhone experience, but it shows they can lag behind, buy from other vendors, and still win when it becomes worth it to them.

9 comments

codeptualize

Reply
moondev  15 hours ago

How is changing the architecture of a platform that only you make hardware for doing the impossible?

They could change the architecture again tonight, and start releasing new machines with it. The users will adopt because there is literally no other choice.

Every machine they release will be fastest and most capable on the platform, because there is no other option

  • crote  15 hours ago

    The hard part is doing so without completely ruining the existing app ecosystem. Rosetta 2 is genuinely impressive.

    • codeptualize  3 hours ago

      Exactly this! Rosetta + the whole app developer community who really quickly released builds for M chips (voluntary or forced, but it did happen).

      I had the initial m1 air, and it was remarkable how useable it was. You'd expect all sorts of friction and issue but mostly things just worked (very fast). Even with some Rosetta overhead it was still fast compared to intel macs.

    • oarsinsync  14 hours ago

      Rosetta 1 delivered 50-80% of the performance of native, during the PPC->Intel transition. It turns out, you can deliver not particularly impressive performance and still not ruin your app ecosystem, because developers have to either update to target your new platform, or leave your platform entirely.

      You can also voluntarily cut off huge chunks of your own app ecosystem intentionally, by giving up 32bit support and requiring everything to be 64bit capable.

      ...because users have no other choice when only one vendor controls the both the hardware+software. They can either use the apps still available to them, or they can leave. And the cost of leaving for users is a lot higher.

Krutonium  15 hours ago

It's also notably not the first time they switched. They did the Motorola (I think MIPS?) Archictecure, then IBM PowerPC, then Intel x86 (for a single generation, then x86_64) and now Apple M-Series.