Eli5: Why is Apple moving to ARM on Mac a big thing? My understanding is it will be able to run less software.
In: Technology
Your understanding is not quite correct.
It will require developers to release new versions of their software to run on the new chips. That doesn’t necessarily equate to “less softwate.”
This isn’t the first time Apple has done this. They moved from the PowerPC chip architecture to Intel chips in 2005 and today Macs run more software than ever before.
When Apple made that move, they provided a means for developers to build a “universal” app that would run both on PowerPC Macs and Intel Macs, and they’ve already announced plans to do that for the transition to Apple-built ARM chips. That’s a transition strategy, and once most developers have made the leap to building for ARM they will eventually phase out the “universal” app and end support for software built for the Intel architecture. That will take several years. With the PowerPC–>Intel move they maintained that transition stage for four years.
From a business perspective, this is big primarily because it gives Apple more control over their hardware; they’ve been hamstrung by Intel on several occasions. Manufacturing their own chipsets gives them the freedom to move as quickly or slowly as they want/can without being beholden to a 3rd party chip manufacturer. They’ve already made that move on mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple Home, Apple TV), and now they will have a unified chip architecture across that and their desktop operating system. That’s potentially makes it easier for developers to build apps that cross mobile and desktop more seamlessly.
There isn’t actually anything stopping it from running specific software, the lack of supported software is simply less people write compatible software.
And macs running on none Intel chips has been done before. They have previously used PowerPC processors which were developed by Apple IBM and Motorola. They were awful and as such eventually shifted to Intel.
You will have performance issues here too as well as a long time for developers to move their software over. This will most likely not end well.
I frankly don’t think that this will be a big deal, except maybe for some niche application that will never get updated and may have problems. They are going to do everything in their power to make this seamless, and developers will have ample time to make any necessary changes.
The benefit of this is that the CPUs in use on the iMacs and Mac Books will be more similar to the CPUs in use in iPads, iPhones, and perhaps even Apple TVs or Watches. It will allow Apple to more closely merge the user experience between them, eventually making it so that your iPad doesn’t feel all that different than your iMac, which will make switching between them far easier as time goes on.
My Apple rep has told us that long-term, Apple’s goal is to more or less merge the user experience between their devices, and this CPU change is just a step towards that.
These new Macs should actually run more software. Now macOS will be able to run all iPhone and iPad software as well as mac software.
For best performance, mac software will need to be recompiled for the new processor. Old software will still run, essentially using an emulator, so it will be slower.
As for why? Control. Now they can make whatever chip they want in whatever configuration they want and don’t need to depend on Intel.
ARM processors are known for low power. So they probably have plans for new, thinner laptops without fans.
Apple has such a small share of the laptop market that I’m shocked that anyone noticed.
I somehow doubt this will happen for some time yet, Apple will need to continue to release x86 based devices for a while to support their consumer base running things like GarageBand and other audio apps which is a big part of their business.
For the average Mac user that uses the device to surf the web and check email this will have virtually no impact on them. Apple products are already limited to only being able to run a fraction of applications available on a PC, so that’s not really a change.
Changing their laptops to use ARM with align them with their existing mobile devices like iPads and iPhones which already use ARM processors and have a well defined Operating System.
That means they don’t have to develop the Unix based MacOS Cat Operating Systems anymore and can focus 100% of resources on IOS instead.
Applications that want to run on the new Mac ARM platform will have to be re-written, but presumably they’ll have access to the entirety of the iPhone+iPad app libraries so there’s a lot already out there.
There’s also a long running trend in the industry to develop web-apps that run in a web browser. These apps don’t care if you’re ARM or x86, they just run in your Firefox, Chrome, Safari, whatever.
Most current software is written in languages that can be compiled to run on any reasonable processor. Some parts of multithreading and driver implementation may differ, but the rest just compiles.
In my pre-retirement life I supported a fairly large package written in C that ran on Motorola, Power PC, Alpha (a Digital RISC chip), and x86. It was briefly ported to Intel’s Itanium, but their company and my company couldn’t agree on pricing.
For efficiency, one part of the code used a machine locking instruction directly rather than relying on the equivalent AIX/Unix/Linux functions. Implementing that bit of code and the C compiler options were the only changes required to move among the different systems.
TL;DR: It will run any well written non-system software that anyone chooses to compile for it.
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