> Apple is widely rumored to also consider switching to their quite credible in house ARM based processors.
Does the Mac App Store require submission as source code?
If not, consider the implications.
Does the Mac App Store require submission as source code?
If not, consider the implications.
They implemented a dynamic binary translator to ease the transition (which they discontinued a couple versions later -- initially released in Tiger, and was removed in Lion).
Or they could slowly make it required.
No. You do not submit source code.
> They require (I think -- maybe just strongly encourage) submissions to the iOS App Store to include LLVM bitcode.
Apple does not currently require LLVM bitcode for iOS. It does require it for Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Additionally, LLVM bitcode is not architecture agnostic. It would not solve the problem of going from x86 to ARM.
> (anyone remember fat binaries i.e. the ones including both PPC and Intel executables in one .app container?)
This was also used in Apple's transition from 32-bit to 64-bit on Mac. And later again on iOS.
So yes, if Apple were to transition CPU architectures again, fat binaries would be the likely approach.