Given that Apple survived m68k to ppc to x86 to x86_64 I think they may have the ability to predict the obstacles needed to win over and the price for it.

Likely, but I guess many people wouldn’t care. We have been there before (32 bit clean apps, 68k apps, PowerPC apps, 32 bit apps, Carbon apps, non-signed apps. I may be missing a few)

Apple presumably would sell it with Safari, Photos, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Microsoft would port Office or happily sell you Office 365 in a browser. Firefox would be ported. It would run the WhatsApp, Facebook etc iOS apps.

I could like something like that, depending on the hardware. It could be a cross between iPad and MacBook; easier to be productive in than the former, cheaper and longer battery life than the latter.

Not necessarily see for example the Microsoft Surface Pro X.

Relatedly, since MacOS already broke a great number of apps with Catalina (breaking x86 support), they can focus on x64 support only:

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-reportedly-working-...

Assuming the Apple-designed ARM chip is indeed significantly more performant than the x86-64 chip (there wouldn't be much point to this transition otherwise -- if it was solely about business concerns with Intel, they could use AMD's x86-64 chips instead), they could do an emulation mode of some kind. They could potentially even have some hardware optimizations for it.

Apps like photoshop would still get compiled targeting the new architecture to take advantage of the performance benefits, but other apps could run in emulation mode. Then, over say 3-4 years, most commercial and open-source apps would get updated or be replaced by alternatives.

On one hand, it's weird to use a different CPU than other computers. On the other hand I hate x86 and its complexity and its weird hacks, and it's about time someone ditched it. Although they literally just actually completed the transition to x86-64 a few months ago so it's a bit hilarious they're moving away so soon.