Perhaps a naive question, but what will this mean for Bootcamp users?
> (notably, one thing Apple does not need to give up is Windows support: Windows has run on ARM for the last decade, and I expect Boot Camp to continue, and for virtualization offerings to be available as well; whether this will be as useful as Intel-based virtualization remains to be seen).
There's also x86 emulation on ARM. It's slow, but it might be enough to run that 20 year old business app.
While I don't know what became of that, I can see Microsoft working out a deal with Intel because Windows is still huge on x86 and wasn't going anywhere.
On the other hand, if Apple is planning to completely drop Intel in favor of ARM and wants to implement x86 emulation, I can't see Intel letting OSX ARM emulate x86 without some form of resistance.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel... (sorry about the link being Forbes, it was the first search result for the keywords I used)
This is the same concept box86 implements on Linux. https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86 . It's good enough to run lower end Linux games on a Raspberry Pi 4
And 'hackintosh' enthusiasts?
But even more likely is someone would port it to off the shelf ARM processors.
My guess is that Apple will put some effort into ensuring this will be non-trivial (read: impossible).
The danger is not so much T2 chips or the like, because that can easily be defeated in software, but locking down peripheral support would be. For instance if they only support their own custom graphics hardware that would be a problem. This is what Apple tends to do so it's the most likely scenario.
Companies selling hardware that is "Mac compatible" and profiting from that is a very different thing. Apple clearly cares about that.
If Apple hits a jackpot a couple of years later I'm sure we will see the same on the Windows world.
Either they’ve integrated Wine, or you’re screwed.
You probably mean something like Rosetta...
Apple is actually pretty far behind the curve here, at least in terms of end-user-accessible features. Presumably that means they wouldn't have to innovate too much to get x86/ARM translation working, even for binaries that couldn't be readily recompiled to support the new chips directly.
It turns out such a project actually exists![0] But it seems to be in an early stage, and relies on infrastructure not exactly favoured in MacOS (QEMU, deprecated OpenGL). Apple could work to port it and polish it so it works with most apps, but why on earth would they invest so much in Windows compatibility?
IMHO, Apple has two reasonable choices here: Ignore Windows compatibility from now on, or do just enough so that Windows on ARM boots, and let Microsoft deal with the supporting x86 Windows headache and blame.