Apple to Dump Intel in Macs?
...I wouldn't hold your breath. The video was from last April anyway, and nothing got announced at WWDC (which is a
developers conference, and developers will need to start their engines 6 months+ before ARM-based Mac products appear - with the PPC to Intel shift, Apple released a developer-only system at WWDC the year before Intel Macs came out).
There's the red herring of the T2 chip which is ARM-based and most likely
will be in all Macs by 2020 (I think its just the iMac to go, now) - but its a SSD controller/security chip that doesn't replace the main CPU. Maybe the T3 or T4 will integrate USB4 controllers replacing the Intel Thunderbolt controller (pure speculation)...
The Mac Pro suggests that Apple are committed to Intel at the top end for a while yet.
We've also had the iPadOS announcement + larger screened iPads suggests that they're working on making the (ARM-based) iPads more credible as laptop replacements/supplements: the obvious first candidate for an ARM-based Mac was the 12" MacBook, but its pretty clear that Apple thinks you should get an iPad Pro instead.
Long term, though, ARM Macs are perfectly feasible. I'd be very, very surprised if Apple haven't had one chugging away behind a securely locked door for years. Now, Intel applications won't run directly on ARM, but, as with the Intel switch, but a code translator like Rosetta would take care of that in the short term. Then there will be a large tranche of Apps, written in Swift, ObjC etc. or other high-level languages using the correct Apple frameworks like Metal, core audio, Accelerator kit etc. that, in theory, need the developer to tick the 'ARM64' box in XCode and hit "Build" (not necessarily trivial - note the 'in theory' - but not an unreasonable demand for an active developer).
Then there will be the awkward squad of 'legacy' code with bits of lovingly handcrafted assembly language, possibly with direct use of Intel-specific processor features... Frankly, its 2019 and there should be much less of that than in 2005 - I'd guess that its going to be the big "Pro" apps that suffer, especially ones with lots of third-party plugins. But then, Apple have just announced an Intel-based Mac Pro, so I doubt that they'll be forcing ARM on pro users anytime soon.
The major loss would be BootCamp and the ability to run x86 virtual machines - undoubtedly a dealbreaker for some, but probably not as widespread as in the past esp. if you try and think what you might be doing in 3+ years when the switch becomes unavoidable.
The way that Apple could
really muck up an ARM transition would be to let the Intel Macs get badly out of date while they were working in ARM, so people were desperate to upgrade, then drop them like a stone when the first ARM Macs, with all the inevitable teething troubles, come out, forcing lots of people to be unwilling early adopters. But, don't worry, they've never done anything like that in the past. Well, except with the Mac Pro in 2012. Oh, and the MBP in 2016. And the Mac Pro again. And the Mac Mini. And the MacBook Air.... um...
I do have hope that that won’t be the case though since Apple was convinced to make the Pro iPhones a bit thicker for better battery life.
