The effect of having a large uniform computing base

[Bodhitree]

It occurred to me a few days ago, Apple has created a large body of very capable computing devices with M1. Its in desktops, laptops and even tablets, and where before they would use a range of processors from Intel now they use far fewer. That makes writing low-level software quite a bit easier, and I would expect it to have some significant knock-on effects.

It also affects the entire software industry, because it makes it easier to know what computing capabilities the device that your software runs on is going to have. I expect games developers would find it attractive, its like developing for a console. But I also think it will help with debugging, with long term maintenance of software, various different areas.

It seems to me that simplifying the range of processors that things have to run on has a lot of benefits for the whole ecosystem, and you could argue that doing the same thing for operating systems might have similar benefits. Something worth considering, methinks. A slower pace of OS updates would benefit stability, operating lifetime, while also providing bigger feature sets for tentpole OS releases.

 

[apostolosdt]

Agreed, but we are noticing some “Kuhnian losses”, like upgradability and ECC RAM units.

 

[senttoschool]

You might be interested in how this could improve gaming for Macs: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...le-of-playing-aaa-games-will-be-macs.2275962/

 

[Bodhitree]

I remember hearing that Apple had originally ordered 20 million M1 processors from TSMC, I suspect that the majority of those will have gone into Macs, the sales volume of iPad Pro’s is probably quite a bit less and the M1 iPad Air came later. Anyway it’d be interesting to see a complete breakdown of those numbers.

 

[Lihp8270]

It occurred to me a few days ago, Apple has created a large body of very capable computing devices with M1. Its in desktops, laptops and even tablets, and where before they would use a range of processors from Intel now they use far fewer. That makes writing low-level software quite a bit easier, and I would expect it to have some significant knock-on effects.

It also affects the entire software industry, because it makes it easier to know what computing capabilities the device that your software runs on is going to have. I expect games developers would find it attractive, its like developing for a console. But I also think it will help with debugging, with long term maintenance of software, various different areas.

It seems to me that simplifying the range of processors that things have to run on has a lot of benefits for the whole ecosystem, and you could argue that doing the same thing for operating systems might have similar benefits. Something worth considering, methinks. A slower pace of OS updates would benefit stability, operating lifetime, while also providing bigger feature sets for tentpole OS releases.

All these positives are cancelled out by apples drive and willingness to change so much that software can stop working in just a few months on an OS update.

 

[Lihp8270]

You might be interested in how this could improve gaming for Macs: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...le-of-playing-aaa-games-will-be-macs.2275962/

It will only improve gaming for macs if a 5+ year old release runs without issue on the newest OS.

With apples trend I don’t think that will be the case.

 

[leman]

Yep. We are entering an era of unprecedented stability and compatibility in the Apple ecosystem. Software can be scaled from a phone to a large server–like machine with minor effort, and testing becomes much easier. These are pretty much unprecedented things in personal computing.