Why do people keep repeating that? Do you (not you personally, this is wheeled out at least weekly) believe that when Phil Schiller announces ARMacbook onstage someone will shout "but is there any usable software for it", and suddenly Phil will drop the prototype and whisper "I knew we've forgotten something"?
Yes, precisely. Apple is known to work with the software developers to provide a full solution from day 1. I was just reading up on the PowerPC to Intel migration and it was similar: all software development tools were presented, then the hardware, then the most important software was ported in the coming years. Microsoft Office only got a universal binary in 2008 (Office 2004 was PowerPC only, 2008 Intel+PowerPC, 2011 Intel only).
Of course, the main worry will be that, while Intel was much faster than PowerPC so it could emulate the PowerPC. The worry is then that the ARM will never be able to achieve that. I think the worry is well founded. But when we look back at Rosetta, reviews read: "Rosetta that allowed all but a few PowerPC-based programs to run on Intel machines—but with a noticeable performance hit...
much slower for particularly processor-intensive programs such as Photoshop." (
MacWorld 2006) or "Rosetta should be more than adequate when it comes to general-purpose office apps, but for the heavy-duty stuff like Photoshop and other CPU-intensive applications, you'll notice a slowdown. Some reportedly won't launch at all, like Final Cut Pro 5 and Logic 7" (
Ars Technica 2006). It will be interesting to see what sort of single core speeds the Apple ARM will reach. If the iPad Pro is any indication,
it seems to be doing OK, with the obvious sidenote that, like Rosetta, Intel apps will get a speed impact.
At the same time, computers have become more complex. As one example, there's much more software capable of running on multiple cores now. So I'm looking forward how MacOS will fare in intensive multicore software. Not so worried about peripherals because Apple controls that tightly in its laptops.