First, let me get this out of the way: Intel has not been able to deliver 5nm chips. Taiwan Semi has.
All that said... this transition is going to be a royal pain in the butt for all users (except for brand new ones).
I have lived through all the major transitions: 16 to 32 bit. Motorola CISC to PowerPC RISC. MacOS 9 to MacOS X. PowerPC to Intel. 32-bit to 64-bit.
So let me tell you what this transition really means for many you:
Each has laid waste to my software library and created a graveyard of unusable scanners, silent audio interfaces, unplayable games, and dead plugins that litter my closets and leech heavy metals into local landfills. All these items WOULD still be usable if Apple wasn't addicted to making users rebuy everything they own once or twice per decade.
So here is my advice:
Buy a really nice Intel Mac this year or next, and keep it forever.
Rather than look at this as a transition, look at it is an investment opportunity, because the final Intel Macs will hold their value extremely well.
Look at this as an opportunity to create a final version of what the Mac once was, which you can always keep as a treasure of a forgotten era. You'll now have a way to always and forever run your prior software and still use your old hardware.
I've been following this tenet the entire time. Yes, I own 37 Macs, stored across four rooms of my house on various desks. No, my significant other is not fond of this.
I can still run World Builder on my SE/30, and I can still run 10.6 and Windows 98 through Windows 8 VMs on my Mac Pro 2009.
I can still use my SCSI Nikon film scanner on my Beige G3 desktop. I can still run A-10 Attack on my 9600.
What I do with my IIfx and Quadra 950, however, is classified. Literally.
Just some advice.
- 5nm means much better performance-per-watt.
- 5nm runs much cooler.
- 5nm means no more throttling due to heat like what happens today in a MacBook Pro, where heat is the limiting factor.
- Apple could elect to support CHERI in their ARM implementation—a super-secure new processor architecture
All that said... this transition is going to be a royal pain in the butt for all users (except for brand new ones).
I have lived through all the major transitions: 16 to 32 bit. Motorola CISC to PowerPC RISC. MacOS 9 to MacOS X. PowerPC to Intel. 32-bit to 64-bit.
So let me tell you what this transition really means for many you:
- many x86 binaries won't run natively, which means
- goodbye to any Intel-platform-based VMs running with native performance (in WWDC 2020 Platforms State of the Union, Apple demo'd Parallels running an ARM version of Linux)
- goodbye to locally running the same binaries in Docker that run on the server (Apple says Docker is not initially supported but they're "working with Docker over the coming months"—but I can't see how it could possibly work reliably with binaries that were precompiled for Intel servers)
- goodbye to older peripheral hardware—like audio interfaces, for instance—these will stop working because it won't be worth it (or possible) for the devs to rewrite the drivers
- goodbye to older software plug-ins, like all your current VST and AU3 plugins, Photoshop plugins, etc.—especially 32-bit ones (currently those can still be made to work on Catalina using compatibility wrappers, but I'll be shocked if that works on ARM Macs)
- goodbye to BootCamp
- goodbye to WINE games
- goodbye to the few mainstream PC game ports we get nowadays... it will be a long time (possibly forever) before enough of these ARM macs are out there for it to be worth it for PC game makers to bother with native Mac versions, so we'll be forever doomed to the same horrible third-world garbage games as the dreadful Apple Arcade (sorry, speaking as a gamer, it SUCKS—none of these games come remotely close to taking advantage of devices like iPhone 11 Pro Max or iPad Pro 3rd/4th gen.)
- reliability and performance of Intel apps running under Rosetta 2 will NOT be a guarantee—expect crashy, spotty performance
- just like Rosetta 1, Rosetta 2 compatibility will get phased out sooner than many would like—after the end of the two-year "transition period", so by 10.18 or 10.19, which will be here much sooner than you'd like, forcing many users to have to rebuy thousands of dollars in software or not update
Each has laid waste to my software library and created a graveyard of unusable scanners, silent audio interfaces, unplayable games, and dead plugins that litter my closets and leech heavy metals into local landfills. All these items WOULD still be usable if Apple wasn't addicted to making users rebuy everything they own once or twice per decade.
So here is my advice:
Buy a really nice Intel Mac this year or next, and keep it forever.
Rather than look at this as a transition, look at it is an investment opportunity, because the final Intel Macs will hold their value extremely well.
Look at this as an opportunity to create a final version of what the Mac once was, which you can always keep as a treasure of a forgotten era. You'll now have a way to always and forever run your prior software and still use your old hardware.
I've been following this tenet the entire time. Yes, I own 37 Macs, stored across four rooms of my house on various desks. No, my significant other is not fond of this.
I can still run World Builder on my SE/30, and I can still run 10.6 and Windows 98 through Windows 8 VMs on my Mac Pro 2009.
I can still use my SCSI Nikon film scanner on my Beige G3 desktop. I can still run A-10 Attack on my 9600.
What I do with my IIfx and Quadra 950, however, is classified. Literally.
Just some advice.
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