News Intel Confirms Apple Macs Will Switch to Arm CPUs by 2020, Says Report

[abryant]

Two different reports from this week point to Apple working on switching Macs to its own chips and allowing iOS developers to port their apps to Macs. Read more here.

LUCIAN ARMASU
@Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.

 

[tvleavitt]

I'll buy that Apple is working to enable cross-platform compatibility between iOS and MacOS, and that they're at the point of launching tools to do this. I find the idea of Apple walking away from x86 far less credible, as there's a world of software not developed using their tools that this would wall users off from (such as much open source software) without major efforts on the part of the originating developers. Are cross platform game engines like Unity going to equip themselves to target ARM based Macs? Unlikely, at least in the short term, I would think. Now, it's entirely possible that Apple has wrangled a license to manufacture their own x86 compatible CPUs... I wouldn't put that past them, either. On the other hand, I can see Apple creating an ARM compatible version of OS X, an then building a lower end ARM based laptop running OS X, or maybe running some hybrid version of iOS and OS X with a touchscreen.