Don’t confuse the compilers and IDE with the frameworks. The big step is getting the framework(s) ported. Currently, the ARM frameworks are Linux 32bit console and iOS 64bit. There are no macOS/Cocoa, Windows/.NET, or GTK/Linux frameworks and THAT is where the bulk of the work will fall.
I do not have any appreciation for the time and effort necessary to create a new framework, and had no idea that would be the major problem. Should I assume Apple will not be helping developers like Xojo to transition to the new framework?
I am sure Apple will provide technical documentation to Xojo in much the same way they supply it to any developer… But I doubt seriously that Apple will “help with the transition”
Helping? No. They will document the functionality, but it will be up to the Xojo team to make it work. Back in the old days, Apple provided pre-release development hardware for us to work against prior to that hardware’s release - anyone remember the first Xserve and the first G5 Power Mac development kits or the Intel server board for the first generation Intel Macs? In the Cook era, this is no longer the case and new hardware development is kept very tightly guarded outside of the Apple campuses.
[quote=425837:@Jeff Tullin]Not saying it’s false, but these sites are all echoing each other.
Juicy gossip is the fuel of the internet.[/quote]
I have known Tom’s hardware for a long time. They are not a gossip site. They know more than a thing or two about Macs.
It makes a lot of sense for Macbooks to switch to low consumption ARM architecture.
In terms of development, Xojo already produces ARM programs for both iOS and Raspberry Pie. At first glance, it should not be out of their competence to produce programs for an ARM Mac.
Should Apple transition to ARM, I dont see it as a significant challenge for us. We have been through many transitions and already have experience converting an existing framework (Linux) to ARM.
Nothing to see here. Move along. 
I still wait for someone at Xojo Inc. spending a weekend to duplicate the ARM32 build scripts to build ARM64 as well for Linux
They were significant changes in Mac hardware. There hasn’t been such a significant change since the Intel change. The next up is clearly going to be a move to ARM and we’ll see what they do then. Under Cook, in the exact same manner as under Jobs, Apple sent out free Apple TV development kits in 2015, before the official launch. Mine is still in use somewhere at home.
Can someone tell me why ARM processors are inherently more energy efficient than Intel processors? If MacBook Pros are switched to Arm processors, will that invariably mean a loss of power for the sake of energy efficiency? Is the MacBook Pro 2018 i9 computer the last of its kind? Hope not!
It’s simply in the design of the chip and it’s mechanisms for achieving the processing. the ARM group has a very good paper describing this on their site:
ARM Server and HPC Power and Performance
As for performance, the new, high-core-count ARM Server level CPUs are on par with most normal Intel/AMD CPS.
As I mentioned above, these ARM chips are not the same low power chips used in phones, but they are still orders of magnitude lower in power consumption than their Intel/AMD counterparts.
Also, since Apple is building their own ARM architecture, I would expect anything Apple releases to be on par with a similar Intel/AMD based unit.
[quote=426037:@Tim Jones]It’s simply in the design of the chip and it’s mechanisms for achieving the processing. the ARM group has a very good paper describing this on their site:
ARM Server and HPC Power and Performance [/quote]
Thanks Tim,
I had no idea the ARM chips were this good. Because Apple owns ARM, my naive assumption is they will indeed switch to them at some point. Another reason to keep my Xojo license active.
not a true statement
I feel sorry for people who developed code for CUDA and MMX / SIMD… Kiss all that hard work goodbye.
Ohh… All those 32 bit apps that I bought a 2 years ago… Gotta buy them again!?
Thanks Apple.
[quote=426044:@Brian O’Brien]Ohh… All those 32 bit apps that I bought a 2 years ago… Gotta buy them again!?
Thanks Apple.[/quote]
Good Lord, I sometimes feel surrounded by luddites around here. What are these Mac apps, which you bought 24 months ago, and are 32-bit only?!
[quote=426040:@Robert Birge]Thanks Tim,
I had no idea the ARM chips were this good. Because Apple owns ARM, my naive assumption is they will indeed switch to them at some point. Another reason to keep my Xojo license active.[/quote]
Apple doesn’t own ARM, they make their own version of the ARM architecture chips. based on licenses from ARM. But, Apple’s control of as near 100% of their hard-goods is a goal that has been obvious for some time.
The ARM processor you mentioned has a TDP of 180W vs Xeon processors with 150-205W TDP (depending on model). Relative performance varies based on what task you’re measuring and what Xeon you’re comparing it to. But even when it performs better on a performance-per-watt basis it’s never close to one order of magnitude better.
There’s nothing new under the sun. RISC has always been more efficient. But it has never been more efficient by leaps and bounds. If Apple wants Mac performance comparable to current Intel cores then their ARM cores will consume comparable levels of energy while running native ARM code. It might be less, but it will be close.
The wrinkle is this: performance will be lower and energy consumption will be higher any time that ARM core is emulating an x86 instruction set. There’s no way around this. This means the first generation of MacBook Pros which use ARM processors…assuming the rumor is true…will have less performance and lower battery life than their immediately previous Intel counterparts in most real world use scenarios. Same thing as the last two transitions.
And power consumption will be much worse for anyone who has to run Windows or Linux in a VM. In theory Apple could get emulation speeds up by throwing cores at the problem (1-2 cores decoding the instruction stream and managing a code cache for every core doing work). But you’re never going to get good emulated x86 performance without using a lot of power relative to an Intel Mac.
If you only use Mac apps then who cares? Sooner or later you’ll get ARM builds of your apps and a…20-25% power savings? But if you have to work with the massive installed base of x86 code…
We could use more luddites in this industry. There’s a lot of software dating back to classic Macs I sometimes wish I could still use. To give but one example: Office 2001 for Power Mac. On a dual core G5 with a hard drive that version runs circles around Office 365 on a quad core i7 with a SSD. (And yes, I’ve actually measured it. I’m not going off nostalgia.) That means even under emulation, and even with the added weight of a virtual machine running Mac OS 9 to host the software*, Office 2001 would run faster and use less energy on my current MacBook Pro than Office 365. I would like to say it’s because of new and better features in Office 365, but I honestly can’t find anything in Office 365 that I would use that’s not also in Office 2001.
That’s kind of ironic considering how much emphasis the industry is putting on performance-per-watt. Maybe the problem isn’t instruction set architectures or processor cores. And maybe if ‘luddites’ could still use their old software it would force companies like Microsoft to build something worth buying.
- G5s could only run Mac OS X and Office 2001 ran in the Classic environment.
It just means Microsoft uses lousy programming optimization. Nothing new 
In case you haven’t seen it, we have our first native Xojo app running now on Apple Silicon.
https://blog.xojo.com/2020/07/07/hello-world-on-apple-silicon/