'Look at ARM and think about what the benefits are for users,' she said, 'stronger battery, enable thinner machines, lessen Apple's cost of chip fabrication so the price for consumers can be lower.' Apple doesn't have battery concerns with its desktop Macs, and the hefty price of the Mac Pro shows that Apple's not in a rush to get it to a cheaper price. We agreed that Apple could easily leave the Mac Pro and iMac Pro out of the ARM revolution. Specifically, Wu told me 'I think the truth is that if Apple moves to ARM, that will cause those apps to go away entirely.' 'When you look at 3D compositing software, 3D modelling software, professional software for special effects or video compositing,' she said, 'you'll see that these software ecosystems are falling apart in ways that are deeply underreported.'Īnd the ARM transition, if done across all Macs, would be bad news for users in those ecosystems. If you thought the 'butterfly' keyboards were bad, this sounds worse. Wu's concerns are rooted in what she sees as one of Apple's fraying relationships with users. MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro: What's the best MacBook?.But to gauge the tech’s potential impact ahead of the official news, I asked Brianna Wu, CEO of independent game studio Giant Spacekat, and co-host of the Rocket podcast, about the possible risks of Apple's ARM future.
We expect to learn a lot about Apple's plans for ARM-based Macs at Monday's WWDC 2020 conference.
