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Microsoft says “Prism” translation layer does for Arm PCs what Rosetta did for Macs
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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What Apple did for Macs when switching architectures, though, was to port their own software to the new architecture. Microsoft doesn't even port fucking Minesweeper to ARM.
this is for the transition. no point in porting your software if nobody has the hardware. This will get people to get the hardware, as they can just keep using the existing software, and wait until it's properly ported
Edit: you people really think windows is the only software that needs a translation? Do you only ever use your OS on your computer, and not a single software more?
Apple released a native x86 version of Tiger with their first Intel Macs.
Sure, but the vast majority of Mac software at the time, including loads of first applications from Apple, couldn't run on Tiger. You had to run it in the "Classic" environment - and they never ported that to Intel.
Tiger shipped just 4 years after the MacOS 9.2 and plenty of people hadn't switched to MacOS X yet.
The reality is Apple only brings things forward when they can do it easily.
Apple has done eight major CPU transitions in the last 40 years (mix of architecture and bit length changes) and a single team worked on every single transition. Also, Apple co-founded the ARM processor before they did the first transition. It's safe to assume the team that did all those transitions was also well aware of and involved in ARM for as long as the architecture has existed.