The world will be fine even X86 is at its beginning of the end. It’s also OK for Arm is eating the world of computation beyond mobile. But, it’s just sad if Apple walled garden is the only choice unified app ecosystem.
On Apple Event — May 7,2024, new iPad Pro is annouced with new Apple M4 chip, a tiny but mighty brain. I called Apple M1 is Another Phase Change. It went against the common wisdom 4 years ago. By now, most people can agree: x86 is at its ceiling if not falling already. Whereas, ARM is eating the world of computation beyond mobile, not only for the new compute: AI. For example, NVIDIA revenue grew 105% to $55B, becoming the top IC design house in 2023 by shipping its GPU with Arm CPU cores. But also, the olds: PC & data centers, e.g. Google Cloud just announced Axion: new Arm-based CPUs with unrivaled performance and efficiency.
Sure, there can still be a few more “good” x86 years ahead. Thanks to a huge trench: Wintel app ecosystem & legacy. Only, it won’t last forever. The few leads are already moving fast. The momentum will keep building up. It’s only the matter of time to reach an inflation point, a point of no return 🕳
- Qualcomm says most Windows games should “just work” on upcoming Arm laptops. Thanks to the power of emulation, aka Software Defined literally.
- Chrome is optimized & ready for Windows on Arm. Users may not care about browser too much, but they all care about apps & contents. A good browser can bootstrap that at the beginning, and also let the long tail web apps & contents to play forever.
- With Apple’s iPhone, Mac, iPad & Vision Pro: 2+B growing device ecosystem, it’s a great time to “reinvent” new AAA games & productivity apps with Arm native first. Sooner Apple’s “unified app empire” will rule them all. And then, the spillover effect will take over.
I respect Apple a lot because Apple is the only company successfully executed such transition 5 times. But, I’m not an “Apple fan”. All other things being equal, I believe the world is always better off with other choices beside A walled garden. So, the question is what we may do while we can🤔 Let me know what you think.
