[Info-vax] Apple Mac architecture transitions; iPhone support (was: Re: Taking a break - Open Source on OpenVMS Conference Calls Resume in the FALL of 2022...)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2022-07-04 10:33:20 +0000, seasoned_geek said:

> On Sunday, July 3, 2022 at 8:33:33 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 7/3/2022 10:14 AM, seasoned_geek wrote:
>>> That's exactly what people who know nothing said about Apple each and 
>>> every time it completely abandoned a platform.
>> And why Apple jumped through hoops to make the new platforms compatible 
>> with the old.
> 
> Not really.
> https://www.howtogeek.com/677270/deja-vu-a-brief-history-of-every-mac-cpu-architecture/ 
> 
> 
> I never heard of anyone being able to use Lisa software on Macintosh or 
> any Macintosh stuff being able to run on iMac.

Lisa is from ~1983, and failed in the market.

The Mac got going in ~1984 with Motorola 68000 hardware, and later 
migrated to IBM/Motorola PPC hardware.

I'll skip forward to the last ~quarter-century of Mac history in the 
following...

Pre-Y2K OS 9 "Classic" apps continued to run on Mac PPC OS X hardware 
using the Classic support available through OS X 10.5. Then PPC apps 
continued until OS X 10.7 on Intel hardware, using Rosetta. Intel apps 
now are continuing to run on Mac with Apple silicon hardware using 
Rosetta 2.

PPC to Intel was a fast transition, yes. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Intel_processors

Intel to Apple silicon got going in 2020, and there are at least two 
Intel models still being sold. Here's the transition: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Apple_silicon

Apple doesn't keep the old hardware and under- or un-maintained apps 
around all that long after a transition, but never has. Apple does keep 
the transitional stuff around for a hardware generation or so.

In parallel, the 32-bit to 64-bit transition took a ~decade; from OS X 
10.5 or so, and the transition was completed with macOS 10.15 and the 
removal of 32-bit APIs and frameworks. OpenVMS tried a different 
approach for this migration, keeping everything. Or at least trying to. 
Which makes adopting the resulting 64-bit environment more complex 
particularly for new work, and means that some of the more problematic 
APIs are also still in active use.

The iMac product name has been used for hardware with PPC, Intel, and 
Apple silicon processors, and models have booted and run Classic, OS X, 
and now macOS, so that name doesn't narrow down the transition as much 
as might be assumed.

> Apple completely abandons its customer base with each processor change. 
> The switch to Apple made ARM processors for notebooks/laptops/desktops 
> may be the only switch with a semi-compatible code base for the OS . . 
> . assuming they stick with their butchered BSD.

Rosetta and Rosetta 2 work well. A whole lot of folks have been using 
Rosetta 2 to run their Intel apps on their Apple silicon Macs, too.

One area that's been lumpy for folks buying Apple silicon Macs have 
been those folks trying to use Intel operating systems on Apple silicon 
hardware, and Apple never supported that.  Absent a hypervisor with 
emulation (UTM, or QEMU directly, etc), the operating system needs to 
be ported. The Linux port is working. Windows for Arm is working too, 
though Microsoft is not (yet?) selling and not supporting that as a 
product for use on Apple silicon Macs.

> Phones have a market life of about six months. You need lead time if 
> you are going to use "the cool new hardware"

Google Pixel was getting up to three years of updates, last I checked.

Cheaper and generic and Android phones tend to be much closer to 
disposable, yes.

Apple iPhone tends to go for three to five years from purchase, there 
are a lot of folks still running yet older models.

For updates, iPhone 6s (2015) and newer models are all getting updates 
to the current iOS 15 version.

iPhone 8 (2017) and newer will be getting support and updates for the 
upcoming iOS 16 version, arriving later this year.




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