Intel Engineer Explains Why Apple Switched to ARM (opens in new tab)

Perhaps true, but a greater lust fills Apple with desire - the lust for control of their users. It has become increasingly hard to install software from your favorite vendor on the Mac. The advent of the Apple App Store for Mac sure looks like a play for a closed eco-system like they have with the iPhone. Moving to ARM will make the push to a closed eco-system that much easier, if not inevitable.

I'm a dev that work in OSS Machine Learning and rely on a machine that runs all this server tech. Even when I use Docker, it runs a hypervisor based VM - impossible with ARM which will need an emulated VM. This all makes ARM dev machine a non-starter. Add to this the crappy quality of the MacBook Pro (I am now 2 keyboard failures into the MBP) and I have to say goodbye to my otherwise beloved Mac.

Years back the Mac took over my area of development. I remember going to a MongoDB conference in 2011 and looking around to see nothing but Macs in the audience - I was a bit surprised to see such a huge shift a trend that has only accelerated (even with crappy MBPs). Now I wonder how many of those folks will opt-out of Macs until there is a huge demand for ARM servers.

Apple doesn't get to make this decision for me, the market for servers makes it. Until the market moves I need AMD64 + a `nix OS. Maybe a Dell laptop and Linux - oh well...

It doesn't seem to be a coincidence how BK's tenure as CEO of Intel coincided perfectly with Intel completely failing to deliver on their plans. It's fascinating to hear about the personalities that led to the culture there, but the idea of the leadership not listening to data is spot on. I certainly heard from people within some pretty core teams that quality control was more a matter of making sure that the process was seen to be adhered to rather than really getting things right- like removing failing tests so that all the tests pass so that they can sign off the process.

Title needs to start with: "Former Intel engineer..."

Quite a gutsy move making claims like that about a former employer