The real story here, I think, is that Apple is making moves to end the bifurcation of their product line. Having the same ISA in both lines means eventually we'll see the lines between them blur.
Whether that's good for consumers remains to be seen -- I fear it may lead to Macs whose architecture is locked down in a manner similar to iOS devices. That would be a worrying trend.
It's amazing that in their history of making computers Apple has used the 6502/65816, the 68k series, the PowerPC, and now ARM. And along the way there were backwards compatibility options for all of them (although not many people bought and used the Apple II compatibility cards for the Mac, they were really two separate user bases).
It is kind of satisfying in a way to see the ARM architecture come full circle and back to the 'home computer' segment it started in. I look forward to seeing someone port RISC-OS to a Mac, I'm sure it will happen. :-)
Whether that's good for consumers remains to be seen -- I fear it may lead to Macs whose architecture is locked down in a manner similar to iOS devices. That would be a worrying trend.
It's amazing that in their history of making computers Apple has used the 6502/65816, the 68k series, the PowerPC, and now ARM. And along the way there were backwards compatibility options for all of them (although not many people bought and used the Apple II compatibility cards for the Mac, they were really two separate user bases).
It is kind of satisfying in a way to see the ARM architecture come full circle and back to the 'home computer' segment it started in. I look forward to seeing someone port RISC-OS to a Mac, I'm sure it will happen. :-)