Apple may Ditch Intel Processors

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Link to article

This is an interesting read about what may happen in the future and some of the issues.

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Indeed as I posted here…Same SketchUp you love, a new way to buy - #278 by SeanB

Might be the reason for the push to a web based solution.

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I doubt this possible change in Apple technology had a lot to do with Trimble’s decision a few years ago to begin work on SketchUp for Web (if that’s what you mean).

In any case, it will be interesting to see if and when SketchUp for Web may be able to handle complex models as well as the desktop versions of SketchUp handle them. Perhaps the desktop version will always scale better/bigger than browser-based versions?

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Who knows? This has been rumored for the last 2 years (Apple switching to Arm). It does solve several problems at once. MS has already released a few Arm based Windows 10 units themselves and now Apple is moving that way. This could also work on Android and I can “run” SU 4 Web on my iPad Pro a bit.

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SketchUp for Web is at least 5 years old. With it, Trimble has shown that they keep up with the latest (software) building infrastructure, so if they can produce Intel binaries and WASM byte code, then ARM binaries are not too far away (but ARM-specific optimizations of the rendering engine would start from scratch).

It might become a problem when you try to run SketchUp 8 (or SketchUp 2020) in an x86-64 emulator on ARM. But you should be fine if you go with the latest hardware and software (subscription?, hehe).

Much of open-source platforms and (niche) software ecosystems (including Blender) were ready on ARM 8 years ago (with barely a handful of ARM notebooks available). Bigger and proprietary ecosystems move slower, but focus on the mainstream and profitability. Sometimes it requires Apple’s courage to introduce innovation to the mainstream to actually see such devices on the market.

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OK, we’ll see. I am not saying that Apple was the “only” reason just that it might have been one. We might also see the desktop version go away as well. Subscription looks like a 1st step in that direction.