Pure speculation: I suspect that Apple will support x86 longer than it supported PPC.
Why? The macOS platform is "older" now and more popular than when PPC was around. There's more old applications laying around, unmaintained. Also, don't forget that "windows compatibility" was a huge Mac selling point when they switched to x86.
So, I suspect a minimum of 8 years support, but possibly indefinitely if Windows can't make the jump to ARM. Again, pure speculation, but what will be the deciding factor is if x86 virtualization on ARM Mac ever becomes a thing. (And I hope it does!)
> I suspect that Apple will support x86 longer than it supported PPC.
Totally agree - I was surprised how quickly they dropped PPC support. The install base is so much larger now, and hardware refresh cycles so much longer that it'll be necessary. Hell, they've said this transition will take 2 years - the Intel transition took them a year to go from no Intel macs to all Intel macs.
> So, I suspect a minimum of 8 years support,
Not gonna happen. The Apple of today does not care about old unmaintained applications and definitely does not want to make computers for people to run Windows on.
Pure speculation: I suspect that Apple will support x86 longer than it supported PPC.
Why? The macOS platform is "older" now and more popular than when PPC was around. There's more old applications laying around, unmaintained. Also, don't forget that "windows compatibility" was a huge Mac selling point when they switched to x86.
So, I suspect a minimum of 8 years support, but possibly indefinitely if Windows can't make the jump to ARM. Again, pure speculation, but what will be the deciding factor is if x86 virtualization on ARM Mac ever becomes a thing. (And I hope it does!)