Apple released another beta build of macOS 11 ‘Big Sur’ (link) – it will be interesting to see whether beta 7 marks the move to the final stretch or whether Apple will keep pushing out updates to address the last few ‘known issues’. There Is a rumour going around that there will be another event held at the end of September regarding the iPhone 12 and the launch of the first Apple Silicon based Mac so it is plausible that they’re wanting to stabilise macOS as much as possible so that the first round of Apple Silicon based Mac’s give customers the best possible experience out of the gate (although like the Intel Mac’s I’m sure there will be a flurry of updates pushed out to fix up bugs developers find, to improve Rosetta optimisation etc). I have a strong feeling (completing guessing) that macOS 11.0 will be released when Xcode 12.2 and the x.2 series of iOS, iPadOS etc. will be released around the same time.

There was a podcast I was listening to a few days ago that claims Apple were looking at moving to their own ARM based designs for Mac as far back as the 2015 based on Intel falling behind the roadmap that Intel promised Apple but I personally disagree with that assessment. I disagree with with the assessment because of Apple’s historical tendency towards wanting to bring as much as possible ‘in house’ which enables them to control the complete process and for the components to suit their needs rather than a third party developing something aimed for a larger market and it kinda meets the needs of Apple. When Apple started to move to their own CPU design (vs. using a reference design) that long term Apple was going to move the Mac platform to their own CPU design – the situation wasn’t if but rather when. I would say that where the decision in 2015 kicks in is the decision to bring forward the time line – that it was always going to go ahead but sometime in the future but given what has taken place with Intel unable to meet it’s roadmap it brings forward the time line of transitioning over to its own CPU.