I'm not sure it technically quite counts as emulation, though, since it apparently reads the X64 code, translates it to Arm, then saves it out and doesn't read the X64 code again. That can never be as fast as native code compiled from source, but it avoids some typical emulation overhead.

However the CPU does seem to be very fast, and it's just the first generation. I wasn't a fan of this idea when the rumors started a couple years ago, but looking at the trajectory for Apple's chips vs. Intel for the last 6-7 years, Apple realistically didn't have much choice and will soon be far ahead if things keep going like they have been. However Intel probably doesn't have to worry for a while, since Apple would never license their chips out, and nobody else's Arm chips seem to be in the same league.

Given that this year has had the highest Mac sales ever, and even low-end M1 machines aren't terrible for gaming, I wonder if that might overcome some of Apple's more developer-hostile actions and generate an uptick in Mac game ports.

If ARM will manage to replace x86 for PCs (in 10-20 years?), I'm worried about videogame preservation.
Even with a perfect Rosetta in a new Windows ARM, we'll probably end up missing old abandoned features required by games.
Perhaps we'll need both emulation and virtual machines for win7-10 x86-64 at that point..

This is probably the first time in history I've been pondering whether I'd want to buy an Apple product, as these new M1 Macs do seem quite special in the hardware front. However, I still have the normal reservations towards Apple as they seem to promote the idea of locked-in hardware and ecosystem, the golden cage. I prefer the opposite, I like the relative freedom of PCs.

And that Apple keeps higher margins, ie. Apple products just tend to cost much more than PC equivalents (but in this case there is no actual PC equivalent I guess).

Not that MS is any better, hence I don't even consider buying any Surface products.

I am wondering if in the future you could replace the Apple OS in M1 Macs with e.g. Linux? And is it so that you can run even (some) Windows programs/games on current M1 Macs with WINE?

Considering how well e.g. Amiga (and various other old systems, including gaming consoles even up to PS2 and Nintendo N64 and GameCube) work nowadays, I am not concerned that much. I can nowadays play pretty much any Amiga or PSX or PS2 game just fine, even though the system where I play them has no hardware compatibility with the old systems in any way. (Apparently those aforementioned emulators work fine even on a lowly ARM-based Raspberry Pi 3 and 4; I haven't tried them yet.)

It depends how well Intel and AMD keeps up. If they become stuck in the technological curve in the long run, then it is natural the ecosystems move to more efficient (and powerful?) solutions, just like Apple is doing now, and MS has dabbled with ARM-based Windows machines as well. We'll see, maybe Intel and AMD break the jackpot with some new tech... Heck, who knows, maybe even Intel or AMD itself would at some point introduce some M1-like design, either based on ARM or RISC-V or something else? A totally different architecture that merely "emulates" x86?

Somehow I am more interested in RISC-V than ARM as RISC-V is "open source CPU design", ie. anyone could start making their own RISC-V CPUs, no need for licensing etc. That somehow sits into "free PC" idea quite well; not that the current situation with AMD and Intel competing neck to neck is that bad either, or AMD vs NVidia vs Intel GPUs. As long as there is real competition also on the hardware side.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/09/risc_v_intel_amd_arm/

All I hope that some kind of relatively free and open computing ecosystem persists, the reason I prefer PCs over e.g. Apples or gaming consoles. Something that lets you decide what to install and from what sources, even alternative operating systems. I don't care if it has x86 or ARM or RISC-V or whatever. At the moment I am not that concerned because luckily there seems to be some demand for such open ecosystems, and there are already non-x86 PC alternatives too, Raspberry Pi being one (even if it is a low-performance one at this point). There are no restrictions what OS I may use with RPi, not even UEFI SecureBoot requiring some digital signature by Microsoft before I am allowed to run an alternative OS on my PC...

Some hardware manufacturers are already leveraging RISC V, but in terms of the economic feasibility of it... instead of investing in developing their own RISC architecture, most companies will simply go and buy an ARM license along with all the pre-baked stuff it offers and be done with it. Unless Nvidia takes ARM down a different road, I don't see this changing any time soon.

True, most will choose the easy licensing way, but good to know there is at least an option if something undesirable happened with ARM or its licensing.

Not sure if it is a good comparison, but maybe a bit like Linux Mint, which is nowadays based on Ubuntu, still have an option to switch to e.g. Debian, in case something undesirable happens with Ubuntu due to Canonical (which is why I think Mint has the experimental Debian-based edition, as a plan B if the shit hits the fan with Ubuntu at some point).

Or Linux overall: something bad happens with certain family of Linux distros? Change to some other Linux distro family (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu vs RedHat vs Arch.)

EDIT: This was actually an interesting comment in https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2020/03/09/risc_v_intel_amd_arm/ So not sure how much leverage China could have in the CPU business in the long run...

I mean...Apple officially included a utility for installing Windows (Bootcamp) until the M1 Macs, where that's obviously not going to work. You've always been able to install Linux. MacOS itself doesn't have online DRM or forced updates, and while Apple encourages you to use their store, it's not at all mandatory (as GOG/Steam/itch/Humble/etc. make clear) and Microsoft does the same thing. You don't even have to use signed software if you don't want to. I think you might be conflating iOS with macOS; they still are quite different in many ways even if they share some of the same codebase. iOS is far more console-like.

I guess that is why I am not so keen on MS either these days. Ever since Windows 8 I've felt they have more and more tried to push Windows ecosystem towards iOS like "buy stuff through our store".

It helps though that in the past Microsoft hasn't tried to control the hardware as well, but with Surface products that seems to have changed somewhat as well...

Looking forward to updates to the emulators so everything runs on the M1 Macs. There is a build of Boxer out there that is already 64bit so will run. Good news though is that Blade Runner still works fine on the M1 and for myself that was the most important thing, so happy about that.

boxer-x, scummvm will compile to native now so it's very possible to run a large number of these older games natively on Apple Silicon. Most of the GOG bundles here use wine to run dosbox-x (which is silly.)

Was trying to deconstruct Albion so I can run native under dosbox-x. Needs some work to get he cd to mount, but it should run well and native.

Not quite true.

In lower level code (like in bootloaders, kernels, or embedded systems), there are some instances in which certain tasks simply can't be done in a language like C. For example:
* On some architectures (x86), hardware registers require special instructions. (Some other architectures use memory mapped registers, and C is capable of accessing arbitrary memory locations.)
* x86 CPUs start in real mode, and switching processor modes requires assembly. Also, tasks like setting up virtual memory mappings also require assembly.
* Any other CPU feature not exposed by the compiler needs assembly.
* One niche case: There are a few modern indie games that are developed for vintage systems (like Tanglewood and Nox Archaist); some of those end up having to be written in assembly language, as those CPUs don't handle C well.

(Note that this is generally not a concern in higher application-level code, but it's still occasionally necessary for low-level code.)

For those tat are adventurous. I compiled dosbox on the M1 from source and sym-linked to the bundle for a game or two with 100% success. This essentially makes the game Apple Silicon native vs Rosetta 2.

This works for scummvm as well (compiles natively.)

Technically GOG could do this too (if they were so inclined.)

what is Rosetta 2?
what is Apple Silicon?

It's ironic the older titles are easier to 'port' since we have engines and environments in open-source that can compile on native Apple Silicon. For Mac versions using this new architecture it should be significantly easier for GOG to port vs others or newer software.