I love watching really skilled magicians. Even though you know that they’ll distract your attention away from their sleight of hand, catching them transferring the card they’re just about to trick you with is almost impossible. So with Apple: over the last couple of years, rumours about Apple Silicon grew steadily stronger and more credible, and all the time the most giveaway clue was right under our noses, in plain sight. But none of us spotted it.
The clue was in the command tool lipo, something which had been quietly fading away since the last processor transition and its Universal Binaries. By High Sierra, it had withered to the point where anyone wanting real use from it preferred to work with the version shipped in Xcode. What none of us noticed was that two years ago Mojave brought a rejuvenated and highly capable update to lipo, which Apple even documented fully in a long and explicit man page dated 31 August 2018.
With the wisdom of hindsight, there couldn’t really have been a clearer sign that Apple Silicon and Universal Binaries were just around the corner. Yet we all missed it.
The tool’s name lipo refers not to the last transition to Intel, but way back to the introduction of the PowerPC, when Universal Apps were named Fat, usage which is now deemed inappropriate. Liposuction is of course the term for the removal of local fat deposits in cosmetic surgery, and conveniently retains the original allusion without compromising inclusivity. Since the passing of the last generation of Universal Binaries nine years ago, lipo has seen limited use with the 32-bit and 64-bit transition, and has been much more used when building apps for iOS.
Read more at EclecticLight.co