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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought Apple universal binaries are fat binaries? So why did Apple build this ability if nobody wants it?



Apple's fat binaries were never very "universal". They put in a codepath where macOS detects and handles macOS-arm-and-x86_64 binaries. That is something where they can support both variants, and themselves in control. Cosmopolitan libc is a pile of hacks, compared to that, more comparable to somebody making Linux boot on a 4004 CPU than what Apple did.


> So why did Apple build this ability if nobody wants it?

did you miss the part where they transitioned from x86 to arm64 in 2020?


I don't get your point. People were arguing that one doesn't need fat binaries because cross compiling and having different binaries is fine. Apple clearly thought differently when they transitioned from x86 to arm (not their first architecture transition either).

So now you're saying because apple finished the transition fat binaries are useless again? What about other platforms?


> apple finished the transition fat binaries are useless again?

Is the transition really finished? I'm writing this on a x86_64 Macbook with a browser that is distributed as x86_64/arm64 universal binary.


> finished the transition fat binaries are useless again?

yup that's exactly what i'm saying.


And PowerPC to x86 before that.




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