There’s one thing I don’t think Gassée, or many of the people predicting an ARM transition for the Mac, are considering: user patience and goodwill, basically political capital with the user base.

Apple blew through an incredible amount of it on vanity projects in the 2010s, from the abandoned trashcan Mac Pro to the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard. They’ve clearly changed course with the 16” MacBook Pro and the 2019 Mac Pro, but they’ve asked a lot of users over the past decade, and this doesn’t quite seem like the right time to ask the entire user base to please be patient once again.

In other words, while there’s little question that a switch to ARM is worth the headache for Apple, the critical question is whether Apple can make the case that the switch is worth it for users.

Apart from sentiment, does anyone, including Apple, still care about OSX? Seems that the potential move to ARM will merely be the final nail in its coffin. Apple has removed a lot of backwards compat over the last releases, large app developers seem to not be embracing new systems/APIs, software largely isn't being ported, iOS now has the iPad pro, soon perhaps a laptop.

What is the reason for macOS at this point?

Pixar does, along with many other video/movie producers. There are also a lot of professional musicians and recording engineers using Macs as well. Not to mention all the developers using Macs for iOS app development. None of these activities are realistically viable on an iPad Pro. I think the real issue is OSs aren't very interesting at this point - they're mature and there isn't a lot of sexy sizzle to be added to them.

and then the gates will open to ARM heaven, once developers find a way to do their jobs on an ipad the rest of the industries follow