The comment above mine said,

> Apple has solved the chicken and egg problem regarding software compatibility by forcing everyone to move on to ARM in the near future.

I don't see "everyone" moving to ARM in the near future. I don't even see myself buying an Apple Silicon machine in the near future. I don't see corporate users going to ARM in the near future, and I certainly don't see government users going to ARM in the near future.

Even if the Mac lineup goes exclusively to ARM in two years as planned, I'd be shocked if Dell, Lenovo, and other manufacturers follow suit. Lenovo just announced that the fully specced Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 9 will run on an Intel 11th Gen CPU. They're not even going to AMD, let alone ARM.

Apple switched to Intel from PowerPC for a reason. Apart from raw performance at that time, Intel's draw was practical: dual boot, software compatibility, and so forth. Now, Apple is leaving Intel because the lithography has fallen behind, the chips run hot, Intel's share of the profit eats into Apple's profit margins, and x86 impedes their dream of iOS/MacOS app singularity. However, the masses are not clamoring for a move away from x86, so there's no pent-up demand to be had with a switch to ARM.

Let's assume that Apple follows through on its two-year plan to offer an exclusively ARM Mac lineup. What's the bear case?

If Apple is the only player to move to ARM, and the market doesn't follow, it could end up as the first existential setback that the Mac has faced in a long time. In my view, Apple has been out of touch with Mac users for a while now. When they eliminated MagSafe for Macbooks, users shrugged. When they introduced TouchBar, users stared blankly. When they removed all but one format of accessory port, users groaned. When they introduced the butterfly keyboard that put thinness above function, users complained. Eventually if you make enough weird moves, you start to alienate customers.

There are bound to be gaps in the respective software libraries of x86 and ARM, and that is going to matter to regular folks and application-specific power users alike. Apple itself is having problems getting Big Sur to run properly on all the machines it supports. "Supported" 2013 and 2014 machines are getting bricked, and even brand-new machines are experiencing bugs with basic functions like managing external displays. I can attest that Intel-based 2020 four-port MBP13s were still shipping with Catalina at the end of December (I don't know if that has changed in the past two weeks). If the OS itself is having problems, that isn't exactly a good sign for the applications that run atop it.

Apple has gotten used to saying "whatever, I do what I want," and getting its way. Remember 3.5mm audio ports on flagship mobile phones? Me neither. But what happens if complacency about that kind of market power carries Apple a bridge too far? They will have been so used to success that they will miss the early signs of market distaste, and may be unable to adapt mid-flight. There's a certain sense of bravado and self-fulfilling prophecy in saying that -- come what may -- the Mac is moving to Apple Silicon, but it'd be smarter to eschew the bravado and see how things go with the M1 before announcing plans to transition the entire lineup.

So to answer your question, I was talking about ARM vs x86 in general. A transition from x86 to ARM isn't something that one firm with minority market share can force unilaterally. However, I also think the Apple Silicon two-year timeline is overly ambitious and that Apple risks losing market share as a result. If that happens, the stock will suffer drastically, and there will be a reshaping of Apple's C-suite.