This sounds like the same old complaining that Apple abandoned NVidia/Open GL from Hackatosh users or parties that still use old Mac OS sytem versions. The problem with that is Apple at already moving beyond being stuck to the past.
This is not about supporting old versions of macOS, but having these features in new versions. Ever since Apple dropped Nvidia it's been way more difficult to get things done. Look at anything that is deep learning related and see what the status outside of the Nvidia world is there. Not even consider Apple here, look in the PC world without Nvidia. You can throw PlaidML in the mix for AMD, solve a problem and create ten new with it. Non-Nvidia in the field is pretty much dead. Now add Apple to the mix and you're in a niche of a niche. There's a Tensorflow version for Apple M1 now, missing tons of features, but it's being worked on. What about all the other frameworks? Again, out of luck there. Sure, one can start everything from scratch and port over, let's do that for PyTorch or Coppelia Sim, AirSim and others. How much time and manpower is that going to cost? Isn't it just easier to buy a Dell box and clone a repo instead?
That's what I do, I'm using a >$30k Dell box under the desk to get work done, in addition to a GPU cluster for heavy lifting. So the question is simple, how much does the Apple "overhead" cost in comparison to buying different hardware and be done?
Of course x86 is outdated, it's 40 year of garbage dragged along. But it allows people to get a job done and far more utilized than anything Apple has. So as long as I don't have to do it, port everything out there to Apple. This never worked with Intel-based Apple with or without AMD and it never even worked with Intel-based Apple with Nvidia. Problems were easier to solve back then and the more Apple moves away from the mainstream, the more complicated things get. Here's a simple problem, let's say we have ported perfectly to M1, how do I get to play 500 or 1000 M1 machines to play together? With Nvidia, it's a "push of a button".
It like comments that Rosetta 2 will only be supported for 2 years then it will be gone, again all based on Apple's PPC history.
On what are you basing it then? On pure faith?
Don't you think Apple is a much more thoughtful company then that with large business customers, not to play to Osborn example of promoting obsoletion of products before they should go?
Where are those large business customers? And what do you define as "large". 10000 employees? 100k? We're blowing about 10 million on Hardware annually, not counting larger investments like GPU clusters. Apple is a niche.
Seriously I doubt Tim Cook will disfranchise fortune 500 business clients using Intel Macs as long they represent a large part of their business base.
Business and consumer are two totally different fields. A business that heavily relies on hardware is usually buying hardware for an average of 3 years. After that they're losing money and it's better to buy new one. That's exactly Apples two year transition period + one year of software support. A consumer is different, they'll switch eventually but normally later unless it's a enthusiast. Apple cares little about this.
In the end, this is going to boil down to a simple thing. How much does a port cost vs. how much it costs not to do it in terms of lost sales. For games, this can be relatively easy when using Engines that allow you to flip a switch and be done (well, not quite that easy). But of course that doesn't work when building in-house engines, because then it's not a feature of the toolstack, but something you have to do (see Nvidia example from above).
As for say hello to D3 in 2030. The article sounds like they are recognizing that Blizzard game development needs to be accelerated. Moving a 200-person design studio against, "It will now focus entirely on Blizzard’s franchises, including Diablo" recognizes their blizzard business side lacks products/updates to grow and maintain players IMHO.
When have you ever seen a group of 200 people join a game developing project to offer their support and things went smoothly? I have never seen or talked to anyone who knows of such a case. I know a few people (and with some of them I've studied), who work for Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo, Capcom and EA. Some have worked on titles such as Assassins Creed and Anno and when you ask them, merging large teams usually means chaos. In some cases it means starting over from scratch. That's understandable, because the new guys usually bring new ideas, don't like how things were done, there are usually creative differences and so on. Telltale Games is a perfect example of this. I doubt they'll cancel the D4 project, but I can easily see a delay based on this news. Then again, Blizzard has a history of delaying games. The only case I know of where things are run "differently" is Valve, but there you don't really have fixed groups dedicated to a game.
