With Bitcode, Apple could change OS X into something like the old TAOS jit based OS. Except for a small kernel, all TAOS executables were intermediate representation files. This IR could be translated to real machine code at the same speed as disk access, and resulted in code running at 80-90% native speed on most platforms.
With software like that, Apple could become independent of any particular software architecture.
(TAOS dates from the 90's and is hard to google, but is mentioned in some papers. And yes, the JIT translator could do that even on 90's machines.)
With software like that, Apple could become independent of any particular software architecture.
(TAOS dates from the 90's and is hard to google, but is mentioned in some papers. And yes, the JIT translator could do that even on 90's machines.)