@BigD, that approach would be the worst way to go. The ARM works well because it does smaller tasks very fast. That is what RISC means, Reduced Instruction Set Computing. But the reduction is NOT in capability, it's that each individual instruction is meant to be accomplished in one clock cycle, if possible. The CISC of Intel (Complex Instructing Set Computing), allow, in fact demands, that any given instruction will take more clock cycles to complete the complex task. I've heard some instructions take up to 12 clock cycles to complete. But in CISC, if you need ONE of the outcomes of the instruction set, you have to wait for ALL of them. RISC allows a developer to get just what is wanted, faster.
So, what does a developer of applications have to do to make the change? Just recompile the source code for ARM. That's it. Boom. The new binary will use the RISC instruction set instead of the Intel CISC set. In fact, Apple announced that for a while, Xcode will create binaries that have BOTH and which will run on either, so a developer would build the Application in Xcode, compile and end up with a binary set that is good for both kinds of CPU. Eventually, the developer may decide to drop Intel CISC and recompile, but that is, for the foreseeable future, up to the developer. I suspect that at some point after Apple declares the final Intel machine as obsolete and no longer supported, Xcode will stop producing Intel code, but that's out in the future a few years, at least.
The better way to get what you seem to want (Intel compatibility?) is for Apple to create software to emulate the Intel CISC instruction set, which is what the announced Rosetta 2 is supposed to do when the ARM systems start to arrive. No reason to bastardize the ARM chip with some clone of the Intel instruction set, if Intel would even license Apple to do that. I'm not sure why supporting MS Windows is a key concern for Mac users, and the article says only 2% installed BootCamp to do so. I needed Windows to do a printing function for my wife's business because the printer company for the unique printer we needed didn't support Macs, so I ran Parallels to get Windows for my printing, but now that the printer is gone, I don't run Windows, or Windows programs, for any reason at all. If Parallels had not existed, I would have plunked $300 for an "el cheapo PC" to do the printing. However, there is not much stopping MS from compiling their source code for an ARM system, if they think there is a market for it. They have actually already done it, according to reports. MS even has a webpage for support of Win10 on ARM. Companies like Parallels can continue to develop emulators to run virtual systems in an ARM environment, although the performance of those emulations is probably going to be severely impacted because right now virtual systems can be given direct CPU access to run CISC instructions but in an ARM system the emulator is going to have to intercept all of those CISC calls and convert them to ARM RISC calls.
From my perspective all of the lathering up over the move to ARM is overblown hyperbole.
