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Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#151

Post by lambda_lover »

rdsubhas wrote: post #84
lambda_lover wrote: post #45

> "A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility where it has failed to gain a foothold so far." > "Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan, for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and iPad apps on Macs" Two things here: 1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving to a walled garden where Ap…

> 1) .... why? ... You're already scratching the surface: vertical integration, backdoors and high prices, power and battery life optimization, lesser effort for an app developer to publish to all platforms, develop-once-run-everywhere, ... Looks like you're looking for one "The Reason" - but there doesn't need to be one. If a layperson like you or me is able to provide 5-10 reasons, then its likely there could be 10…

Good point on 1) -- basically, Intel has produced enough problems for a high enough cost that there's reason enough to try alternatives.

On 2)... I hate web apps. Probably much more than your average layperson. Electron is miserable in my experience -- laggy, high memory/CPU user, non-native feel, but I think a web app in a browser is OK. There are really two different use cases I see here. a) Take TurboTax, for instance. I don't want to download a TurboTax app for my computer. I'd only use it once or twice a year. But it works well in a browser. It's complex enough that a web app is justified. b) Spotify. It needs to interact with local files, and I usually have it up in the background. A web app doesn't work well for this. Unfortunately Electron doesn't work well for this either.

I think if this is executed well it could be amazing -- what if layouts scale beautifully onto a laptop screen, so I can use an iOS app instead of an Electron app for Spotify/Slack/etc? If this happened, the benefits could trickle down into iOS, making it a more useful platform. On the other hand, layouts might not scale well for larger screens, and iOS apps on macOS could end up neutered and even less useless than a current webapp. Hopefully the former case happens, but lately Apple makes me feel like the latter is more likely.

3) I'm not really convinced that this will reduce bugs. In my experience, combining two pieces of software into one just makes the resulting monolith harder to reason about because it doubles complexity at high levels and increases complexity exponentially at low levels. But maybe that says something about my development skills :)

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#153

Post by Skunkleton »

SyneRyder wrote: post #142
Skunkleton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If apple uses its own chips, I would assume that they would be aarch64 and not x86_64. Also, Microsoft has some magics for executing x86_64 binaries on aarch64 with good performance, so Apple may have a similar technology. We could end up with another situation similar to the Power->x86 transition that happened back in 2006. Or it could be nothing. This is a pretty thin article.

> ...Microsoft has some magics for executing x86_64 binaries on aarch64 with good performance... I was just listening to a Windows Weekly podcast about that, and its limited to 32-bit x86 binaries only, no 64-bit support. They also said its "unusable" for 32-bit apps (in particular Chrome), because you can watch the system drawing the windows of x86 apps on the screen. Watching the video, they seem to be exaggerating…

Ahh that is a bummer. I only read about the translation stuff when it was first announced, before there was much info on the details.

Edit: After watching the video, that didn't seem too bad. Perhaps it would work well enough on top of a beefier ARM processor? Of course the lack of x86_64 support is another issue that may not have a reasonable solution.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#154

Post by yardie »

troupe wrote: post #46
jweir wrote: post #24

Apple does have a good record of moving their OS and software from different architectures. 68XXX to PPC to Intel was not a horrible experience. Having gone through three transitions I don't remember a lot of pain - but maybe I am repressing it!

It is fairly common for newer versions of OS X to break software that worked on previous versions. If you try to use Photoshop 6 on a modern version of OS X it isn't going to work. I think this makes the chip transition less painful because no one really expects their old software to work anyway.

PS6 used the old Carbon Framework. This was developed as a stopgap to allow developers to transition off of MacOS to OSX in the early aughts. It goes to show how little respect Adobe back then had for Apple and Mac users that Apple ended up purchasing and developing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro IP.

Microsoft Office was another drag on the Carbon library. They also chose to keep their applications in the old format even though they were told repeatedly from Apple that this thing was going away. Eventually they got their shit together and the Office suite for OSX is a best of show.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#155

Post by joezydeco »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #125
rfrey wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy two iPads and use one as a keyboard.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not :-) That said, CPUs have gotten so cost effective that it makes possible something which has come in and out of favor for a while, which is a network of devices that do one thing co-operating as a larger system. So lets say you buy your "iDisk" which is a storage brick that you can put on a short range wireless network. A couple of iPad monitors, a wireless Apple keyboard…

We've been dreaming about this kind of system since the rumors were flying about the Apple "Brick".

The "brick" turned out to be the all-aluminum MacBook, being carved from a single piece of metal.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#156

Post by izacus »

uptown wrote: post #69

Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that the iPad is "the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing" and Apple only sells around 4M Macs per quarter, while iOS devices dwarf this stat. If their plan is to continue moving users from desktop/laptop devices to their iOS ecosystem, and the software can be transformed to cross between both classes of devices, then it only makes sense to unify the pr…

More importantly, Apple has clearly demonstrated several times that they want to own a fully locked down platform where they approve any piece of code and collect percentage from every sale. iOS devices are that - everything from DRM protected hardware to app store apps pays tax to Apple. Users of desktop platforms are resistant to that (Mac App store failed) it's easier to just introduce a larger iPad to push people over.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#157

Post by chocolatebunny »

danaliv wrote: post #77
cptskippy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple did a pretty decent job when they transitioned from PPC to x86_64, it has Rosetta to translate PPC to x86. Microsoft and partners released ARM based Windows Laptops this year that can run Win32 apps in emulation. What's stopping Apple from shipping Macbooks with a custom SoC that can run existing Apps in emulation until developers can recompile? I would argue that most Air and Macbook owners aren't developers a…

And before that they successfully managed the transition from m68k to PPC. The processor doesn't matter.

The processor doesn't matter to Apple because they don't mind fucking over their customers and their third party developers.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#158

Post by trollied »

andmarios wrote: post #96

I think for a site full of developers, the almost exclusively welcome reactions to such a change are intriguing. Don't you worry you will have to cross-compile to run your programs on the amd64 server? Or how you are going to debug locally bugs that may arise from a different architecture? Or that homebrew could be in an inconsistent state for some years until all software catches up with the new architecture?

Apple dealt with this last time with Universal Binaries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#159

Post by jcadam »

MBCook wrote: post #48
jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

I wonder if this is more about coprocessors and other chips than the main CPU. I know the iPad Pros certainly outperform many cheaper Intel chips while using lower power. But I doubt they would want to split the line into half ARM half Intel, or move the Mac Pro to ARM.

Apple has been trying to chase power users and professionals off of their platform for years. A switch to ARM is an opportunity to rid themselves of the few remaining holdouts and focus 100% on high-end consumer electronics.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#160

Post by monocasa »

btian wrote: post #27
justherefortart wrote: post #4

Great, we can go back to the macrumors nonsense about how this PPC is "just as fast" as the x86 days. With their focus on iOS vs MacOS, this doesn't surprise me. MacOS will simply die once they port their tools to iOS. Terrible choice IMO.

Except PPC was Motorola and IBM, not Apple

Apple contributed heavily; they're the ones who basically invented Altivec.
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