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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

#211

Post by macintux »

macintux wrote: post #197
chocolatebunny wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple spent a lot of effort with each transition trying to make it as smooth for customers as possible while still pushing forward with the new system. I have no doubt some customers were caused pain by the transitions, and some left the Apple world entirely, but characterizing them as being "fucked over" seems a bit over the top.

(gaius is right, however: CodeWarrior saved Apple once, but they've clearly learned a lot with successive transitions.)

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

#212

Post by BlackLotus89 »

Is this maybe why they are looking for Linux kernel developers?

Tim Pritlove predicted this move for some years now on his freakshow(.fm).

Anyway the only interesting thing to me is if they will share a codebase between macOs and ios or if they will create something new and not based on darwin. Maybe they will take the step steve didn't want and switch to linux.

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

#213

Post by Stranger43 »

Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward?

I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app-store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photoshop, autocad, mathematica(ok that one is fairly portable), AfterEffects and whatever it is the pro's use for video editing those days are a different ballgame.

We saw microsoft stumble down that path with their successfull port of windows to arm where the OS itself worked but where no major 3rd party business essential app ever got ported to windows for arm, with a lot of IT departments choosing to keep windows 7 around our of fear of what 10 would morph into until MS begun to dial back their ambitions for windows everywhere.

Im guessing that the short run result of Apple going though with OSX on arm is that a lot of the CAD and video editing heavyweights just drop support for whatever OSX morphs into to support running on IOS hardware.

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

#214

Post by ken »

mtgx wrote: post #184
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 wouldn't know, but hasn't Apple made its Mac Store apps architecture-agnostic? I'd be surprised if that's still not the case.

No, the Xcode workflow is set up to make applications CPU-agnostic by default, but there's nothing about the Mac App Store that requires it. The executables are ordinary x64 binaries.

It'd be perfectly valid to write an application for the MAS in x64 assembly, if you want, as long as it's sandboxed and doesn't touch any private APIs.

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

#215

Post by thought_alarm »

notatoad wrote: post #54
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…

> It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable the article (thin as it is) claims a multi-step transition. Apple almost certainly has a version of Mac OS that can run on their iPad hardware - the transition path that makes the most sense to me is a 12" MacBook that runs essentially the same internal hardware as an iPad pro, and a MacOS that can run iOS apps. There would be a great consumer market for a…

This needs to be repeated every time there's a discussion about ARM and the Mac:

Putting an ARM processor in a Mac does absolutely nothing to change the viability of running iOS apps on a Mac.

iOS developers always compile, test, and debug their apps on x86. The challenge of running iOS apps on x86 was solved 10 years ago.

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

#216

Post by pvg »

klodolph wrote: post #198
pvg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter that the new processor is a lot more powerful and faster than the old processor. This wouldn't be the case this time.

It's not powerful/faster that sells chips, it's power and speed relative to envelope. Maybe the iMac pro continues to ship with Xeons, the iMac with Core i5 and i7 depending on configuration. But compare the Intel Core m3 to the Apple A11, and a completely different story will emerge. The A11 is already comparable to relatively recent Macbooks in terms of performance.

The point is, if we're going to bring up what an 'easy' time Apple has had transitioning from one architecture to another, it's worth remembering each transition came with a big performance jump. This made the new platform desirable and emulation bearable. If they are considering a transition again, 'bearable emulation' is not as much of a given.

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

#217

Post by H1Supreme »

cptskippy wrote: post #64
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…

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…

> until developers can recompile?

Will it be that simple? Apple's own Logic Pro ships with a lot of legacy products from Emagic days. I know they've re-skinned a few with the last couple releases, but I'm guessing a lot of the DSP code is still the same.

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

#218

Post by Moto7451 »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #157
danaliv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s a popular line around here but it doesn’t line up with the reality. When they’ve done architecture changes in the past they’ve reached out to large developers for feedback before committing to the changes being made. The original very OpenStep like OS X did not ship en mass because it lacked a bridge library to support developers and Adobe and others cried foul. That’s how Carbon came about. When 64bit Carbon was shelved some 10 years ago, the “sky is falling” was proclaimed but Adobe came along for the ride and everything was fine. Are Technica did a great write up summarizing both the genesis and end of Carbon development [0]

The PPC transition and Intel Transition both had emulators, fat binary support, and for the Intel transition, early access to developer hardware [1]. I’m not sure how much more you can ask of Apple. The current iOS simulator compiles to native Intel code and then builds for deployment use the appropriate CPU target. The tooling is mature and the execution know.

Apple can certainly do better in a lot of areas, i.e. Swift examples that are either missing or are too old to compile. This is something they’re competent at.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/staff/2008/04/rhapsody-and-blues/

[1] http://vintagemacmuseum.com/the-apple-developer-transition-s...

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

#219

Post by solarkraft »

wlesieutre wrote: post #178
wlesieutre wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still very skeptical of the “Mac that can run iOS apps” concept. Tim Cook has been pretty unambiguous in his statements about Mac vs iPad. https://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/16/tim-cook-no-converged-m... >We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad, because what that would wind up doing, or what we’re worried would happen, is that neither experience would be as good as the c…

Of course this is from 2015, and it’s possible they’ve been prototyping for years and think they can overcome the fear of a subpar device. But as a former Surface Pro owner who now has an iPad Pro, I don’t see that happening. The iPad is immeasurably better as a tablet when you have tablet-oriented software available. And when you don’t, obviously the Surface’s compromise of “have a crappy desktop experience too” is…

Microsoft has been trying convergence for years and have been awful at it, but there are finally some real implemented concepts like modifying the task bar based on tablet/desktop modes. Realized at scale I still think this strategy could work and with Apple's tight control over the iOS software landscape there is some hope of having iOS as a second-, class citizen on mac OS.
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