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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

#221

Post by mortenjorck »

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…

> I don’t think Apple is going to make those compromises. They might do a more converged developer blackened for Mac and iOS to make it easier to target both platforms, but they won’t shove the frontends together.

This, I think, is the most accurate picture of future iOS / Mac convergence. Universal binaries that present either a desktop, tablet, or phone UI based on where they're running.

Microsoft's mistake was trying to converge the desktop and tablet UIs.

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

#222

Post by jmull »

If this is true, I'm pretty interested to see how they intend to pull it off (and how it works out in real life).

I'd be more skeptical if Apple hadn't already pulled off CPU architecture transitions with impressive smoothness multiple times already.

Will Apple do an x64 CPU?

Or maybe x64 emulation? ...maybe with custom hardware assist?

Could they possibly do a crazy "you must recompile for ARM if you want to run on the latest Macs" thing?

The performance of Apple's ARM CPUs is already fine for the lower end of lappys, and have superior power usage. Moving up into midrange performance lappys doesn't seem like a stretch at all to me, or even higher end lappys, especially if you're looking for more cores. But what about iMacm, iMac Pro and Mac Pro? Does Apple really have a solid plan that makes ARM CPUs competitive there? Or will there be Intel-based Macs at the high-end and ARM-based Macs at the mid to low end?

Could Apple possibly tie all this to some unification of iOS and MacOS?

And/or tie it to a unification of the iOS App Store and Mac App Store?

Interesting stuff.

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

#223

Post by bhouston »

Stranger43 wrote: post #213

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 photosho…

Adobe has a lot of stuff that works well on iOS. ARM has neon instructions for SIMD. I think they will be okay. Changing over from one SIMD architecture to another is not that hard.

AutoCAD isn't ultra optimized for Mac anyhow, it will be okay.

This transition may screw up or significantly slow down VMs of Intel-based OSes like Ubuntu.

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

#224

Post by zitterbewegung »

madeofpalk wrote: post #39
zitterbewegung wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have moved past the easy parts of optimization. Apple's optimizations still have thermal throttling issues (sustained use of an A11 will not beat an Intel chip due to better cooling and IPC). Compared to other ARM licencees they do beat the pants off of. This is probably why Apple put in a T1 chip and a touch bar in the Macbook Pro and the T2 chip (dedicated power module) in the iMac Pro. They are protot…

FWIW, the TouchBar MacBook Pros have the T1, and the iMac has the next generation T2 chip.

Thank you for correcting me :)

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

#225

Post by jernfrost »

otterley wrote: post #139
jernfrost wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will obviously be an ARM transition not x86: https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-switch-f...

What is so "obvious" about it?

That is what I explain in the link. I saw this move coming two years ago when I wrote that article. I noticed how regular users were using iPhones and iPads for almost everything they do. I noticed how office apps like Pages, Keynote and Numbers worked without any performance issues on iPad.

I concluded ARM was fast enough for 90% of users. Once you don't have the restriction of battery life and small enclosure it is not hard to imagine that Apple could beef up ARM a lot for their desktops and laptops.

Why run multiple CPU architectures when one does the job and is much cheaper?

I've been thinking hard about what kind of workload ARM can't handle and I can't think of anything. Ok... there is one 1st person shooter games. But iOS is a more successful gaming platform than Mac.

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

#226

Post by htormey »

Stranger43 wrote: post #213

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 photosho…

How do you think the announcement that OSX will be supporting external graphics cards fit into Adobe/Autodesks plans?

I don’t really do much video, photo or 3d editing these days but isn’t that all GPU driven?

If that’s the case then couldn’t someone like Nvidia pick up the slack for Apple with a really nice external modular offering?

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

#227

Post by MereInterest »

mankash666 wrote: post #208
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.

How does this fuck over customers or third party devs in anyways?

If you are changing CPU architecture, you have three options with respect to backwards compatibility.

1) Old programs don't work, because it is a different CPU architecture. 2) Old programs work, but in a VM, so it can't take full advantage of the hardware. 3) Old programs must be recompiled to work on new architecture.

The last one is the preferred option, but is only possible for open source software. If options 1 or 3 are taken for proprietary software, the customer needs to buy a new version of the software.

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

#228

Post by Jyaif »

jernfrost wrote: post #126

This is such an obvious move, that I predicted it 2 years ago: https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-switch-f... My prediction in 2016, was that Apple would switch to ARM based laptops in 2019, so it looks like I am off by just 1 year. A quick summary of my argument back then was that ARM was getting fast ENOUGH, but are considerably cheaper. Standardizing on one CPU architecture for all their products…

> I predicted it 2 years ago

Such clairvoyance.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/139677-the-threat-of-m...

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

#229

Post by mark_l_watson »

This might just be a bargaining move on Apple’s part, but I don’t think so. I think that long term they are much better off controlling their entire hardware stack. I wouldn’t be surprised to even see them make their own display screens.

As an Apple customer, I like this idea also. For 20 years, I used to be a desktop Linux fanatic and later became a fan of Android. In the last few years, I have switched to using all Apple devices.

Even though I am a computer scientists, I actually spend more time on my iPad and iPhone, by far, than on my Mac laptops. I only use a laptop for software development (because of the nature of my work, that is often just SSHed into Linux servers), the rest of my workflow and entertainment is on iOS devices.

The older I get, the more I want to get my work done expediently, leaving time to study new technologies and spend time with family and friends. At least for right now, I am maximally effective in Apple’s environments.

As a bonus, I trust Apple more that Microsoft, Google, Intel, etc.

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

#230

Post by samstave »

What I find funny is that in ~2006 I had a net eng working for me that was a die-hard Mac fan.

I claimed at the time, that I would bet him that apple would start making machines with Intel chips. He LOST it and said "THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!!"

And thought I was a complete moron for even suggesting as such.

:-)

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