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

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

#511

Post by mythz »

mehrdadn wrote: post #499
mythz wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of JetBrains IDE's are better and they're cross-platform. I've switched to Rider after getting sick of constant white screen of deaths, crashes, locking and perf issues in VS.NET. Rider is on par with VS.NET/R# for C# and superior for pretty much everything else except for visual GUI designers - although I haven't used one seriously in over a decade.

I'm very skeptical but I will try out JetBrains, thanks for the pointer! :) EDIT: These all seem to be .NET development? I use Visual Studio mostly for C++... for that would you recommend CLion?

Yeah you'd use CLion for C/C++ development (tho AppCode includes C/C++ support as well), although haven't used that variant myself, but they're all built from the same high-quality core platform and share many components so I'd expect it to provide a quality experience for C/C++ as well.

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

#512

Post by BooneJS »

adrianmonk wrote: post #400
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…

I'm not a chip designer, but how practical would it be for Apple to try to make a CPU that has good hardware support for both ARM and x86/x86-64 binaries? It's a radical direction, but they are designing the chip by themselves and for themselves, they have deep pockets, and if it worked well it would reduce an important risk. There are already several chips capable of running multiple instruction sets. Most desktop m…

See: Transmeta.

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

#513

Post by awalton »

Bud wrote: post #281
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those changes were all to more powerful processors such that emulating the old architecture wouldn't be that bad. In this instance, Apple would likely be going to a less powerful processors and thus emulation at any reasonable level of performance wouldn't be that viable.

That's not "likely" at all. Apple's CPUs are already faster in single-core benchmarks than the Intel competition, even though the Apple processors in question are designed for mobile devices and have much less power to work with. Apple would not be making this switch if they didn't think they could improve performance.

> Apple's CPUs are already faster in single-core benchmarks than the Intel competition

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "But Geekbench..." is not extraordinary evidence. Give me a board where I can do an Apple to apples comparison, booting both under the same revision of the same OS, and running industry standard benchmarks (read: plural), and then we can come to that conclusion.

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

#514

Post by stiGGG »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #452
Myrmornis wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What apple software do you need to use? Sure, it's annoying not having the GNU command-line utilities. But `brew install coreutils` basically fixes that for me. I admit I don't work heavily with compiled languages on macOS so I can't comment on technical aspects of that. iTerm2 is not inferior to linux terminal emulators. The Apple laptops are quite obviously the best hardware experience out there. I mean obviously i…

I mean the laptops are great. Provided you don't need a HDMI port. Or more than 1 spare USB port. Or am ethernet port. You could get the touch-bar version, but I've read literally nothing but bad reviews and stories about that thing, plus tb versions have smaller batteries. Yes, I could get a dock, but here's a better idea: how about apple chills out on their unnecessary-thinness fetish, and givese back some actual f…

With touch bar i agree, it hate it. But the thunderbolt dock thingie totally rocks. It's really nice to only plug in one cable to connect the complete hardware on your desk (multiple screens, ethernet, power, etc).

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

#515

Post by zeveb »

fastball wrote: post #443
sreque wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have…

What exactly does your development workflow look like where Linux was so much better than MacOS?

StumpWM & a full GNU userland just like the machines we deploy on are killer.

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

#516

Post by bb88 »

npunt wrote: post #455
sreque wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have…

2/3s of all PR activity on Github is on a Mac, for what it's worth. Certainly the platform punches above its weight relative to market share. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2...

My only complaint is that if the mac were truly a developer-centric device, I wouldn't need homebrew to install software. It should just be in the apple store for me to download.

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

#517

Post by awalton »

CharlesW wrote: post #307
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those changes were all to more powerful processors such that emulating the old architecture wouldn't be that bad. In this instance, Apple would likely be going to a less powerful processors and thus emulation at any reasonable level of performance wouldn't be that viable.

> In this instance, Apple would likely be going to a less powerful processors… Arguably, the A11 Bionic is already faster than mainstream desktop CPUs. "The iPhone 8 even edged out the score from the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro with a 7th-generation Core i5 processor. That notebook notched 9,213. Is Geekbench 4 really comparable from phone to desktop? According to the founder of Geekbench, John Poole, 'the short is ans…

...in one benchmark, from a heavily Apple-favoring company.

I'm sorry, we need better evidence.

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

#518

Post by figgis »

Lio wrote: post #492
chuckdries wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs ship with outdated versions of common bash commands and tools as well. Homebrew goes a long way to fixing this for me.

I have the same problem on Ubuntu LTS distributions. Eg the ancient version of git in 16.04LTS. You can fix that of course but homebrew does the same job on macOS. Roll on 18.04LTS.

The most enjoyable and productive dev workstations I have used/setup have all used rolling release distro's for this exact reason.

It does have the overhead of requiring you actually understand (or know how to google) your system/packages that you use though.

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

#519

Post by awalton »

otterley wrote: post #147
xaduha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else is there?

x86_64, but of their own manufacture. A fair number of people use MBPs to run Docker containers and other Linux/Windows VMs; to ask them to sacrifice this functionality would be to risk a fairly significant user population.

If other companies could legally figure out how to license and build x86 chips, nVidia would already be there stamping them out. It's a legal minefield that's simply not worth exploring, even for Apple.

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

#520

Post by ratsimihah »

sreque wrote: post #433
mark_l_watson wrote: post #229

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…

I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have…

What does Linux give you that macOS doesn’t?

I use both a Mac and an Arch Linux running i3/awesomewm, and to me macOS is like any Linux distro with a user-friendly desktop environment.

I guess it doesn’t have an « official » package manager, but homebrew has most packages anyway?

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