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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

#711

Post by stiGGG »

jernfrost wrote: post #146
mcphage wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> significant work by third parties outside Apple who haven't even heard of the possibility of this happening until today I dunno, I feel like the writing has been on the wall for Apple to switch to their own ARM chips, for 3 or 4 years now. At first it was "yeah maybe someday", but by this point, I'm just surprised they're waiting until 2020. I was hoping the first ARM Macbooks would be this summer. (Really, last su…

Agree this was obviously something that was going to happen. My prediction was 2019 tough. My thoughts was that they probably wanted to get more developers over to using bitcode first as well as ARM being almost at desired performance but not quite there yet. In 2020 I doubt anyone will see any problems with ARM performance on a desktop or laptop.

I remember Chris Lattner giving some details to bitcode a while ago and according to him it's not possible to recompile an app for a different architecture having only the so called bitcode.

Edit: Found the source: http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript/#bitcod...

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

#712

Post by eklavya »

freehunter wrote: post #621
megy wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Second, while Apple's mobile processors are currently the best in ARM world, for "pro" desktop computers Apple needs desktop-grade processor. Making something comparable to i7 isn't such an easy and cheap job. Good point, I guess Apple never though of that.

It's quite impressive how many people in the comments can so easily come up with big show-stoppers that Apple never thought about. Must be why Apple is struggling financially and can't get anyone to buy their products.

While being sarcastic you might have missed the sarcasm of the parent :)

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

#713

Post by promeus »

jeremiep wrote: post #673
blacklight wrote: post #560

I personally hate close fences with no rooms for customization, and many computer scientists are on the same wavelength. Windows is an awful choice for software development, a job that usually requires a lot of interaction with Unix servers. Microsoft's recent crush for Linux and open source can't fix many years of closed standards, closed protocols, and Embrace-Extend-Exterminate evil culture. And MacOS, even though…

I still prefer the "closed fence" that is macOS over the complete mess that is desktop on linux. macOS was really really liberating after years of frustrations with all of gnome, kde and xfce. Then was x11 vs mir vs wayland. Desktop on linux is pretty much still a toy when compared to desktop on macos. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about the whole developer's environment thing. "Made by developers, for dev…

I beg to differ: Take a look at current state of MacOS. There is nothing wrong in idea of quality control with emphasis on security, but actual os implementation lacks it. Only Apple can survive root fiasco from this year. I think that a need of commercial desktop linux distribution is present. I remember commercial SUSE 11. It was a good desktop, but targeted in a wrong direction, if someone is brave enough to target creative market with all good things that Apple is famous for, it will be more than a hit. It will be glorious. Microsoft is going in cloud/ai direction. Apple is mobile only. Desktop computing will not die so easily. Professionals need desktop, bigger screen, and reliable and expandable hardware architecture.

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

#714

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

metafunctor wrote: post #604
blacklight wrote: post #560

I personally hate close fences with no rooms for customization, and many computer scientists are on the same wavelength. Windows is an awful choice for software development, a job that usually requires a lot of interaction with Unix servers. Microsoft's recent crush for Linux and open source can't fix many years of closed standards, closed protocols, and Embrace-Extend-Exterminate evil culture. And MacOS, even though…

I, too, used to love tinkering with Linux. I would compile my own kernels, hack drivers and fix bugs to make it run better on the hardware I chose to buy. I wanted everything to be just so. Then, I realized that I have more money than time. I can choose Apple hardware, and run OS X (now macOS), trouble free. The only time I patched my Linux kernel was when some piece of hardware didn't work. Now, I simply choose hard…

I've always kind of wondered what you guys are doing with your computers where you run into issues with Linux. For 95% of users, even software developers, in there off time you just want a web browser.

If you are developing, Linux is almost certainly better. The vast majority of languages have all their libraries available in the built in package manager, the included versions being guaranteed to work together.

I'm obviously not suggesting you run Arch Linux, but any Debian based distro will pretty much just work. And Ubuntu LTS doubly so.

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

#715

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

fnord123 wrote: post #638
ratsimihah wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What does Linux give you that macOS doesn’t? perf, case sensitive file systems, non stupid alt-tab behaviour, strace, pstack, gdb (these don't seem to work without sacrificing animals), gnome-shell (better than finder by a long way, imo). I've got a mac. I don't install programs except for things through brew. It's basically shitty linux with outlook.

I was trying to work with some students with Swift and the Mac character encoding ending up causing no end of problems.

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

#716

Post by jen20 »

yellow_postit wrote: post #551
reaperducer wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. Not that many years ago that was the same reason IT departments would give for only giving people Windows machines.

Apple shot themselves in the foot for this market with the touch bar. It adds such a small amount of utility for annoying every VIM user.

15 year VI and VIM user here. This is a stupid complaint: anyone seriously using VIM remapped Escape a long time ago, or learned to use Ctrl+[.

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

#717

Post by Arbalest »

pixel_fcker wrote: post #696
bwat49 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it's not going to work if I'm copying and pasting kernel code from Stack Overflow to get my trackpad to scroll the correct direction When was the last time you used a linux desktop, 2005? On any linux desktop I can think of (MATE, Gnome, KDE) this is a matter of going to Settings | Mouse & Touchpad | check or un-check the natural scrolling box as desired

I’m using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on a MBP and I cannot get the trackpad to work properly (right-click in the corner). I have to hand-edit confit files, the settings involved are undocumented, and it doesn’t work and I don’t know why. Even regular movement just feels janky compared to macOS.

MBPs have gotten worse with linux compatibility over the past few years. It usually takes at least a year to even get usable. It's just not worth getting a Mac to run linux. Mac has successfully made sure that macs are only for MacOS.

That being said, many laptops which were originally for windows have issues like this too. Desktops are usually fine because they tend to use highly standardised components. Laptops, not so much. This is pretty much entirely because companies are not willing to write open source drivers, and the good integration of stuff in package managers only works if drivers fit the packaging requirements. This usually means open source. I imagine this is mostly a problem of slightly higher cost, but also embarrassment of the jankiness of code. For mass produced systems with volume in mind, where the target consumer barely cares about reputation, it just isn't a priority.

In other words, you have to go for something expensive while also not being an OEM who opposes openness.

tl;dr you need to do your research before you buy. Linux needs cooperation from all parties, you can't expect compatibility with everything.

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

#719

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

I remember when Atari and Apple used to use Motorola chips. I miss the greater variety of those days, so I see this as positive, even if I'm not an Apple user myself. (And I look forward to trying out Apple-produced chips second-hand, and running Linux on them....)

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

#720

Post by powvans »

freehunter wrote: post #612
blacklight wrote: post #560

I personally hate close fences with no rooms for customization, and many computer scientists are on the same wavelength. Windows is an awful choice for software development, a job that usually requires a lot of interaction with Unix servers. Microsoft's recent crush for Linux and open source can't fix many years of closed standards, closed protocols, and Embrace-Extend-Exterminate evil culture. And MacOS, even though…

Here's the problem with saying "this is better for computer scientists": It's the same argument every time someone says "the Macbook Pro is not a professional device". Not every computer scientist has the same needs. There are a lot of CS folks who will never need to recompile a kernel or even get into the OS internals. For those people, having to do that is a major downside to any computer. So the obvious choice is…

Couldn't agree with you more. Ubuntu was my daily driver from the start of 2007 through early 2014 when I finally gave in and bought a rMBP. Despite missing the "real" nix environment being available right under the GUI, I have been much much happier on the Mac.

I fought software update and driver issues for years. I ran the most bog standard HP laptops that I could get, albeit w/ Nvidia GPUs. Every distribution upgrade there was something that went wrong. One of a list of usual suspects: video driver, power management, and wifi. Things were never completely broken. It would be something like not being able to close the lid, sleep, and properly recover. Or not being able to connect to wifi when coming back from sleep. Or not being able to stay connected to wifi after a couple hours and needing the kernel modules to be removed and reinserted.

I kept a set of hard drives so that I could always move to the next version of the OS on a clean install. I could fall back easily if the next release presented problems. I would tinker and fix the sort of issues you get with these random outlier driver problems and press forward. I had a good regimen going, but ultimately it was the power management issues that wore me down. Randomly finding the battery dead because the laptop didn't sleep when I closed the lid or not being able to properly return from sleep was just too much.

I've been running Linux for 20 years and I'm not willing to put up with these problems on my workstation. It seems like it must be a very small minority that can.

If you're going to have an actual destkop machine maybe you can avoid most of these problems. And maybe these things have been solved finally for laptops, but I wouldn't know, I moved on and haven't looked back.

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