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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

#731

Post by scottmf »

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #670
metafunctor wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait! What! Virtual Desktops "Spaces" are gone in OSX?

Spaces are still there, but what they have removed is that “X”. It’s simply “MacOS” now.

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

#732

Post by haZard_OS »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #714
metafunctor wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I second that. I own a System76 laptop (Ubuntu 16.04 pre-installed) and an HP stream that I bought specifically to run POP! OS. I have also replaced several of my colleagues' OS with a Linux distro and I have yet to encounter a problem that took more than an hour to solve...and even those minor problems rarely occur.

  I am by no means a Linux guru - I just grew disgusted with Windows and wasn't willing to switch to Apple.

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

#733

Post by no_wizard »

pohl wrote: post #661
amelius wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all not forget that if IBM, in the 80s, controlled its hardware and software stack like Apple does now, we would not have the modular desktop PC and we would not have Linux. I consider the extreme vertical integration of Apple as a bad development (Apple recently is trying to control even rare Earth metals). I like the market to be "modular", with many different vendors, making replaceable parts that fit to…

...we would not have the modular desktop PC and we would not have Linux. There’s probably no way to support that counter-factual. We could easily have ended up with some other open-architecture personal computer and open source operating system.

There is actually: BSD. In 1991 BSD transitioned to open source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution

Which of course gave us FreeBSD in 1993

Thats just one simple example I can think of. Intel, as well, was never monopolized as a chip manufacturer. They could sell chips freely to IBM competitors.

Also, the reverse engineering of the IBM platform is what made Compaq computer successful in the mid 80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq

I don't think even a quick examination of the histories involved here would yield any other result than open hardware and software was always going to be a big component of desktop computing.

These things ebb and flow anyway, historically what you usually see is that for at least a decade (sometimes more, a lot more, and sometimes dramatically less) what ends up happening is vertically integrated solutions are favored as they bring the most harmony to the average customer of said platform ('it just works!' was as slogan of many firms, not just Apple). Then as complexities can be either mitigated or eliminated these things tend to open themselves up.

I believe Mobile devices are going through this phase. I think in another decade or two you will have a situation where you start seeing really useable open alternatives to the major platforms even though right now it does not seem intuitive or obvious how that will work

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

#734

Post by scottmf »

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.

Alt-tab behavior is more of a preference thing.

>It's basically shitty linux with outlook.

Linux is shitty Linux. Except on the server. (IMO, of course).

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

#735

Post by no_wizard »

jcfrei wrote: post #564
fastball wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple frequently introduces changes to its OS that caters to the average user without any hindsight for developers. A good example I had to deal with; I wanted to change the port the SSH daemon listens on. With El Capitan and future versions you have to temporarily disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) - which requires two reboots - in order to make the change to the ssh.plist file. As you can see it's a common p…

Flatly, This isn't true.

I can still go into /etc/ssh sudo vim sshd_config, can my values, and they stick.

Just to test it, I did it right now, and I'm running 10.13.4, for what its worth.

What exactly was the issue with changing the sshd config? This isn't a SIP protected directory, which is the only thing that would prevent such a move.

Perhaps the requirement of sudo? I feel like most linux distros force that in the /etc directory too.

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

#736

Post by imtringued »

yasth wrote: post #587
snowwrestler wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When they switched to Intel, I recall there being a lot of talk of benefits to running on the same chips as everyone else. They switched to Intel first and foremost because PowerPC was not going to get them the performance/power ratio that they wanted. It was holding them back in laptops. For example, Apple never shipped a laptop with a G5 chip because it took so much damn power to run a G5. Intel was basically the…

OS as a gatekeeper is still present in a lot of corporate stuff. You'd be amazed the number of people who are still running IE because of one reporting package or what not. That said there is no reason in 2020 they couldn't dual boot to MS's Windows ARM which is already shipping supports 32 bit x86 apps and should be polished enough to do legacy to the limited degree most users need. I have to say this isn't how I ex…

The x86 emulation is far from reliable. It's far more likely that corporations just get the intel laptop because processors just are simply just a small fraction of the total price of a laptop. When you're buying a dell laptop that costs $1300 then spending another $200 for the intel laptop is a drop in the bucket.

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

#737

Post by no_wizard »

lhorie wrote: post #420
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…

How's this different than going back to PowerPC architecture? When they switched to Intel, I recall there being a lot of talk of benefits to running on the same chips as everyone else. From what I've been hearing lately about Apple, the impression I keep getting is that Apple doesn't think of Mac as a product with a specific target market, but more as a sort of just-a-really-really-big-ipad. The closed garden approac…

Well, certainly I think a part of it was that they could unify on one Chip with the rest of the industry did provide some economies of scale advantages, though rumor has it that Apple has always paid a little bit more for its chips so they could guarantee certain things and dictate as such.

I believe the main driver though, as pointed out in this CNET article https://www.cnet.com/news/four-years-later-why-did-apple-dro... was that IBM could not deliver on a powerful enough powerpc chip that would also meet the other constraints, namely, at this time, one of the biggest markets Apple had was the notebook market, and its sales there were exploding. IBM was unable to deliver a lower thermal envelope for its portable chipsets on top of performance issues.

I think this more than anything else pushed that reality.

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

#739

Post by emodendroket »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #726
emodendroket wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone not still in high school that struck me as way more effort than it was worth.

Hah, now that you mention it does seem like a huge chunk of the community is in high school. When I went to college I just got a real Mac and it is 100x better than the MSI Wind I used to use (though that was a great device too!).

That's kind of the crowd for something that saves you a bit of money at the cost of a huge chunk of your time, isn't it?

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

#740

Post by troupe »

bobwaycott wrote: post #57
troupe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ... no one really expects their old software to work anyway. My experience with HN comments leads me to believe otherwise, at least among professionals. :)

Well everyone (including myself) likes to complain about it, but there is a huge difference in how many OS updates it takes to break a legacy application on OS X and Windows. If we really expected the OS X updates to not break things, we'd move to a different OS.
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