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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

#941

Post by jcadam »

jcadam wrote: post #159
MBCook wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is more about coprocessors and other chips than the main CPU. I know the iPad Pros certainly outperform many cheaper Intel chips while using lower power. But I doubt they would want to split the line into half ARM half Intel, or move the Mac Pro to ARM.

Apple has been trying to chase power users and professionals off of their platform for years. A switch to ARM is an opportunity to rid themselves of the few remaining holdouts and focus 100% on high-end consumer electronics.

Oh good, I see the downvotes are rolling in now (I was concerned after receiving a wave of upvotes yesterday). I've found there is no more reliable method to collect downvotes on HN than to say something critical about Apple.

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

#942

Post by cerved »

apetrovic wrote: post #340
Lramseyer wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remember back to the mid 2000's when Apple switched from PowerPC to (Intel) x86, the higher end machines still ran with PowerPC chips in them while the mid-low end products had x86 chips. All of the old applications that weren't yet ported to x86 had to use "Rosetta." It wasn't until a little while later, presumably once most of the professional software companies had good working x86 versions of their softwar…

There's two problems with that story: first, the famous switch from PowerPC to Intel happened when the desktop was the king, and app developers had strong incentive to recompile programs to the new platform. Right now? Not so much. 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 a…

Also worth noting is Windows and x86 desktop dominance at the time likely made porting Mac software to x86 easier

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

#943

Post by mercer »

wongma wrote: post #833
Symbiote wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give examples of the GUI and CLI integration? I have a mac, but mostly use a Linux desktop, so I don't know what I'm missing.

Drag and drop an item from Finder to the terminal and it expands to its full path. Not sure if Linux does something similar as I'm not a regular user.

I also quite like the 'open' command to do the opposite.

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

#944

Post by whywhywhywhy »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #727
lhorie wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. As a long-time Mac user who's still basically happy with the product, this is what worries me the most long-term. YMMV, different strokes, go in peace with Ubuntu, but for me personally, macOS has been my favor…

I'm not too worried about Marzipan in the short term, I'm thinking the goal of that project might be to get devs who make pro apps on the mac side work on a codebase that they could easily port over to the iPad side seen as the iPad Pro is seriously lacking in app support compared to the Mac, because it's unprofitable to maintain them.

In the long term this is a play to push Cook's iPad Pro post-pc idea, yet again...

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

#945

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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…

>this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward?

Some would argue it's already been dead for a long time. I'm seeing less and less directors and artists using Macs for their workstations when it was close to 100% about 10 years ago.

They just didn't supply a competitive workstation machine for so long that many were forced to move to windows if they wanted power. I don't know a 3D artist anymore who isn't doing all their rendering through multiple Nvidia GPUs in a tower PC.

The iMac Pro has only been out for a few weeks after years of neglect and I'd struggle to recommend it to anyone at that price point.

(Ironically many I know still use a Mac laptop but it's relegated purely to office/email/slack/web tasks that back in the day we'd associate with Windows machines, not the actual creative work)

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

#946

Post by jcadam »

mrweasel wrote: post #850
nunez wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust that for two reasons: 1) There is a lot of cargo-culting around the MacBook because hurr durr Windows is terribad (though, to be fair, Docker does work better natively with OS X than Windows, even under WSL), and 2) Most companies give their developers the choice of a MacBook or the shittiest Windows machines known to man (because of irresistable volume deals from Windows OEMs). I bet the spread would b…

While I do prefer MacOS over Windows, I believe that you have a point in regards to the computers companies (and people in general) run Windows on. Most of issues people have with Windows can easily be explained by low quality hardware. If you need a decent laptop, you're looking at price tags above $1000. Depending on where you live, I wouldn't buy a Windows laptop below $1400, if you expect to be happy with it. Hon…

What I do every few years: buy a refurb/clearance business-class laptop (latitude, precision, et. al) from the Dell Outlet. The specs may be merely ok, but the build quality is pretty good. And you'll spend less than $1000 :)

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

#947

Post by simonh »

npunt wrote: post #864
bob1029 wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am finding it almost bemusing that people are dancing so delicately around the only rational possibility here: A semi-custom AMD-produced x86-64 CPU, very much like the Samsung-produced A-series ARM CPUs for their phones and tablets. I see zero reason that the next Axxxx chip cant be a rebranded Zen core with Vega GPU and custom Apple IP magic sprinkled in - https://www.amd.com/en-us/solutions/semi-custom Just…

That’s a lot of fuss for at best a lateral shift, and a step down in the all-important performance-per-watt metric (Zen and Vega are totally unproven here). You may be underestimating the possible paths Apple has to a) transition software developers quickly with better tooling, and b) provide sufficiently performant JIT / compatibility layer by sprinkling a bit of x86 compatibility into future A-series chips, and you…

That’s assuming Apple manly uses existng core designs from AMD etc and doesn’t significantly contribute improvements for their own systems, to gain advantages over the chips available to their competitors. But surely adding a hefty dose of their own secret sauce would be the only thing that would make such a move worthwhile?

What’s being suggested is not that Apple use AMD designs. It’s that Apple partner with AMD in order to gain licensing cover for their own largely or completely in-house engineered chips.

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

#948

Post by sreque »

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?

I don't know if its still the case, but I can honestly say with a straight face that at various points in the past decade I've used Netbeans for C development and it was fantastic. My understanding is that a lot of the Netbeans C/C++ code was ported over from Sun Studio, which is why it is so solid and mature.

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

#949

Post by bmaupin »

gargravarr wrote: post #925
stiGGG wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my second to last company (a web development shop), they had originally the policy that a new developers can choose if he want either a mac, linux or windows machine. When i arrived there it was 75% mac and the rest used linux, not even one had made the choice for windows. After a while some new guys get hired and one of them wanted to use windows. We found out immediately, that this caused a lot of problems, beca…

We run a Mac and Linux setup here - me being the admin, this is tolerable. Mac's still-essentially-Unix underlying OS makes this reasonably consistent - I can SSH between either platform fairly easily, for example. We offer new starters the option, and are about 50/50, though I've had a few surprises - one user had only previously used Windows, and from experience these sort of users switch to Mac more easily than Ub…

> I have no real tools to do so on Ubuntu

Ansible works pretty well for managing Windows machines but it requires a little bit more up-front setup on the Windows side and as always YMMV depending on what you're trying to do.

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

#950

Post by erric »

saagarjha wrote: post #384
erric wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just a stream of consciousness and I was planning on editing it but got distracted. It also wasn't formatted very well. My mistake. I'm sure this has been going on for a long time behind the scenes. That is what happened when the PPC -> x86 transition became public. Since Apple has it's own ARM chips/fab, I wonder if ARM is where they are going? It would make sense from a couple different points of view: Lower…

Your concerns would be better founded if this was news of iOS coming to desktop instead of Apple switching desktop processors.

There are several reports about this happening. Granted it’s rumor: https://www.cultofmac.com/519763/apples-got-secret-plan-merg...
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