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Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

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Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#11

Post by runjake »

For some context: the author of this article, Jean-Louis Gassée, was a former director at Apple, founded Be, Inc. and was chairman at PalmSource for a while.

His background may help or hurt his viewpoint, depending on how you see things.

I will say that I disagree with his points. And I'll also point out that the Mac ARM transition is happening right before our eyes with the T2 chip, which replaces a bunch of system components (memory, i/o, disk controllers, etc) with an ARM-based platform.

Practically, the only thing that hasn't been replaced are the main CPU and the GPU, but it's only a matter of time.

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#12

Post by mktmkr »

runjake wrote: post #11

For some context: the author of this article, Jean-Louis Gassée, was a former director at Apple, founded Be, Inc. and was chairman at PalmSource for a while. His background may help or hurt his viewpoint, depending on how you see things. I will say that I disagree with his points. And I'll also point out that the Mac ARM transition is happening right before our eyes with the T2 chip , which replaces a bunch of system…

Sorry, what do you mean? On a current MacBook Pro the memory is controlled by the CPU and the disk is attached to a PCIe root port also on the CPU. The "disk controller" as such has moved into the disk.

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#13

Post by flomo »

My take on the iPad form-factor hasn't really changed since the introduction. Its really great for certain casual use cases, but as soon as you sit down at a desk to get some work done, oh god does this fucking suck. And the keyboard cases actually make it worse because you delude yourself into thinking it makes it better, when it does not.

So an iOS/iPadOS laptop with full KVM support always seemed like a no-brainer in my mind. Or at least a much more obvious move than MacOS/ARM (which would split a small ecosystem behind the only logic that "they did it before and it worked out".) Plus 'the future' is obviously iOS.

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#14

Post by mktmkr »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

I see a lot of Surface Pro in the iPad[1]. That isn't a bad thing, it is great to have two design studios trying to out do each other. If you agree that these devices should work better on ARM chips rather than x86 chips, then the iPad has an advantage with an already ARM based ecosystem. Of course the Surface R/T tried that too, and stumbled. But I wonder if Apple saw that as a hint of where Microsoft might go. I fi…

I strongly prefer tethering to network awareness. Every computer I've had with a WWAN card has thought it would be terribly clever if all the sockets get reset every time the air interface flaps. It's network aware! Tethering is far superior because your laptop never learns that the mobile link was down for a moment.

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#15

Post by pvg »

Moto7451 wrote: post #4

I don’t think the argument holds very well. Apple has made three processor architectural changes including one on the current OS. “Too complicated” doesn’t really align with the execution history Apple has. The fat binary support Apple has is a huge tool and the ability to add instructions and optimizations to their chips to help with x86 emulation is a big deal. I don’t know if Apple will ever actually do this, but…

The past cases are qualitatively different - an architecture switch to much more powerful processors with some degree of software backward compatibility provided. That's not yet a practical option.

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#18

Post by sjwright »

Moto7451 wrote: post #4

I don’t think the argument holds very well. Apple has made three processor architectural changes including one on the current OS. “Too complicated” doesn’t really align with the execution history Apple has. The fat binary support Apple has is a huge tool and the ability to add instructions and optimizations to their chips to help with x86 emulation is a big deal. I don’t know if Apple will ever actually do this, but…

Furthermore I predict that Apple won’t treat it like a transition, rather it will be a long term dual platform strategy. They’ll encourage developers to build fat binaries and have good x86 translation support in the interim.

But it’ll be long term, at least five years. Standard iMacs and MacBooks will be moved over to ARM quickly, higher-end iMacs and possibly some MBP SKUs a few years later, pro devices will stay Intel indefinitely.

The transition only needs to end if and when Apple can beat Intel/AMD for uncompromising high performance. Maybe that will happen, but until then, fat binaries are a perfect solution.

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#19

Post by jart »

runjake wrote: post #11

For some context: the author of this article, Jean-Louis Gassée, was a former director at Apple, founded Be, Inc. and was chairman at PalmSource for a while. His background may help or hurt his viewpoint, depending on how you see things. I will say that I disagree with his points. And I'll also point out that the Mac ARM transition is happening right before our eyes with the T2 chip , which replaces a bunch of system…

Is the struggle for microprocessor supremacy still even relevant? I'd ask, "who's going to build the best quantum processor?" rather than, "who's going to dethrone x86?"

Re: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

#20

Post by [deleted] »

mktmkr wrote: post #12
runjake wrote: post #11

For some context: the author of this article, Jean-Louis Gassée, was a former director at Apple, founded Be, Inc. and was chairman at PalmSource for a while. His background may help or hurt his viewpoint, depending on how you see things. I will say that I disagree with his points. And I'll also point out that the Mac ARM transition is happening right before our eyes with the T2 chip , which replaces a bunch of system…

Sorry, what do you mean? On a current MacBook Pro the memory is controlled by the CPU and the disk is attached to a PCIe root port also on the CPU. The "disk controller" as such has moved into the disk.

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