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

Post by NikkiA » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 5:35 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #29

OldHand2018 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps like the "Math co-processor" in the 386 days? Imagine a future generation T-series chip with the neural cores that the A-series chips have. Accessible using the existing frameworks that you are already using. Or adding GPU cores to the MacBook Pro lineup as a replacement for the AMD GPUs that they have now. And while they are doing that, they can release a Smart Keyboard for a future iPad Pro that has a track…

386? Where's the love for Intel's 8087? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8087

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 5:49 AM UTC

eridius wrote: post #47

dehrmann wrote: post #44

ARM on the Macbook Pro would put a lot of software shops (I'm guessing tech and design firms are the main purchasers of Macs) using Docker in an awkward spot with their containers not running on dev machines.

Do these shops have to use the exact same container on their dev machine as elsewhere? Can they not build an ARM flavor of their container? Same Dockerfile but with an ARM base image instead of an x86_64 base image?

Post by wodenokoto » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 6:09 AM UTC

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…

Post by wodenokoto » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 6:18 AM UTC

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…

Post by tomsmeding » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 6:36 AM UTC

Laforet wrote: post #34

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…

I can't help but feel T2 chip is just another cynical ploy to gradually kill off third party repairs by baking software functions into proprietary hardware that only the manufacturer have access to. It may be a sound security decision, but I have doubts whether it's worth it for the end user. It also goes against a wider industrial trend of moving from ARM to RISCV and other architectures. On the other hand, do all t…