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Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

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101–110 of 174 posts

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#101
I wonder have they considered switching back to PowerPC (power9/power10) now that it is open (for whatever that means, I am not sure)? I am sure they would appreciate the control that could give them.

Does somebody have an idea how much approximately would it cost Apple to switch the Apple A14 from ARM to POWER? Usually it is said that the instruction decoder is a small part of a CPU core, and the architectures are not hugely different (compared to AMD64/Intel, at least).

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ELI5 this?

Not all compilers and other machine-specific programs are as tuned for AArch64 as they are AMD64. Some may not be designed with AArch64’s properties in mind.

Oh sure. Thanks that makes sense.

I guess though simple apps should be easy. It’s just heavy apps that would require more than a simple recompile right?

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#103

This is just a rehash of Bloomberg reporting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-pla... older: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aim... --- Personally, I gave up on the Apple ecosystem years ago and moved to Linux. But I feel ambivalent about this. On one hand, the iPhone/Pad chips have impressive performance and power consumption, at least for the mobile use case. Some co…

> On the other hand: this seems like a golden opportunity for Apple continue the path of merging iOS and Mac OS, turning the desktop platform into an equally walled garden. They can't turn macOS into a totally walled garden, without making it impossible to use as a development platform. If I can't compile and run my own software, or software I downloaded from others in source form, I can't use it as a development pla…

You can run your own code on an iPhone if you have a developer account. They could easily do the same for the Mac.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#105

This is just a rehash of Bloomberg reporting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-pla... older: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aim... --- Personally, I gave up on the Apple ecosystem years ago and moved to Linux. But I feel ambivalent about this. On one hand, the iPhone/Pad chips have impressive performance and power consumption, at least for the mobile use case. Some co…

I remember when they went from ppc to x86, and you could not only run your mac software, you could dual-boot windows on the same hardware. (a reasonable desktop AND good games)

The future was very bright when that happened.

Now, it seems apple is gazing ever more inwards.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#106
post #99

What's going to happen to Boot Camp? Are they planning to support Windows on ARM, or?..

I have a hunch they'll use the opportunity to kill Boot Camp, which has been unloved for years. However I hope to be wrong here — supporting ARM based operating systems would be a super cool thing for Apple to do.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#107

I would love to see new MacBook pros with the latest AMD Ryzen, speedy and power efficient, processors. I can understand the move to ARM, since iPhones and iPads are already there and it make sense to unite the ecosystem. Fun fact: Kalamata is the second largest city in southern Greece. I tried finding why they named the Apple project like this, but couldn’t find anything relevant. Any ideas?

> MacBook pros with the latest AMD Ryzen

Looks like that ship has sailed unfortunately. ARM has won, and it won't be long before it conquers the minds of other laptop (and desktop) manufacturers.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#108
post #73

Last time they did this they managed to pull it off really well. From memory there was the ability to package apps for both architectures so they would run on either machine. And to bridge the gap there was Rosetta which allowed PowerPC binaries to run on intel Mac’s by translating in real-time with a small performance penalty. How close are arm chips to PowerPC? They’re both risc architectures, right?

[deleted]

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the problems with the 2016 - 2019 MBP, and also the problems with the first generation intel MBPs, the biggest issue in both cases was heat. (Although there were clearly other issues as well.) The new Apple chips are going to be much more power efficient, so I think there is actually hope here. I still wouldn't buy a v1 because I think they'll have problems, but I think whatever problems they'll have w…

One of the biggest problems with absolute data loss for current Apple machines is the T2 chip dying.

Can you expand on that?

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#110

This is just a rehash of Bloomberg reporting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-pla... older: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aim... --- Personally, I gave up on the Apple ecosystem years ago and moved to Linux. But I feel ambivalent about this. On one hand, the iPhone/Pad chips have impressive performance and power consumption, at least for the mobile use case. Some co…

> On the other hand: this seems like a golden opportunity for Apple continue the path of merging iOS and Mac OS, turning the desktop platform into an equally walled garden. They can't turn macOS into a totally walled garden, without making it impossible to use as a development platform. If I can't compile and run my own software, or software I downloaded from others in source form, I can't use it as a development pla…

Maybe they could go the route of herding most users to a walled garden, but giving developers more freedom? (yuck)
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