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Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

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Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#61
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious that they said nothing about virtualizing Windows. That can’t be a mistake or oversight. Odd.

It may be to avoid appearing to be misleading. They'll almost certainly be able to virtualize ARM-based Windows, but that's not what normal users are looking for when they want to virtualize Windows.

Why not? Windows 10 for ARM can run x86 apps.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#62
post #39
post #3

edit: why the downvotes? legit curious I'm curious about the future, especially games, if they want to take on consoles. PS4 and XboxOne are 7 years old and while the next gen looks really good Apple can refresh the productline much quicker (on the other hand it's a good question if people really would want to buy a new console say every year because Apple sure will be aggressive pushing out new models much more freq…

macOS's gaming story has always been pretty abysmal. They nuked a ton of games when they dropped 32-bit support, and they refuse to implement the graphics API that the gaming industry is standardizing around. I don't foresee any improvements in Mac gaming from this announcement.

But now games like Fortnite, Minecraft, PUBG etc. that already exist on iOS can natively run on the Mac. So I think that's a pretty big thing

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#63

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

I wouldn't be so sure, there are a fair number of people who want a machine that will run x86 for various reasons. Windows support/ Linux support. Even considering how impressive x86 VMs looked in the demo, lots of people will prefer using intel silicon for guaranteed compatibility.

Linux and Windows have both supported ARM for a while now.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, "look how good our CPU support is by running a several year old GPU limited game" fell a bit flat for me.

Not even running it very well. All the graphics settings were turned down, the framerate looked choppy and it was only running in 1080p.

It’s not a demo of their new gaming-class GPU though.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#65

Well, that new MBP I bought 4 weeks ago and planned to keep for 5 years just got a muuuuch shorter life span if I can run iOS apps on an Arm Mac, my wife is going to be livid. I guess this also means Catalyst’s life span is pretty short and SwiftUI will becomes the focus?

This if anything makes Catalyst more important.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#66
My comment from a week ago:

"What would keep Apple from shipping machines with both ARM and Intel CPUs in them? The ARM CPU would run the OS and decide when to ship jobs over to the Intel CPU. I can’t imagine that the home-grown ARM CPU would add much to the total price of the computer."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23530084

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#67
post #45
post #26

MacMini with an A12 chip. Available now as a part of a developer kit. Will be fun to see what that can do.

I wonder what the cost of the transition mini is.

The last time Apple transitioned to a new architecture, the dev kits were loaners you had to give back.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#69
post #7
post #4

am I stupid? how are they running a x86 vm on ARM...

Rosetta. Apple knows processors, ARM is just a licensed instruction set.

To be clear, it's not a virtual machine. Rosetta translates x86 instructions to ARM instructions on the fly.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#70

Is it just me or did apple just bungle this entire announcement by not announcing a consumer facing ARM MacOS device, only a hot-rodded Mac Mini with an iPad Pro chip inside. How many devs actually have the setup in place to use a non mobile device? I also wonder if the current+last gen iPad Pro that has the new keyboard + trackpad case will gain the ability to run Xcode and native macOS apps in the near future.

They are repeating PowerPC -> Intel transition timeline: https://www.macstories.net/stories/this-is-not-a-product-the...
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