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Apple/ARM = best now, because Apple's vast capital from iPhone success has allowed it to build a world-class CPU engineering team from scratch. Building the end products at the same company gives them integration that can't be matched by other companies.
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
Dual CPUs never made any sense. That’s why they are doing emulation and binary conversion. Maybe Apple adds the i86 instruction set as a module in their SOCs, but they aren’t paying intel CPU prices on their ARM Macs.
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What is really sad is that I don't think the majority of Apple consumers really understand what this means for the Intel macs in the long run. I fear a number of people will buy them not realizing they have a very limited lifespan.
If those devices will have 4-5 years worth of use, then I think most people would be fine with the purchase. 4-5 years already does require upgrading for either performance or quality of life features.
It's still as powerful as any of the current Apple laptops - progress has been slow these last 6 years.
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Whether or not they think that or they can, they have been developing GPUs for iOS devices. It'll be interesting to see what they do for their desktops.
I agree. I know they're currently using AMD GPUs, but how much longer will they keep using AMD if they believe that their own in house chips can do a better job? Also, I'm curious as to whether they would try to sell their GPUs (iGPU?) to gamers who traditionally don't stay within the Mac ecosystem at all. Having a 3rd major player in the GPU space would be wild.
Rosetta 2 - the interesting bit was that it was going to pre-translate binaries instead of at runtime. The implications for actual VM emulation is that Rosetta won't work for run time environments like OS emulation. They touched on it briefly with the emulation technologies bit, but it looks like it will be separate from, and likely much less performant than Rosetta.
Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.
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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.
Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.
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The advantage Apple has is that Nvidia and AMD and Intel have to actually make money from their chips. Apple can break even or make a loss on the chips themselves. So maybe, they certainly have the budget to try.
I don't expect Apple to sell the hardware for cost. They are quite adept at selling products with a hefty profit margin.
And charge you a bunch for the whole package, of course.