If I just purchased a new Macbook Pro 13 10th gen Intel, should I return it and wait for this?
Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
221–230 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#222I'm surprised we didn't get any performance numbers. Either raw power or at least power efficiency and projected battery life improvements. Seeing as this is a major reason for the transition (according to them), it feels very weird. They're shipping a 'Development Transition Kit' Mac mini with an A12Z this week, so it's not like the numbers are going to stay private for a long time. Even if there's an NDA, someone's…
If A12Z is based on the A12 they will never make consumer products with it but instead take a new A14
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#223I'm surprised we didn't get any performance numbers. Either raw power or at least power efficiency and projected battery life improvements. Seeing as this is a major reason for the transition (according to them), it feels very weird. They're shipping a 'Development Transition Kit' Mac mini with an A12Z this week, so it's not like the numbers are going to stay private for a long time. Even if there's an NDA, someone's…
It wasn't just lack of performance numbers, there were no actual products announced. They would have had to tip their hand on a lot of info that is not helpful to customers or their ability to keep selling Intel stuff. One big question though will be how this devkit benchmarks against the current maxed Intel mac mini. I'm curious if GPU performance beats the current BlackMagic eGPU. (rx 580)
Not divulging their hand may be a thing. But they could at least have said something (rehashed) about the A12Z: "it performs better than the CPUs currently shipping in the Mac mini by X% in Y benchmark".
I'm not intrisically excited for a new Apple product, but if they could have told me, we can deliver 50% extra battery life in your new MacBook at comparable performance, that would build up some hype and maybe mindshare.
> not helpful to [...] their ability to keep selling Intel stuff.
I hope that that's it. If we're going through the pains of a platform transition, I'd like to get something out of it.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#224I really wonder what this says about the x86 platform going forward. Mobile completely passed it by. I’ve been seeing more hype about ARM servers for a while with AWS Graviton instances, the new #1 supercomputer in the TOP500, etc. And of course today we see that Apple plans to transition their Macs to their own ARM chips. Even Microsoft made an ARM-based Windows/Surface product but it didn’t seem to amount to much.…
Intel has either squandered the tech and we will see drastic improvements soon or possibly they’ll fall closer toward the dustbin of history. I suspect the later since they’ve been stuck at various points of specifications for a decade plus. Or they do something novel for once. I wouldn’t count them out of a breakthrough into new architectures/fab processes entirely.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#225Do you think they rewrote Mac OS for ARM, or altered iOS to look like Mac OS? Or have they secretly been in sync for the past 10 years? It's been 9 years since they rewrote Final Cut, and 7 years for Logic Pro, both rewritten for this day
They didn’t rewrite macOS; I’m sure it’s been kept in-sync with ARM for at least the last few versions.
They did the same thing with PPC versions of macOS before the Intel transition.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#226I'm curious if (1) that first Mac to ship with "Apple Silicon" will be pack an A14 -- A14X? -- chip and (2) if we'll get new branding to distinguish CPUs for phones, iPads, and macOS devices. UPDATE: I don't mean the developer transition kit that has a Mac mini with an A12Z, I mean the first consumer macOS device/macBook
It's the A12Z and they are shipping A12Z mac minis to developers who buy one on the store starting today.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#227Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#228For those of us long around enough to remember, the switch to intel was really smooth with a good balance of quick adoption and solid emulation for legacy apps. I am not team Mac anymore but IMHO they did it as smoothly as auch a major change could be conducted. I have no idea where this will take the ecosystem. But apart from pissing off power users (developers mostly) and deprecating intel based hardware in the resale market I would not worry too much.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#229The biggest question is will Apple/developers support x86 macs longer than Apple/developers supported PowerPC macs when that transition happened?
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#230> Apple will release the first Mac with Apple silicon end of this year, and it expects the transition to take two years.
That's more than twice as long as the transition from PPC. Sounds like they've not yet figured out how to do high-end. Hopefully, they won't be as quick to drop support on the $6k 2019 Mac Pro as they were on the 2005 Power Mac G5 quad (<4 years from release to unsupported by OS X).