Seems like they’ve just Osborned half the machines for the next 2 years.
Nope; the vast majority of consumers have no idea who makes the processor in their Macs.
This is a developer-only concern.
Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
251–260 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#252Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.
I wonder if these intel based ones are going to be on the high end of the Macbook Pro lineup or iMac.
Its total transition to Arm in 2 years. Likely they will build different SoCs performance/power for desktop and notebook.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#253So, if I install numpy via conda on a Mac now, it's backed by Intel MKL and is thus amazingly fast. What will it be replaced with? Has anyone at Apple thought about use cases like this?..
Rosetta 2 will take care of translation and JITing
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#254I'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…
There's no indication that the A12Z will be the chip that ships to consumers at the end of the year. So honestly it'd be a bit out of character to boast about the specific performance numbers of a pre-release dev kit chip - especially when that chip has already had Geekbench run on it for a while: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/ipad-pro-12-9-inch...
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#255I was surprised to hear that the transition would take two years. I was expecting it to take a shorter duration considering Apple’s experience with transitions and the performance levels of Apple Silicon (AFAIK, at least single core performance has been leagues ahead of other ARM processors on smartphones and tablets). I don’t know what other people consider as the lifetime of a Mac (meaning the number of years they’…
They may be sandbagging to give themselves some wiggle room. IIRC Jobs also said the Intel transition would take two years and it only ended up taking one.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#256I'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…
I found in the Press release the cost of the Transition Kit: $500. Not bad at all.
Probably a rental, based on the last transition.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#257Do 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 probably just recompiled for arm and optimized any pain points.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#258Apple ported many Pro Apps to ARM , especially their Logic Pro, Photoshop and they were showcasing Maya on ARM. That is about as Pro as it gets for Mac.
That reads to me Apple isn't going to have Intel for some high end Pro machine. They intended to go all in with ARM. i.e There will be a Mac Pro with High TDP ARM Chip. I wonder what are the owner of Mac Pro feeling now having just spend a $5K+ Mac Pro with Intel.
Question is,
1. They are going to design their own CPU for the whole range of Mac? up to 10W for MacBook, up to 45W for MacBook Pro. ~150W for iMac, ~ 250W for Mac Pro ? How is that financially feasible considering the volume of Mac Pro sold. Or do they intend to use those high TDP chip in their server farm / iCloud?
2. What happens to GPU? Having their own GPU for iMac and Mac Pro as well? Dual GPU options where Apple GPU for power efficiency? This feels like additional complexity.
3. Would it be like the PowerPC era where you will get a new iMac once you finish with the development kit?
Finally while I am excited for ARM Mac, at the same time I am also feeling a little sad. Good bye x86.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#259The aarch64 ISA has left cruft and legacy than x64, with all unoptimal support for the complete history of SIMD evolution over several decades...
On one side, I think this switch is a good thing for the industry, as I always believed that ARM was a better choice and that we should get rid of the legacy at some point.
On the other hand, Apple is again tempted to play in their own garden, with a complete disregard of standards and interoperability. They're doing that with Metal, they will certainly do the same with their custom silicon.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#260What's odd is that they announce Microsoft office for Arm but Microsoft did not have that when launching the Surface X