291–300 of 1001 posts
Docker and Linux virtualization. Fat binaries to make it easy to update Mac apps. iPhone and iPad apps. Rosetta to run Intel apps that aren’t updated. Apple is gonna knock this out if the park.
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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.
Windows has always been cross-platform, x86, MIPS, Alpha and PPC back in the day. There was even a SPARC build at one point.
I 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.…
We've been used to x86 dominance on the desktop and servers for so long that I think a future where there are two architectures with critical mass and one of the architectures can be licensed by a number of firms is hard to imagine.
There will be some short term effort and pain but it must surely be a better competitive environment than we have now.
The historic / current Intel and AMD duopoly has surely not been healthy.
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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.
I'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…
Steve Jobs demoed OSX first. Then surprised everybody by saying, OSX had lived a double life in a secret building for many years (with photo), and that he had been running on an Intel Pentium 4 during the demo all morning. Nothing about performance.
There was also a developer system back then; an Intel Pentium 4 in a PowerMac case.
In a lot of ways, this is far more ambitious, and could mean a lot more for Apple long term, but...
... The one thing that hit me the most was, how impressed I was with Apple back then, and how excited I was that a company could do this. Steve Jobs presented it really well, but this time it felt quite flat.
... I really, wish they worked a bit on their showman-ship. They rushed through so many small things, and the presentation felt unnatural. Like they have all over-rehearsed it, but are still reading while presenting (you could even see eye-movements). It is just too smooth, too generic, and a bit too polished.
Please slow down, focus on only the most interesting bits, and give us time to digest it...
No thanks, switching back to Linux. I'm done with this crap.
I have invested quite a bit into the Mac/Apple ecosystem. A big part of that reason was the longevity of the hardware, along with good resale values.
I hope they do right by their existing Mac customers. As of right now I don't have a strong reason to switch away.
I also hope that Apple does not blow this transition from a quality perspective. Their design choices and attention to detail have left a quite a few things to be desired in the past few generations of hardware.