Annoying that there probably won't be any more Hackintoshes, unless we get ARM desktops.
Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
431–440 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. Eh? This is a flimsy claim. AMD's performance/watt is extremely impressive right now. Apple is ahead of Intel for sure, but Intel isn't the only other player here. > So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. Alternately a Macbook Air type with 16 hours plus strong 4k per…
AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. The real problem though, is that apple is actually designing a core 100% focused on the target market. Unlike intel, for whatever reason, and AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. So, I would expect the engineering tradeoffs for said laptop/desktop proces…
> AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops.
Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past.
> AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput.
This might be true for devices like the MacBook Air which are designed for relatively light usage like Office, but I don't see that argument working with their "Pro" lineup, including the iMac Pro and the MacBook Pro. These are devices specifically targeted to a professional audience like graphics designers, 3d artists, software developers or video editors. All of those tasks can be done with decent single-threaded performance, but lots of those tasks also benefit from multithreading. I haven't owned a single MacBook so far and I doubt that'll change anytime soon. Nevertheless, its exciting to see Apple do this move and it'll be interesting how good their CPUs can compare to mobile processors by Intel and AMD.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#433I'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 was pretty much the same with PowerPC to Intel... 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 mor…
It wasn't a surprise to anyone paying attention; NeXTSTEP had run on 68K/x86/Sparc/PA-RISC. Removing architecture support would have been remarkable.
What's important, for those paying attention, is that Apple promoted PowerPC emulation with the first x86 Macs in OS X 10.4 and then removed it after 10.6. If you think Apple won't screw you again, well, go ahead, it's your money.
[Dis]claimer: I have no long or short in AAPL. Anyone posting or voting in this thread should similarly disclose.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder what this will do to Electron. If the iOS apps are really 1:1 on macOS, then the need to maintain an electron app will probably diminish. As long as they both support the same OS APIs I can see devs that can learn a new language (Swift) ditch Electron.
Isn't this already the case? iOS apps can be built, for Intel, using Catalyst, with very trivial changes in code, but we still see Electron hanging around today like a bad smell. I can't imagine this will change anything.
Catalyst and SwiftUI are (were?) very immature technologies, not yet ideal for production software. I'd imagine that we're at least a year out from seeing real SwiftUI software in the wild.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#435Commenters here seem dubious. I’ll take the contra-position. This feels to me like it’s going to be great; a big win for consumers and developers. Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. I presume their consumer hardware will launch with an A13Z, or maybe an A14 type chip. Apple has consistently shipped new chip designs on time; I…
> So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+f I predict they'll have the same battery life. Any savings will be used to reduce the battery size.
I think without Ive they'll take the battery life and market it as the incredible win of moving away from Intel.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#436Docker 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.
I wonder what this will do to Electron. If the iOS apps are really 1:1 on macOS, then the need to maintain an electron app will probably diminish. As long as they both support the same OS APIs I can see devs that can learn a new language (Swift) ditch Electron.
Mac and iOS aren't the only two platforms.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#437Rip apple. They're going to either have to copy Intel/amd Instruction sets or be surpassed by the power of SIMD.
You need to understand ARM also has its own SIMD instruction set called NEON, and from what I've heard it offers more flexibility than Intel's.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#438Commenters here seem dubious. I’ll take the contra-position. This feels to me like it’s going to be great; a big win for consumers and developers. Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. I presume their consumer hardware will launch with an A13Z, or maybe an A14 type chip. Apple has consistently shipped new chip designs on time; I…
> Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. Eh? This is a flimsy claim. AMD's performance/watt is extremely impressive right now. Apple is ahead of Intel for sure, but Intel isn't the only other player here. > So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. Alternately a Macbook Air type with 16 hours plus strong 4k per…
Apple SOCs are going to be a big part of the performance/watt gains.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#439Apple 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. Qu…
> Logic Pro
Logic isn't worth much without plugins, and I expect many smaller developers not to port to ARM, and there's nobody to fill the gap in the first years. If that is indeed the case, Apple will begin losing market share where it currently reigns. When there's no pro software, the mac will be just an iPad with a keyboard. It's quite a gamble.
But I've been too pessimistic before.
Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs
#440Commenters here seem dubious. I’ll take the contra-position. This feels to me like it’s going to be great; a big win for consumers and developers. Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. I presume their consumer hardware will launch with an A13Z, or maybe an A14 type chip. Apple has consistently shipped new chip designs on time; I…
> I’m not highly conversant with ARM linux, but in my mind I imagine it’s still largely a second class citizen
IMO ARM linux is great, the real thing lacking is good hardware to run it.