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Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

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Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#551

Post by yyyk »

I'd suggest avoiding either hyping or dismissing the new processors. We don't have performance numbers for a real model, and until we do, we know very little.

The thing we can talk about is Apple's strategic direction. The good version has Apple releasing a notably superior general purpose computer, maybe even gaining more marketshare in the process. The bad version has the Mac turning into an iOS development station. The fact they showed a game of all things does give some encouragement.

Key questions:

1. How open the new OS/Models will be, and how much developer support we get. The more open, the more likely is will be a powerful general purpose computer.

2. Whether Apple can keep riding the tiger regarding processors. I'm sure they did their due diligence, and the new processors will be powerful enough. But x86 isn't dead yet, AMD is capable and even Intel isn't dead - they still have a hand to play.

If Apple can keep at this, developers will flock in and we'll see nice stuff. If x86 (re)gains its momentum, Apple will be left behind, but they will be unlikely to switch back (unifying processors with the iPhone has a lot of advantages for Apple), and we end up with the bad future.

Apple took a chance today, we'll see whether it pays.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#552

Post by seanalltogether »

thought_alarm wrote: post #153
cm0000cm wrote: post #29

I was seriously considering upgrading my 2012 MacBook to the new 16" model soon, but now I wonder what kind of longevity or support I can expect from that hardware...

Given Apple's track record of supporting older Mac hardware, I would expect Intel Mac hardware to be supported for many years and many OS versions after the last Intel Mac has been produced. Also given Apple's recent MacBook track record, the first version of ARM Macs may not be as much of a slam dunk as people hope.

Which track record are you talking about? Apple discontinued OS support for PPC only 3 years after intel was announced. That means no more support for xcode and new commandline tools after 3.5 years.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#553

Post by scythe »

justinfrankel wrote: post #440
vessenes wrote: post #305

Commenters 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.

I had an ARM Chromebook for a while (around 2016) that I customized with a 256GB SD card and Linux Mint. The software all worked well, but the WiFi card died after a year and effectively bricked the damn thing. Cross-compiling might be an issue, but that's not a primary use case.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#554

Post by eanzenberg »

jl6 wrote: post #537
vessenes wrote: post #305

Commenters 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…

Here's an analogy to help explain the skepticism: ants have amazing efficiency - they can lift multiples of their own body weight. So why can't an ant lift my car? Well, because it's too small. So let's just take the same ant design and scale it up? Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. A creature capable of lifting my car wouldn't be much like an ant. There is no guarantee that a phone-scale CPU can just become…

They already have a mobile chip that is as fast as an active-thermally cooled notebook chip.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#555

Post by jimbokun »

kps wrote: post #433
joakleaf wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

There was almost 10 years between 10.0 and 10.7:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history#Releases

So if you're worried about not being able to run your Intel Mac OS X software in 2030, yeah, you should probably avoid these new ARM Macs.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#556

Post by drawkbox »

tjr wrote: post #37
jccalhoun wrote: post #19

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

And I reckon those of us who just bought a shiny new Intel Mac in the past few months might be questioning our decision. Should have held on to that 2010 MBP one more year?

Buying a Mac right now, need to replace my EOL Mac Pro. I definitely won't be getting a Pro now. Probably just an iMac with more RAM and SSD instead of Fusion. I really wish I knew when they were updating their iMac and Mac Pro lines.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#557

Post by GeekyBear »

paulpan wrote: post #407
ksec wrote: post #258

Apple 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…

> 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. I think GPU scaling will be much harder than CPU, so whereas Apple can surpass Intel CPUs for all but the highest segments, putting together a standalone GPU will be hard and very interesting to see. For an entry-level GPU? No issues. But what about a…

>I think GPU scaling will be much harder than CPU

We only have mobile SOCs as a reference point so far, but Apple is doing very well on that metric.

>On the GPU side of things, Apple has also been hitting it out of the park; the last two GPU generations have brought tremendous efficiency upgrades which also allow for larger performance gains. I really had not expected Apple to make as large strides with the A13’s GPU this year, and the efficiency improvements really surprised me. The differences to Qualcomm’s Adreno architecture are now so big that even the newest Snapdragon 865 peak performance isn’t able to match Apple’s sustained performance figures. It’s no longer that Apple just leads in CPU, they are now also massively leading in GPU.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15246/anandtech-year-in-revie...

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#558

Post by abruzzi »

what makes me sad is that while Apple has done very well with these major transitions, it leaves behind instances where (for me) a completely unique application gets left in behind. I currently maintain an only system 7 computer for software that is incompatible with system 8 or 9. A MDD G4 running System 9 for software that won't run on OSX, and a Mac Pro running 10.6.8 to run PPC OSX application (through Rosetta.) I haven't upgraded to Catalina because I have some applications that will never make the transition to 64bit, and now I'll have to maintain something to keep intel compatibility on the table (assuming Apple EOLs Rosetta 2 like they did Rosetta.)

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#559

Post by klelatti »

kllrnohj wrote: post #451
moduspol wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on all points. I saw speculation elsewhere that this change, along with AWS's addition of Graviton-based (their own ARM processors) instances at much more competitive price points relative to x86, are bound to spearhead the change to "ARM by default." If your devs are already using ARM, and ARM's notably cheaper in the cloud, that's a compelling case. If you're already using Kubernetes / Docker heavily, you're…

This claim doesn't really hold up. The problem here is the vast majority of non-Apple laptops & desktops that are in use. THOSE will still all be x86 for the foreseeable future as ARM CPUs not made by Apple all have terrible per-core performance. Graviton2 compensates by just throwing 64 cores at the problem, but that's not going to do anything for your Electron-based text editor that struggles to use 2 CPU cores in…

I can't agree with the characterisation here that only Apple can make decent Arm cores. Graviton is apparently pretty closely based on an Arm Neoverse N1 CPU and the 64 vs 32 core point is comparing a hyperthreaded part vs one that isn't. Plus Graviton seems to be materially more cost effective.

However, there is a real challenge here and that's who has the capability and incentives to make laptop and desktop Arm cores. Microsoft probably, but hard to see many other firms doing so.

So a scenario where Apple gains a material lead in desktop and laptop performance over everyone else and grows market share as a result seems quite credible.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#560

Post by splatcollision »

CharlesW wrote: post #478
tgv wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Logic isn't worth much without plugins… Rosetta 2 cross-compiles Intel binaries to ARM. Why would VST/AU plug-in binaries be an exception?

They specifically mentioned Rosetta 2 would work for all binaries, including plugins.
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