I wonder if this will mean the end of Flash Player for Mac? Will Adobe bother releasing an ARM version?
Macintel: The End Is Nigh
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Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#12I wonder if this will mean the end of Flash Player for Mac? Will Adobe bother releasing an ARM version?
There are already ARM versions for Android, but whether they will bother making the mac version build for it is a different question.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#13For someone who's not very knowledgeable about architecture shifts, what software changes would be require to make this happen? I'd assume that the Mac OSX itself might be able to make the shift easily, given that Swift and ObjC code seems to run on both iOS/ARM devices and MacOS/x386 machines. What else will have to change? Or is this purely a hardware choice?
All software would need to be rebuilt .. OR, like before they may have some emulation, but then older software would be quite a bit slower.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've done it twice, not once. They moved from 68k to PPC in the early 90s, again with full emulation. In that case it was even more extreme, as much of the OS ran emulated in early PPC releases (yet it was still quicker than running on actual 68k hardware!).
I think it's technically irrelevant, how many people from the 68k/ppc era are still there, and the os/tooling/techniques back then have probably nothing to do with what's in place nowadays. Pyschologically it still matters though, as you said, they did it twice and the first was surely a harder task.
They almost certainly have some 68k/ppc guys left, and while tooling has changed they at least had a historical recipe (e.g., go ahead an emulate somethings, transition gradually, etc) that was proven to work.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#15For someone who's not very knowledgeable about architecture shifts, what software changes would be require to make this happen? I'd assume that the Mac OSX itself might be able to make the shift easily, given that Swift and ObjC code seems to run on both iOS/ARM devices and MacOS/x386 machines. What else will have to change? Or is this purely a hardware choice?
The fact that iOS shares a lot of the same code as OS X will make this a much easier transition. Apple can take a lot of the low-level stuff from iOS, where they've had years to figure out how to get Darwin working smoothly on ARM. Beyond that, all apps on the OS X app store will have to be recompiled and resubmitted. None of the binaries installed on current OS X machines will still work, unless Apple includes an x8…
The transition will be easy for applications that rely on Apple's APIs only, the fun will be for programs that use proprietary third party components all of which will need to be rebuilt, as well as all binary plugins to applications.
I can imagine this might be a huge job for some of the more heavyweight production programs for Mac , as well as AAA games.
It would basically spell doom for Parallels and other virtualization software which give Mac switchers an escape hatch back to any Windows programs they might use.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#16Had a hard time loading it, so here's the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SDIaXc5...
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#17From what i've understood from benchmarks and reviews the latest Intel atom processors have a better power/performance ratio then arm processors. I'm not sure if the performance/price ratio is better though, does anyone know?
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#18I think it's funny that the main reason people cite the need to switch from Intel to ARM is power consumption. A big reason to stay on Intel is that a lot of people have real needs to run Windows software (whether in Bootcamp or a VM). Switchers feel a lot better jumping to the Mac if they could fall back to Windows if they wanted to.
Regarding battery life: The latest MacBooks get 9-12 hours of battery life. I haven't experienced battery anxiety on a Mac in a long time. In contrast, my iPhone is dead by the end of the day and watching it creep below 50% makes me start thinking about the nearest Lightning adapter (yes, I understand the Mac has a much larger battery and cell radios are power hungry).
Put another way, max power consumption on an iPad Air is ~11W[1]. The max power draw on a Haswell MacBook Air is 15-25W (~50% improvement in battery life from 2012 to 2013, which had 21-34W max draw)[2][3]. Given that Macs have more space available for batteries due to larger screens and the need for keyboard and trackpad, I don't see power consumption argument holding water.
[1]: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/3
[2]: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6063/macbook-air-13inch-mid-20...
[3]: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7180/apple-macbook-air-11-2013...
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#19The real weakness of Intel in power consumption relative to ARM hasn't been so much in the chips as the chip sets, software and the balance-of-system. To create a low power system, ALL components need to be low power, and it is easier to start from a system built to be low power and scale up capabilities rather than go the other way around. For instance, I have a Windows-based laptop which is a great machine, but if…
The x86 instruction baggage is a red-herring. It takes maybe 3% of the transistor budget to support it.
I saw an interesting interview once with an ARM exec who leveled and said they don't really have a big power advantage over Intel, despite what people commonly think. I didn't manage to find the article with Google though.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#20The real weakness of Intel in power consumption relative to ARM hasn't been so much in the chips as the chip sets, software and the balance-of-system. To create a low power system, ALL components need to be low power, and it is easier to start from a system built to be low power and scale up capabilities rather than go the other way around. For instance, I have a Windows-based laptop which is a great machine, but if…
To me it seems mostly a problem of unwalled garden. When Apple owns the platform from the silicon to the development environment, it's easier for them to manage power. Wintel on the other hand has so much variety all the way down the software stack and even into hardware, it is more difficult to control... x86+Linux (Lintel?) suffers the same problem.
The unwalled garden can still be made low power. Android has set an example of tackling that problem with the battery tracker, which profiles which application is chewing up battery.
For power over USB, what do you mean? My Android cell phone can power keyboards, flash drives, and the like with an OTG cable. It certainly has no fan.