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Macintel: The End Is Nigh

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Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#141

Post by Aloha »

vacri wrote: post #134
joshstrange wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents just upgraded and sold their old (4 and 5yro) MBP's for a yearly "cost" similar to what I saw ($240/yr, it was a little closer to $300 for them). I will agree that selling and re-buying every 1-2 years can increase your savings but the fact that a 4 & 5yro laptop is worth anything is testimate enough IMHO. You don't see that with windows laptops. Please show me a windows laptop that is still worth even hal…

Please show me a windows laptop that is still worth even half it's value after 2 years. About two months ago I was looking for a Thinkpad w700ds, and while admittedly an unusual laptop, I found two items on ebay going for more than they originally cost. As for a 5yo laptop costing $1500 after resale, the laptop I currently use is a Thinkpad x200, a 6yo laptop that I bought new for $1300 and I see now on ebay for an o…

Lets take the case of a ThinkPad T510 vs a 2010 MBP, the thinkpad is going for 250-350+ (low of 100 for parts and a high of 600 for a refurb system), the MBP 450-600+ (250 for a low, and 1000 or so for a refurb system) - the Apple clearly has the better resale value - that said, I think anyone buying a piece of consumer electronics for resale value is a fool - I recently bought a rMBP, simply because power for performance was better bar none than anything else I could find in the same class (read ThinkPad) - plus I wanted to give OSX a try, I wanted a Unix workstation that could run MS Office (I need Excel - and LO/OO Calc is not a suitable replacement) so that basically left MacOS - and I'm supremely impressed.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#142

Post by noir_lord »

vacri wrote: post #122
noir_lord wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is exactly for this reason my next laptop will be a MBP running Linux (I have zero interest in MacOSX). I bought a mid level Vostro a while back and it is absolute piece of shit. Touch pad detects my palm from across the room but is inaccurate when I actually touch it, screen is mediocre and lets dust in constantly, keyboard is mushy with no positive click. The spec looked good and Vostro's used to be ok, the Vost…

Check out the current Thinkpads; they might also have something that suits you.

Thanks I will :).

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#143

Post by scandinavian »

jp555 wrote: post #99
sliverstorm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

If you think Android isn't a walled garden (unless you mean non-Google Android?) then the devil has convinced you he doesn't exist.

Wikipedia says: "A closed platform, walled garden or closed ecosystem[1][2] is a software system where the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applications or content."

Google doesn't restrict access to applications or content on my Nexus 5, so how is it a walled garden?

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#144

Post by willyt »

Apple needs x86 to run existing apps. Who would accept a a big slow down for a slightly cheaper laptop. x86 intel chips are a RISC design with a glue layer which grafts x86 on the outside. Could Apple design an x86 chip with an ARM RISC core hidden inside? Sounds pretty complicated, I doubt they have a big enough hardware engineering team. If there was an ARM core inside could it be exposed for recompiled software to take advantage of it? Big issues managing state/contention between 2 different ISAs?

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#145

Post by demallien »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #133
demallien wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Activate Developer Tools in the preferences of Safari. This gives you a Developer menu in the toolbar. When a site refuses to play video on your Mac because it needs Flash, you tell Safari to pretend it's an iPad. The site invariably serves you the video you wanted, without Flash.

I read this advice previously on HN, and it worked for a while. Then Google changed something, and it stopped working. I don't know, maybe I was screwing up. Or maybe it's just easier for Google to roll ads ahead of the video when it's in Flash. Or maybe Google wants me to download Chrome, which has a built in Flash player. Not gonna do that until it supports NoScript. YMMV, obviously.

No, it still works just fine. I was using it just yesterday...

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#146

Post by lsc »

alialkhatib wrote: post #62
dgallagher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Apple introduced workstation-class ARM another way; made a really powerful iPad/iPhone which could sit in a dock with keyboard/mouse/monitor, and run both iOS and ARM OSX? x86 computers could continue to exist for high-end users, but typical-users might be content with a hybrid tablet/computer. As ARM increased in power, x86 might dissapear entirely. Your comments on Windows compatibility/virtualization are s…

What you're describing (a mobile device that docks into a workstation environment and powers the KVM) sounds like the dream mobile product designers have been having for well over a decade. I remember Canonical recently coming up with a concept of a phone that would do this (see: Ubuntu Edge[0]). That being said, the roadmap implied by iOS 8 and Yosemite strongly suggests that they're just going to bridge these gaps…

It's been done several, dare I say many times. Badly, of course. I saw one at fry's where the base even had a more powerful CPU and when you docked it, the tablet was just the monitor... but you could access the tablet functionality while docked through something that looked like your typical telivisions "Picture in Picture" functionality. There was also a phone, a while back, that would dock into a video/keyboard in a laptop form factor. (Many phones these days, I am given to understand, have hdmi out, so this is largely a mechanical engineering problem. Well, that and making the software usable on both screens.)

So yeah, if it is, in fact, a useful form factor (and I have my doubts) it's in the perfect place in the technology curve for apple; the tech is all there, but nobody has implemented anything usable.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#147

Post by Grynn »

I blogged about this in April. http://vishaldoshi.me/2014/04/25/apple-intc/

It looks like Chromebooks are a very popular format and I think an ARM based 'AirBook' could compete in that space.

Napkin Math

MacBook Air current generation (mid-2013) retail price: $999 ($1099 for 13″ model with same CPU).

Intel Core i5-4250U, Tray: $315, http://ark.intel.com/products/75028/ (sure Apple will be getting large discounts on this, but it can't be that large, since $INTC has ~60% gross margin overall)

Apple A7, Tray: $20 (estimated)

Intel Atom E3827, Tray: $41

Tray = 1000 pcs;

The Core i5 has a 15W TDP; 1.3 Ghz clock (turbo to 2.6Ghz); 2 cores, 4 threads. Sunspider 250ms.

The Apple A7 has a 2W TDP; 1.3Ghz clock; 2 cores, 2 threads. Sunspider 397 ms.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4250U-vs-Apple-A7

It’s not looking all that different! Esp. when you take into account that the A8 will be twice as fast (think Tegra K1) – i.e – a Sunspider score of 200ms maybe?

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#148

Post by Symmetry »

ggreer wrote: post #78
Symmetry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that ARM chips are 10x slower than Haswells, but the difference isn't actually that large anymore and for Apple's A7 it's around 3x versus a normal desktop chip like the 4770 and only 1.7X versus the 4250U you'd find in a Macbook Air[1]. Diminishing returns is a constant factor in engineering and I'd expect it to be very hard for Apple to make up the remaining distance between themselves and Intel, but we sho…

I think GeekBench is a poor benchmark, since it's measuring peak CPU performance in a narrow domain, but the table you cited shows that the 4770 is 6.5x faster than the A7 (16774 vs 2564). Even at the same frequency and core count, Haswell is 1.8x faster in the benchmark. Whatever the exact number, it doesn't invalidate the point I was making: Switching to ARM will ruin performance for x86 programs, which need to be…

I was looking at the single threaded numbers because those are usually more relevant to what you would be doing on most Macbooks.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#149

Post by kabdib »

aidenn0 wrote: post #139
kabdib wrote: post #124

The Windows kernel guys were evaluating ARM systems for us, and the gist was "Run away, don't walk; the memory systems on those things are terrible." I like the ARM architecture a lot. It's simple and easy to write software for, all the way from embedded controller stuff to "real" operating systems. But they're not all that great at doing massive computation. We were going to use one in the video path of a popular ga…

When was this? ARM historically has abysmal memory systems, but there have been significant improvements over the past few years (I don't know that they've caught up, but they are in a different league from about 5 years ago or so).

Within the last three years, but projecting availability out about a year.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#150

Post by dragontamer »

higherpurpose wrote: post #63
ggreer wrote: post #26

What would happen to the cost, battery life, and size of an A10-powered MacBook Air? It would be worse in almost every aspect. The cost wouldn't change much, and Apple wouldn't profit much more from the switch. The cited CPU cost is the suggested retail price . Apple's volume lets them negotiate huge discounts. Battery life would go up a bit, but battery life is already pretty good on Apple laptops. My 2013 11" Air g…

The discounts aren't that "huge" when compared to ARM chip prices. They are only "huge" in comparison to other Intel customers. But the difference still remains something close to an order of magnitude . It's been shown before that Intel chips make up roughly 40 percent of the BOM/retail price (however you want to account it) of a PC. I doubt it's less than say 30 percent for an Apple Mac. The retail price for a high…

Microsoft tried to sell WinRT based ARM tablets at $300, and still couldn't sell any. In comparison, the $1000+ Surface Pro (once you get the keyboard attachment and everything, it breaks $1000 easy) has been getting pretty decent reviews and has fallen into a solid niche.

Why would an ARM-based Mac do any better than WinRT?

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