I'd love to see a worthy competition to Intel.
The AC points out that the chips were made by Intel.
Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
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Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#12Fascinating, but take it with a grain of salt. One anonymous poster didn't just violate, but shredded and used as hamster mulch, their NDA to report iPad-with-a-keyboard? It's plausible, but I think most of us here could have written that comment as a speculative exercise.
That AC could be both right and wrong. He could be totally right about the existence of those prototypes, and I bet it's true (it'd be more surprising if Apple didn't have prototype ARM laptops floating around). But it doesn't mean he knows anything about actual plans to get these out the door. There are HUGE barriers to that happening at the moment, the cost/benefit ratio is extremely high. It sounds to me like this…
Well, the title of the post is “Last sentence is (almost) BS.”, so take the final paragraph with an additional heaping of salt.
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#13Makes sense. Allegedly they had pretty much every version OS X after Rhapsody continuing to run on x86 in some capacity until the x86 version of OS X finally came out. Keeping an ARM version around seems like a no brainer. I suspect this isn't being held in case the Mac market falls apart, but in case the iPad market starts losing to Surface and friends.
Exactly, in fact there's even more to it then that. Particularly at Apple's scale, maintaining a codebase across multiple architectures internally, even if there is absolutely zero foreseeable intention to use them, offers significant value. Strategically of course it creates some hedge against over dependence on any single supplier, it's not just "the Mac market falling apart" so much as Intel/AMD dropping the ball or becoming unable to go in a direction Apple wanted (as happened with PowerPC). By the same token it helps maintain some level of economic negotiating position, even if Apple faces what is effectively right now a single key supplier situation. The mere fact that they could switch if absolutely forced to is of use.
Non-strategic value though is probably just as important as any of this stuff: as probably most of HN knows well, keeping a codebase portable can be quite helpful in terms of plain and simple quality. Obscure bugs or bad patterns that are hard to find on one architecture can be a lot easier to identify on another. It can help promote discipline and good practices. Portability I think is really a constant process rather then a goal or single thing, it's a lot easier to have worked on it all along for years before you need it then try to "port" something later because without the constant pressure of staying portable it's all too easy to start falling into dependence on features (or worse, quirks) of a single arch and build up more and more technical debt. Then when the "bill" (not necessarily just in terms of money but sheer developer hours) finally comes due it's effectively unpayable.
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#14If the future is supposedly going to be this locked down, I wonder what will happen to the internet when there is no hardware left where you can develop stuff like apache-httpd and php and mysqld.
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#15Makes sense. Allegedly they had pretty much every version OS X after Rhapsody continuing to run on x86 in some capacity until the x86 version of OS X finally came out. Keeping an ARM version around seems like a no brainer. I suspect this isn't being held in case the Mac market falls apart, but in case the iPad market starts losing to Surface and friends.
Exactly, in fact there's even more to it then that. Particularly at Apple's scale, maintaining a codebase across multiple architectures internally, even if there is absolutely zero foreseeable intention to use them, offers significant value. Strategically of course it creates some hedge against over dependence on any single supplier, it's not just "the Mac market falling apart" so much as Intel/AMD dropping the ball…
Should this apply to cloud provider portability?
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#16If the future is supposedly going to be this locked down, I wonder what will happen to the internet when there is no hardware left where you can develop stuff like apache-httpd and php and mysqld.
Mac is dead for developers and pro users if this is the case. My current Mac will be my last, and I'll be happy to give my money to Dell instead and anyone else selling more open hardware.
One of our devs just got a new XPS 15. It's a gorgeous machine. Amazing. First time I've envied a non-Apple machine since the early 2000s. I still marginally prefer the Mac track pad but the rest is on par or better.
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#17If the future is supposedly going to be this locked down, I wonder what will happen to the internet when there is no hardware left where you can develop stuff like apache-httpd and php and mysqld.
Mac is dead for developers and pro users if this is the case. My current Mac will be my last, and I'll be happy to give my money to Dell instead and anyone else selling more open hardware. One of our devs just got a new XPS 15. It's a gorgeous machine. Amazing. First time I've envied a non-Apple machine since the early 2000s. I still marginally prefer the Mac track pad but the rest is on par or better.
Yeah, I think they'll lose 99.5% developer mindshare as well. Which is the one thing Ballmer got right. Don't underestimate the value of developer support for a platform like iOS.
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#18Makes sense. Allegedly they had pretty much every version OS X after Rhapsody continuing to run on x86 in some capacity until the x86 version of OS X finally came out. Keeping an ARM version around seems like a no brainer. I suspect this isn't being held in case the Mac market falls apart, but in case the iPad market starts losing to Surface and friends.
Exactly, in fact there's even more to it then that. Particularly at Apple's scale, maintaining a codebase across multiple architectures internally, even if there is absolutely zero foreseeable intention to use them, offers significant value. Strategically of course it creates some hedge against over dependence on any single supplier, it's not just "the Mac market falling apart" so much as Intel/AMD dropping the ball…
In addition to the pure R & D value (with all its uncertainty, but with probable considerable upside in the longer term), doing this likely more than pays for itself in terms of the leverage it provides with/against existing vendors/partners.
This is just my speculation. But, 1) You learn things; 2) You lessen lock-in / dependence, in turn reducing the markup you have to pay on existing production inputs.
Apple's benefited very considerably from the increasing customization and optimization of its phone CPU et al. platform. What's the argument against carrying that over to their computer lines, if and when they can make that a relatively smooth transition?
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#19An interesting product line split might be putting the Macbook line onto ARM for portability & battery life, and keeping the pro or air & pro line on Intel.
Re: Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally
#20Fascinating, but take it with a grain of salt. One anonymous poster didn't just violate, but shredded and used as hamster mulch, their NDA to report iPad-with-a-keyboard? It's plausible, but I think most of us here could have written that comment as a speculative exercise.
It could also be an intentional leak to gauge reaction.