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Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

appleinsider.com

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Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#141

Post by philwelch »

ianai wrote: post #119
philwelch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS development and, potentially, better support for Catalyst are the obvious pluses I haven’t seen mentioned yet.

Or graphics algorithms tailored to many cpu cores instead of just gpus. Or have the Mac platform interoperate with their mobiles better, again.

Graphics algorithms for what? Mac is still such a small market share that third party developers won’t take advantage of any weird architectural advantages. Sony tried and failed to pull this off with the PS3’s Cell processor, which was ironically PowerPC-based.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#142

Post by taylodl »

arvinsim wrote: post #137
taylodl wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo! This is exactly what I see happening!

Would that significantly increase cost?

Actually it would give them something with which to differentiate their Pro lines: they would have the x86 processor along with the ARMs.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#143

Post by ianai »

philwelch wrote: post #141
ianai wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or graphics algorithms tailored to many cpu cores instead of just gpus. Or have the Mac platform interoperate with their mobiles better, again.

Graphics algorithms for what? Mac is still such a small market share that third party developers won’t take advantage of any weird architectural advantages. Sony tried and failed to pull this off with the PS3’s Cell processor, which was ironically PowerPC-based.

FCP, Adobe, etc. Apple has enough market power, cash, and know how to pull some combos and killer features off.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#144

Post by saidajigumi »

pianoben wrote: post #116
bitwize wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Apple we're talking about -- and Apple is what other OEMs want to be when they grow up. Not only will the Apple-designed ARM CPUs perform at or above the level of a similarly-specced Intel machine, but the ISA transition will be seamless , with a nearly-invisible Intel binary compatibility layer that does on-the-fly JITing. Otherwise, they simply won't release it at all.

I think you are over-estimating the quality of their software engineering. Maybe ten years ago I would have believed this, but with each macOS release the litany of unforced errors just continues to grow. The advantage Apple derives from owning the whole stack is a bit oversold, at least when it comes to their non-iOS products. Of course this is anecdotal, but my macbook (made solely from Apple-supplied parts) seems…

> Maybe ten years ago I would have believed this, but with each macOS release the litany of unforced errors just continues to grow.

Apple, of all companies, is not a monolith. There are parts of the company who've been just killing it from a software perspective (Swift, SwiftUI, XCode preview for SwiftUI, etc.) Where they've had severe issues has effectively been quality management across the broader OS.

Also, I'll be very interested to watch what happens over the next couple of major release cycles. I think Apple got a major wake-up call with the shitstorm that was the iOS 13 / Catalina release cycle. I'm hoping that they'll be putting in place an outright culture shift to fix that long-term, vs. a one-off "Snow Leopard" tech debt paydown release.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#145

Post by jlei523 »

Traster wrote: post #42

To be honest, I am super unexcited by this. What I want to see from Apple is a move back to high software quality, high hardware quality and real vision for their products. At the moment their convergence between iPad and Macbook has essentially been to add sub-par versions of macbook features to the iPad and to make the macbook a second class citizen in terms of quality. My big worry is that actually this is just ac…

Apple spent the last 4 years backtracking on features they introduced in 2016:

- Keyboard with more travel - ESC key

Now people are calling the 16" the greatest laptop ever. It's like you've been abused for 4 years, then the abuser does something nice, and you think he/she is the nicest person in the world.

Macbook Pros are still bad:

- Useless touchbar that makes basic functions harder - Resting your palm over an oversized touchpad - Dongle-hell - No battery life improvement in 8 years - Overpriced due to focus on thinness and useless touch bar

They should have taken the 2015 Macbook Pro and gave it a 16" screen, touch ID, newer ports, newer CPUs/GPUs and it would have been 10x better than the overpriced junk we have today.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#147

Post by mikhailt »

DeathArrow wrote: post #122
mikhailt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already have Windows PCs (SP4 + Desktop)and while W10 has come a long way, it's not as stable as macOS. Catalina is just as bad as Vista IMO. However, macOS is still better IMO because I still have a lot of issues on Windows; all stemming from MS shipping bad updates. Two months ago, a Windows update broke my bluetooth completely and I had to wait a month for another Windows update/driver to fix it. Last year, a ba…

I have 4 machines running Windows 10 from its release and never had to reinstall the OS. Everything is stable and I hardly reboot. Most development tools have Windows versions: Node, NPM, Git, Docker. If I'd encounter one which doesn't run ob Windows, there's WSL. I pretty much disliked Windows XP, Vista and preferred Linux, but since Windows 7,the OS got a lot better from my point of view. I have the largest possibl…

Agreed, VSCode is my favorite text editor, WSL2 looks to be awesome (I'm waiting for VMware to use it since VMware is required for my job), Github, WinUI looks awesome, etc.

Windows is slowly becoming a very developer friendly platform. Will it work out for Microsoft? Who knows.

I'm more excited for Microsoft than Apple at this point but I am looking forward to seeing iPadOS/macOS later this year.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#148

Post by ksec »

saidajigumi wrote: post #144
pianoben wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are over-estimating the quality of their software engineering. Maybe ten years ago I would have believed this, but with each macOS release the litany of unforced errors just continues to grow. The advantage Apple derives from owning the whole stack is a bit oversold, at least when it comes to their non-iOS products. Of course this is anecdotal, but my macbook (made solely from Apple-supplied parts) seems…

> Maybe ten years ago I would have believed this, but with each macOS release the litany of unforced errors just continues to grow. Apple, of all companies, is not a monolith. There are parts of the company who've been just killing it from a software perspective (Swift, SwiftUI, XCode preview for SwiftUI, etc.) Where they've had severe issues has effectively been quality management across the broader OS. Also, I'll b…

>(Swift, SwiftUI, XCode preview for SwiftUI, etc.)

Time will tell, but right now I think Swift isn't the languages that I once hoped for. And objective-C, despite all of its problem, is still doing well.

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