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Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#201

Post by jmull »

slededit wrote: post #28
Joeri wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except apple has demonstrated they can design cpu’s that outperform the (android) competition. Who is to say they can’t make ARM cpu’s that genuinely outperform intel? Intel hasn’t executed all that well lately anyway.

The trade offs for a SoC are different than for a desktop machine, and to a lesser extent a laptop. The desktop is where we'll feel the most pain. I wouldn't be surprised if they cancelled the Mac Pro entirely.

It would surprise me, because they made a big public show of recommitting to the Mac Pro last year.

If they had any doubts all they had to do was say nothing -- which is their strong preference -- and it would have remained clear that the Mac Pro was dead.

Making a strong "trust us, we're working on it" statement and then canceling would be a pretty bad unforced error. Not impossible, but with their top-down, forward-looking decison-making process it seems very unlikely to me.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#203

Post by danielrhodes »

jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

> third parties outside Apple who haven't even heard of the possibility of this happening until today

This announcement is hardly a surprise. The writing has been on the wall for at least the last 5 years since LLVM replaced GCC in XCode. It became even more obvious when Apple started compiling to "Bitcode" so that they could deliver optimized binaries to devices. What that replacement meant is that it would ease Apple's transition away from any particular architecture - developers shouldn't have to do much if the app is installed from the App Store.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#204

Post by otterley »

djrogers wrote: post #181
otterley wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is so "obvious" about it?

The fact that Apple develops and ships hundreds of millions of ARM processors every year, which are widely regarded to be the best ARM processors made, and they design and ship no X86 processors?

That alone doesn't make it "obvious" as applied _to a Mac_, which is a very different kind of device that caters to a different audience that often has special needs. See our other discussion threads elsewhere.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#205

Post by notatoad »

wlesieutre wrote: post #132
notatoad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable the article (thin as it is) claims a multi-step transition. Apple almost certainly has a version of Mac OS that can run on their iPad hardware - the transition path that makes the most sense to me is a 12" MacBook that runs essentially the same internal hardware as an iPad pro, and a MacOS that can run iOS apps. There would be a great consumer market for a…

I’m still very skeptical of the “Mac that can run iOS apps” concept. Tim Cook has been pretty unambiguous in his statements about Mac vs iPad. https://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/16/tim-cook-no-converged-m... >We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad, because what that would wind up doing, or what we’re worried would happen, is that neither experience would be as good as the c…

Apple has a long history of being strongly against things right up until they actually do them. And i think there's a significant difference between a converged iPad and MacBook, and a MacBook that is still primarily a laptop that runs MacOS, but can run iOS apps as a sort of bonus feature and consolation prize for incompatibility with existing Mac apps.

It's also worth noting that when he said that, Chromebooks didn't run android apps.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#207

Post by slededit »

jmull wrote: post #201
slededit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade offs for a SoC are different than for a desktop machine, and to a lesser extent a laptop. The desktop is where we'll feel the most pain. I wouldn't be surprised if they cancelled the Mac Pro entirely.

It would surprise me, because they made a big public show of recommitting to the Mac Pro last year. If they had any doubts all they had to do was say nothing -- which is their strong preference -- and it would have remained clear that the Mac Pro was dead. Making a strong "trust us, we're working on it" statement and then canceling would be a pretty bad unforced error. Not impossible, but with their top-down, forward…

Given the failure of ARM in the datacenter Apple would be pulling something off that no other semi manufacturer has. It's not impossible but just very unlikely.

It's much more reasonable that they'll do a "best effort" in the high end space but it won't be comparable to a Xeon. You can see the iMac Pro as a prelude to that. A beefy machine to be sure but not what you'd expect for top of the line.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#208

Post by mankash666 »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #157
danaliv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that they successfully managed the transition from m68k to PPC. The processor doesn't matter.

The processor doesn't matter to Apple because they don't mind fucking over their customers and their third party developers.

How does this fuck over customers or third party devs in anyways?

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#209

Post by kawera »

joezydeco wrote: post #74
uptown wrote: post #69

Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that the iPad is "the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing" and Apple only sells around 4M Macs per quarter, while iOS devices dwarf this stat. If their plan is to continue moving users from desktop/laptop devices to their iOS ecosystem, and the software can be transformed to cross between both classes of devices, then it only makes sense to unify the pr…

I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?

Their own cloud IDE and build farm ?

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#210

Post by ghazak »

gaius wrote: post #191
chocolatebunny wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The processor doesn't matter to Apple because they don't mind fucking over their customers and their third party developers.

It’s true that Apple fumbled 68k —> PPC as far as MPW went but it’s also true that creating fat binaries was a total non-issue with CodeWarrior. Apple had learnt from that mistake for PPC —> x86

The difference is that the x86 chips were so much faster than what they had for PPC, that they could still emulate it without customers feeling like they were going backwards.
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