41–50 of 263 posts
Apple should just buy AMD. It would only cost them about 15 Billion or so and they would get an x86 license. If they really want to control their own destiny this would be the way to go.
Apple should just buy AMD. It would only cost them about 15 Billion or so and they would get an x86 license. If they really want to control their own destiny this would be the way to go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds incredibly kludgey and at odds with Apple's de-investment in macOS. (As in "reduced investment", not "divestment".) Adding massive complexity to eke out another hour or two of battery life seems like a poor choice when there are so many things to be fixed in the OS.
Is apple divesting its mac offering? Sounds like FUD.
So the test to apply is: will this enable a headline feature? In this case, if it lets Apple put a significantly bigger battery life number on the product page, I'd bet on it.
I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…
Doesn't that complicate the mainboard design vastly? Memory & caching, clocks & time, concurrency, etc.
I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…
This sounds incredibly kludgey and at odds with Apple's de-investment in macOS. (As in "reduced investment", not "divestment".) Adding massive complexity to eke out another hour or two of battery life seems like a poor choice when there are so many things to be fixed in the OS.
Ultimately, the 2016 MBPs are a great example of why Apple needs to divest from Intel. The poor timing for Kaby Lake mobile processors and lack of low-power RAM were both Apple's reasons stated when the topic of "the MBP isn't keeping up with the competition" arises.
And who's to say that macOS.next will be anything similar to the current macOS?
There is only one piece of "news" (possibly speculation) in this article: that they may offload some processing to the ARM coprocessor as a transitional step. Interesting idea! But the idea that they have the Mac OS running on their own ARM chips -- Apple shareholders should be annoyed if the company weren't doing this. OS X was running for a long time on Intel before anyone decided to make Intel based Macs.
... or iOS will be graduating up to be the new OS across both mobile and desktop platforms? Earlier today via HN.... http://www.macworld.com/article/3163248/ios/the-future-of-io...
As long as it's still x86/AMD64 we're good. I really don't want to see PPC/Intel fragmentation again.
Probably arm this time around and if you look at the linux ecosystem you'll see that there's nothing to fear.
There's always a hedge afoot. Apple had OS 7 running on Intel as early as 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
Apple should just buy AMD. It would only cost them about 15 Billion or so and they would get an x86 license. If they really want to control their own destiny this would be the way to go.
IIRC AMD's cross-licensing deals with Intel over certain key patents are null and void if AMD is bought, which puts a real damper on the main reason anyone would consider purchasing the company.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2488/000119312509236...
Can you just imagine how long the battery would last on an arm based macbook? Days?!