Anything to get more competition in that market is greatly appreciated. Intel products have become a massive disappointment.
Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
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Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you remember back to the mid 2000's when Apple switched from PowerPC to (Intel) x86, the higher end machines still ran with PowerPC chips in them while the mid-low end products had x86 chips. All of the old applications that weren't yet ported to x86 had to use "Rosetta." It wasn't until a little while later, presumably once most of the professional software companies had good working x86 versions of their softwar…
There's two problems with that story: first, the famous switch from PowerPC to Intel happened when the desktop was the king, and app developers had strong incentive to recompile programs to the new platform. Right now? Not so much. Second, while Apple's mobile processors are currently the best in ARM world, for "pro" desktop computers Apple needs desktop-grade processor. Making something comparable to i7 isn't such a…
> Second, while Apple's mobile processors are currently the best in ARM world, for "pro" desktop computers Apple needs desktop-grade processor. Making something comparable to i7 isn't such an easy and cheap job.
Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and Cavium have created very powerful ARM chips for non-mobile application. Apple definitely has the chip architects, the money, and the experience to do such a thing.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creatives who want hardware optimized Adobe apps to continue to be fast will care. I wouldn't count on emulation of vectorized code to work all that well.
Yep, I think people tend to gloss over how smooth these transitions really were. From a creative professional perspective, they were huge short-term PITA until Adobe etc had everything ported over. Also Excel lost VBA support for several years.
Adobe's transition was somewhat rough because they took the Carbon route, and then had to do it again to switch over to Cocoa. I expect that now that all their apps are built on Cocoa, the transition will be relatively breezy.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#414Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward? I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app-store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photosho…
No one wants to be the next QuarkXPress.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#415If the current MacBook Pro is any indication, then I would be surprised if people are still buying Macs at all in 2020.
Pretty sure I'll still be using / rebuying the 2015 model
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#416> "A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility where it has failed to gain a foothold so far." > "Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan, for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and iPad apps on Macs" Two things here: 1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving to a walled garden where Ap…
If I read that correctly, I don't know where you're extrapolating that Apple is making this move to replace macOS with iOS / a walled-garden where nobody can create apps for Mac except by selling them through the App Store. If Apple wanted to do that, they would just sell iPads and stop selling MacBooks. As for 2), I think that's a nice convenience - if you're a developer you wouldn't have to to worry about emulation…
Absolutely true-- Apple is, after all, one of the most valuable companies in the world. But I think recent issues in iOS and macOS hint that they might not be one of the most talented software companies in the world. If regular maintenance and feature updates are bringing their OSes to their knees, what will a massive spec change do?
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In this instance, Apple would likely be going to a less powerful processors… Arguably, the A11 Bionic is already faster than mainstream desktop CPUs. "The iPhone 8 even edged out the score from the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro with a 7th-generation Core i5 processor. That notebook notched 9,213. Is Geekbench 4 really comparable from phone to desktop? According to the founder of Geekbench, John Poole, 'the short is ans…
A 6-core CPU beat a 2-core one in a perfectly scaling multithreaded benchmark? That's just shocking ! Truly, that is definitely, unquestionably, beyond any doubt representative of what a battle at the workstation level would be. But more seriously and less snarky there's a reason they used the 13" macbook pro there specifically and that's because the 15" with the quad-core i7 destroys the A11, 15k vs. 10k. Of course…
Don’t forget that the current gen A processors are designed to run in something with a tiny battery compared to a laptop. It’s likely that any MacBook bound Apple CPU won’t have such a limitation and will be able to run much faster as a result.
Also if you look at the performance trajectory of A-series in the last five years, 2020 sounds about right for where the crossover will come even between iOS based A-series processors and the fastest of what Intel has to offer, provided they can keep up the pace of performance improvement.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
With Apple's documented interest in owner's control of their devices and delivering the required documentation for it, they won't tell us what is included in the chips and what's not.
Apple has done a very good job with documenting iOS security: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf If they included a management engine and produced a document like that, I'd be satisfied.
I always see this document linked to on HN even though it's a (relatively) high level description of what is happening on the device.
Besides, there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple isn't just being "semi-open" with their security mechanisms. In other words, who is to say that there are no redundant, undocumented mechanisms in place?
But I will concede that Apple is ahead of everyone else in this regard. It's just that I think Apple being ahead doesn't mean that the information they're providing is enough.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they wanted to go x86 they would just buy VIA? I think it will be aarch64
Without meaning to comment on whether it is likely or not, they could also easily buy AMD. (Price tag would be in the ballpark of $15-20 billion, 3 months of income for Apple)
AMD's cross-licensing agreements are unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, nontransferable.
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-clar...
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#420This might just be a bargaining move on Apple’s part, but I don’t think so. I think that long term they are much better off controlling their entire hardware stack. I wouldn’t be surprised to even see them make their own display screens. As an Apple customer, I like this idea also. For 20 years, I used to be a desktop Linux fanatic and later became a fan of Android. In the last few years, I have switched to using all…
How's this different than going back to PowerPC architecture? When they switched to Intel, I recall there being a lot of talk of benefits to running on the same chips as everyone else.
From what I've been hearing lately about Apple, the impression I keep getting is that Apple doesn't think of Mac as a product with a specific target market, but more as a sort of just-a-really-really-big-ipad. The closed garden approach worked well with iOS, where for the most part people just play throwaway games, but I really don't see that being a viable underlying philosophy for laptops, where interop with digital plumbing is important.