Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

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

#421

Post by briandear »

samayylmao wrote: post #351
mark_l_watson wrote: post #229

This 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…

To play devil's advocate.. While you may trust them more, you can't deny they have had many significant software security issues of late. How could consumers trust the security of their chips?

A bug is bad. A business model based on selling your personal information to third parties without your explicit knowledge -- far worse. A bug is a mistake -- not excusable, but the _intent_ is much different.

The admin access without a password bug -- fixed in 24 hours, and it still required physical access to a machine.

That's not to diminish the seriousness of the flaw, but that's far different that Facebook's (and many others') nefarious, continual and one-might-argue, malicious exploitation of personal data.

I feel like Apple actually cares deeply about privacy. Look at Tim Cook's personal life for example -- extremely private person -- someone, given his life story, who probably appreciates privacy more than most.

No company is perfect and no company should get a free pass for negligence, but I think Apple has earned the benefit of the doubt.

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

#422

Post by martin_bech »

wbl wrote: post #403
djrogers wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close, but Apple already produces it's own WiFi/BT chipsets (the S1/S2 etc SOCs in Apple watches for example, and the W1 chipset in AirPods and new Beats headphones), and is rumored to be working on an LTE/GSM chipset. I think Apple is intensely interested in controlling the entire stack.

Why? A lot of these parts are commodetized. Are they really getting that much better battery life from their own stuff?

W1 chip seems to have better performance and power than any other chip. A10 A11 seems to have better performance and power than any other chip. I see a trend..

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

#423

Post by mediocrejoker »

mywittyname wrote: post #395
mediocrejoker wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The niche market of "software developer" is in an interesting position if you include developers who create the apps that Apple needs to sell phones. Clearly "iOS app developer" is only a subset of "software developer" but I think there is only so far down the "consumer tech toy" road they can go without doing longer term damage to their ecosystem

I would think that non-iOS software developers are still a big money maker for Apple. It seems like half of professional developers use Macbooks.

Even though I am a non-iOSdeveloper who likes using a macbook, I can see how it would make sense for Apple to push out a small group of power users if their requirements conflict with features that enhance the experience for the majority of their users, for example something like sandboxing the entire OS away from the user. This would (ostensibly) be good for security and would only be a dealbreaker for a small minority.

As long as iOS developers aren't impacted, I'm not sure what the incentive is for Apple to allow that kind of access.

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

#424

Post by gsnedders »

masklinn wrote: post #60
Skunkleton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If apple uses its own chips, I would assume that they would be aarch64 and not x86_64. Also, Microsoft has some magics for executing x86_64 binaries on aarch64 with good performance, so Apple may have a similar technology. We could end up with another situation similar to the Power->x86 transition that happened back in 2006. Or it could be nothing. This is a pretty thin article.

> If apple uses its own chips, I would assume that they would be aarch64 and not x86_64. Also, Microsoft has some magics for executing x86_64 binaries on aarch64 with good performance, so Apple may have a similar technology. They definitely do have OSX running on ARM64, they had OSX running on x86 for years before the switch (in fact they had OSX running on x86 before it even was OSX, NeXT ran on x86, SPARC, PA-RISC…

What I'm really curious about is what they've still maintained: what they publicly ship now is all little-endian; are they still maintaining any big-endian port? Do they have a big-endian ARM port? Have they preserved the big-endian PPC port?

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

#425

Post by pilsetnieks »

saagarjha wrote: post #326
iagooar wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM less powerful? Wait and see what Apple can do with their own ARM-design if they target Desktops / Laptops. We might get to see 32 or even 64 cores in a regular MBP. Now tell me how THAT would be less powerful than the current Intel offering.

Apple has always gone down the path of fewer, more powerful cores instead of packing many, weaker ones. Apple's chips were dual core until A10.

And it has let them eke out performance that absolutely leaves almost all Android phones in the dust, and all that with a battery that's 30-50% smaller than the rest (although that does bring its own problems, as we now know.)

Imagine if they're not held back by the battery at all, or even just have to match the power consumption of the power-hungry x86 chips.

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

#426

Post by Baeocystin »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #333
feedmeseymour wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever there is a big change by Apple, I always see a lot of relatively niche comments like this, and they're really important, IMHO. These sorts of "great, now I can't use Mac for XYZ" problems might, at first glance, be dismissed as "well, looks like Apple out-grew your niche market... sorry." Upon further investigation, however, it appears that Apple might letting go of too many niche customers whose needs will…

The niche market of "software developer" is in an interesting position if you include developers who create the apps that Apple needs to sell phones. Clearly "iOS app developer" is only a subset of "software developer" but I think there is only so far down the "consumer tech toy" road they can go without doing longer term damage to their ecosystem

...and they passed that point years ago, to boot.

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

#427

Post by contingencies »

jacquesc wrote: post #415
craigc wrote: post #101

If 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

Try an XPS15.

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

#428

Post by gsnedders »

tinus_hn wrote: post #342
jluxenberg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS apps do not run via emulation on macOS; they are compiled for x86_64 and run as a normal process.

And it’s actually a pre that every iOS app works on multiple architectures. If Apple ever wants to change iOS to run on a different type of CPU it’ll be easy.

And they've already made advantage of that, with the move from A32 to A64.

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

#429

Post by sydney6 »

djrogers wrote: post #348
sydney6 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that long term they are much better off controlling their entire hardware stack. But CPU/GPU aren't the only chips Apple is sourcing from 3rd party. Think wireless modems like WiFi, LTE, etc.

Close, but Apple already produces it's own WiFi/BT chipsets (the S1/S2 etc SOCs in Apple watches for example, and the W1 chipset in AirPods and new Beats headphones), and is rumored to be working on an LTE/GSM chipset. I think Apple is intensely interested in controlling the entire stack.

Isn't wireless hardware in general more like a IP/Patenting/Licensing issue?

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

#430

Post by npunt »

lhorie wrote: post #420
mark_l_watson wrote: post #229

This 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 approac…

Apple is in a much different state now. Making your own chip requires significant resources, and before they didn't have the leverage nor talent to get the chips they wanted built. Now, they have a trillion dollar product (iPhone) and a mature chip development team that many consider the best in the industry, and they can throw tons of money at the problem.

The benefit of running the same chips as everyone else was about leveraging the investment of other products into the Intel architecture. Now they're doing that, just with their own chips.

Post reply on HN