Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#51

Post by fortytw2 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

Is it just me or did apple just bungle this entire announcement by not announcing a consumer facing ARM MacOS device, only a hot-rodded Mac Mini with an iPad Pro chip inside.

How many devs actually have the setup in place to use a non mobile device?

I also wonder if the current+last gen iPad Pro that has the new keyboard + trackpad case will gain the ability to run Xcode and native macOS apps in the near future.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#52

Post by jaredtn » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

Native virtualization and the ability to run iPhone and iPad apps directly on the Mac. This could unlock a whole new level of focus and optimizations for Apple.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#53

Post by stu2b50 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #2

I was interested by the GPU that was mentioned in the slide, does this mean that Apple is thinking that they have the expertise to take on Nvidia and AMD in that space?

The advantage Apple has is that Nvidia and AMD and Intel have to actually make money from their chips. Apple can break even or make a loss on the chips themselves.

So maybe, they certainly have the budget to try.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#54

Post by minimaxir » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #19

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

Those are the rumored "iPad Pro" aesthetic Macs which were initially rumored to be released today.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#55

Post by inapis » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

kemiller2002 wrote: post #41

jccalhoun wrote: post #19

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

What is really sad is that I don't think the majority of Apple consumers really understand what this means for the Intel macs in the long run. I fear a number of people will buy them not realizing they have a very limited lifespan.

If those devices will have 4-5 years worth of use, then I think most people would be fine with the purchase. 4-5 years already does require upgrading for either performance or quality of life features.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#56

Post by jagger27 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #19

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

I was waiting for Craig to say that every Mac with a T-series chip could be used as a dev platform, since they're pretty strong on their own. Oh well. Maybe to smooth things over they'll ship an A-series co-processor with those Macs.

Apple released a bunch of PPC Macs after they announced the switch to Intel, so this isn't unprecedented.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#57

Post by Androider » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #19

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

Personally I'd rather grab one of those as my daily driver, and wait a few years for all the issues to get worked out during the transition.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#58

Post by Slartie » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

cmer wrote: post #12

nouveaux wrote: post #6

It's interesting that their official virtualization support (in the demo) is Parallels.

Curious that they said nothing about virtualizing Windows. That can’t be a mistake or oversight. Odd.

I noticed that too. Might have trademark or legal reasons though. Technically, if they're able to dynamically translate x86 to ARM as they've explicitly stated (with JIT of JS and the JVM as the example) they should be able to dynamically translate x86 VMs regardless of what OS they contain, which would allow x86 Windows to be virtualized with better-than-interpreted performance.

Or at least that's what I hope ;-) I'm relying on running x86 Windows and Linux within Parallels in addition to native MacOS Apps to do my daily work, which involves compiling and testing x86 binaries for these platforms, so whether this virtualization thing actually runs x86 OSes transparently is an absolute make-or-break feature for me to continue my usage of the MacOS platform for work.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#59

Post by monocasa » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #50

monocasa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, "look how good our CPU support is by running a several year old GPU limited game" fell a bit flat for me.

It’s not about the game, it’s about running performance-dependent code written for x86 on an ARM chip. A lot harder to fake a stable frame rate in a game than in Photoshop.

I mean, it didn't look like a stable frame rate to me.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#60

Post by mikece » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

Will BootCamp continue to be supported for the next ten years on my June 2019 MacBook Pro so I can install an operating system that continues to develop new features with the assumption I'm running on x86-64?