Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by samcat116 » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

lambda_lover wrote: post #416

aeriklawson wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Random, probably not true thought: large portions of their OS developers have been working on this rewrite, hence leading to the "increase" of bugs on macOS right now.

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

#522

Post by lr4444lr » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

sreque wrote: post #433

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…

I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have…

I can concede Linux might be superior, but were you comparing apples to apples with OSX vs. Windows? Most Windows development seems to be on MS-based development stacks. A lot more of platform-independent development happens on OSX, I'd be willing to bet, and that iOS development on OSX would be commensurately productive as .NET development on a Windows machine.

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

#523

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

davidy123 wrote: post #464

traek wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no way to run userscripts/WebExtensions on IOS. Your device is no longer a user-focused tool to access media, your browser is closer to being a "smart tv" than a customize-able information explorer and augmenter essentially controlled by no one. I have (personally) never had the desire to write/run a userscript on iOS. If my device being a “smart tv” lets me focus more on other areas of my life (i.e. projec…

As usual, a lot of the innovation you probably take for granted happens through side channels, user-favouring features that would never appear unless they can be "unauthorized" add-ons. Like ad blocking. I understand that some people value convenience above all else, but maybe you never experienced the bad old days when everything was locked down. It's good that Apple still has competition and others are conscious of…

>"unauthorized" add-ons. Like ad blocking.

There are iOS ad blockers on the Apple App Store, and extensions for MacOS Safari. I'm not sure how much more authorized it can get than that unless you want Tim Cook to hold your hand through the process.

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

#524

Post by sitkack » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

Lio wrote: post #492

chuckdries wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs ship with outdated versions of common bash commands and tools as well. Homebrew goes a long way to fixing this for me.

I have the same problem on Ubuntu LTS distributions. Eg the ancient version of git in 16.04LTS. You can fix that of course but homebrew does the same job on macOS. Roll on 18.04LTS.

Homebrew exists on Linux. I like running LTS distros because they just work. For newer per-project exceptions, I put everything into a container (again layered on LTS), it is esp nice for things like specific versions of LLVM which I wouldn't want to pollute my base machine with. My peronal userland gets shipped via, cargo, go, pip, npm, etc.

https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew

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

#525

Post by ratsimihah » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #448

fastball wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly does your development workflow look like where Linux was so much better than MacOS?

What was the workflow in which windows was better than anything UNIX based....

I’m missing the logic as well.

Linux > Windows > macOS?

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

#526

Post by stiGGG » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

Myrmornis wrote: post #507

unclepresent wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for everyone who wants to expirience a hell of developing software for linux under OSX i suggest to try to build apache httpd server from source on mac. it seems to be a trivial task on Linux but it is a hell of nightmare on OSX. I am saying this just because having a custom build version of apache is a commin need for many web projects.

Once you've got to the point of needing to match your production server technology, doesn't it feel like you should be using a VM or docker (assuming you're tied to MacOS as the development environment)?

Yeah, i don't understand this argument. Even all the devs i know working under linux are doing all their development under docker or VMs to match the live environment and being able to switch between different projects more easily. And even when you have only one project, who wants to run debian stable or centos as his main OS?

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

#527

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #473

sneak wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- decent video calling - imessage (signal is getting warmer, but the integration is still lacking) - adobe creative suite - video editing - audio production apps - photo management and post processing (darktable is still garbage) - sleep/wake and connecting/disconnecting external displays - not-ugly fonts

It’s kind of funny to compare Linux vs. macOS if your experience of macOS primarily comes from using a Hackintosh. (No sleep/wake support for me! Unplugging my HDMI cable causes a hard-reboot! Etc.) Which is to say: Linux is pretty good on Macs, whereas macOS is pretty broken (after weeks of intense debugging with other Hackintosh folks) on hardware that would run Linux just fine.

You admit you're using a hackintosh, and then blame Apple when stuff doesn't work?

That's one heck of a mental disconnect.

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

#528

Post by rubyn00bie » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #516

npunt wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3s of all PR activity on Github is on a Mac, for what it's worth. Certainly the platform punches above its weight relative to market share. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2...

My only complaint is that if the mac were truly a developer-centric device, I wouldn't need homebrew to install software. It should just be in the apple store for me to download.

I think that'd be a disservice to both developers and non-developers alike. It'd clutter the app store and force developers to use the app store and whatever approval process they decide.

I think it would be cumbersome to say the least...

  * Would you have to install through the app store gui?

  * How would it manage dependency chains and conflicts (system ruby vs local ruby)?

  * How about explicit paths or build parameters?

  * How would it handle different shells?

I know other operating systems do this but I've never liked it... I guess I just don't mind installing and managing command line/developer tools from a terminal window ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And, with all that said, I have a quite a bit of negative sentiment towards Apple lately for their hardware and platform choices. So I would still say, it's not a developer-centric platform (the Mac)...

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

#529

Post by antimatter » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

sreque wrote: post #462

Myrmornis wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What apple software do you need to use? Sure, it's annoying not having the GNU command-line utilities. But `brew install coreutils` basically fixes that for me. I admit I don't work heavily with compiled languages on macOS so I can't comment on technical aspects of that. iTerm2 is not inferior to linux terminal emulators. The Apple laptops are quite obviously the best hardware experience out there. I mean obviously i…

I've heard it said that the greatest minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. However, I feel like the greatest minds of our generation are spent trying to figure out how to enable people to build Linux software on OSX. Whether it is: * a convoluted process involving Vagrant, Docker, or both, because you depend on one or more pieces of software that don't run at all on OSX, including D…

Everything you listed under your general issues section is my exact experience when running Linux. I don't seem to have any of those issues on OSX.

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

#530

Post by awalton » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

wilsonnb wrote: post #248

otterley wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say they can't manufacture their own x86 chips a la AMD?

Better yet they can probably afford to just buy AMD.

Even at $15-20B all cash, Apple would be overpaying, and then having to deal with all of the continuing business of supporting AMD, including the ATi problem - there's just no way to acquire AMD without destroying the graphics/gpu-compute market (you know, any more than AMD has already done themselves). There's probably some other explosive x86 licensing terms that would have to be hammered out under the transfer as well (iirc, in the past when AMD buyouts have been discussed, to deal with the architecture licensing stickiness they all had to be "reverse mergers" with AMD, and that killed every prospect of that happening...)

Just not worth the hassle compared to the price of an ARM license or sticking with Intel (or even just investing a huge chunk of cash in AMD to build super power efficient laptop chips, if you had any confidence that they could pull it off).