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

#541

Post by stephenr » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:35 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…

Add blocking is something Safari (and Apple) does better than the any other browser vendor, IMO.

A good ad blocker for Safari (on Mac or iOS) just uses the Content Blockers system, and provides essentially a JSON blob with a bunch of rules in it to Webkit, which will then take the requested actions (mostly block, sometimes hide elements, sometimes force a URL to https) internally - the Ad Blocker "app" never knows what sites you're visiting and is never involved in actual blocking.

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

#542

Post by LoSboccacc » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #523

davidy123 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that only works with safari of course because they don't want chrome having feature parity or, gasp, being better!

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

#543

Post by quotemstr » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:35 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…

So why are you sticking with it? Go out and get a nice Linux machine. Expense it. If you're working at a company too square to approve that, install Linux on your Apple laptop. If you're working at a company that won't even allow that, well, you have my condolences. Things to ask before you sign, I guess.

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

#544

Post by stuntkite » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

welly wrote: post #481

davidy123 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't easily share media between the Apple ecosystem and others. You can't access some Apple services at all from Linux. 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. You're giving up an awful lot for the sak…

> I also don't get what's missing from a modern Linux desktop A user interface that isn't ugly and laggy.

I bought a system76 bonobo with their pop linux distro. I'm perfectly happy with my desktop experience.

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

#545

Post by Insanity » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #536

ratsimihah wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Linux give you that macOS doesn’t? I use both a Mac and an Arch Linux running i3/awesomewm, and to me macOS is like any Linux distro with a user-friendly desktop environment. I guess it doesn’t have an « official » package manager, but homebrew has most packages anyway?

You can run things like the Adobe Suite without any ridiculous overhead. Where Xcode is important you've also got that. For a lot of people that don't care the differences are largely subjective and the difference between Ubuntu, for example, and macOS are largely academic and aesthetic.

With academic, I'm not sure if you also include 'philosophic'. Personally, I'd rather develop on mac than on windows but I'm the happiest on Linux.

A large factor in this is that I like to contribute to FOSS and find that 'ideology' to be a match with my beliefs regarding software.

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

#546

Post by ironjunkie » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

npunt wrote: post #455

sreque wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

probably related to the fact that the top language on Github is javascript.

If you do anything else than UI scripts, I would agree with the above and say you are better off with a linux box.

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

#547

Post by stephenr » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:37 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.

Breaking news: An OS with a limited set of drivers for the hardware it's specifically designed to be used on, doesn't work very well on hardware it was never intended to be used on. Full story at 11.

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

#548

Post by stuntkite » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #447

davidy123 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't easily share media between the Apple ecosystem and others. You can't access some Apple services at all from Linux. 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. You're giving up an awful lot for the sak…

- 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

Audio production on linux is pretty good, well not for everyone, but it's got a lot to offer. I spent years with logic / Ableton live on OSX. I'm moving to a more barebones approach these days with linux and supercollider.

Still nothing for the creative suite except for wine though.

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

#549

Post by BillinghamJ » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #390

Lramseyer wrote: post #300

Earlier 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…

Couldn't they achieve that today by running legacy apps in a hypervisor?

The issue is implementing the features for the hypervisor’s emulation system without Intel-licensed hardware or software.

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

#550

Post by mulmen » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

stiGGG wrote: post #514

FridgeSeal wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the laptops are great. Provided you don't need a HDMI port. Or more than 1 spare USB port. Or am ethernet port. You could get the touch-bar version, but I've read literally nothing but bad reviews and stories about that thing, plus tb versions have smaller batteries. Yes, I could get a dock, but here's a better idea: how about apple chills out on their unnecessary-thinness fetish, and givese back some actual f…

With touch bar i agree, it hate it. But the thunderbolt dock thingie totally rocks. It's really nice to only plug in one cable to connect the complete hardware on your desk (multiple screens, ethernet, power, etc).

In theory the dock is nice but in reality they don't work at all. Does Apple make their own dock?

Every time I come back to my desk with my laptop I have to go through some ritual involving opening and closing the laptop lid and connecting cables in a certain order to maintain screen orientations and try to get the thing to even wake up. I power cycle my dock at least three times a week to try and make it all work

I used to have a 2014 RMBP with the Apple display and it was fantastic because it was all built by Apple and Just Worked (TM).

Hopefully moving to their own chip fab is the start of them going back to owning the entire device solution.