I actually have a lot of nostalgia for PPC. The promise of RISC processors was a good one, but IBM just wasn't up to the task of looking toward efficiency and Intel caught up. I still, at least in concept, prefer the RISC model.
People thought the PPC and the AIM (Apple IBM Motorola) alliance were going to rule the world. Then nothing pretty much happened. THANK GOD Steve Jobs had PLAN B.
I can see it 5 years from now...Intel will only be in Pro level Macs. Mac Air and Mini may run on custom Apple chips.
A few years from now, Tim cook will go on stage saying "We have been running OSX on iPads inside Apple for the last five years" and will introduce the first ARM-based Mac that runs Intel-Mac programs and the universal app will be born again as an iPad/OSX cross-over (and remind us they did the same from PPC to Intel in 2005).
People thought the PPC and the AIM (Apple IBM Motorola) alliance were going to rule the world. Then nothing pretty much happened. THANK GOD Steve Jobs had PLAN B.
Oh, well. Life goes on.
More like Apple's Plan B and NeXT/Steve Jobs' Plan A.
A few years from now, Tim cook will go on stage saying "We have been running OSX on iPads inside Apple for the last five years" and will introduce the first ARM-based Mac that runs Intel-Mac programs and the universal app will be born again as an iPad/OSX cross-over (and remind us they did the same from PPC to Intel in 2005).
Maybe. The latest OS X runs like a dog on a 2009 MacBook Pro. Not sure how current A chips compare though.
Hopefully they fix the Yosemite and iOS 8 mess of bugs and issues first and stop cranking out endless features every year.
Maybe. The latest OS X runs like a dog on a 2009 MacBook Pro. Not sure how current A chips compare though.
Hopefully they fix the Yosemite and iOS 8 mess of bugs and issues first and stop cranking out endless features every year.
I have a few Macs but one I use a lot is a 2010 15" MBP i7. I can't speak to your model but mine is great with 10.10.2. What is so different between the 2009 and 2010 MBP I wonder?
I did a few mods along the way though. I replaced the internal HD with a 256 GB SSD and removed the optical and popped a 1TB HD there. Sadly I am stuck with 8 GB RAM as the model I have predates the ability to use 16 GB RAM. That said the machine flies and by using Air Parrot I have the ability to run a similar function to Air Play and I can run Air Drop if on newer Macs I click the 'work with older Macs' option. So no problems what so ever with the latest OS X.
If you haven't tried it, I can say the SSD made my MBP 10 x faster!
I can see it 5 years from now...Intel will only be in Pro level Macs. Mac Air and Mini may run on custom Apple chips.
That's my thoughts too. In fact a Mac Pro could have both for total compatabilty. I am sure the cost of an extra couple of A10s and a Xeon or two would not be noticed in the cost of a future Mac Pro, ... ... Half joking there ...
I have little doubt there are ARM-powered Macs running OS X in a lab somewhere in Cupertino, possibly for years.
While we'll never know, it's possible they started doing this in 2012.
ARM unveiled their new 64-bit architecture in October 2011. Most likely Apple taped out one or two 64-bit chips that never saw service in a shipping product, but remained in the lab for study. Finally, in 2013, Apple's 64-bit design was ready for primetime, in the form of the Apple A7 processor. By then, there have surely been ARM-powered Macs in a lab.
For some reason people seem to think a Mac with an ARM processor has to be as powerful as Macs with an Intel processor while also running all the same software; this is incorrect. The first ARM-powered Mac (MacBook?) only has to be as powerful as the high-end iPad, but will have the advantages of a Mac such as:
larger screen
physical keyboard
more RAM, most likely be soldered, though
user-upgradable PCIe storage
All of Apple's consumer software, and those that come with OS X, will be available immediately, and it will not take long for 3rd-party software developers so update their software.
I can see it 5 years from now...Intel will only be in Pro level Macs. Mac Air and Mini may run on custom Apple chips.
On the contrary. Personally, I believe that the iBook series is making a comeback, running a more "featured" version of iOS. The iPod Nano and AppleWatch show that Apple can mold iOS as it pleases. Even the iPad has a slightly different iOS version.
Just like it happened from the iPhone to the iPad, it will happen again.
As those iBooks gain traction and dev support on the scale that the Mac never saw, the Mac-line will be phased out, in some years time.
OS X, despite immensely better than Windows, is going to die as soon as the iOS time says: It's showtime.
Apple doesn't buy the most chips from Intel, but all the chips they buy are in the higher consumer end, scarcely dropping into the sub $300 range (on their public price sheet for lots of 1000) for any of their Macs. But I think that's only the minor issue for Intel.
Intel (and everyone else) knows that Apple is the trend setter. If ARM has reached a point that the power per watt is more than sufficient for a standard user's traditional "PC" needs then Apple moving to ARM would be the start of a large of issue for Intel (and AMD). With smartphones and tablets being the go-to devices for most consumers these days, the traditional "PC" as a laptop or desktop has been reduced to doing the occasional, "heavy" workload for the majority of users.
If Apple makes that move within a few years Windows desktop will be ARM — already is with Windows RT — which will regulate Intel to the higher-end of the market, which may put them in a niche position that doesn't allow them to balance development costs over many, many years on a a wide range of chips. I'd even say that MS would like this movie because it would reduce the cost of "PCs" thereby increasing unit sales without reducing the cost for Windows licenses to the OEMs.
Perhaps one day Apple will supply Microsoft with ARM chips ... the Earth would probably stop spinning but you never know
I have a few Macs but one I use a lot is a 2010 15" MBP i7. I can't speak to your model but mine is great with 10.10.2. What is so different between the 2009 and 2010 MBP I wonder?
I did a few mods along the way though. I replaced the internal HD with a 256 GB SSD and removed the optical and popped a 1TB HD there. Sadly I am stuck with 8 GB RAM as the model I have predates the ability to use 16 GB RAM. That said the machine flies and by using Air Parrot I have the ability to run a similar function to Air Play and I can run Air Drop if on newer Macs I click the 'work with older Macs' option. So no problems what so ever with the latest OS X.
If you haven't tried it, I can say the SSD made my MBP 10 x faster!
Yes, I have an early 2009. It's a handmedown from my daughter for $300 after I got water damage on my 2011 machine. There is quite a bit of difference between early 2009 and older machines and this is a basic i5 base model Pro so...
Very good idea for the SSD. Certainly an option. In our case, the battery is shot, so...price performance, might just be better to ditch it at 4GB and get a refurb Air instead of upgrading to SSD/8 GB RAM. HD is 500 GB, so that's kind of nice, but most of our stuff is on external & cloud. And considering it's 2009 vs spending a couple of hundred more to get a refurbed or new Air, might be worth it.
The other issue might be that I was particularly lazy at the OS upgrade. The OS X upgrade is one upon the other and no clean install. Daughter had Parallels and Windows running and Office and didn't want to mess with that setup and took the path of least resistance.
Anyhoo, thanks for the feedback. It might be $300 at this point to upgrade to 8GB/SSD of some size/new Apple battery. That would be $300 into a machine worth $300 and it's a boat anchor.
The other factor: we are primarily using iPhones, Chromebooks (on which I type this) and iPads.
As Steve J. said, the Macbook Pro 13" is our "Truck". It does the one or two things our iOS and Chromebook devices don't do.
Heck, we may go seemingly old skool and sell the laptop and get a Mac desktop???
Until then, our other devices are 99% of our use. Wife and stepdaughter only use iOS. Daughters and I primarily only use iOS.
So with all of this Intel confidence you would think that Broadwell based Air would be here by now. I may love my Apple products but I really hate how they drag out the introduction of refreshed and new products.
So with all of this Intel confidence you would think that Broadwell based Air would be here by now. I may love my Apple products but I really hate how they drag out the introduction of refreshed and new products.
The following site says Broadwell-U will be coming in February/March/April:
Core-i3 in February, i5 in March, i7 in April. Apple could bring out a new Air in March and not ship the configurable i7 models until a couple of weeks later. Intel might drop Broadwell H because Skylake is on schedule:
Broadwell H was due in Q2 around Summer but Skylake H is due in the back-to-school period so it doesn't make much sense to put out a new MBP in June only to follow it up with a Skylake model 3 months later.
I could see Apple skipping Broadwell altogether, it wouldn't be the first time they've drawn out a product refresh. If they did, all models would be pushed back to September. Given that the Air is their biggest seller, they could use Broadwell U in March but leave it without a Retina display and then bring out redesigned Retina Skylake Airs in September along with Skylake MBPs with Iris Pro 7200 GPUs. These IGPs should be about 80% faster than Iris Pro 5200. Given that the NVidia 950M will most likely be a rebadge of the 850M, Iris Pro should be comparable in performance. The higher up rMBP could switch from having an NVidia GPU to having more than 16GB of RAM e.g 24GB or 32GB as it's DDR4 and allow the IGP to use 4-8GB of video memory while the 16GB model is limited to 2GB.
Core-i3 in February, i5 in March, i7 in April. Apple could bring out a new Air in March and not ship the configurable i7 models until a couple of weeks later. Intel might drop Broadwell H because Skylake is on schedule:
I've heard the same thing from other sources, there is a real good chance that we won't see a new MBP until SkyLake ships. It makes sense really as it would address the lackluster CPU improvements seen in the Mac Book Pros of late. The MBPs are where CPU improvements are really needed.
Broadwell H was due in Q2 around Summer but Skylake H is due in the back-to-school period so it doesn't make much sense to put out a new MBP in June only to follow it up with a Skylake model 3 months later.
I could see Apple skipping Broadwell altogether, it wouldn't be the first time they've drawn out a product refresh. If they did, all models would be pushed back to September. Given that the Air is their biggest seller, they could use Broadwell U in March but leave it without a Retina display and then bring out redesigned Retina Skylake Airs in September along with Skylake MBPs with Iris Pro 7200 GPUs.
I would think that due to Airs great success that they would go to Broadwell as soon as humanly possible. However doing so without Retina may be an issue. We are seeing more and more hardware with screens that pass as Retina on the market. That leave the Air exposed as the screen is something easy for people to judge.
These IGPs should be about 80% faster than Iris Pro 5200. Given that the NVidia 950M will most likely be a rebadge of the 850M, Iris Pro should be comparable in performance. The higher up rMBP could switch from having an NVidia GPU to having more than 16GB of RAM e.g 24GB or 32GB as it's DDR4 and allow the IGP to use 4-8GB of video memory while the 16GB model is limited to 2GB.
DDR 4 should really do a lot for Intels integrated GPUs as bandwidth is a performance problem on all so called APUs. Of course on the MBPs this is only a benefit if the Discrete GPU is not installed. What will be most interesting is seeing DDR 4 in something like the Mac Mini where it should provide a huge overall boost in performance.
Comments
I actually have a lot of nostalgia for PPC. The promise of RISC processors was a good one, but IBM just wasn't up to the task of looking toward efficiency and Intel caught up. I still, at least in concept, prefer the RISC model.
People thought the PPC and the AIM (Apple IBM Motorola) alliance were going to rule the world. Then nothing pretty much happened. THANK GOD Steve Jobs had PLAN B.
Oh, well. Life goes on.
A few years from now, Tim cook will go on stage saying "We have been running OSX on iPads inside Apple for the last five years" and will introduce the first ARM-based Mac that runs Intel-Mac programs and the universal app will be born again as an iPad/OSX cross-over (and remind us they did the same from PPC to Intel in 2005).
More like Apple's Plan B and NeXT/Steve Jobs' Plan A.
Maybe. The latest OS X runs like a dog on a 2009 MacBook Pro. Not sure how current A chips compare though.
Hopefully they fix the Yosemite and iOS 8 mess of bugs and issues first and stop cranking out endless features every year.
I have a few Macs but one I use a lot is a 2010 15" MBP i7. I can't speak to your model but mine is great with 10.10.2. What is so different between the 2009 and 2010 MBP I wonder?
I did a few mods along the way though. I replaced the internal HD with a 256 GB SSD and removed the optical and popped a 1TB HD there. Sadly I am stuck with 8 GB RAM as the model I have predates the ability to use 16 GB RAM. That said the machine flies and by using Air Parrot I have the ability to run a similar function to Air Play and I can run Air Drop if on newer Macs I click the 'work with older Macs' option. So no problems what so ever with the latest OS X.
If you haven't tried it, I can say the SSD made my MBP 10 x faster!
That's my thoughts too. In fact a Mac Pro could have both for total compatabilty. I am sure the cost of an extra couple of A10s and a Xeon or two would not be noticed in the cost of a future Mac Pro, ...
It will take strong ARMs to compete with Intel in Macs.
- larger screen
- physical keyboard
- more RAM, most likely be soldered, though
- user-upgradable PCIe storage
All of Apple's consumer software, and those that come with OS X, will be available immediately, and it will not take long for 3rd-party software developers so update their software.I can see it 5 years from now...Intel will only be in Pro level Macs. Mac Air and Mini may run on custom Apple chips.
On the contrary. Personally, I believe that the iBook series is making a comeback, running a more "featured" version of iOS. The iPod Nano and AppleWatch show that Apple can mold iOS as it pleases. Even the iPad has a slightly different iOS version.
Just like it happened from the iPhone to the iPad, it will happen again.
As those iBooks gain traction and dev support on the scale that the Mac never saw, the Mac-line will be phased out, in some years time.
OS X, despite immensely better than Windows, is going to die as soon as the iOS time says: It's showtime.
Perhaps one day Apple will supply Microsoft with ARM chips ... the Earth would probably stop spinning but you never know
I have a few Macs but one I use a lot is a 2010 15" MBP i7. I can't speak to your model but mine is great with 10.10.2. What is so different between the 2009 and 2010 MBP I wonder?
I did a few mods along the way though. I replaced the internal HD with a 256 GB SSD and removed the optical and popped a 1TB HD there. Sadly I am stuck with 8 GB RAM as the model I have predates the ability to use 16 GB RAM. That said the machine flies and by using Air Parrot I have the ability to run a similar function to Air Play and I can run Air Drop if on newer Macs I click the 'work with older Macs' option. So no problems what so ever with the latest OS X.
If you haven't tried it, I can say the SSD made my MBP 10 x faster!
Yes, I have an early 2009. It's a handmedown from my daughter for $300 after I got water damage on my 2011 machine. There is quite a bit of difference between early 2009 and older machines and this is a basic i5 base model Pro so...
Very good idea for the SSD. Certainly an option. In our case, the battery is shot, so...price performance, might just be better to ditch it at 4GB and get a refurb Air instead of upgrading to SSD/8 GB RAM. HD is 500 GB, so that's kind of nice, but most of our stuff is on external & cloud. And considering it's 2009 vs spending a couple of hundred more to get a refurbed or new Air, might be worth it.
The other issue might be that I was particularly lazy at the OS upgrade. The OS X upgrade is one upon the other and no clean install. Daughter had Parallels and Windows running and Office and didn't want to mess with that setup and took the path of least resistance.
Anyhoo, thanks for the feedback. It might be $300 at this point to upgrade to 8GB/SSD of some size/new Apple battery. That would be $300 into a machine worth $300 and it's a boat anchor.
The other factor: we are primarily using iPhones, Chromebooks (on which I type this) and iPads.
As Steve J. said, the Macbook Pro 13" is our "Truck". It does the one or two things our iOS and Chromebook devices don't do.
Heck, we may go seemingly old skool and sell the laptop and get a Mac desktop???
Until then, our other devices are 99% of our use. Wife and stepdaughter only use iOS. Daughters and I primarily only use iOS.
The following site says Broadwell-U will be coming in February/March/April:
http://www.techspot.com/news/59328-intel-updates-nuc-lineup-broadwell-chips-swappable-lids.html
Core-i3 in February, i5 in March, i7 in April. Apple could bring out a new Air in March and not ship the configurable i7 models until a couple of weeks later. Intel might drop Broadwell H because Skylake is on schedule:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/36782-intel-confirms-skylake-on-time
Broadwell H was due in Q2 around Summer but Skylake H is due in the back-to-school period so it doesn't make much sense to put out a new MBP in June only to follow it up with a Skylake model 3 months later.
I could see Apple skipping Broadwell altogether, it wouldn't be the first time they've drawn out a product refresh. If they did, all models would be pushed back to September. Given that the Air is their biggest seller, they could use Broadwell U in March but leave it without a Retina display and then bring out redesigned Retina Skylake Airs in September along with Skylake MBPs with Iris Pro 7200 GPUs. These IGPs should be about 80% faster than Iris Pro 5200. Given that the NVidia 950M will most likely be a rebadge of the 850M, Iris Pro should be comparable in performance. The higher up rMBP could switch from having an NVidia GPU to having more than 16GB of RAM e.g 24GB or 32GB as it's DDR4 and allow the IGP to use 4-8GB of video memory while the 16GB model is limited to 2GB.
DDR 4 should really do a lot for Intels integrated GPUs as bandwidth is a performance problem on all so called APUs. Of course on the MBPs this is only a benefit if the Discrete GPU is not installed. What will be most interesting is seeing DDR 4 in something like the Mac Mini where it should provide a huge overall boost in performance.