This is going to suck. Most of you Millenials are too young to remember the Motorola days. Those were some dark days when you found out that the most popular software was not compatible with the Mac. It's kind of like the Discover card. The only thing you discover with the Discover card is that no one takes it.
Didn't bother me at all, it was great!
The move from motorola to intel was a great thing.
And if the time has come to move from intel to arm, then bring it on!
Granted, but like with the Discover Card, those early teething problems were overcome.
I'm going with low end laptops for Arm processors. Bring back the "Affordable" iBook name. Price around the same as iPads.
You prefer a tablet, iPad is for you. Prefer a laptop, then pick an iBook, maybe have a bunch of colour choices.....
6 months ago that was true. But now, with the Magic Keyboard, the iPad makes a pretty fair laptop too.
Since both will have variations of the same processor, excellent screens and audio, this will be interesting!
My speculation is that Apple will engineer much more thermal headroom, and a larger die, into an ARM Book than there is in an iPad, so I would expect a notable performance differential between the two.
From a marketing standpoint, Apple would want to do that to set themselves up as superior to Qualcomm's notebook SOC's that have been released, or are planned.
I'm going with low end laptops for Arm processors. Bring back the "Affordable" iBook name. Price around the same as iPads.
You prefer a tablet, iPad is for you. Prefer a laptop, then pick an iBook, maybe have a bunch of colour choices.....
6 months ago that was true. But now, with the Magic Keyboard, the iPad makes a pretty fair laptop too.
Since both will have variations of the same processor, excellent screens and audio, this will be interesting!
My speculation is that Apple will engineer much more thermal headroom, and a larger die, into an ARM Book than there is in an iPad, so I would expect a notable performance differential between the two.
From a marketing standpoint, Apple would want to do that to set themselves up as superior to Qualcomm's notebook SOC's that have been released, or are planned.
At the very least I hope this isn’t some kind of “netbooks the reunion” show
I'm going with low end laptops for Arm processors. Bring back the "Affordable" iBook name. Price around the same as iPads.
You prefer a tablet, iPad is for you. Prefer a laptop, then pick an iBook, maybe have a bunch of colour choices.....
6 months ago that was true. But now, with the Magic Keyboard, the iPad makes a pretty fair laptop too.
Since both will have variations of the same processor, excellent screens and audio, this will be interesting!
My speculation is that Apple will engineer much more thermal headroom, and a larger die, into an ARM Book than there is in an iPad, so I would expect a notable performance differential between the two.
From a marketing standpoint, Apple would want to do that to set themselves up as superior to Qualcomm's notebook SOC's that have been released, or are planned.
This will be interesting to see what type of competition grows in the ARM SoC market.
With ARM finally working on big core designs, Cortex X1 will allow other non-Apple manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, to offer some considerable CPU performance.
Do keep in mind the A14 on 5nm would be ahead of the A13 in the image above, however the Cortex X Program represents a major departure from ARM's previous design strategy.
Meanwhile the Cortex-X1 is a big change for Arm. And that change has less to do with the technology of the cores, and more with the business decisions that it now opens up for the company, although both are intertwined. For years many people were wondering why the company didn't design a core that could more closely compete with what Apple had built. In my view, one of the reasons for that was that Arm has always been constrained by the need to create a “one core fits all” design that could fit all of their customers’ needs – and not just the few flagship SoC designs.
The Cortex-X program here effectively unshackles Arm from these business limitations, and it allows the company to provide the best of both worlds. As a result, the A78 continues the company’s bread & butter design philosophy of power-performance-area leadership, whilst the X1 and its successors can now aim for the stars in terms of performance, without such strict area usage or power consumption limitations.
We all hope that Apple realizes that their product line is not like Highlander. There can be more than one product, with significant overlap in features and customers, at a certain price tier for a certain market, but also have significant differences that drive sales to other customers.
As somebody else noted, ARM drives iDevices, so Apple should use this to bring back an iBook line, not phase out the MacBook. The two can co-exist with developers going forward deploying software using a new universal binary that works with both Intel and ARM.
?
The MacBook is already gone, it was discontinued about a year ago. Are you talking about the entire MacBook * line? We don't expect an immediate MacBook Air or MacBook Pro replacement.
The branding on the ARM Macs, if true, is going to be interesting. They may change some of the product names like the last two times.
My impression is that the branding names of MacBook Air/Pro or just MacBook, the Mac Pro and the Mac mini has run its course and branding needs to be changed. The iMac has achieved permanency and can remain the same. Coming up with a new brand name sounds really hard and there is going to be a trademark mine field to traverse, lawsuits to contend with.
Given that, and “Apple” will be part of all these names:
Air Book? Magic Book? Pro Book XDR? Air Pad? Sequoia Book? LightningPad? LightBook? Macman? (Mac mini) GreenBook? Laptop series-1, 2, ...? Laptop Pro series-1, 2, ...? Mac XDR? (Mac Pro) Weed?
Argh. Branding is tough. Like product destroying tough, like the Sony Xperia...
Glad you don't work for Apple's marketing department. 😂
If macOS for ARM does not support the UNIX side, then the Mac in STEM will be dead. If macOS for ARM does not support a hypervisor for Docker, etc., then the Mac in STEM will be on life support. The data sciences are moving to containerization with Docker, Singularity, etc. and support of these technologies will be critical. Now, lack of support for CUDA is a big problem. In principal, Docker on ARM is supported, but it will be tricky even if Apple supports it. I would hate to think of moving to Windows Subsystem for Linux.
macOS needs to stay true, certified UNIX! If they break this, it's a serious, serious mistake, as it has become one of the reasons why macOS has survived and prospered.
If macOS for ARM does not support the UNIX side, then the Mac in STEM will be dead. If macOS for ARM does not support a hypervisor for Docker, etc., then the Mac in STEM will be on life support. The data sciences are moving to containerization with Docker, Singularity, etc. and support of these technologies will be critical. Now, lack of support for CUDA is a big problem. In principal, Docker on ARM is supported, but it will be tricky even if Apple supports it. I would hate to think of moving to Windows Subsystem for Linux.
It’s unlikely that Unix will be going away. The kernel will certainly still be there and not providing a terminal and/or sshd service would turn the Mac into something closer to an iPad.
Virtualization is a big unknown though. I occasionally need a full VM, and am almost always running at least one container. If we lose Virtualization support, a lot of devs (like myself) will have little choice but to move to Linux.
But it raises the question of how much better a low-end ARM based MacBook would be over an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard and mouse for the average, non-power user consumer?
Let's see:
The ARM based MacBook has: -- A really nice clamshell design that is sturdy, portable and works well on a lap.
-- Multiple external ports
-- Versatile and powerful MacOS (or some semblance of it)
-- Bigger screen and bigger battery
The iPad Pro with Magic keyboard has:
-- LTE go-anywhere connectivity
-- Ability to convert to high quality tablet mode as needed
-- I simple, easy to learn and use OS that iPhone users can easily and readily adapt to without taking a course.
-- Compatibility with a plethora of apps
-- Ability to use the Apple Pencil
-- Touch screen
For many, the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard will be the better buy and the best fit for their needs.
That's not to trash the ARM based MacBook, but to point out that it will have a very high bar to clear.
Yep, why not build out and increase the function of the iPad Family instead of opening a world of confusion of "Not-quiet Mac" Macs.
What ever they have planned must have its own compelling narative.
I hope Apple can pull off an ARM-based Mac, but call me skeptical. On a 12" light, thin machine like the defunct 'MacBook' sure. On higher end Macs? Again I am extremely skeptical. Two things Apple has going for it: 1. They have successfully done processor transitions before (Motorola 6X00 ---> PowerPC & PowerPC ---> Intel) 2. Large catalog of iPadOS apps and large developer community.
Other questions. Would an ARM-based Mac have a touchscreen? Would Apple completely abandon Intel processors?
I already lived through the PowerPC era and in many ways moving to Intel breathed new life into the hardware. The stagnant PowerPC was ditched and in turn we gained access to a lot stuff that was Intel centric.
ARM has come a long way, especially in the mobile arena, but my concern is losing access to stuff that was designed to run on Intel chips. Apple needs to demonstrate that x86 apps can run as fast or faster on the new hardware to be interesting, in emulation. I am just worried that we will be back in a world where as Mac users we are on the defensive again for a niche choice.
Why would it? They could have a touch screen right now on Intel. There's nothing inherent in ARM that correlates with touch screens. It's not the chip, it's the UI/UX.
But it raises the question of how much better a low-end ARM based MacBook would be over an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard and mouse for the average, non-power user consumer?
Let's see:
The ARM based MacBook has: -- A really nice clamshell design that is sturdy, portable and works well on a lap.
-- Multiple external ports
-- Versatile and powerful MacOS (or some semblance of it)
-- Bigger screen and bigger battery
The iPad Pro with Magic keyboard has:
-- LTE go-anywhere connectivity
-- Ability to convert to high quality tablet mode as needed
-- I simple, easy to learn and use OS that iPhone users can easily and readily adapt to without taking a course.
-- Compatibility with a plethora of apps
-- Ability to use the Apple Pencil
-- Touch screen
For many, the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard will be the better buy and the best fit for their needs.
That's not to trash the ARM based MacBook, but to point out that it will have a very high bar to clear.
Yep, why not build out and increase the function of the iPad Family instead of opening a world of confusion of "Not-quiet Mac" Macs.
What ever they have planned must have its own compelling narative.
This pretty much sums it up. We don't know what exactly they are thinking, but we can bet that this has been well thought out and is not simply change for change sake or some cost cutting measure like we could expect from a lesser company.
I already lived through the PowerPC era and in many ways moving to Intel breathed new life into the hardware. The stagnant PowerPC was ditched and in turn we gained access to a lot stuff that was Intel centric.
ARM has come a long way, especially in the mobile arena, but my concern is losing access to stuff that was designed to run on Intel chips. Apple needs to demonstrate that x86 apps can run as fast or faster on the new hardware to be interesting, in emulation. I am just worried that we will be back in a world where as Mac users we are on the defensive again for a niche choice.
I actually lived through both of Apple's CPU transitions and while the PPC was a huge step up in performance over 68K, the real game-changer for the platform was moving to x86. It allowed software companies to port to Mac more easily and there was a significant increase in cross-platform games and other software. And for software that wasn't available for Mac, you could even run Windows itself either via Bootcamp or in a VM. All that ends in a move to an ARM instruction set.
Now what would be clever, imo, is Apple rolling their own x86 knockoff a la Ryzen...
Comments
Granted, but like with the Discover Card, those early teething problems were overcome.
From a marketing standpoint, Apple would want to do that to set themselves up as superior to Qualcomm's notebook SOC's that have been released, or are planned.
.
With ARM finally working on big core designs, Cortex X1 will allow other non-Apple manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, to offer some considerable CPU performance.
Do keep in mind the A14 on 5nm would be ahead of the A13 in the image above, however the Cortex X Program represents a major departure from ARM's previous design strategy.
macOS needs to stay true, certified UNIX! If they break this, it's a serious, serious mistake, as it has become one of the reasons why macOS has survived and prospered.
Virtualization is a big unknown though. I occasionally need a full VM, and am almost always running at least one container. If we lose Virtualization support, a lot of devs (like myself) will have little choice but to move to Linux.
1. They have successfully done processor transitions before (Motorola 6X00 ---> PowerPC & PowerPC ---> Intel)
2. Large catalog of iPadOS apps and large developer community.
Other questions. Would an ARM-based Mac have a touchscreen? Would Apple completely abandon Intel processors?
Guess more to be revealed soon 🤔