The Mac Pro is PCIe 3.0 - which simply isn't fast enough. Even budget computers from AMD are now running PCIe 4. The Mac Pro 2019 was built using tech that was obsolete on launch. You can get a B550 motherboard with a PCIe 4.0 SSD for 50-100% better performance on storage.
PCIe-4 support depends on Intel, not on Apple. Show us any Xeon that supports PCIe-4 yet. Your point is irrelevant.
Apple could have gone PCIe 4.0 with AMD (which they use exclusively for GPUs) but decided to deliver obsolete technology. Isn't that relevant?
OK, performance and architecture differences put aside, how many Ryzens AMD could deliver matching Apple's specifications? This is a matter of quality and production scale. Even Intel can barely fulfill Apple's demands, if you melt a motherboard every couple of years the speed of your PCIe 4 won't help. Mac Pro is not a DIY home tinkerer's hobby.
Ryzen and EPYC (check the EPYC 7702P) are manufactured side-by-side Apple Silicon by TSMC. Each Mac Pro does come with a GPU made by AMD made on the same 7nm by TSMC. Quality? Scale to production? Not a problem to either Apple or AMD. Apple spent 5 years on doing nothing for the Mac Pro and then in late 2019 they went with a power heavy 14nm CPU and PCIe 3.0. It was obsolete on arrival.
The availability of GPUs from AMD may not be a reason to a total switch to AMD because Apple sells more models without discrete GPUs than those with AMD GPUs. And since a total switch would necessitate the rewriting of the whole Mac ecosystem (actually optimized for Intel), Apple may have chosen rewriting the whole ecosystem for Apple Silicon instead of AMD. That simply proves that AMD has failed to sell enough GPUs to Apple to make a total switch to AMD an attractive option. MacPro obsolete because of PCIe 3.0? Let be it. A DIY home tinkered PC beats the Mac Pro? Great, go for it, all nations need those creative home tinkerers. But businesses think differently than home tinkerers.
It could be that the reason Apple 'did nothing' is because they've been planning this move for ten years.
As the A12z is effectively a 2018 chip, I'm assuming that Apple is holding back to show a beefed-up desktop optimised successor that will blow the A12z out of the water. I'm sure they did mention a family of upcoming chips. I'm just wondering if the baseline would be the A12z successor with maybe a couple of more powerful options up to something like a 64-core Graviton2 style chip for the Mac Pro and what the cost would be compared to Intel.
The key is the performance per watt. A series SoCs have been great in that regard, so scaling up the performance to larger laptop batteries and hardware that is always plugged in should not be a problem. The A14X will likely blow the A12Z out of the water by itself, and then Apple could have Mac specific designs that are even better since they could be designed for a larger power source than an iPad battery.
macOS evolves. I'm sure someone coming from System 6 or 7 would look at Catalina and say "This isn't a Mac any more".
The problem is that it is too much Mac - no matter if you came from System 4 or 6.0.5. You have a menu designed for 9" screens - now you have to chase across much larger screens to the top and back to the content. You have a way of structuring files designed for local 400k disks - and you still need to manually structure them, they are still files (no OpenDoc here), and they don't find data across other sources. We really didn't need yet another skin. We need a better way for computers to assist us at work, and we really could use Apple to take us there.
I would not disagree with that. the Keyboard/Pointer/Mouse paradigm has been with us for a long time. I'd think we could do better.
Actually no need for a Mac, whatever processor is planted in, but the iPad battery life is too short and not user replaceable. Why Apple doesn't design the iPhone and iPad to have the battery swap possible at user level?
Sad! grab an Intel Mac Pro while you can. ARM Macs will be inferior in performance.
Source?
A (potential) A-Series out performing an Intel MacPro ?
Look at the first slide of this article. It shows that most of the benefit of going to an A-Series processor is the performance to power consumption ratio -- and showing desktops outstripping on both counts: more performance and more power consumption - with the ratio weighted towards a big increase in power consumption versus a smaller increase in performance. But then, somebody running a MacPro at full performance probably isn't concerned about power consumption.
It remains to be seen if today's A-Series chips can run with a full blown Xeon processor -- or even an I9 fully configured for performance. Maybe eventually, but I very much doubt it today. I suspect the MacPro will be the last to be converted to "Apple Silicon".
That 10-year or older 720p webcam they haven’t changed in the 2020 MacBook pros but they want to change the cpu to an inferior product
There you are again! Raawwwhrhr! Get off of here you little troll!
Justified! But then he did have a point: The Corona Virus and the push towards virtual meetings made crappy front facing cameras kind of obsolete. Time to start upgrading not only the resolution but the kinds of things that make for a good image on the rear cameras of iPhones.
Your points don't really have anything to do with anything.
It should be possible to disagree without being rude, and I'm not even sure we do disagree. Well, on style we do.
Apple's drop in the K-12 market is because they chose not to develop a machine cheap enough to keep their share at 60%. ...
There really is no point bleating on about market share, because for Apple it's of secondary concern when up against profit.
You're saying that after 40 years of Apple in Education then schools decided that "cheap" was the only thing. Do you really believe the focus on cost+value is new in K-12? It has been like that forever and Apple did profit from K-12 - not on margins but on volume. When it comes to value then K-12 is the canary in the coal mine.
Jobs once asked a CEO: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?". Tim Cook is thrilled with selling sugar water like animojis, widgets, and UI skins. He is not moving us forward on how we work or gather/structure/validate our knowledge.
Actually no need for a Mac, whatever processor is planted in, but the iPad battery life is too short and not user replaceable. Why Apple doesn't design the iPhone and iPad to have the battery swap possible at user level?
Really?
I mean, WTF, that was an argument back in 2007, maybe 2008, but today, it absolutely isn't going to happen, and it shouldn't.
This has never been just about speed, so throwing in comparisons against a processor you haven’t seen is rather pointless.
I agree completely. Take a look at the Performance vs. Power "chart" that Tim showed with Desktops and Laptops and where Apple wants to be. It's not a coincidence that the blue (where we want to be) area is barely higher on the Performance scale and much lower on the Power scale. If they wanted to sell this as a raw performance play, they would have put that blue area much higher (or extending much higher).
I am also skeptical. All of this talk about virtualization, Rosetta, etc. Very reminiscent of when we went from PowerPC to Intel. The difference is, going to Intel was a boon because suddenly we had Macs that could run linux, Windows, etc. It was great, and I promptly tossed my Windows machine out a window.
Now? We're going in the opposite direction, hoping all of these virtualization technologies won't take a bit performance hit (I've got news. They always do!). He's talking about getting linux running on a mac, which is great, but are we talking about custom ARM builds? There are only a limited number of distros (granted, all my favorites are there) and even then having ARM support doesn't by any means guarantee compatibility with your arm processor. Nothing has been built for Apple's chips that I know of (yet).
And graphics performance? Anyone here really think Apple is going to magically be able to compete with nVidia hardware, with on-the-fly ray tracing support? I find it hard to swallow. We will need to get AMD or nVidia to create drivers for OSX I suppose if we have their gpu's at all.
Then we have the question of native performance. Until I see some benchmarks I will reserve judgment. I'll be very happy indeed if they can get their chips to compete with the latest Ryzen cpus.
Just so I'm not sounding too negative, I am very excited for the common development across iOS and OSX. This should bring a ton of software across both platforms.
While xCode is huge with iOS development, I am not aware of those outside of that ecosystem being big fans. This turns on getting everyone to use it, no? Otherwise we aren't going to see as many apps from Windows developers who wanted to go cross-platform, but don't want to switch IDE's.
Ive been pointing this out since yesterday. All of the demos Apple did were on a machine powered by the same A12Z SoC my iPad Pro has, that I’m typing on now. This is an SoC that‘s based on the older A12, not last year’s A13. So it’s already a generation older, with the A13 being substantially faster. In just 3 months, maybe 4 if COVID delays things, the A14 will be out, again substantially faster yet. In addition Apple stated, very clearly, that Apple powered Macs will have a line of chips developed SPECIFICALLY for the Mac, stating that they will be more powerful.
the A12Z has Apple’s integrated graphics, using shared regular RAM, not fast graphics ram. When they put the Maya demo on, software I also use, with 6 million polygons, it was very impressive. When they ran Tomb Raider, it was also impressive, even though it was apparently in 1080p. This is with a now older chip. It amazingly shows x86 apps running at close to normal speed. When Apple moved to the PPC and later to x86, it took almost two years to have emulated apps run at full speed on the new machines, as their speed kept rising. While Intel will keep making chips, and they will keep getting better, as will AMD’s, Apple’s chips will improve faster. Maybe substantially so.
apple has the advantage of not having all the 16 and 32 bit cruft on their chips. This helps them use silicon for machine learning, and all of the other technologies that are being increasingly used by developers. Metal is also considered to be an advantage.
i agree that we have to wait until a “real” ARM powered Mac to see what the performance will be, but with Apple saying that their GPU will be very performance oriented, I think we should at least be encouraged.
I remain skeptical. Not because I don't think Apple can pull this off. They've done it 2x before so clearly they can. Consumers probably won't notice any difference other than better battery life, etc. Will large corporations buy any laptop that doesn't have an x86 compatible processor? Clearly they buy lots of iPhones and iPads so perhaps. Fortunately for Apple the Mac is a small portion of their overall revenue so the risk is relatively small. Especially compared to their last major transition when Mac was the majority of their revenue. This is a multi-year adventure so it will be interesting to follow Apple's progress.
I think we're at the point where for "desktop class" systems corporations aren't going to give a damn.
And they've done this more than twice before. Remember, what we call Apple and macOS today is really NeXT and NeXTSTEP rebranded. So, they started out on Motorola silicon, then switched to Intel (first instance of Fat Binaries aka Universal Apps). [We'll now skip a few niche architectures that NeXTSTEP also ran on.] After NeXT took over Apple, they moved to PowerPC and then, eventually, back to Intel. Each time the process was more seamless than the last, and this transition to Apple Silicon looks to be even more seamless for developers and users than the PowerPC to Intel transition was. They know how to do this.
I remain skeptical. Not because I don't think Apple can pull this off. They've done it 2x before so clearly they can. Consumers probably won't notice any difference other than better battery life, etc. Will large corporations buy any laptop that doesn't have an x86 compatible processor? Clearly they buy lots of iPhones and iPads so perhaps. Fortunately for Apple the Mac is a small portion of their overall revenue so the risk is relatively small. Especially compared to their last major transition when Mac was the majority of their revenue. This is a multi-year adventure so it will be interesting to follow Apple's progress.
I think we're at the point where for "desktop class" systems corporations aren't going to give a damn.
And they've done this more than twice before. Remember, what we call Apple and macOS today is really NeXT and NeXTSTEP rebranded. So, they started out on Motorola silicon, then switched to Intel (first instance of Fat Binaries aka Universal Apps). [We'll now skip a few niche architectures that NeXTSTEP also ran on.] After NeXT took over Apple, they moved to PowerPC and then, eventually, back to Intel. Each time the process was more seamless than the last, and this transition to Apple Silicon looks to be even more seamless for developers and users than the PowerPC to Intel transition was. They know how to do this.
I suspect the corporate acceptance will take a lot of time. It's already difficult convincing companies to consider an AMD processor rather than Intel. This is several degrees beyond that.
WWDC was a very boring and a major disappointment because no hardware was announced as rumored! I fell asleep watching this 1 1/2 hour of the Craig Federighi stand up comedy audition! I do not trust anything this software engineer claims because anything Apple tries with software always does not work in the beginning until several updates later! Time to look at another computer brand because Apple is going to destroy their already limited line up!
That’s nonsense! I hope you’re happy with Windows. I know we’ll be happy you left.
Actually no need for a Mac, whatever processor is planted in, but the iPad battery life is too short and not user replaceable. Why Apple doesn't design the iPhone and iPad to have the battery swap possible at user level?
Really?
I mean, WTF, that was an argument back in 2007, maybe 2008, but today, it absolutely isn't going to happen, and it shouldn't.
Seriously! I was expecting his next argument to be why Apple is wrong for not supporting Adobe Flash in iOS.
The Mac Pro is PCIe 3.0 - which simply isn't fast enough. Even budget computers from AMD are now running PCIe 4. The Mac Pro 2019 was built using tech that was obsolete on launch. You can get a B550 motherboard with a PCIe 4.0 SSD for 50-100% better performance on storage.
PCIe-4 support depends on Intel, not on Apple. Show us any Xeon that supports PCIe-4 yet. Your point is irrelevant.
Apple could have gone PCIe 4.0 with AMD (which they use exclusively for GPUs) but decided to deliver obsolete technology. Isn't that relevant?
If what you were saying were true, which it isn’t. Every day I would hope that Apple never went with AMD. It’s a crapshoot with them. They have islands of occasional brilliance in a vast sea of mediocrity.
it doesn’t even make sense to say obsolete technology. Intel tech isn’t any more obsolete than AMD. Though both are obsolete when compared to Apple’s technology.
I remain skeptical. Not because I don't think Apple can pull this off. They've done it 2x before so clearly they can. Consumers probably won't notice any difference other than better battery life, etc. Will large corporations buy any laptop that doesn't have an x86 compatible processor? Clearly they buy lots of iPhones and iPads so perhaps. Fortunately for Apple the Mac is a small portion of their overall revenue so the risk is relatively small. Especially compared to their last major transition when Mac was the majority of their revenue. This is a multi-year adventure so it will be interesting to follow Apple's progress.
I think we're at the point where for "desktop class" systems corporations aren't going to give a damn.
And they've done this more than twice before. Remember, what we call Apple and macOS today is really NeXT and NeXTSTEP rebranded. So, they started out on Motorola silicon, then switched to Intel (first instance of Fat Binaries aka Universal Apps). [We'll now skip a few niche architectures that NeXTSTEP also ran on.] After NeXT took over Apple, they moved to PowerPC and then, eventually, back to Intel. Each time the process was more seamless than the last, and this transition to Apple Silicon looks to be even more seamless for developers and users than the PowerPC to Intel transition was. They know how to do this.
I suspect the corporate acceptance will take a lot of time. It's already difficult convincing companies to consider an AMD processor rather than Intel. This is several degrees beyond that.
Always the pessimist, and almost always wrong. (There was that one time you were right, for which I give you credit.) It's not at all, "several degrees beyond that," In fact it's nothing like considering an AMD processor. Buying a Mac from Apple won't be considered a risk because it's from Apple, built with "genuine" Apple Silicon. Buying an AMD processor might be considered a risk by some because it's not a "genuine" Intel processor. Total Apple and oranges comparison.
Apple hit problems with 68K Apple hit problems with PowerPC Apple hit problems with Intel
At some point you have realise that only you care enough about what you’re trying to do to make sure you have all the pieces in place to do it.
Apple failing to deliver more than 2 updates to Mac Pro in 10 years this isn't due to silicon. The problems Apple hit on the Mac - like going from 60% to 20% market share in K-12 (mac+iPad) were not due to silicon. Mac shipments dropped 21% from 2019 to 2020 - with all other vendors on x86 it simply isn't about the silicon.
Your points don't really have anything to do with anything. Apple's drop in the K-12 market is because they chose not to develop a machine cheap enough to keep their share at 60%. What they did was build a machine that allowed them to keep the most profitable 20%. Probably because they realised that the machine kids use at school doesn't seem to influence the machine they eventually use when they're in college or go to work.
There really is no point bleating on about market share, because for Apple it's of secondary concern when up against profit. So with that in mind, let's look at the problem they're trying to actually solve (their desktops and laptops running on a stagnating architecture), and what does the switch give them:
A machine that's cheaper to build. An ecosystem that is much simpler and cheaper to build software for, which benefits Apple's developers as well as Apple Machines that are optimised for the operating systems and software they're running. Machines that can be recycled and stripped down to power lower-end machines and devices later on.
I remember, years ago, when Apple bought PA-Semi, and we all thought that they were going to build their own PowerPC chips. The move to Intel was seen with much the same hysteria we're seeing from a few people here now. But we can see now that Intel was only ever a stop-gap. Complete control and integration was always the plan. I suspect that Apple's Silicon engineers knew precisely when Intel was going to hit the wall, and Apple's management knew that the company would do little about it because they have a near monopoly, so there was no real incentive for them to try harder.
I disagree with that statement. Apple's drop in the K-12 to market had little to do with Apple's product pricing and a lot to do with them not offering a software / service infrastructure that made the management and administration of those devices easy for teachers and IT staff. Apple wasn't beaten by cheap Chromebooks but by Google's well done Google Classroom cloud service.
Comments
Why Apple doesn't design the iPhone and iPad to have the battery swap possible at user level?
Justified!
But then he did have a point: The Corona Virus and the push towards virtual meetings made crappy front facing cameras kind of obsolete. Time to start upgrading not only the resolution but the kinds of things that make for a good image on the rear cameras of iPhones.
You're saying that after 40 years of Apple in Education then schools decided that "cheap" was the only thing. Do you really believe the focus on cost+value is new in K-12? It has been like that forever and Apple did profit from K-12 - not on margins but on volume. When it comes to value then K-12 is the canary in the coal mine.
Jobs once asked a CEO: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?". Tim Cook is thrilled with selling sugar water like animojis, widgets, and UI skins. He is not moving us forward on how we work or gather/structure/validate our knowledge.
I'm wondering if the resale value of my grandson's 500Gb MacBook Air running both MacOS and Windows 10 via BootCamp just went up?
I mean, WTF, that was an argument back in 2007, maybe 2008, but today, it absolutely isn't going to happen, and it shouldn't.
Seriously, all of this pearl clutching...
the A12Z has Apple’s integrated graphics, using shared regular RAM, not fast graphics ram. When they put the Maya demo on, software I also use, with 6 million polygons, it was very impressive. When they ran Tomb Raider, it was also impressive, even though it was apparently in 1080p. This is with a now older chip. It amazingly shows x86 apps running at close to normal speed. When Apple moved to the PPC and later to x86, it took almost two years to have emulated apps run at full speed on the new machines, as their speed kept rising. While Intel will keep making chips, and they will keep getting better, as will AMD’s, Apple’s chips will improve faster. Maybe substantially so.
apple has the advantage of not having all the 16 and 32 bit cruft on their chips. This helps them use silicon for machine learning, and all of the other technologies that are being increasingly used by developers. Metal is also considered to be an advantage.
i agree that we have to wait until a “real” ARM powered Mac to see what the performance will be, but with Apple saying that their GPU will be very performance oriented, I think we should at least be encouraged.
And they've done this more than twice before. Remember, what we call Apple and macOS today is really NeXT and NeXTSTEP rebranded. So, they started out on Motorola silicon, then switched to Intel (first instance of Fat Binaries aka Universal Apps). [We'll now skip a few niche architectures that NeXTSTEP also ran on.] After NeXT took over Apple, they moved to PowerPC and then, eventually, back to Intel. Each time the process was more seamless than the last, and this transition to Apple Silicon looks to be even more seamless for developers and users than the PowerPC to Intel transition was. They know how to do this.
it doesn’t even make sense to say obsolete technology. Intel tech isn’t any more obsolete than AMD. Though both are obsolete when compared to Apple’s technology.