There's is no way that Apple is going to bifurcate their OS X market. And that's exactly what would happen.
You are right.
It's a strategic decision to divide the market into iOS devices or OS X devices.
Any laptop will be on OS X at least for the rest of this decade and it will incorporate an Intel CPU.
But your argumentation that's because ARM isn't strong enough is wrong.
The single core performance of an A9X will surpass anything AMD has to offer just 1 month from now.
In two years the single core performance of an A11X will catch up with the fastest mobile chips Intel will have available at that time.
And with 4 cores (and maybe SMT) multi core performance will be equal too.
The decision to buy a tablet or a laptop will only be about what you want to do and how you want to do it, not about what performance needs you might have.
I do do graphics work for a living. I don't consider myself a professional graphic designer, but I create better work than 80% of the so called professional designers that I meet as an iOS dev, and it's usually me that ends up doing the graphics.
As I said, if you read my post, it does NOT compete on features, but it ruins Adobe on UI and stability. You can have a multi million $ music studio and still make shit music, another man could make great music with a $1 flute. It's horses for courses.
A lot of lower end graphics and photo people don't need Adobe's pro apps. No question of that, but I ran a commercial photo lab in NYC for many years, and Adobe is the gold standard, like it or not.
Well, I'm assuming it would be running a variant of iOS with OSX relegated to 'pro' machines, and destined to die in the distant future.
I agree. I think what we will see is a unified OS in 2017. Note that Apple continued to use OS "X" even though we are up to version 12 off it. iOS 9 and iOS 10 will be mobile specific, but I believe the timelines will converge with OS 11.
There's not much you couldn't do on a super powerful iOS type of platform. Yes software would be rewritten for it but that's already happening.
You are right.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">It's a strategic decision to </span>
divide the market into <span style="line-height:1.4em;">iOS devices or OS X devices.</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Any laptop will be on OS X at least for the rest of this decade and it will incorporate an Intel CPU.</span>
But your argumentation that's because ARM isn't strong enough is wrong. The single core performance of an A9X will surpass anything AMD has to offer just 1 month from now. In two years the single core performance of an A11X will catch up with the fastest mobile chips Intel will have available at that time. And with 4 cores (and maybe SMT) multi core performance will be equal too.
The decision to buy a tablet or a laptop will only be about what you want to do and how you want to do it, not about what performance needs you might have.
How do you get that the A9, or A9x will be more powerful, per core, than ANYTHING AMD will have a month from now? Can you give some performance numbers from some of AMD's higher end chips? If they don't go higher than a single core score of 2500, we all will be shocked.
What if something better than Adobe CC becomes available?
What if it allows you, and other similar companies, to do a better job -- significantly faster, easier at less cost.
Will you adapt?
If not, will you suffer from your competitors who have adapted?
What if, what if, what if. That's meaningless. We can all what if. What if we could travel faster than light? Yes, that's not serious. But we can what if forever. It doesn't do anything. It's just pure speculation. There needs to be a very good business reason. Just because a few people would like this doesn't mean that it's a good idea.
It needs to be looked at from Apple's point of view. What would this do for them? I've just posted price comparisons from Apple's site. An ARM notebook wouldn't cost less, it would cost more. Just look at Apple's pricing.$949 for a Pro with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage vs a Macbook Air with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage for $999. But you need to buy a keyboard for the Pro, and Apple's is $169, and it looks as though third parties keyboards will be about the same. So the Pro with keyboard is $1130. That's a lot more, and it's not really good as a laptop.
You and I have been around tech long enough to realize that if you don't constantly ask: "What if, What if" -- you'll soon be asking "What just happened?".
$799 for 32GB and no keyboard.
$949 for 128GB and no keyboard.
What was that about a $700 ARM notebook again?
Your point? You think those specs are somehow capable except for the processor? How much do you think an A10 will cost Apple as they sell upwards of 100 million per quarter compared to what Intel offers for CULV processors? You think the cost is 1:1, or more for the A-series chip? Really?
Just an observation. Could Apple go down the path that Motorola explored a few years ago with dedicated cores for specific functions? I think it was the Moto X that had 6 cores, but really two processing cores and four other task specific cores. I don't remember the details but it was supposed to be much more power efficient vs using the processing cores to run the tasks.
Didn't bother to read all the comment here but a few things
There is no 10nm Fab that would fit the volume for Apple. None. Not even Intel if they are working with Apple.
The next A10 is VERY likely to be TSMC 16nm exclusive. And since TSMC has issued a statement about decline in revenue in coming quarters it is highly likely the A9 is mostly being fabbed on Samsung 14nm.
Despite A10 still being on 16nm, the 16nm next year from TSMC will allow InFo, which is 3D die stack or more like Apple's watch S1 system on a package. It should, theoretically speaking allow Apple to have its WiFi, Bluetooth, and possibly 4G baseband integrated within the same package.
Having said that, I dont see how they will move from 16nm InFo to 10nm InFo because InFo tends to not to be on the leading node.
The iPad pro may be the gateway drug that slowly builds a robust ecosystem of more powerful software that makes its way and trickles down to the other idevices as customers upgrade to the latest products.
I don't see Apple putting their creative community in jeopardy, but let's also admit that the consumer market is far far bigger and more profitable in aggregate than a niche creative market. Apple is now big enough in both the laptop market and mobile market to call the shots for themselves. They know that their economy of scale is big enough to viably support their own chips,...and almost as importantly, to clear the path to their own future, instead of waiting on Intel or Adobe to grace them with something.
The iPad pro may be the gateway drug that slowly builds a robust ecosystem of more powerful software that makes its way and trickles down to the other devices...
Trickles up, rather. Multitouch is the future of desktop interaction.
By what measure? If it's an iOS laptop, no problem. If it's an OS X laptop, problem.
I'm not sure why you believe this. Right now an ARM based laptop with 8GB of RAM would have very similar performance to today's Mac Book. Given that Apple could operate the device at a higher power level than in the iPhone I really think this discussion is over.
We've been over this a number of times. Making an ARM OS X device is a lot more difficult than an iOS one. It's one reason Microsoft went with i3, i5 and i7 chips for the Surface Pro.
This is nonsense. Beyond that MS dropped ARN due to lack of sales which was due to a half assed product.
People keep thinking that Apple has OS X on ARM, since it's pretty much the same thing as iOS inside, and that Apple has iWork apps on iOS, so they could do that too. Simple! But it's not so simple. There is no way that Desktop Office or Apple's FCP suite, or Creative Cloud, would work off an ARM chip.
Why? The ARM 64 bit architecture can address a lot of memory, all Apple would need to do is to implement the addressing in hardware. In any event I'm expecting iPad Pro to demonstrate a whole bunch of new app capabilities when it is released.
Not going to happen! There is lots of software for OS X that's just too big and needs too much processing power for this.
There is a lot of software that can't run decently on the Mac Book, that is the reality of any generation laptop.
Then, there's the little problem that these third party apps would need to run in emulation. Forget it!
So you think iOS will "scale up" to include desktop computers.
The thought of iOS as a desktop OS makes me want to scream, so I hope they do something significantly different.
Along the lines of the concept in this patent filing?
But yeah, we’ll need a stand that can effortlessly move from vertical (for content consumption) to horizontal (for content creation). I had a theory that the evolution of the iMac shape for the last 10 years has been leading up to that. The angle of the curve in the case of the new models would be a nice angle for typing, laid down flat.
Absolutely wrong. DRAM has to be continually refreshed. Every 25-100 ms (depending on temperature, die quality, etc) the entire contents of RAM have to be read out and rewritten. Sitting idle, your iPhone is burning 40 GB/s of internal memory bandwidth. As a rough idea of how it scales as density increases, page 22 of this datasheet shows that power consumption increases by 70% when the amount of data to be refreshed doubles (half versus full array). https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/data-sheet/dram/mobile-dram/low-power-dram/lpddr3/253b_12-5x12-5_2ch_8-16gb_2c0f_mobile_lpddr3.pdf
I think the guy was talking about new technology like LPDDR4.
Right. Despite the skepticism of this article, Apple would need to study how many threads are available to run every time the processor wakes from sleep. Then the optimal number of cores would be based on this number. Straight doubling is not smart and is something Samsung would do, the best is to study the problem then design the chip.
Actually if there is effort put into the design for future generations doubling the number of execution units is easy. It is the way Intel does Xeons implementing blocks of execution units.
The reason was efficiency in a time when ARM was slow as hell. That's time is not now, and that time is not the future.
This was in response to me pointing out that Apple continue to diversify their OS offerings including 2 this year. Watch OS and TV OS. I know people see what they want to see but clearly Apple is not going down the monolithic one OS runs on everything route.
You're making assumptions that you have no right to make. There are thousands of programs out there for the Mac. How do you know how many of those are important, even vital to most Mac users? You don't. But you dismiss all of that too easily. We see people not wanting to move to the Mac because of just one program. Just one. How are they going to get these programs to work, if not by either porting them over, or using something like Rosetta, or Virtual PC? It's one or the other. Yes, IF Apple did this, they would provide a way to ease the process in the SDK. But anything other than simple apps are going to take work, often a lot of work. Most developers will do what they always do, and wait it out.
I want to see iOS continue to be developed to the point where I can continue using my iPad more and more. With the Pro, that will be easier. I foresee where I will use photoshop less for front end use, and more for back end use. This is the way we use Lightroom and Photoshop now. My daughter, a pro lhotographer and editor, is looking forwards to the Pro and Pencil as well. I'm pretty stoked over it. November is a long ways off right now.
But Apple needs to make major improvements in iOS before it can compete with OS X in many ways, and OS X simply isn't going to make it on ARM for a long time. Maybe if Apple did what I've been suggesting here with their ARM SoCs it wou,d have helped, but they look to be going in a different direction.
It really doesn't take a lot of work. Any properly written app would take a recompile and most App Store apps wouldn't even need that.
My last post about the apple bit code got lost I see. Here's what Apple says in the Xcode 7 release notes.
Bitcode. When you archive for submission to the App Store, Xcode compiles your app into an intermediate representation. The App Store then compiles the bitcode down into the 64- or 32-bit executables as necessary.
Not yet obligatory for the Mac store but eventually it will be. On the day they announces an ARM desktop, oi any, all bit code uploaded apps will be available to run natively.
This was in response to me pointing out that Apple continue to diversify their OS offerings including 2 this year. Watch OS and TV OS. I know people see what they want to see but clearly Apple is not going down the monolithic one OS runs on everything route.
It really doesn't take a lot of work. Any properly written app would take a recompile and most App Store apps wouldn't even need that.
My last post about the apple bit code got lost I see. Here's what Apple says in the Xcode 7 release notes.
Bitcode. When you archive for submission to the App Store, Xcode compiles your app into an intermediate representation. The App Store then compiles the bitcode down into the 64- or 32-bit executables as necessary.
Not yet obligatory for the Mac store but eventually it will be. On the day they announces an ARM desktop, oi any, all bit code uploaded apps will be available to run natively.
Comments
There's is no way that Apple is going to bifurcate their OS X market. And that's exactly what would happen.
You are right.
It's a strategic decision to divide the market into iOS devices or OS X devices.
Any laptop will be on OS X at least for the rest of this decade and it will incorporate an Intel CPU.
But your argumentation that's because ARM isn't strong enough is wrong.
The single core performance of an A9X will surpass anything AMD has to offer just 1 month from now.
In two years the single core performance of an A11X will catch up with the fastest mobile chips Intel will have available at that time.
And with 4 cores (and maybe SMT) multi core performance will be equal too.
The decision to buy a tablet or a laptop will only be about what you want to do and how you want to do it, not about what performance needs you might have.
A lot of lower end graphics and photo people don't need Adobe's pro apps. No question of that, but I ran a commercial photo lab in NYC for many years, and Adobe is the gold standard, like it or not.
I'm just trying to understand how you can make assertions that you know nothing about. And you know nothing about how many people would buy this.
There's not much you couldn't do on a super powerful iOS type of platform. Yes software would be rewritten for it but that's already happening.
How do you get that the A9, or A9x will be more powerful, per core, than ANYTHING AMD will have a month from now? Can you give some performance numbers from some of AMD's higher end chips? If they don't go higher than a single core score of 2500, we all will be shocked.
You and I have been around tech long enough to realize that if you don't constantly ask: "What if, What if" -- you'll soon be asking "What just happened?".
There is iPad for it. It is the dev tools what is missing on iOS
Your point? You think those specs are somehow capable except for the processor? How much do you think an A10 will cost Apple as they sell upwards of 100 million per quarter compared to what Intel offers for CULV processors? You think the cost is 1:1, or more for the A-series chip? Really?
Didn't bother to read all the comment here but a few things
There is no 10nm Fab that would fit the volume for Apple. None. Not even Intel if they are working with Apple.
The next A10 is VERY likely to be TSMC 16nm exclusive. And since TSMC has issued a statement about decline in revenue in coming quarters it is highly likely the A9 is mostly being fabbed on Samsung 14nm.
Despite A10 still being on 16nm, the 16nm next year from TSMC will allow InFo, which is 3D die stack or more like Apple's watch S1 system on a package. It should, theoretically speaking allow Apple to have its WiFi, Bluetooth, and possibly 4G baseband integrated within the same package.
Having said that, I dont see how they will move from 16nm InFo to 10nm InFo because InFo tends to not to be on the leading node.
I don't see Apple putting their creative community in jeopardy, but let's also admit that the consumer market is far far bigger and more profitable in aggregate than a niche creative market.
Apple is now big enough in both the laptop market and mobile market to call the shots for themselves. They know that their economy of scale is big enough to viably support their own chips,...and almost as importantly, to clear the path to their own future, instead of waiting on Intel or Adobe to grace them with something.
Trickles up, rather. Multitouch is the future of desktop interaction.
Trickles up, rather. Multitouch is the future of desktop interaction.
So you think iOS will "scale up" to include desktop computers. Along the lines of the concept in this patent filing?
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2010/08/the-mother-lode-welcome-to-the-imac-touch.html
No you could just run native apps.
The thought of iOS as a desktop OS makes me want to scream, so I hope they do something significantly different.
But yeah, we’ll need a stand that can effortlessly move from vertical (for content consumption) to horizontal (for content creation). I had a theory that the evolution of the iMac shape for the last 10 years has been leading up to that. The angle of the curve in the case of the new models would be a nice angle for typing, laid down flat.
Nope!
This was in response to me pointing out that Apple continue to diversify their OS offerings including 2 this year. Watch OS and TV OS. I know people see what they want to see but clearly Apple is not going down the monolithic one OS runs on everything route.
It really doesn't take a lot of work. Any properly written app would take a recompile and most App Store apps wouldn't even need that.
My last post about the apple bit code got lost I see. Here's what Apple says in the Xcode 7 release notes.
Bitcode. When you archive for submission to the App Store, Xcode compiles your app into an intermediate representation. The App Store then compiles the bitcode down into the 64- or 32-bit executables as necessary.
Not yet obligatory for the Mac store but eventually it will be. On the day they announces an ARM desktop, oi any, all bit code uploaded apps will be available to run natively.
Oh no it isn't.
This was in response to me pointing out that Apple continue to diversify their OS offerings including 2 this year. Watch OS and TV OS. I know people see what they want to see but clearly Apple is not going down the monolithic one OS runs on everything route.
It really doesn't take a lot of work. Any properly written app would take a recompile and most App Store apps wouldn't even need that.
My last post about the apple bit code got lost I see. Here's what Apple says in the Xcode 7 release notes.
Bitcode. When you archive for submission to the App Store, Xcode compiles your app into an intermediate representation. The App Store then compiles the bitcode down into the 64- or 32-bit executables as necessary.
Not yet obligatory for the Mac store but eventually it will be. On the day they announces an ARM desktop, oi any, all bit code uploaded apps will be available to run natively.
Oh no it isn't.
"Oh no it isn't."
And why not?
Because the mouse and keyboard are the future of desktop.