This is Apple running its MacOS from the A chips and having an intel processor for 3rd party apps. If you think two processors in one system is bonkers, remember the touchbar chip in the new macbook pros, or think back 20 (25?) years to the old mac desktops with the cardslot for an x86. Anybody remember those?
Benefits: - Apple stuff runs on its own stuff. Cheaper for Apple to develop. - the intel chips are still "inside" for running all the enterprise stuff, excel, etc. And computer games. And because the intel chips aren't also handling system processes there should be a performance improvement or the potential to use lower-wattage intel chips with less of a performance hit. - Apple would have to figure out how to use multiple chips/cores at the same time, to manage efficiency/performance question marks... new iPhones seem to have put a lot of work into this. - An operating system running on a dedicated chip will feel "snappier" (sorry, couldn't help it)
Probably late 2018-mid 2019. Two years. I agree with assessment, because the current iPhone chips "could" boot a mac desktop OS, but right now every A11 they produce is probably needed for phones. This article is probably from a leaker who saw that, with the new A11s, Apple is now really seriously kicking off R&D into this whereas before it was a side project, "wouldn't it be nice if we only compiled for ARM?".
Thats really not the reason to keep Intel. The reason is the better power of the higher end processors and to attract people who switch from Windows but who need to run apps that are not yet ported to macOS. Apps ported to macOS will just need a re-compile.
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
Epic reading fail. iPad Pro. Not MacBook Pro. If you can't afford an iPad Pro the budget iPad is pretty damn good too.
And yes, the entire point is the iPad and iOS will basically do everything an ARM based MacBook can do. It's almost like Apple has some kind of plan for the iPad to replace the Mac as the general purpose computing platform for most people...
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
The primary input can and should remain direct manipulation as most apps will work more intuitively that way. Only some apps will want a cursor and a pointing device.
I have a cursor right now while typing text into this post.
You don't need to make it like a Mac. Just be able to fulfill the same use cases for the general population as well as or better than the WIMP interface on a Mac.
IOS and macOS are basically the same OS with different UI libraries. ARM Macs are a no brainer.
. .
The Mac mini failed. Arm won’t change that. Cheaper iPhones are necessary though
The Mac mini never failed. They stilll sell despite not being upgraded in 4 yeard
Everything will sell at some limited amount. Apple hasn't updated in what - 3 years. It is not a market they are interested in.
That's wholly different than your initial assertion that the Mac mini was a failure. We sold the mini probably 3:1 to businesses versus consumers and the sales are likely still coming from businesses that need small departmental servers or computing devices. Apple likes it's reputation for high ASP and the mini runs counter to that but it has great usage cases for those that have more than just basic computing needs.
nht said: The primary input can and should remain direct manipulation as most apps will work more intuitively that way. Only some apps will want a cursor and a pointing device.
I have a cursor right now while typing text into this post. You don't need to make it like a Mac. Just be able to fulfill the same use cases for the general population as well as or better than the WIMP interface on a Mac.
I used an iPad w/ BT keyboard for several years as my mobile device... it's a sucky UX. Trying to highlight things by touching (w/o tipping over) your screen with your finger, or selecting things just isn't productive or much fun at all. That doesn't mean the average person won't put up with the punishment if they don't know better. But, a laptop it isn't. (As you might guess, I'm back to a laptop.)
nht said: The primary input can and should remain direct manipulation as most apps will work more intuitively that way. Only some apps will want a cursor and a pointing device.
I have a cursor right now while typing text into this post. You don't need to make it like a Mac. Just be able to fulfill the same use cases for the general population as well as or better than the WIMP interface on a Mac.
I used an iPad w/ BT keyboard for several years as my mobile device... it's a sucky UX. Trying to highlight things by touching (w/o tipping over) your screen with your finger, or selecting things just isn't productive or much fun at all. That doesn't mean the average person won't put up with the punishment if they don't know better. But, a laptop it isn't. (As you might guess, I'm back to a laptop.)
Option+shift+arrow selects in most apps with a BT keyboard in text boxes.
nht said: The primary input can and should remain direct manipulation as most apps will work more intuitively that way. Only some apps will want a cursor and a pointing device.
I have a cursor right now while typing text into this post. You don't need to make it like a Mac. Just be able to fulfill the same use cases for the general population as well as or better than the WIMP interface on a Mac.
I used an iPad w/ BT keyboard for several years as my mobile device... it's a sucky UX. Trying to highlight things by touching (w/o tipping over) your screen with your finger, or selecting things just isn't productive or much fun at all. That doesn't mean the average person won't put up with the punishment if they don't know better. But, a laptop it isn't. (As you might guess, I'm back to a laptop.)
yes, copy and paste is a huge issue. I am typing away on a keyboard, want to copy something? It back to touching the screen. Once I am on a keyboard and mouse ( if tht is introduced for the iPad, or iOS) then everything has to work with the keyboard and mouse.
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
Here, I fixed that for you. No Thank You required... To make it like a Mac is needs as a secondary input to be a cursor
driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a minor UI update.
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
Epic reading fail. iPad Pro. Not MacBook Pro. If you can't afford an iPad Pro the budget iPad is pretty damn good too.
And yes, the entire point is the iPad and iOS will basically do everything an ARM based MacBook can do. It's almost like Apple has some kind of plan for the iPad to replace the Mac as the general purpose computing platform for most people...
No, not true... Without a cursor and trackpad the iPad sucks as a business tool. You are right that it CAN do it, but its HOW it does it. Not user friendly at all. At best its a laptop with (only) a touchscreen. Even Apple said that that sucked.
nht said: The primary input can and should remain direct manipulation as most apps will work more intuitively that way. Only some apps will want a cursor and a pointing device.
I have a cursor right now while typing text into this post. You don't need to make it like a Mac. Just be able to fulfill the same use cases for the general population as well as or better than the WIMP interface on a Mac.
I used an iPad w/ BT keyboard for several years as my mobile device... it's a sucky UX. Trying to highlight things by touching (w/o tipping over) your screen with your finger, or selecting things just isn't productive or much fun at all. That doesn't mean the average person won't put up with the punishment if they don't know better. But, a laptop it isn't. (As you might guess, I'm back to a laptop.)
Yet all they need to do is add a touchpad to their keyboard and you have the best of both worlds all in one package. It's really just a matter of time. -- The tablet is the best form for some things. The laptop is the best form for other things. -- Touchscreen control is better for some things. Cursor control is better for other things.
It's quite silly for Apple to be dragging this out. Or, perhaps they aren't. They seem to be building the foundation: They have started advertising the iPad as a laptop replacement. They added an external keyboard. And now they've added a file system.
It's just a matter of time before they add a touchpad to the external keyboard. ... The only drawback is the cry of anguish from those fearful the iPad will replace the MacBook.
IOS and macOS are basically the same OS with different UI libraries. ARM Macs are a no brainer.
. .
The Mac mini failed. Arm won’t change that. Cheaper iPhones are necessary though
The Mac mini never failed. They stilll sell despite not being upgraded in 4 yeard
Everything will sell at some limited amount. Apple hasn't updated in what - 3 years. It is not a market they are interested in.
That's wholly different than your initial assertion that the Mac mini was a failure. We sold the mini probably 3:1 to businesses versus consumers and the sales are likely still coming from businesses that need small departmental servers or computing devices. Apple likes it's reputation for high ASP and the mini runs counter to that but it has great usage cases for those that have more than just basic computing needs.
Oh yeh, businesses do use them for headless servers to run iOS and other unixen build systems. That is true. However Apple does not seem interested. And that wasnt the original reason Apple produced the mac mini. Getting people to switch is hard on desktops.
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
Here, I fixed that for you. No Thank You required... To make it like a Mac is needs as a secondary input to be a cursor
driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a minor UI update.
Apple has said that they dont want to go down the surface route precisely because of these supposedly minor UI issues.
( Also this has literally nothing to do with Mac OS on an ARM chip.)
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
I don't think it's as big a paradigm shift as might appear at first glance. For one thing, we already have a rudimentary non-touch version of iOS in tvOS, just extend that paradigm by adding a proper touchpad (shaped just like the screen you're using it to drive) for more precise manipulation of items on the screen.
Imagine the touchpad mimics (in shape) the screen it is controlling, where you touch the touchpad a "blur" (or something similar to indicate your touch as input) appears in the same location on the screen as if it were your finger actually touching the screen or display (though the screen/display is non-touch). Move your finger around the touchpad, the "blur" moves as if you were touching around in iOS. Remove your finger from the touchpad and the "blur" goes away. That way you can still retain the "touch" paradigm of the OS (so not much really has to change), you're just changing the object you touch and providing the input the OS uses to know what you want to control.
Does that make it a Mac? Most certainly not, iOS is an OS in its own right, having matured and gained much sophistication in recent years. Also, the list of differences between macOS and iOS feature sets has reduced at the same time to the point that iOS actually does serve as primary computing for many, many people. iOS is obviously the company's future, they've done a lot with it so far and it wouldn't be surprising to see them extend it more in the future in very interesting ways.
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
I don't think it's as big a paradigm shift as might appear at first glance. For one thing, we already have a rudimentary non-touch version of iOS in tvOS, just extend that paradigm by adding a proper touchpad (shaped just like the screen you're using it to drive) for more precise manipulation of items on the screen.
Imagine the touchpad mimics (in shape) the screen it is controlling, where you touch the touchpad a "blur" (or something similar to indicate your touch as input) appears in the same location on the screen as if it were your finger actually touching the screen or display (though the screen/display is non-touch). Move your finger around the touchpad, the "blur" moves as if you were touching around in iOS. Remove your finger from the touchpad and the "blur" goes away. That way you can still retain the "touch" paradigm of the OS (so not much really has to change), you're just changing the object you touch and providing the input the OS uses to know what you want to control.
Does that make it a Mac? Most certainly not, iOS is an OS in its own right, having matured and gained much sophistication in recent years. Also, the list of differences between macOS and iOS feature sets has reduced at the same time to the point that iOS actually does serve as primary computing for many, many people. iOS is obviously the company's future, they've done a lot with it so far and it wouldn't be surprising to see them extend it more in the future in very interesting ways.
Thanks for a genuinely interesting argument.
However there are many reasons I wouldnt replace my MacBook Pro with an iPad, even one with a mouse. ( Actually I have both, but the iPad is strictly a consumer device).
A nonexhaustive list would include : an application I run not being available on iOS and unlikely to be, an app I boot into windows for, a proper filesystem which allows me to bypass the Mac Store for downloads, and shows networked, and external drives. A bigger screen. Terminal access. Automation. The ability to mirror the device and run on external monitors. And probably lots I have not yet thought of. I dont really buy that Tim Cook runs only on iPads.
Does this mean going back to the days of most programs being incompatible with Mac like with the Power PC? No bootcamp anymore?
I'm curious what percentage of the Mac market is still running Windows. While Bootcamp helped me make the jump from PC to Mac, I haven't felt the slightest temptation to run Windows in many years. The BYOD revolution has made workplaces more platform-agnostic, and enterprise software is increasingly transitioning from Windows to SaaS.
Bottom line, I don't think the lack of Windows support is going to be a significant deterrent to buying a future ARM-powered MacBook—especially if it blows its Intel-powered competition out of the water in both performance and battery life.
Can't speak to running bootcamp, I don't but I'm able to use a MacBook Pro at work because there are programs I can install on it that I need. Dunno if that would happen with ARM. These are not MS programs but others that come from smaller vendors
As far as performance ARM has beefed up their architecture. You can now have up to 8 CPU in a cluster and you can cluster 32 of these Octoclusters together. Want more speed? Add more CPU.
Doesn't work that way for many apps which are constrained by single threaded performance because the expensive computations aren't easily parallellizable.
Also multiple CPUs has architecture costs vs multiple cores. There's no free lunch.
I have no idea why folks will look at the A series of processors and then claim that by adding more cores you can outperform the faster processor when the older quad core A series chips regularly beat the pants off the hexacore and octocore chips that Samsung and Qualcomm made and the A11 will demolish everything Samsung or Qualcomm will have because its single core performance is so much better. Samsung could make a dual processor octacore phone (16 cores) and still lose to the A11 in usable performance.
Those performance advantages don't simply disappear because it's Intel desktop quad core i7 vs any ARM octacore, even Apple's. Intel has been working extremely hard to improve performance per watt to the point we have highly performant 4.5W Intel processors. The dual core Intel Core i7-7Y75 MacBook scores 4020 single core and 7999 multicore on 4.5W TDP. That's on par with the A11 but only using 2 cores and not 4+2. All those folks that claim Intel has done nothing in the last few years is ignoring that Intel has been doing EXACTLY what Apple has wanted them to do: concentrate on performance per watt over top end speed.
Essentially Intel has caught up with ARM on power consumption for performance per watt. The primary difference is at the top end where ARM doesn't compete and price where ARM is much cheaper than Intel and Intel doesn't compete.
The highest end Intel processors (which is what you are comparing to) account for about 10-20% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of room for the "A" series to step in.
So what? The majority of that 80% is better off with an iPad Pro vs an Arm MacBook. The remainder are largely business users with a need to run windows apps natively.
Apple doesnt compete in most of that 80-90% market with the Mac anyway but with the iPad.
80% of users should buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook? Really? Where did you come up with that? And, where are they going to come up with the money for that? There's a reason why Apple named it a "Pro" line.
And, once the iPad has a cursor & touchpad on its keyboard, it will basically be a MacBook since it will be able to do the things that a MacBook does. Or it can be a tablet. Whichever you need at the time.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
Here, I fixed that for you. No Thank You required... To make it like a Mac is needs as a secondary input to be a cursor
driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a minor UI update.
Apple has said that they dont want to go down the surface route precisely because of these supposedly minor UI issues.
( Also this has literally nothing to do with Mac OS on an ARM chip.)
Actually No, No they did not say ever say that. They did however say that a touch screen laptop sucked -- shortly before they created one with the iPad Pro.
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Thats really not the reason to keep Intel. The reason is the better power of the higher end processors and to attract people who switch from Windows but who need to run apps that are not yet ported to macOS. Apps ported to macOS will just need a re-compile.
To make it like a Mac is needs as the primary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a major UI change.
And yes, the entire point is the iPad and iOS will basically do everything an ARM based MacBook can do. It's almost like Apple has some kind of plan for the iPad to replace the Mac as the general purpose computing platform for most people...
The primary input can and should remain direct manipulation as most apps will work more intuitively that way. Only some apps will want a cursor and a pointing device.
I have a cursor right now while typing text into this post.
You don't need to make it like a Mac. Just be able to fulfill the same use cases for the general population as well as or better than the WIMP interface on a Mac.
That's wholly different than your initial assertion that the Mac mini was a failure. We sold the mini probably 3:1 to businesses versus consumers and the sales are likely still coming from businesses that need small departmental servers or computing devices. Apple likes it's reputation for high ASP and the mini runs counter to that but it has great usage cases for those that have more than just basic computing needs.
(As you might guess, I'm back to a laptop.)
To make it like a Mac is needs as a secondary input to be a cursor driven by a mouse. This is not so much a technical change as a minor UI update.
-- The tablet is the best form for some things. The laptop is the best form for other things.
-- Touchscreen control is better for some things. Cursor control is better for other things.
It's quite silly for Apple to be dragging this out. Or, perhaps they aren't. They seem to be building the foundation: They have started advertising the iPad as a laptop replacement. They added an external keyboard. And now they've added a file system.
It's just a matter of time before they add a touchpad to the external keyboard.
... The only drawback is the cry of anguish from those fearful the iPad will replace the MacBook.
( Also this has literally nothing to do with Mac OS on an ARM chip.)
Imagine the touchpad mimics (in shape) the screen it is controlling, where you touch the touchpad a "blur" (or something similar to indicate your touch as input) appears in the same location on the screen as if it were your finger actually touching the screen or display (though the screen/display is non-touch). Move your finger around the touchpad, the "blur" moves as if you were touching around in iOS. Remove your finger from the touchpad and the "blur" goes away. That way you can still retain the "touch" paradigm of the OS (so not much really has to change), you're just changing the object you touch and providing the input the OS uses to know what you want to control.
Does that make it a Mac? Most certainly not, iOS is an OS in its own right, having matured and gained much sophistication in recent years. Also, the list of differences between macOS and iOS feature sets has reduced at the same time to the point that iOS actually does serve as primary computing for many, many people. iOS is obviously the company's future, they've done a lot with it so far and it wouldn't be surprising to see them extend it more in the future in very interesting ways.
However there are many reasons I wouldnt replace my MacBook Pro with an iPad, even one with a mouse. ( Actually I have both, but the iPad is strictly a consumer device).
A nonexhaustive list would include : an application I run not being available on iOS and unlikely to be, an app I boot into windows for, a proper filesystem which allows me to bypass the Mac Store for downloads, and shows networked, and external drives. A bigger screen. Terminal access. Automation. The ability to mirror the device and run on external monitors. And probably lots I have not yet thought of. I dont really buy that Tim Cook runs only on iPads.
... Great Profit follows great product.