Apple's management doesn't want Nvidia support in macOS, and that's a bad sign for the Mac...

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  • Reply 81 of 128
    TEAMSWITCHER said:
    But that is not the case.  We have not had ANY Macs fail that used nvidia graphics or had only Intel Iris Pro graphics - as on the 13" MacBook Pro.  
    If we are reporting anecdotes, I had an iMac with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS (the top 2008 model).

    The GPU board died in that, outside of AppleCare naturally. I got it repaired (after first replacing the main board that was originally diagnosed as the problem, which made no difference).

    A couple of years later it failed again... (at this point the machine was rather lacking oomph and RAM for my workloads and I reluctantly scrapped it)

    One thing Apple has achieved, with its dealer and store network, is gathering a lot of data about how their hardware fails in the field. You have to assume that, as they’ve been doing this a while, they are gonna use that data as one input into their future designs. 
    fastasleep
  • Reply 82 of 128
    nerudaneruda Posts: 439member

    I always thought it was a mistake to only focus on iPhone since you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The Mac market may not be as lucrative as iPhone, but I’m surprised they never had a contingency plan if the whole smartphone market plateaued. 
    This is exactly correct, and a byproduct of all of this is complacency in management. Remember when Steve Jobs said that Cook was not a products guy? Steve also said that he wanted Apple to come up with the replacement of its own products/ideas rather than its competitions (e,g., how the iPod business was largely supplanted by Apple's own iPhones).  Now, what has Cook done to prepare Apple for the eventual slowdown of iPhone sales (from competition, market saturation, etc)?  Nothing, really. Does Apple think the iPhone cash cow will go on for ever? They clearly have done little to prepare for the possibility that it won't. 
    1.  Let's not forget that this article refers to a computer that has not had any significant updates since 2013, as as of now (early 2019), we still have no idea of what the new Mac Pro will provide or when it's going to be available. If this were any other computer company the VP responsible for the hardware division would have gotten fired for this.  But iPhones account for nearly 60% of Apple's revenues and everything lese (including computer hardware) is clearly not a priority to anyone at Apple. Apple has admitted that the design of the trashcan MacPro was shortsighted at the very least and a mistake at worst, so why would it take them over 6 years to rectify this if Apple really cared about its pro users? It doesn't. 
    2. Apple developed Siri, and then sat on it for years while others (Amazon/Google) implemented digital voice assistants in a variety of products.  Apple is Johny come lately with its HomePod and the company should have aggressively pushed this technology rather then sitting back and playing catch-up with competitors. Complacency.
    3. The idea that Apple can supplant iPhone revenue with revenue from services is unlikely due to the fact that those services are in large part dependent on the number of iOS users (ie iPhone sales).  What will happen to services revenue if iPhone sales go down? Both of these revenue streams are connected to each other
    4. Where is the next disruptive product from Apple? That ship seems to have died with Steve Jobs himself.

    Apple has forgotten, or at least become complacent, about the innovator's dilemma. The blame should fall squarely on the top (Cook).  Contrast what Nadella has done at Microsoft vs. what Cook has done at Apple?  Blasphemy to say this, I know, but one company is clearly being managed better than the other.  The fundamentals of each company also attests to this in my opinion (MS is a much better diversified company then Apple is, from an investor's point of view). 

    Please get off your a*s Apple.  
  • Reply 83 of 128
    lqdlqd Posts: 1member
    There is one more important thing. Many 3D softwares in GAME/Movie VFX sector supports only Nvidia CUDA cores for physics simulations and visual rendering. It work's on High Sierra, but what about the future?  I can't understand these steps from Apple, because they don't loose any money - everybody gets their computers with it's GPU inside. But why they disabled options for customers - the choice for extended enclosures to have better performance? Isn't the claim of Apple to help people have life easier? Then, there is no way to call things PRO. So hello guys in Apple, It's year 2019!! :( 
    edited January 2019 cgWerksderekcurrie
  • Reply 84 of 128
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    Apple must have something under their sleeves. Wait until MacPro is out, Apple will surprise us with their own G1 Graphic Card that runs on Metal driver.
    Absolutely and preferably 128-core/16GB HBM2 on an m.2/m.3 card with increased power budget & 8xPCIe5.0.  

    They should produce an 256-core N1 neural card for Machine Training and an S12Xi card while they’re at it to drop straight into the back of new 5K & 9K displays.  The Anandtech analysis shows the A12X has a full power consumption of 8W for 8CPU + 7GPU cores, imagine what they could do with 65W.
  • Reply 85 of 128
    auxio said:
    Apple has never DEFINED change in the PC industry.  For as long as I can remember, they've never been in the dominant marketshare position in PCs.  And any changes they've ever made have been ridiculed and declared to be their downfall by people who are either emotionally and/or fiscally invested in other platforms.  By people with tunnel vision who only see one path and want to beat everyone into submission so that they follow that same path.  Regardless of whether that path is actually going to lead to a better future or simply hold things back because those people just don't want to change/do things differently.
    Mostly agree that except at the beginning when Apple was the PC industry with the first Macs. Windows was a revelation with color monitors and worksheets and databases that along with Visual Basic let non-technically inclined become power users.

    The rest is a better description of Apple bullying much smaller suppliers and it's closed system's tunnel vision and falling behind technologically because brand loyalty and the closed system lets them get away with it. This even includes professional users who are more demanding and want their money's worth. On the other hand it's this closed system that prevents Apple from spinning off the Mac division that current management has no patience for (80/20 rule). But they've run it down so much any premium including for the installed base is gone. Wouldn't be surprised if Apple tries to build a new type of closed system that independent of hardware by continuing to deprecate Mac and then announcing big software plans for Windows and Android.
  • Reply 86 of 128
    nVidia can FREELY create drivers for the Mac Even on Mohave. Apple doesn't have to be the one that releases the drivers.  nVidia's complaint of being unable to release drivers for the Mac on Mohave is very dishonest.  After all, I install printer and scanner drivers from various companies on the Mac that Apple doesn't have.

    The authors of this article need to do better research of the problems Apple has had with nVidia.

    The problem with nVidia and Apple stemmed years ago from Apple's desire to do GPU computing on the Mac. Apple wanted a programmable GPU language that eventually became METAL. AMD was open to this and completely supported it.  But nVidia banned this. They wanted Apple to use CUDA, it's house-brand programmable GPU language. And there lies the problem.  If Apple gave in to nVidia and used CUDA, then it blocks the use of AMD GPUs which are NOT CUDA compatible. It is nVidia that has CONTRACTUALLY blocked the use of non-CUDA GPU programming interfaces. This forced Apple to use OpenGL as a general solution - albeit slower solution - for the Mac so what GPU computing could be done on both AMD and nVidia GPUs. OpenGL can't easily be customized since decisions for it are by international committee, not by Apple itself for its purposes.

    ---

    I believe Apple's solution is to create its own GPU.

    Apple already creates the iPhone and iPad Pro custom GPUs that are very powerful and low powered. All Apple has to do is to scale the GPU and it will be able to outstrip what nVidia is doing. 

    Apple wants to own the technology in their computers.

    So I believe Apple's custom GPU will match or exceed nVidia's GPUs but will also have a NEURAL PROCESSOR. This is necessary to add Face ID to the Mac. 

    Fr general computing tasks, the NEURAL PROCESSOR for the MAC can be much more powerful than for the iPhone since power limitations are gone.

    The combination of Apple's custom GPU Plus NEURAL PROCESSOR will have performance outstripping anything nVidia has.

    The MODULAR MAC can have MULTIPLE custom GPUs PLUS NEURAL PROCESSORS both internal and external. 

    This allows the MODULAR MAC to become a SUPERCOMPUTER with the only limitation being Intel's own CPUs. 

  • Reply 87 of 128
    If anything, nVidia is blocking Metal support on its GPUs.
    The reason is that Metal makes CUDA (nVidia's own version of Metal) completely unnecessary. 
    This essentially turns nVidia into a generic GPU company. 
    derekcurrie
  • Reply 88 of 128
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    nVidia can FREELY create drivers for the Mac Even on Mohave. Apple doesn't have to be the one that releases the drivers.  nVidia's complaint of being unable to release drivers for the Mac on Mohave is very dishonest.  After all, I install printer and scanner drivers from various companies on the Mac that Apple doesn't have.

    The authors of this article need to do better research of the problems Apple has had with nVidia.

    The problem with nVidia and Apple stemmed years ago from Apple's desire to do GPU computing on the Mac. Apple wanted a programmable GPU language that eventually became METAL. AMD was open to this and completely supported it.  But nVidia banned this. They wanted Apple to use CUDA, it's house-brand programmable GPU language. And there lies the problem.  If Apple gave in to nVidia and used CUDA, then it blocks the use of AMD GPUs which are NOT CUDA compatible. It is nVidia that has CONTRACTUALLY blocked the use of non-CUDA GPU programming interfaces. This forced Apple to use OpenGL as a general solution - albeit slower solution - for the Mac so what GPU computing could be done on both AMD and nVidia GPUs. OpenGL can't easily be customized since decisions for it are by international committee, not by Apple itself for its purposes.

    ---

    I believe Apple's solution is to create its own GPU.

    Apple already creates the iPhone and iPad Pro custom GPUs that are very powerful and low powered. All Apple has to do is to scale the GPU and it will be able to outstrip what nVidia is doing. 

    Apple wants to own the technology in their computers.

    So I believe Apple's custom GPU will match or exceed nVidia's GPUs but will also have a NEURAL PROCESSOR. This is necessary to add Face ID to the Mac. 

    Fr general computing tasks, the NEURAL PROCESSOR for the MAC can be much more powerful than for the iPhone since power limitations are gone.

    The combination of Apple's custom GPU Plus NEURAL PROCESSOR will have performance outstripping anything nVidia has.

    The MODULAR MAC can have MULTIPLE custom GPUs PLUS NEURAL PROCESSORS both internal and external. 

    This allows the MODULAR MAC to become a SUPERCOMPUTER with the only limitation being Intel's own CPUs. 

    Grossly oversimplifying the situation, Apple needs to sign the drivers for them to function in Mojave for them to function at all, thus, no drivers available unless Apple wills it so. Everybody's got their own pet theories behind who's at fault and why, but the bottom line is that it is two stubborn and proud companies butting heads. And, the users are the ones paying for it.

    We already know Apple's got a pile of GPU engineers on staff. However, that doesn't solve the problem of the people who need CUDA, nor those who want better performance for software like Adobe's suite, that runs better on Nvidia than it does on Radeon.
    edited January 2019 cgWerksderekcurriefastasleep
  • Reply 89 of 128
    A correction to Eric_in_CT's story: John Lasseter was there at the founding of Pixar in 1986, when Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith secured investment from Steve Jobs to help the group, which had been part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, break off under the name "Pixar". But it is wildly inaccurate to say that Lasseter created Pixar with help from Jobs, as John was one of 40 or so employees at Pixar at its founding, and not a founder, not a boss, but a relatively junior employee. Lasseter is a very talented animator and years later took on a leadership role, but he was not a co-founder of Pixar. (I worked with Lasseter on his first animated short with Pixar, "Luxo, Jr.", in 1986).
  • Reply 90 of 128
    tomahawk said:
    This has the potential to be another hit against Apple in the science field.  We have a number of people we support running programs that utilize CUDA.  Access to eGPU Nvidia cards, especially if we can install CUDA, could keep a number of labs using Macs.  Failure to do so starts to swing the economics further in other directions.
    Exactly this. But also people using a hackintosh for work, and gaming, like myself. And now it's AMD that has the performance per watt issues...
  • Reply 91 of 128
    Apple must have something under their sleeves. Wait until MacPro is out, Apple will surprise us with their own G1 Graphic Card that runs on Metal driver.
    Which for some people is pointless if it doesn't support CUDA. Or if you can no longer dualboot into windows to plays games. Dumbing down pro machines has never worked for anyone. I'd welcome an Apple GPU in a macbook pro or consumer machine though.
    cgWerks
  • Reply 92 of 128
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    tomahawk said:
    This has the potential to be another hit against Apple in the science field.  We have a number of people we support running programs that utilize CUDA.  Access to eGPU Nvidia cards, especially if we can install CUDA, could keep a number of labs using Macs.  Failure to do so starts to swing the economics further in other directions.
    Resistance is futile, it will all be Apples A GPU in the future.
  • Reply 93 of 128
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    Notsofast said:
    Now is the time to put pressure on Apple to allow Nvidia to create drivers for Mohave. 
    After they report earnings on the 29th, they will have to have a clearer roadmap of what is going to happen this year in regards to products and services. 

    I always thought it was a mistake to only focus on iPhone since you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The Mac market may not be as lucrative as iPhone, but I’m surprised they never had a contingency plan if the whole smartphone market plateaued. 

    Sure they talk about services making up the difference, but I read a good article showing that services won’t be as profitable as the lost sales of iPhones. 

    This is the first time I have seen a little panic in Apple’s behavior. They didn’t predict that the Xs and XR would not sell as well as they thought, and they surely didn’t predict that they would be replacing 11 million iPhone batteries in 2018. That was something that they should have factored correctly.  They predicted only 1-2 million batteries would have been replaced. 

    So if there ever is a time that you have Apple’s attention, it’s now.  Let Apple know that the Mac is still very much a viable market and they can make up for years of neglect if they work fast. I know there are a lot of people who have been waiting for a Mac good enough to upgrade to and taking care of them can boost the bottom line. 
     You have to pull back a bit.  First, it's part of the fake news out there that Apple PREDICTED only 1 to 2 million batteries would be replaced. What Gruber reported Tim Cook said was that they NORMALLY replace that many in a year.  Cook said it was higher than anticipated, but he never said what they guesstimated it would be and certainly they knew many millions more than normal would replace their batteries.  

    Second, Apple hasn't ever put "all its eggs in the basket of the iPhone."  To cite just one example, Apple announced a few years ago that services was going to be a major revenue driver.  Since then it has become a Fortune 100 company by size and is growing at a huge rate, heading toward $50 BILLION dollars in revenue next year.  Most  people don't realize that Apple Services now dwarfs Facebook's ENTIRE revenue.  

    Apple and other major companies don't have "contingency plans"  of the sort you are suggesting. You can't develop products that take several years to get to market that way.  They have a strategic development plan that is constantly being adjusted.  That's why Apple is spending over a BILLION dollars every month on R and D-" The latest MacBooks, the Mini, Apple Watch, iPad, EarPods, Airpower, new pencil, Augmented Reality glasses, etc., are all part of their "contingency plan."
    Services is usually the last we see of a company, so not someting to strive to.
    Note that almost all of Apple ‘services’ have no value on its own and disappear when ios devices stop selling.
    derekcurriecgWerks
  • Reply 94 of 128
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    knowitall said:
    Notsofast said:
    Now is the time to put pressure on Apple to allow Nvidia to create drivers for Mohave. 
    After they report earnings on the 29th, they will have to have a clearer roadmap of what is going to happen this year in regards to products and services. 

    I always thought it was a mistake to only focus on iPhone since you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The Mac market may not be as lucrative as iPhone, but I’m surprised they never had a contingency plan if the whole smartphone market plateaued. 

    Sure they talk about services making up the difference, but I read a good article showing that services won’t be as profitable as the lost sales of iPhones. 

    This is the first time I have seen a little panic in Apple’s behavior. They didn’t predict that the Xs and XR would not sell as well as they thought, and they surely didn’t predict that they would be replacing 11 million iPhone batteries in 2018. That was something that they should have factored correctly.  They predicted only 1-2 million batteries would have been replaced. 

    So if there ever is a time that you have Apple’s attention, it’s now.  Let Apple know that the Mac is still very much a viable market and they can make up for years of neglect if they work fast. I know there are a lot of people who have been waiting for a Mac good enough to upgrade to and taking care of them can boost the bottom line. 
     You have to pull back a bit.  First, it's part of the fake news out there that Apple PREDICTED only 1 to 2 million batteries would be replaced. What Gruber reported Tim Cook said was that they NORMALLY replace that many in a year.  Cook said it was higher than anticipated, but he never said what they guesstimated it would be and certainly they knew many millions more than normal would replace their batteries.  

    Second, Apple hasn't ever put "all its eggs in the basket of the iPhone."  To cite just one example, Apple announced a few years ago that services was going to be a major revenue driver.  Since then it has become a Fortune 100 company by size and is growing at a huge rate, heading toward $50 BILLION dollars in revenue next year.  Most  people don't realize that Apple Services now dwarfs Facebook's ENTIRE revenue.  

    Apple and other major companies don't have "contingency plans"  of the sort you are suggesting. You can't develop products that take several years to get to market that way.  They have a strategic development plan that is constantly being adjusted.  That's why Apple is spending over a BILLION dollars every month on R and D-" The latest MacBooks, the Mini, Apple Watch, iPad, EarPods, Airpower, new pencil, Augmented Reality glasses, etc., are all part of their "contingency plan."
    Services is usually the last we see of a company, so not someting to strive to.
    Note that almost all of Apple ‘services’ have no value on its own and disappear when ios devices stop selling.
    Perhaps, but I don't think that there's any argument to be made that iOS devices have stopped selling, or that there's any danger that the installed base is somehow going to fade into oblivion at any time in the next decade or two.
    fastasleep
  • Reply 95 of 128
    From the article:
    What we found was support inside the Spaceship for the idea, but a lack of will to allow Nvidia GPUs. We've spoken with several dozen developers inside Apple, obviously not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, who feel that support for Nvidia's higher-end cards would be welcome, but disallowed quietly at higher levels of the company.

    "It's not like we have any real work to do on it, Nvidia has great engineers," said one developer in a sentiment echoed by nearly all of the Apple staff we spoke with. "It's not like Metal 2 can't be moved to Nvidia with great performance. Somebody just doesn't want it there."
    The AppleInsider interpretation of that quote is NVIDIA have created a fast Metal driver for their cards, but Apple won't sign the driver.

    My interpretation: that NVIDIA wants their non-Metal driver signed by Apple. "It's not like Metal 2 can't be moved to Nvidia with great performance. Somebody just doesn't want it there." - Somebody at NVIDIA.

    If Apple doesn't let CUDA work better on macOS, NVIDIA expects users of applications that limited their GPU options by optimising for CUDA to put pressure on Apple.

    This AppleInsider article itself could be part of the NVIDIA campaign to put pressure on Apple to keep the CUDA dream alive on future versions of macOS without NVIDIA making drivers to Apple’s specification: non-CUDA, Metal.
  • Reply 96 of 128
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    alex4d said:
    From the article:
    What we found was support inside the Spaceship for the idea, but a lack of will to allow Nvidia GPUs. We've spoken with several dozen developers inside Apple, obviously not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, who feel that support for Nvidia's higher-end cards would be welcome, but disallowed quietly at higher levels of the company.

    "It's not like we have any real work to do on it, Nvidia has great engineers," said one developer in a sentiment echoed by nearly all of the Apple staff we spoke with. "It's not like Metal 2 can't be moved to Nvidia with great performance. Somebody just doesn't want it there."
    The AppleInsider interpretation of that quote is NVIDIA have created a fast Metal driver for their cards, but Apple won't sign the driver.

    My interpretation: that NVIDIA wants their non-Metal driver signed by Apple. "It's not like Metal 2 can't be moved to Nvidia with great performance. Somebody just doesn't want it there." - Somebody at NVIDIA.

    If Apple doesn't let CUDA work better on macOS, NVIDIA expects users of applications that limited their GPU options by optimising for CUDA to put pressure on Apple.

    This AppleInsider article itself could be part of the NVIDIA campaign to put pressure on Apple to keep the CUDA dream alive on future versions of macOS without NVIDIA making drivers to Apple’s specification: non-CUDA, Metal.
    I'm not sure where you got that was our interpretation of the quote, but go ahead with how you want to see it, I guess. We have no take from the quote given to us by a developer inside Apple, as it says. It stands alone, and isn't from Nvidia.

    And, given the bolded section, considering Nvidia didn't respond to our requests for amplification, I'd think not. 
    edited January 2019 alex4d
  • Reply 97 of 128
    5 years ago myself and all my freelance Mograph colleagues used Macs and loved doing so but then Apple released the Trashcan Mac Pro which wasn't much if any upgrade to the heavily upgraded classic Mac Pros we were all running. Most of us looked at the Trashcan and thought meh, at the very least we'll wait for V2.0 and we waited and waited for nearly 4 years. In that 3-4 years every single one of my colleagues and friends moved to the PC and was raving about nVidia GPUs 3D rendering on Octane and Redshift completely blowing me out of the water with me stuck CPU rendering but I loved MacOS and I didn't want to give it up. Apple was surely only months away from announcing a new Mac Pro it can't be long now...

    Then Apple in a rare moment of honesty say they had cancelled the Mac Pro but due to Pro interest they were doing a modular Mac Pro but not for some unspecified time and BTW here's the iMac Pro buy this, a sealed, virtually un-upgradeable computer with a ridiculous price tag! This was the final straw and I built a PC workstation, I'm now kicking out work in ways I had always dreamed of. Yes, Win10 is no MacOS but it is far from the nightmare of previous versions and for me the benefits of cheap powerful hardware trumps the OS every time.

    Apple wants to own everything around Mac Hardware and OS like it does with iDevices so as far back as the Trashcan release we saw Apple moving to an Appliance culture where 3rd party upgrades are more or less limited to TB & USB hardware. We have seen the inclusion of the T2 chip which further locks down the hardware from unauthorised replacement, upgrades and fixes. The modular Mac Pro will no doubt be the pinnacle of Apple's 'Appliance Culture' and will allow zero 3rd party intrusion, Apple does not want users like me buying a 2010 Mac Pro then have me updating GPUs, SSDs and Memory and Apple not see a red cent from these upgrades and be happy for 6 years. So expect the modular Mac Pro to be locked down, you want to upgrade it you'll have to buy the 'module' upgrade from Apple or limit yourself to the absurdly expensive and inefficient way of adding GPU processing to your Mac via TB3. 

    It is anticipated that AMD will release a whole slew of 7nm Threadrippers 2H19 with 32, 48 and 64 cores and we already know the nVidia GPU line up, this will be the Pro hardware market the 'modular' Mac Pro is heading into direct competition with and if that Mac Pro is nothing more than a headless iMac Pro in an attractive box I really don't know what Pros Apple intends to sell them to? For the next Mac Pro to be a success Apple will have to more than innovate on how much coin they can extract from their pro customers and deliver hardware that Pro would flock back to. Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs makes it a tough sell even before the Apple pricing.
  • Reply 98 of 128
    If we put the potential conflicts between Apple and Nvidia managers aside, I'm thinking perhaps this is not only about supporting Mojave – it can also be about adding support for Nvidia's new Turing (RTX 2xxx) graphics cards. If I remember correctly it took quite some time for Pascal (GTX 9xx) graphics cards to get drivers for MacOS, maybe all we need is wait a bit more to get drivers that support both Mojave and RTX 2xxx GPU's?
    fastasleep
  • Reply 100 of 128
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    gnnoni said:
    I don't believe this functions under Mojave.
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