Does any one remember the Emate 300. I think Apples ARM strategy is in flux. I believe they wanted the MacBook line to move to ARM. However with the recent shift in Pro users and X86 changes this is probably not viable.
New chips should be hitting 6k single and almost 50k multi. Also the new GPUs are kinda out of Apple reach. Every iPad Pro user I have talked to also wants a more MacOS X style interface for Pro apps.
I would expect Apple to release a ultra thin MacBook with an ARM core. I am sure they wanted to make an ultra cheap iMac but this may not happen with out a faster CPU.
The biggest problem for Apple will be that bigger more power hunger ARM core will never really be worth it. Apple may sell lots of iPhones and iPads, but they will sell only 1-2 million high end ARM chips a year. This will make continued development costly. Intel makes 300-400 million chips a year and can easily justify the high end development.
Apple's ARM chips do not have the circuits or tech to really compete in the desktop space. Intel and AMD are moving to high core count chiplet designs on specialized substrates. They are moving to 5 GHZ + chips with ultra fast memory.
Apple's lack of a new iMac and recent rushed iterations of the 15" MacBook Pro probably are the result of an ARM course correction.
How good would a ArmBook look against $2,400 8core intel/Nvidia 2070 MaxQ notebook.
There ARM based products would need to be cheap, really cheap. This is not Apples Style.
"Any ARM shift won't be immediate, and won't span the entire product line in one fell swoop. It will likely start on Apple's low-end, like the MacBook and possibly a Mac mini migration."
That's an assumption. When Apple made the shift from PowerPC to Intel, they transitioned their entire Mac line within 1 to 1.5 years. There's no reason to believe they won't do the same when transitioning to ARM.
Two years is not a fell swoop. It takes about two years from design to execution, a bit less if an architecture already exists. What it won't be is the entire product line released at once.
"Any ARM shift won't be immediate, and won't span the entire product line in one fell swoop. It will likely start on Apple's low-end, like the MacBook and possibly a Mac mini migration."
That's an assumption. When Apple made the shift from PowerPC to Intel, they transitioned their entire Mac line within 1 to 1.5 years. There's no reason to believe they won't do the same when transitioning to ARM.
Two years is not a fell swoop. It takes about two years from design to execution, a bit less if an architecture already exists. What it won't be is the entire product line released at once.
They pulled off the PowerPC to Intel switch in one year, but it was two before it permeated throughout the entire line-up. Of course, OS X was running on Intel from day one in the lab. So maybe they ship 18 months from announcing a switch.
The key on this change is going to be performance. I've been an Intel fan for years, but they have failed on their move to 10 nm. From an EE standpoint, the Intel 10 nm process will be the same as the ARM 7nm process. Intel promised 10nm in 2016. They are a full 2.5 years late. I just wish I hadn't bought a new MBP last fall.
Imagine an iPad Pro with 4 A12X's overclocked and with active cooling... That would be a beast of a computer, with a proper keyboard an MacOS for ARM finally released.
My opinion about this migration starts with the unification of the App Store for iOS and MacOS (Something seems will happen soon). And by the way, even if you can only use App Store apps, today you can almost find everything in there (Even Microsoft Office!) Once they have a unified App Store, you can basically have an ARM MacOS that will smash any competition in terms of performance, temps, and even the most important one performance X watt. Imagine to be able to download any app from the App Store, in your desktop
I am expecting this so much, and since the ARM architecture scales so well imagine what they can do with big proper cooled desktops, with insane amounts of cores and heavily boosted clocks. ARM is the future guys.
I still meet people calling me crazy and making appeals to authority ("I'm a developer!") when I mention the ARM transition online. Anyone who thinks it isn't happening simply is not paying attention. Whether it's fast or slow, it is coming, that's for sure.
Curious if they will take over the dedicated GPU silicon for macs with those at the same time
So...no more running Windows via Parallels/Fusion?
If so, that would be a major bummer. I need Windows very little these days but there’s always that one application you absolutely need that is Windows-only.
So...no more running Windows via Parallels/Fusion?
If so, that would be a major bummer. I need Windows very little these days but there’s always that one application you absolutely need that is Windows-only.
As a happy timing co-wink-idink, Windows on ARM has also arrived, and not the stripped down RT version.
I know this will sound crazy but I predict that Apple WILL NOT position the A-series as the low-end product, but instead position the A-series as the "High End" product categories.
I think it is already happening with the price of iPad Pros. I think they will retain exclusive features compared to Intel Chips, maybe these will be performance (just look at the current iPad A-series, faster than what 92% of portable computers), or battery life, or specialized application support, or maybe it will just be a spec advantage, like more Ram or thinner products.
Now this could fail, and I could be 100% wrong about how they position the A-series as premium but I find it very hard to believe they would make a transition unless 1. The A-series is better than Intel. and if that is true then why make it a value low-profit product??
Agreed. And if the power is indeed better than the Intel chips, i would expect low volume niche machines like the new Mac Pro to be the test bed for these chips and both prove themselves and scale to consumers via that model.
Except pro level machines rely on pro level software, typically from large, slow moving sources. What’s the point of a super fast workstation if I can’t run Pro Tools on it?
What about software developers like Adobe? Fonts? Importing old files?
I lived through the Rosetta era and it was brutal. Brutal. Just brutal.
The hardware may have switched in a year, but the software nightmare was real for well over 3.
They will have to do better on the software side.
So...no more running Windows via Parallels/Fusion?
If so, that would be a major bummer. I need Windows very little these days but there’s always that one application you absolutely need that is Windows-only.
As a happy timing co-wink-idink, Windows on ARM has also arrived, and not the stripped down RT version.
And what software runs natively on that? How’s the performance on the virtualized/emulated Intel?
So what if the ARM Macintosh is the modular Mac Pro, running some variant of the iOS device chips? That could explain why Apple has moved so slowly on the Pro desktop.
It predicting, just thinking what if.
If Apple is shifting to ARM, the WWDC would be the perfect time to announce it.
I think you’re on the right track. I don’t believe that MacOS is transitioning to ARM. I think it’s more likely that they’ll release iOS-based “Macs” in the future.
Ditching Intel doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s not in the customer’s best interest to lose compatibility with Windows. Moving to Intel saved the Mac, not because of performance but because of compatibility. I think it would be very foolish of Apple to lose that advantage across the entire product line.
What about software developers like Adobe? Fonts? Importing old files?
I lived through the Rosetta era and it was brutal. Brutal. Just brutal.
The hardware may have switched in a year, but the software nightmare was real for well over 3.
It never ended. There’s plenty of old software that was never updated because lazy-ass corporations wanted to move all development resources on the next product. Things like editors for music hardware, were particularly struck by this. I have a junky PPC MacBook as a last ditch backup to my Snow Leopard installs on older Intel Macs.
The jump off the page info in the article is Microsoft has Windows running on ARM. With Apple’s expertise in optimizing ARM technology can you imagine the show stopper it would be if Apple/ARM smokes Intel at running Windows? An ARM based Mac would be the device to have.
So...no more running Windows via Parallels/Fusion?
If so, that would be a major bummer. I need Windows very little these days but there’s always that one application you absolutely need that is Windows-only.
BS. If it were coming to MacOS then AMD Threadripper and Ryzen would already be here.
How does this statement make any sense? What does AMD have to do with Apple planning to switch to their own ARM chips, AMD using x86/AMD64?
It means Intel is deflecting. Apple needs Thunderbolt, period. It's the only reason they've stuck with Intel after Zen came out. Intel has ZERO threat of ARM supplanting them on the desktop and laptop, never mind the Data Center. They have every concern of AMD and future generations using their superior products for LESS COST.
Apple was ecstatic when Intel announced Thunderbolt would be open sourced. Intel has dragged its feet for nearly 2 years since the announcement and it is still not royalty free and released.
So there is no rational basis for Apple to invest heavily into augmenting their ARM designs for a workstation [Mac Pro], never mind the desktop/laptop [And no iOS is fast because it is very limited in multi-user/multithreaded, multi-core based processing that will be a must on macOS. There are literally hundreds to thousands of processess/threads that are and can be running inside OS X that ARM won't ever supplant what is coming down the pike.
Basic threads and processes on my Macbook Pro 13: 1391 threads, 346 processes. The ARM would get slammed with that and that is nothing when pushing an iMac Pro or Mac Pro.
If you think Apple is going to screw over developers with ARM with the Mac Pro you're effing nuts.
Intel bound Apple when Apple [and as a former NeXT/Apple Engineer I was there] needed a fusion of legitimacy, especially when IBM crapped the bed. At NeXT we made a Quad FAT architecture for the OS because Motorola fucked us over more times than you can imagine on their designs. HP did the same thing. The HP PA-RISC ran circles around x86 at the time. HP did nothing to follow through.
Sun was just a clusterfuck of stupid with regards to the OpenStep initiative. Sun wanted all revenues on the Hardware and to force us to cut the cost of OpenStep licensing. So people were ``shocked'' that didn't take off? Please.
ARM dictates designs. Apple modifies but within those design specs.
You keep believing those pissant benchmarks the mobile world shows as performance figures. Throw 500 processes and 2000 threads at an iPhone and it crashes. There is a reason Apple has very limited subsets of functionality tuned around the tightly coupled hardware constraints.
Microsoft has Windows on ARM now, with a 32-bit software compatibility layer, so virtualization or even Windows on top of one of these new machines isn't out of the question
One thing that nobody is talking about though is compatibility with Intel software. Sure Windows and some software will run on A series chips. But what about the Mac software that is coded to run on Intel? Are they going to run a Blue Box/Yellow Box strategy for a while? It took years before all critical software was ported from PPC to Intel. Some never was and there were a fair number of people who refused to update their OS for years after Apple dropped Rosetta, because they did not dare lose the old software they depended on. Any idea what Apple is going to do for them?
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New chips should be hitting 6k single and almost 50k multi. Also the new GPUs are kinda out of Apple reach. Every iPad Pro user I have talked to also wants a more MacOS X style interface for Pro apps.
I would expect Apple to release a ultra thin MacBook with an ARM core. I am sure they wanted to make an ultra cheap iMac but this may not happen with out a faster CPU.
The biggest problem for Apple will be that bigger more power hunger ARM core will never really be worth it. Apple may sell lots of iPhones and iPads, but they will sell only 1-2 million high end ARM chips a year. This will make continued development costly. Intel makes 300-400 million chips a year and can easily justify the high end development.
Apple's ARM chips do not have the circuits or tech to really compete in the desktop space. Intel and AMD are moving to high core count chiplet designs on specialized substrates. They are moving to 5 GHZ + chips with ultra fast memory.
Apple's lack of a new iMac and recent rushed iterations of the 15" MacBook Pro probably are the result of an ARM course correction.
How good would a ArmBook look against $2,400 8core intel/Nvidia 2070 MaxQ notebook.
There ARM based products would need to be cheap, really cheap. This is not Apples Style.
Curious if they will take over the dedicated GPU silicon for macs with those at the same time
If so, that would be a major bummer. I need Windows very little these days but there’s always that one application you absolutely need that is Windows-only.
As a happy timing co-wink-idink, Windows on ARM has also arrived, and not the stripped down RT version.
Remember when Intel started flashing iPhone like devices and insinuating how stupid Apple would be to not use Intel processors?
I member...
Ditching Intel doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s not in the customer’s best interest to lose compatibility with Windows. Moving to Intel saved the Mac, not because of performance but because of compatibility. I think it would be very foolish of Apple to lose that advantage across the entire product line.
Sun was just a clusterfuck of stupid with regards to the OpenStep initiative. Sun wanted all revenues on the Hardware and to force us to cut the cost of OpenStep licensing. So people were ``shocked'' that didn't take off? Please.