As a developer, I need both mac and windows support. To openly campaign to remove Windows compat is to be irresponsible to the marketplace. If users don't need Windows, that's fine. Don't penalize me for your lack of needs.
I don't think you, nor FredFref read the article.
Why does a dissenting opinion mean they didn't read the article? Maybe they read, disagreed with the basic premise "cross-platform software compatibility is now mostly irrelevant to the wider user base" and everything that follows. Especially since you had a poll, found 35% that said, yes they needed windows and then proceeded to hand wave that away as AI readers aren't a representative sample. Which begs the question of WHY RUN THE POLL IN THE FIRST PLACE?
The next assertion "for Apple's biggest user base, the need for Windows compatibility isn't the same as it is for the main readers of this site" is fabricated out of thin air and has zero supporting data. Whether true or not it's based on nothing but speculation.
If the primary uses of the Macs are Pro and everyone else migrates to iPads then a significant fraction of Mac users (dare I say 35%) will want x86 compatibility.
But, nope...because they disagree they didn't read the article.
That's not why I said that, and you know it. And, there's a lot more to this quote of mine than what you clipped out. And, I didn't even say anything about the ludicrous assumption that this article is a "campaign" to remove Windows compatibility.
It wasn't handwaved away. What it is, is that 35% of the user base that reads AI doesn't need it, which is an overly conservative estimate of what the larger user base needs and does with their machines, and you know this as well, based on your own interactions with the rest of the AI readership. And, even if you translate it literally, it does mean that the majority doesn't care about Windows on the Mac.
Why run the poll and then disregard it? So what if 35% isn't the majority? It's still a large part of the user base.
And how do you know that it is "an overly conservative estimate of what the larger user base needs"? On what data is this assertion based on? Why do you assume that the majority of your readers are pros? Why did you not include in your survey to self identify if they were pros or just general users? Never mind that these polls are generally horridly misleading anyway.
The article, and you, would like to make it seem like it's 0.35% of the user base to sell the idea that x86 compatibility is no longer needed. Apple may have a good idea as to the number but you don't. Moreover you ignored the entire enterprise market because it's inconvenient. Does IBM and other major Mac deployments believe x86 compatibility is irrelevant? I have no idea and neither do you. It would have been fairly easy to reach out to IT folks highlighted in past articles and ask "hey, is x86 compatibility important to your Mac enterprise deployment?"
Nope.
But hey...35% is an overly conservative estimate of what the larger user base needs...
Regarding the bolded section, we are, and your own supposition of how that is going so far is wrong because what they care about so far is iOS development and general productivity. We'll see how it goes in total when we're done.
In regards to our audience, exactly who do you think AppleInsider is read by far, far more? College grads with advanced degrees, industry folk, designers and whatnot, or the "new Apple user" which is iOS centric, where the iPhone is a halo for the Mac and not the other way around?
And the demographics for Mac users are what? Gee maybe folks who are "college grads with advanced degrees, industry folk, designers and whatnot"?
Nah.
I will assert, based on personal experience, that there are very few enterprise iOS developers that don't care about MS project, DOORS and a bevy of windows/x86 corporate tools...still dependent on Excel with macros. People send me a lot of stuff in Visio to boot. Also, most of us aren't iOS developers but enterprise developers and the docker tool chain is a significant part of devops.
Yeah. we're not done. So far, we've spoken to IBM, Cisco, and Deloitte. There are about eight more on the docket. The point of this article, stands, though, that there is a line, where below it, the need for Windows is non-existent.
And you have failed to show where that line is. Again, is the AI demographic you just stated significantly different than that of Mac users? Or have most of the "new Apple users" that don't frequent AI already moved to the iPad or never bought a Mac in the first place and have a windows laptop somewhere?
I'm not really sure what you're asking, here.
We didn't set out to draw precisely where the line is, so there is no failure to show something that we didn't set out to show. The piece is more to remind folks that there is a line, even though that there is the assumption that Windows compatibility is everything to everybody. We were pretty clear in the end of the piece in regards to the Mac Pro maybe never shifting.
Who do you think reads AI? Do you not think it's primarily Apple devout for decades? William addresses this in the piece, somewhat, in regards to who reads AI. Who reads AI should be apparent from the forums at least. Based on what we know, the "average" AI reader has been in the Apple ecosystem for well over a decade, is pretty heavily technologically savvy, has many Apple devices and has for ages, well before the iPhone 3gs, iPad, and iPhone 6 explosions in Apple user volume.
If we could tap into 1% of the "new" Apple customer, we'd be sitting on a gold mine. Most of the new Apple users bought an iPhone and have just that so aren't relevant to this particular conversation, or got an iPhone or iPad and said "hey, this Mac thing might be pretty great" rather than the other way around like it was a decade ago.
I believe project Catalyst is the key to this transition. It is the Trojan horse. If they can convince a mass of developers to embrace the conversion and especially if they made the process work effort ly in reverse, they will have an enormous catalog of apps that will run on ARM but are customized for use on the Mac.
NO. Catalyst is bringing iOS apps to macOS on Intel because Apple can. Bringing RISC apps to CISC CPU architecture is relatively easy. Some Mac users will like them and users. Others will find them limiting.
Bringing Mac apps to iOS on ARM is not gonna happen. Going CISC to RISC is full of roadblocks. I won't list them as they've been covered to death in the past.
1) That did happen. It’s how the iPhone was created. We even had advances like QuickTime coming to iOS that came back to macOS for an even better Mac experience.
2) This is article isn’t about Mac apps going to iOS, it’s about the obvious progression to make macOS run on ARM. ARM does not equate to iOS.
1) What are you on about? You aren't paying attention. 2) Again, you're off.
Please folks, try to be coherent. Posts like this only serve chaos. Reading what people write in context solves confusion.
It is far worse for Intel than Apple users wanting performance over compatibility: "Compatibility" means compatibility with malware, viruses and huge security holes built right into Intel's CPUs. Compatibility means paying extra for an ancient bloated instruction set that has been repeatedly proven to be less efficient and more difficult to code in assembly language than reduced instruction set CPUs such as ARM. From a developer's point of view, all it takes to support an "incompatible" CPU is to select it as a build target. Xcode does the rest. Programming in a high level language, such as C++ or Swift, for ARM is exactly as easy as it is for Intel. In other words, Intel compatibility is a negative feature. We don't want it at all!
Compatibility means the ability to run software that some fo us need for our living. Until AutoCad and/or SolidWorks as well as the hundreds of other applications that are Windows-only and industry standard move to the Mac, we need virtual machines that can run as fast as a dedicated PC. Going back to the old days of VirtualPC is not a viable option.
AutoCAD moved to the Mac a long time ago. It wasn’t all that great initially, but the last couple of years has been pretty solid. An annoyance is lack of OLE support on Mac version that messes up display of embedded logos but other than that, I no longer need to switch over to the Windows side to run AutoCAD.
Anyway. It will be interesting what strategy will Apple chose with ARM Mac. Whether will focus on bringing more iPad apps on board and making other mac apps ARM ready or whether making iPadOS closer to desktop and make something like iPadBook wirh keyboard.
The question I have is, if you're kissing off 35% of your customers, where do the replacements come from? I doubt you can grow the base back by adding a bunch of ported iOS apps. I will probably be one of them because, although I stopped running Parallels a long time ago, I need the option for work stuff.
Please cite your source for the, uh, “kissing” numbers. The eternally unhappy forum-goers do not represent normals.
I expect the transition to ARM to be swift (pun intended) and complete. Intel will be readily forgotten like Kodak and other dinosaurs.
Intel got its Kodak moment because it developed a bureaucratic grind down and lost all interest in innovation. Instead they performed a Bubka (minimal uninspired improvement) once in a increasingly longer while. Intels x86 design is inherently handicapped (nee! politically correct: challenged) by its internal hardware translation to RISC and its slow transition to smaller feature size. What happened is that designing a new chip became more and more a software issue (the right VHDL tools and combined physics calculations) and making the hardware (steppers) more and more an order for ASML.
Apples ARM processors will be the best high end processors you can buy, only at a fraction of the cost and as part of a device.
@damk, agreed. There are linux tools that a lot of us use in macOS that would require porting over to ARM from x86.
What "linux tools" are you referring to that are not part of any Linux distro that is ARM compatible?
He listed them. Docker probably being the primary one. Can it be done? Sorta. Is it a major PITA that is prone to breakage? Yes. There's a lot of stuff that assumes x86.
1) I'm seeing Docker platforms as x86_64, ARM, s390x, and ppc64le.
2) Since Docker is platform-as-a-service SW I don't know why one would expect to ever VIRTUALIZE x86_64 Windows running on any ARM-based platform. Can you detail how that's even possible?
The point is that the target platforms are x86 servers and you can easily run the same docker containers on your x86 Mac that you would in the real environment. On an ARM Mac, not so much, ARM based servers are still largely MIA.
How long has it been since Apple killed Xserve? They make an Server app and have a workstation, but most of their unit sales and profits from traditional PCs come from consumers, and even amongst prosumer and professional users the number that would require virtualization for an Intel-only OS has got to be small and likely nonessential to their future plans.
I believe project Catalyst is the key to this transition. It is the Trojan horse. If they can convince a mass of developers to embrace the conversion and especially if they made the process work effort ly in reverse, they will have an enormous catalog of apps that will run on ARM but are customized for use on the Mac.
NO. Catalyst is bringing iOS apps to macOS on Intel because Apple can. Bringing RISC apps to CISC CPU architecture is relatively easy. Some Mac users will like them and users. Others will find them limiting.
Bringing Mac apps to iOS on ARM is not gonna happen. Going CISC to RISC is full of roadblocks. I won't list them as they've been covered to death in the past.
1) That did happen. It’s how the iPhone was created. We even had advances like QuickTime coming to iOS that came back to macOS for an even better Mac experience.
2) This is article isn’t about Mac apps going to iOS, it’s about the obvious progression to make macOS run on ARM. ARM does not equate to iOS.
1) What are you on about? You aren't paying attention. 2) Again, you're off.
Please folks, try to be coherent. Posts like this only serve chaos. Reading what people write in context solves confusion.
1) Yes, it was. The history of iOS is well documented. At one point they even referred to it as OS X iPhone before eventually settling on publicly adopted iOS moniker.
2) I'm going to laugh when people like you feel sideswiped by what everyone else saw coming years ago.
I am wondering why no one is talking about the possibility of having a main ARM chip, with a custom x86 sub processor embedded into it? Or having a secondary Intel chip on the motherboard?
This is pure random speculation. But how feasible is this strategy; especially since Apple knows that Pros (especially their developers) would benefit from having both.
Why not apply what they have learned to produce a Mac OS only x86 chip, without the legacy crud? It would be fast, and less risk for developers
Seriously though, the plan for the lower end was ARM running iOS. In fact that was probably the dream to replace macs. That is why macs seemed so neglected for three or four years. All interest was on iPad pros. It’s proven harder than Cook thought, hence recent interest in ultra high end offerings for mac, and iPadOS which is closer to a more traditional, real desktop type OS with a file system than Apple had it seemed, wanted.
So for now I can see the low end iPadOS ARM based, and a revival of decent macs on x86.
I am wondering why no one is talking about the possibility of having a main ARM chip, with a custom x86 sub processor embedded into it? Or having a secondary Intel chip on the motherboard?
This is pure random speculation. But how feasible is this strategy; especially since Apple knows that Pros (especially their developers) would benefit from having both.
Dick Applebaum brought that up in this thread (and many others).
It’s a nice, fairly long article. It be]rings up a number of things that are correct. But, I still believe moving to Apple’s ARM chips is more difficult that some people think.
firstly, no, the ‘a serir]es still has a long way to go before it can compete with AND and Intel at the higher levels, with no guarantee that it ever will. That’s all speculation. Are we going to see a 6 core chip? An 8 core chip? These will be needed to compete on the higher laptop level. 16GB RAM? 64GB RAM? Same thing.
convincing developers, particularly those with very large, high performance software to go native ARM? And, yes, that will be needed.
if Apple does begin this process, it will be a very difficult one.
Not because of hardware performance. You're quite mistaken about this. The A series *already* competes quite well with AMD's and Intel's mid/upper-range chips.
The current iPad Pro already has an 8-core chip, and every current iPhone has a 6-core chip. The fact that four of the cores in each case is a lower-power core is irrelevant - regardless of power, a core still requires the same services from the bus (or mesh, or whatever) servicing it. Also, supporting large amounts of RAM is trivial, not a challenge at all.
Those two are the best articles I've seen covering the A12 generation. Here's a quote from the last paragraph of the second:
"What is quite astonishing, is just how close Apple’s A11 and A12 are to
current desktop CPUs. [...]
we see that the A12 outperforms a moderately-clocked Skylake CPU in
single-threaded performance. [...] we’re now talking about very small
margins until Apple’s mobile SoCs outperform the fastest desktop CPUs in
terms of ST performance."
Moving to ARM isn't trivial. But raw performance isn't going to be a significant issue, unless you're actually trying to run Intel code in emulation. And not even then, unless it's really CPU-intensive.
You are distorting reality. First of all, there’s this myth about the A series power. In some way it does exceed a number of x86 chips. But in a number of ways it’s behind.
please don’t pretentious that “efficiency” cores are equal to regular cores. They are much smaller, and much less powerful.
I’ve read the reviews in Anandtech. Usually, I’m the one posting them here, and elsewhere.
I would love love to Apple design a chip that’s really a powerhouse. But we don’t know if that’s their goal. We also don’t really know if Apple is even contemplating having MacOS on ARM. We just don’t, though it seems a lot of people are assuming it.
if running Intel code in emulation is needed, then yes, it’s a very big problem. If you haven’t learned the lessons of the last about that, then look it up.
It’s inevitable that Apple will throw Intel under the bus. Intel just doesn’t have the chips to keep up in the industry anymore. They’re like IBM.
that being said, there must be a big enough market for Windows running on Macs to keep companies like VMWare and Parallels busy developing their virtual machine packages.
I went to Macs because they could run Windows. I don’t use it much but for certain development tools and software I use it’s imperative. I would have to buy a Wintel PC if Apple goes this route.
I’m hoping Apple’s next chips for desktops are not ARM chips but their own home-grown x86-compatible version with Intel’s blessing.
That's certainly a possibility... An earlier post mentioned that a barrier was the need co convert x86 CISC to RISC -- but Intel does just that at execution time thru a proprietary process. As, I read it Apple, with Intels blessing (Apple $), could do either ARM or another Apple Chip running [native] x86.
Why would Intel give Apple its blessing? What would they gain by that? They would eventually lose sales of at least 20 million x86 chips a year to Apple. That’s a considerable amount of money. What would Apple do for Intel that would make that up, pay Intel over $2 billion a year to make up for the loss of sales? I do t see it.
what I’ve said a number of times, though it’s been ignored, is that there is something that Apple could do. It’s recently been found, by a research group, that a dozen, or so, instructions account for about 80% of the slowdown when emulating another chip family (assuming the chips are of about equal performance). Since chip instructions, by themselves, individually, are not patentable, or copyrightable, it’s possible that Apple could implement them in silicon. If so, then either the OS, or the scheduler in the chip could look to see what the app needs, and switch to the x86 instruction, or the ARM instruction. That would eliminated most of the slowdown. The rest could be handled by the performance of the chip itself.
we need to remember that each time Apple moved to a new chip, emulation of some kind was needed. At first, the software ran slowly, but after a couple of chip generations, speed was back where it should be, and after that, native code eliminated the problem. That could happen here. If Apple can use these instructions, even that chip generation problem could be eliminated. Is Apple looking into this? Who knows?
firstly, no, the ‘a serir]es still has a long way to go before it can compete
1) It's an odd assumption to think that the A-series chip is the most powerful chip Apple can design seeing as how those are designed for handheld devices with no options for fans, very limited batteries, and incredibly small spaces, but I find it even more odd that you assume that it would be an A-series chip and not another chip designation, like all the others Apple has come up with already.
2) We know that Apple's chip designs can compete because we already have evidence that their chips are outpacing what they're putting into many of their Macs, but you're incorrectly assuming that they only way Apple could come out with an ARM-based Macs on the lower-end (where compatibility for Bootcamp and virtualization won't have to be supported) is for Apple to also best Intel on their upcoming Mac Pro performance.
if Apple does begin this process, it will be a very difficult one.
Of course Apple has begun this process. Do you really not see all these changes to their codebase at WWDC as not leading to this eventual transition to offer some ARM-baed Macs?
I’ve never said it was the most powerful chip they can design. But it’s not as easy to design a complex chip. As performances goes up, so, will cost, power draw and heat. I’m not saying they can’t do it. But even if they do, developers are still going to have to go native. Yes, no? Who knows how that would go?
It sure reads that way when you say the A-series chips have a long way to go to compete with Macs (which is clearly false and has been for years) by not once mentioning that Apple's A-series chips are designed for small, handheld devices with very limited battery life and a small thermal envelope.
Why do you think Apple is incapable of designing a P-series chip that shoots ahead of the A12X in all the ways that a traditional, low-end notebook would need, like considerably more RAM? I see absolutely no hurdle other than Apple needing to line up all the SW properly to make this transition into a multi-architecture Mac platform (or Mac-like category) feasible.
Is it needed to distort what I said for your argument? Saying that they have a long way to go is not saying they can’t do it—if they want to. A lot of this assumes that Intel will not move forwards. Their newest line will be 20% faster, as an example. You say it “clearly false” but it isn’t. Yes, I read a lot of things saying how great Apple’s chips are. And they are great. But not to the extent some are saying. Yes, they are designed for a low power envelope. And for that, they do we’re well. But if Apple designs them for a higher power envelope, they will run into the same problems everyone else has. You can’t get something for nothing, and things just don’t scale that much.
i’ve suggested several things. One is my response to Dick right above this post. Other things were that Apple remove the graphics from the chip, except for some simpler unit, and implement a full GPU. Another is that they remove the efficiency cores, and add more performance cores. All if that makes sense for a product with much bigger batteries, and improved cooling. If going beyond 4 performance cores is a problem, then they could go with two chops. If Apple can maintain pricing, then two chips would still be cheap, and even a separate GPU would, and allow Apple to use real graphics RAM instead of the RAM sharing they have to do now. That would decouple GPU performance from CPU performance.
so I’m not saying they can’t do it. But they have, I believe, to go further than they have so far. If Apple can’t show that ARM based Macs are better, then what the point? Big developers have to get on board for this.
If I may ask, how many of you who are expressing the need keep x86 are currently using a MacBook or MacBook Air? What percentage of that 35% of AI readers would that be? And what percentage of the total Mac user base would that be?
I think the vast majority of coffee shop surfers wouldn’t even notice the difference. Only that there are more of them because the price point would be a bit lower.
ARM based Macs will be a bottom-up endeavour rather than a top down. Apple is happy to run 2 versions of IOS. It would likely be equally happy running 2 versions of Mac OS.
Pro laptops and all desktops would remain x86 while the consumer level mobile machines move to ARM. Heck, they could even make an entry level iMac on ARM for schools and such. Maybe we would even see the return of the $500 Mac Mini.
As a developer, I need both mac and windows support. To openly campaign to remove Windows compat is to be irresponsible to the marketplace. If users don't need Windows, that's fine. Don't penalize me for your lack of needs.
I don't think you, nor FredFref read the article. As a developer, you need both Mac and Windows support, sure. However, there is no mandate that it be in one machine.
FTA: "In all likelihood, Apple is going to move away from Intel to using ARM processors in the Mac. You can expect that it will start soon with the MacBook, and you can bet that it won't happen with the Mac Pro for many years, if at all."
Don't conflate what you need and is essential to you, with what a larger market that Apple is paying more attention to, and has much, much larger buying power, needs or cares about. Not all use cases are the same.
I’m uncomfortable to agree with you here. I’ve now seen at least a couple of use cases that won’t fit. If we tell everyone with a use case that they shouldn’t take that as an example of others every time one come up, soon we run out of what isn’t a use case that doesn’t fit. Use cases are important when they don’t cover one persons particular needs, but these of an entire industry.
after all, we all know that Apple’s new Mac Pro won’t gather millions of sales. We don’t know if they’ll sell a large number. But that’s a special use case that Apple found it necessary to support. It will also, as a result, support architectural work, 3D design, and other high performance needs. That’s what happens when you support “a use case”. There are others that follow. The engineering area is important. It’s not just a use case.
If I may ask, how many of you who are expressing the need keep x86 are currently using a MacBook or MacBook Air? What percentage of that 35% of AI readers would that be? And what percentage of the total Mac user base would that be?
I think the vast majority of coffee shop surfers wouldn’t even notice the difference. Only that there are more of them because the price point would be a bit lower.
ARM based Macs will be a bottom-up endeavour rather than a top down. Apple is happy to run 2 versions of IOS. It would likely be equally happy running 2 versions of Mac OS.
Pro laptops and all desktops would remain x86 while the consumer level mobile machines move to ARM. Heck, they could even make an entry level iMac on ARM for schools and such. Maybe we would even see the return of the $500 Mac Mini.
👆
I’m not in the market for an ARM-based Mac and will likely use an Intel-base MacBook Pro for as long as possible, but so many people here see ARM + Mac and think Apple is coming for their Mac the way Obama came for everyone’s guns.
As a developer, I need both mac and windows support. To openly campaign to remove Windows compat is to be irresponsible to the marketplace. If users don't need Windows, that's fine. Don't penalize me for your lack of needs.
I don't think you, nor FredFref read the article.
Why does a dissenting opinion mean they didn't read the article? Maybe they read, disagreed with the basic premise "cross-platform software compatibility is now mostly irrelevant to the wider user base" and everything that follows. Especially since you had a poll, found 35% that said, yes they needed windows and then proceeded to hand wave that away as AI readers aren't a representative sample. Which begs the question of WHY RUN THE POLL IN THE FIRST PLACE?
The next assertion "for Apple's biggest user base, the need for Windows compatibility isn't the same as it is for the main readers of this site" is fabricated out of thin air and has zero supporting data. Whether true or not it's based on nothing but speculation.
If the primary uses of the Macs are Pro and everyone else migrates to iPads then a significant fraction of Mac users (dare I say 35%) will want x86 compatibility.
But, nope...because they disagree they didn't read the article.
That's not why I said that, and you know it. And, there's a lot more to this quote of mine than what you clipped out. And, I didn't even say anything about the ludicrous assumption that this article is a "campaign" to remove Windows compatibility.
It wasn't handwaved away. What it is, is that 35% of the user base that reads AI doesn't need it, which is an overly conservative estimate of what the larger user base needs and does with their machines, and you know this as well, based on your own interactions with the rest of the AI readership. And, even if you translate it literally, it does mean that the majority doesn't care about Windows on the Mac.
There are lots of dissenting opinions on this site, and on this piece, and very few overall do I call out because somebody hasn't read a piece. It's pretty obvious when somebody gets pissed that we aren't taking for them, specifically, and has only read the headline, or just a paragraph or two and vents about it.
I think a problem here is what constitutes a “small’ enough minority to be, what would be the word? Ignored? It seems to me that 35%, assuming that number does represent an actual number based on the overall Mac community (which seriously we don’t know), is a rather large one. When Apple announced that they were removing the SD card slot because only a small number of people used it, I quickly assumed it was going to be like, oh, 5%. When he said 20%, a lot of people in the audience sucked their breaths in and went: “ooooh”. They were not happy. And even though I never used that slot, preferring faster readers, I could sympathize with that 20%, because 20% is a large number, not a small one.
i do use windows occasionally, though through Parallels. But I wouldn’t be thrilled if any possibility was removed. But really, this is just one thing. There are others.
i just thought of something else that I missed. wallym mentioned his kids using Windows. I don’t know his kids, so I can’t speak to their needs, but my daughter and her game playing friends boot in Windows for games. I’m told that this is a VERY popular thing to do. As you know, many major games are not available on MacOS. Some that are, are poor ports.
firstly, no, the ‘a serir]es still has a long way to go before it can compete
1) It's an odd assumption to think that the A-series chip is the most powerful chip Apple can design seeing as how those are designed for handheld devices with no options for fans, very limited batteries, and incredibly small spaces, but I find it even more odd that you assume that it would be an A-series chip and not another chip designation, like all the others Apple has come up with already.
2) We know that Apple's chip designs can compete because we already have evidence that their chips are outpacing what they're putting into many of their Macs, but you're incorrectly assuming that they only way Apple could come out with an ARM-based Macs on the lower-end (where compatibility for Bootcamp and virtualization won't have to be supported) is for Apple to also best Intel on their upcoming Mac Pro performance.
if Apple does begin this process, it will be a very difficult one.
Of course Apple has begun this process. Do you really not see all these changes to their codebase at WWDC as not leading to this eventual transition to offer some ARM-baed Macs?
Yes it is not. The modernization and uniform changes have happened twice at NeXT when I worked there, and now three times at Apple. They had nothing to do with the platform ISA which will forever be x86 based.
Intel is just now phasing out Itanium, and no one at Apple even bothered porting to that.
AMD is blowing up the market with their Zen architecture which has 5 major and 5 minor designs already in the middle to stamp out phases of design and mature market levels.
Apple went ARM because of the Patent IP accessibility and only player in the world for embedded systems balance of performance and power requirements.
ARM cannot compete in the x86 market. Apple who co-developed ARM knows this from its inception.
Moving to a 64 core/ 128 thread PCI-E 4.0 based Mac Pro/iMac Pro/iMac etc., will cost Apple NOTHING with AMD as the CPUs/APUs/GPGPUs other than a custom ASIC on their custom designed motherboards. The cost reduction and margin increases will make Apple far more than they have with Intel.
Having been behind the curtain at NeXT and Apple if they were going to waste their time on ARM for desktop it would have happened 8 years ago. Even with ARM's latest designs it gets its ass handed to it.
None of these chip designs competes with Intel and AMD. Not by a long shot. Nor will they. PowerPC is losing ground to AMD, not just Intel.
ROME is arriving in a few days for EPYC 2 at 64 core/128 threads whose chiplet design blows the doors off of anything Intel can do. The upcoming Ryzen 3950x 16 core/ 32 thread non Threadripper CPU stomps all over the competition. The 64/128 Threadripper 3 will be the only non Apple platform in the Windows/Linux creative space market.
Apple moving to AMD is the inevitable outcome, not ARM.
I am wondering why no one is talking about the possibility of having a main ARM chip, with a custom x86 sub processor embedded into it? Or having a secondary Intel chip on the motherboard?
This is pure random speculation. But how feasible is this strategy; especially since Apple knows that Pros (especially their developers) would benefit from having both.
Intel has made it very clear over the years that they’ve not happy with licensees. They can’t stop AMD, but they would like to. Years ago, there were a number of x86 chip licensees, but as the licenses expired, Intel chose to not renew them. IBM essentially forced Intel to license x86, because at one time, early on, Intel was in financial trouble, and IBM was concerned their chip supply would go away. IBM itself made x86 chips for a while.
so done else here brought up the possibility of Apple building x86, or doing it the ARM chip. Other than a few instructions,mwhere Apple likely doesn’t need permission, I just don’t see Intel giving Apple a license for that. Apple is a major customer. They would take a lot of business from Intel if they made their own x86 chips. If it’s a question of Apple somehow moving to ARM, or licensing x86, it think that would be a hard choice. But Apple would have to give Intel at least $2 billion a year to make up for the lost sales. Would that be worth it to Apple? I can’t see it.
Comments
Who do you think reads AI? Do you not think it's primarily Apple devout for decades? William addresses this in the piece, somewhat, in regards to who reads AI. Who reads AI should be apparent from the forums at least. Based on what we know, the "average" AI reader has been in the Apple ecosystem for well over a decade, is pretty heavily technologically savvy, has many Apple devices and has for ages, well before the iPhone 3gs, iPad, and iPhone 6 explosions in Apple user volume.
If we could tap into 1% of the "new" Apple customer, we'd be sitting on a gold mine. Most of the new Apple users bought an iPhone and have just that so aren't relevant to this particular conversation, or got an iPhone or iPad and said "hey, this Mac thing might be pretty great" rather than the other way around like it was a decade ago.
2) Again, you're off.
Please folks, try to be coherent. Posts like this only serve chaos. Reading what people write in context solves confusion.
Intel will be readily forgotten like Kodak and other dinosaurs.
Intel got its Kodak moment because it developed a bureaucratic grind down and lost all interest in innovation. Instead they performed a Bubka (minimal uninspired improvement) once in a increasingly longer while.
Intels x86 design is inherently handicapped (nee! politically correct: challenged) by its internal hardware translation to RISC and its slow transition to smaller feature size.
What happened is that designing a new chip became more and more a software issue (the right VHDL tools and combined physics calculations) and making the hardware (steppers) more and more an order for ASML.
Apples ARM processors will be the best high end processors you can buy, only at a fraction of the cost and as part of a device.
2) I'm going to laugh when people like you feel sideswiped by what everyone else saw coming years ago.
This is pure random speculation. But how feasible is this strategy; especially since Apple knows that Pros (especially their developers) would benefit from having both.
Seriously though, the plan for the lower end was ARM running iOS. In fact that was probably the dream to replace macs. That is why macs seemed so neglected for three or four years. All interest was on iPad pros. It’s proven harder than Cook thought, hence recent interest in ultra high end offerings for mac, and iPadOS which is closer to a more traditional, real desktop type OS with a file system than Apple had it seemed, wanted.
So for now I can see the low end iPadOS ARM based, and a revival of decent macs on x86.
please don’t pretentious that “efficiency” cores are equal to regular cores. They are much smaller, and much less powerful.
I’ve read the reviews in Anandtech. Usually, I’m the one posting them here, and elsewhere.
I would love love to Apple design a chip that’s really a powerhouse. But we don’t know if that’s their goal. We also don’t really know if Apple is even contemplating having MacOS on ARM. We just don’t, though it seems a lot of people are assuming it.
if running Intel code in emulation is needed, then yes, it’s a very big problem. If you haven’t learned the lessons of the last about that, then look it up.
what I’ve said a number of times, though it’s been ignored, is that there is something that Apple could do. It’s recently been found, by a research group, that a dozen, or so, instructions account for about 80% of the slowdown when emulating another chip family (assuming the chips are of about equal performance). Since chip instructions, by themselves, individually, are not patentable, or copyrightable, it’s possible that Apple could implement them in silicon. If so, then either the OS, or the scheduler in the chip could look to see what the app needs, and switch to the x86 instruction, or the ARM instruction. That would eliminated most of the slowdown. The rest could be handled by the performance of the chip itself.
we need to remember that each time Apple moved to a new chip, emulation of some kind was needed. At first, the software ran slowly, but after a couple of chip generations, speed was back where it should be, and after that, native code eliminated the problem. That could happen here. If Apple can use these instructions, even that chip generation problem could be eliminated. Is Apple looking into this? Who knows?
i’ve suggested several things. One is my response to Dick right above this post. Other things were that Apple remove the graphics from the chip, except for some simpler unit, and implement a full GPU. Another is that they remove the efficiency cores, and add more performance cores. All if that makes sense for a product with much bigger batteries, and improved cooling. If going beyond 4 performance cores is a problem, then they could go with two chops. If Apple can maintain pricing, then two chips would still be cheap, and even a separate GPU would, and allow Apple to use real graphics RAM instead of the RAM sharing they have to do now. That would decouple GPU performance from CPU performance.
so I’m not saying they can’t do it. But they have, I believe, to go further than they have so far. If Apple can’t show that ARM based Macs are better, then what the point? Big developers have to get on board for this.
I think the vast majority of coffee shop surfers wouldn’t even notice the difference. Only that there are more of them because the price point would be a bit lower.
ARM based Macs will be a bottom-up endeavour rather than a top down. Apple is happy to run 2 versions of IOS. It would likely be equally happy running 2 versions of Mac OS.
Pro laptops and all desktops would remain x86 while the consumer level mobile machines move to ARM. Heck, they could even make an entry level iMac on ARM for schools and such. Maybe we would even see the return of the $500 Mac Mini.
after all, we all know that Apple’s new Mac Pro won’t gather millions of sales. We don’t know if they’ll sell a large number. But that’s a special use case that Apple found it necessary to support. It will also, as a result, support architectural work, 3D design, and other high performance needs. That’s what happens when you support “a use case”. There are others that follow. The engineering area is important. It’s not just a use case.
I’m not in the market for an ARM-based Mac and will likely use an Intel-base MacBook Pro for as long as possible, but so many people here see ARM + Mac and think Apple is coming for their Mac the way Obama came for everyone’s guns.
i do use windows occasionally, though through Parallels. But I wouldn’t be thrilled if any possibility was removed. But really, this is just one thing. There are others.
i just thought of something else that I missed. wallym mentioned his kids using Windows. I don’t know his kids, so I can’t speak to their needs, but my daughter and her game playing friends boot in Windows for games. I’m told that this is a VERY popular thing to do. As you know, many major games are not available on MacOS. Some that are, are poor ports.
so done else here brought up the possibility of Apple building x86, or doing it the ARM chip. Other than a few instructions,mwhere Apple likely doesn’t need permission, I just don’t see Intel giving Apple a license for that. Apple is a major customer. They would take a lot of business from Intel if they made their own x86 chips. If it’s a question of Apple somehow moving to ARM, or licensing x86, it think that would be a hard choice. But Apple would have to give Intel at least $2 billion a year to make up for the lost sales. Would that be worth it to Apple? I can’t see it.