The Mac's best days are behind it now. And I'm not coming along for the ride, I'm done. I'll still work on the ARM Macs for clients, but I will never own one. And I'm going to be brushing up on my Linux and Windoze support skills, looks like I'm going to need it.
Apple just killed Macintosh.
HA! I've read this SO MANY TIMES over the past 30 YEARS there's no way I can't just laugh now. DOOMED.
I’m thinking that some enterprising company could build a full stack x86 Windows PC into a dock or compute-stick form factor that connects to an Apple Silicon Mac via a TB or USB-C port. The host machine could then run a Remote Desktop session into the Windows PC over a virtual network between itself and the Windows PC “dongle.” Yeah, it doesn’t sound very elegant but architecturally it’s not much of a stretch at all. Everyone loves dongles, don’t they?
I'd buy one. The ability to have Windows in a window right on the Mac is pretty nice. The alternative is a another piece of PC hardware, and then messing with switching input devices, etc. Or, some kind of remote/cloud type thing, but that might not work well for some applications (though I guess if gaming can work, maybe this could too?).
darkvader said: I didn't. I was exceedingly annoyed by how quickly support for PowerPC Macs got dropped, especially considering the quad-core water cooled G5 that was on my desk. That was a serious beast of a machine, and despite Steve's claims otherwise it was faster than the first Intel Macs by quite a bit. But being stuck on 10.5 quickly became a problem.
Yes, this seems a legitimate concern. Hopefully Apple doesn't pull a repeat, and supports our Intel Macs for considerably longer. Sure, people say... it doesn't just stop working. But, if the software/OS support isn't there, it may as well have (even more so today than back then).
It's sad that Apple is in effect putting Parallels out of business.
Yeah except for the Apple Silicon compile of Parallels they literally demoed Monday.
Yeah, I take some comfort in that. Because, if that were all it was able to do, they would go out of business. There must be some plans to support Windows.
madan said: ... Apple A series chips may get close to Intels Coffee Lake i5/7 levels of performance but they’ll lag compared to Golden Coves 10 nm cores next year. If Apple was concerned about security or supply chain, they could’ve gone AMD. Ryzen 3 4xxx series chips have a 15% uplift over 3700x or Core i7s in the 50W envelope and they have a great relationship with AMD. ...
You do realize they will be building a multi-core desktop version of the chip, right? And, that the world's fastest super-computer is ARM based? No, Intel and AMD won't sit still, but I have a hunch they are going to have some serious competition, if not a crisis coming up pretty soon.
Read an interesting thread on ArsTechnica, which seems to mirror a lot of the conversations here.
Someone pointed out that only 2% of the Macs use Bootcamp.
Someone else pointed out that there are other ways to run Windows without Bootcamp.
But, as person number 1 pointed out, these days, many virtualisation setups use Bootcamp to power the Windows install, so the number of users who actually need to run Windows on a Mac is not that far from 2%.
That probably came from AppleInsider. Didn't Mike W present some kind of stat like that a while back? The problem is that far more Mac users run Windows via Parallels/VMWare, etc. I've heard that is around 10%. So, 10% + 2% (I think Mike W said 3%) is 12%.
The question is what are we going to do? I guess we can buy an Apple silicon machine and also a PC. Eventually some kind of emulation might come along and cover some part of that 12%. But, there are also a lot of people like me (ie. I run Autodesk Revit... others might run some other CAD/3D app), which won't work in slow emulation, especially if GPU heavy.
That can get pricy, to the point where it's probably cheaper to just buy a Windows box and be done with it.
There is an opportunity to start a business selling cloud computing to consumers. Anyone got a few million and an empty warehouse with good internet?
From what I am seeing software companies are moving to "live services" model where you don't buy the software outright but effective rent it (360, 1Password, and a large number of games) are examples of this
That can get pricy, to the point where it's probably cheaper to just buy a Windows box and be done with it.
There is an opportunity to start a business selling cloud computing to consumers. Anyone got a few million and an empty warehouse with good internet?
From what I am seeing software companies are moving to "live services" model where you don't buy the software outright but effective rent it (360, 1Password, and a large number of games) are examples of this
maximara said: From what I am seeing software companies are moving to "live services" model where you don't buy the software outright but effective rent it (360, 1Password, and a large number of games) are examples of this
I need to see a viable cloud experience for more advanced software, though. If Stadia (Google's could gaming) works, then I would suppose it should be possible... though I'm not sure Stadia does actually work, heh. It is one thing to have a word-processor or to-do list in the cloud, but running 3D animation / CAD / video editing, etc. I would think is quite another situation.
I find all of the doom and gloom predictions of the demise of Apple because they are appropriately abandoning the x86 platform for very legitimate reasons quite comical.
I myself remain tied to the PowerPC platform and still using a G5 which is considered "ancient" by modern standards. But kudos for the tenfourfox developers as my G5 remains relevant. More than I can say for my 2008 iMac using a core2 duo CPU.
Talking about real work, while rocking 12 year old GPULs that have less performance than a Core i5 3650 is quite comical.
It was actually a sad day for me when Apple abandoned the PowerPC especially when PA Semi was manufacturing the Pwrficient CPU which offered great performance at low power consumption figures. Something that Intel has still failed to come to grips with. Admittedly Intel's relationship with Apple has helped. But Intel is totally lost. AMD is outperforming Intel while Intel continued to flounder. Still on a 14 nm process when everyone else has moved beyond. And Intel's integrated GPU is still an atrocious performer.
Ryzen 2 is still behind Intel in AVX/decode. Ryzen 2 is still behind Intel in single core and single thread performance. Yes AMD IS VERY COMPETITIVE IN CPUs right now but let’s not pretend that Intel Rocket or Cannon lakes are the same as oh... I don’t know, an Apple GPUL chip. That would be comical.
Intel is stuck and their efforts are anemic at best. Improvements to their CPU are occurring at even slower than a snail's pace.
Actually, their upcoming Golden Cove cores should compete well against Ryzen 3. They also finally smoothed out their 10 nm lithography which is competitive with TSMC 7nm.
Suddenly those toasted bunnies from that Apple commercial all those years ago seems eerily prescient.
You’re exaggerating Intel’s ills. Pretty comical. I’m not an Intel fan but they still supply great desktop chips with elite performance. They also have virtualized interoperability throughout the technical world.
So for all of those who yearn for the x86 CPU, just buy a modern Mac today. The CPU will still be relevant a decade from now. Because Intel will still have not have advanced much even by then. Today's Intel CPUs will not be obsoleted by newer Intel CPUs for a long time. If ever.
Not only comical but also erroneous. Per your argument a 10 year old 2 core Penryn does the same as a Core i9 10800x. Except the latter is actually 1200% faster than the former In multithreaded. In ten years that’s a good uplift by any standards, even Apples.
Apple can either stay tied to Intel and continue to advance the A series CPUs for their mobile devices and watch the next generation iPad move past the MacBook Pro even with all of the limitations of the mobile platform or bite the bullet and develop a high performance chip based on the ARM ISA for the MacBook Pro and even the Mac Pro line of machines.
I mean look at the optics people. The iPad pro is matching the core i7 in single threaded performance and in a mobile device!!! Even with much lower amounts of RAM, passive cooling and a limited thermal envelope, Apples bionic CPU is on par with the i7!! For Intel, that's actually not just pathetic, it's embarrassing.
Except it’s not matching a modern i7. The A12Z matches up with a Core i5 Mobility 10000 series. Sure, they could conceivably add 4 more big cores and increase cooling, but theyd only probably hit Coffee Lake desktop i7 speeds. To catch Intels best from the new i9s, theyd have to increase performance over the A12Z by 100%. Can it be done? Sure. It’s still an ARM chip and while Apple will integrate the software well through optimizations, you’d have to be delusional to think that 3rd party devs would do the same. The fact is You’re going to be eating a performance hit for the next five years or so regardless of what Apple does with their chips.
Why wouldn't Apple just ditch Intel. Apple clearly has a much better CPU with a superior integrated GPU than Intel. Why not just develop a high performance version for desktop and laptop use? Honestly, an Intel CPU will remain relevant for a very long time. If nothing more because Intel isn't able to advance the x86 platform. It's even more pathetic that AMD offers better ...
I skipped the rest for redundancy. Do you know what will make Apple computers less safe? The fact that you can’t run other virtualized oses for penetration testing or cyber security testing. What this means is that hackers that focus on Apple computers will have almost free reign since Apple will have little to no similarities with other platforms and won’t be able to leverage the knowledge, expertise and participation of members of other platforms.
Comments
Sure, people say... it doesn't just stop working. But, if the software/OS support isn't there, it may as well have (even more so today than back then).
You do realize they will be building a multi-core desktop version of the chip, right? And, that the world's fastest super-computer is ARM based?
No, Intel and AMD won't sit still, but I have a hunch they are going to have some serious competition, if not a crisis coming up pretty soon.
That probably came from AppleInsider. Didn't Mike W present some kind of stat like that a while back? The problem is that far more Mac users run Windows via Parallels/VMWare, etc. I've heard that is around 10%. So, 10% + 2% (I think Mike W said 3%) is 12%.
The question is what are we going to do? I guess we can buy an Apple silicon machine and also a PC. Eventually some kind of emulation might come along and cover some part of that 12%. But, there are also a lot of people like me (ie. I run Autodesk Revit... others might run some other CAD/3D app), which won't work in slow emulation, especially if GPU heavy.