mjtomlin

mattinoz said:

IF Apple doesn't debut a new ARM core or other suitable function in the ASi family to make the Mac chips a family of their own then performance needs to be stellar (+3x on Intel) or there will be questions.  

Shove an A14x in job done attitude would sure knock the confidence in the transition. 

While Mac ASi will be based off the A-series, they will not be the same nor used across the different product lines. They will have a lot in common as many of the logical units will probably be the same; ISP, ANE, etc. But I would be very surprised if they used the same CPU and GPU cores - even though it is reasonable that they could - Apple is perfectly capable of designing new Mac specific CPU and GPU cores. And, in fact, they already said the GPU cores would be "bigger". There are other factors that support a new series of chips as well; PCI support, VT-x like capabilities, disparate RAM (hopefully upgradeable), much less need to be energy efficient on the desktop, etc.

However, I don't think CPU performance needs to be what you think it does. It really only needs to match what we have now. The benefits will come from the other parts of the SoC. I do expect much better performance on the low end, especially in MacBooks. And then just slightly better on the high end. Apple is mainly looking for a smaller thermal baseline than anything else. This is where Intel has utterly failed and why MacBook Pros have had throttling issues.

melgross said:

There’s a lot of confusion by what’s meant by a “new” series of chips just for Macs, which is what Apple said they were doing.

the way some of you are writing here, you don’t seem to understand that Apple can have all of its chips based on the same cores, but be different chips. Neither AMD or Intel label their chips with x86 in the name of the particular chip itself. But they’re all x86 chips. Apple will be the same. These are not A14 chips and more than they were A6 chips. That’s just the generational indicator, and that’s how Apple labels it’s chips. So there can easily be four or even five A14 chips out there, all having different features. Don’t get caught up by the fact that they may all be called A14 something or other.

x86 (and x84-x64) are ISAs, they are not core designs. ARMv8 Is an ISA as well and yes, all of Apple's CPU cores are base off this ISA, but they are all also different designs. (Hell, they could even move to ARMv9 for their Mac SoCs.) If they weren't, Apple wouldn't need different names for each - A Thunderbolt CPU core is a Thunderbolt core regardless of what generation of SoC it's on. The same goes for every other logical unit on the SoC.

Also, I am not getting "caught up" in the naming... some people are saying that Apple is going to use the exact same chip in both the Mac and iPad and that's where they're wrong, that's where Apple's statement of making and designing a new family of SoCs specifically for the Mac comes in. Because if they're just going to use the exact same A14 and A14X in the Mac, why bother making that statement? Furthermore they also said they're making bigger and more performant GPU cores for the Mac. And those SoCs will support virtualization. They will also support Thunderbolt (PCI). Not to mention they will need to support disparate RAM as RAM requirements for macOS is much different than iOS and putting all that RAM onto the SoC is probably not reasonable. I have a feeling all Mac SoCs will have 8GB RAM "on chip", and the rest "off chip".

And as far as naming goes... current Macs don't use an "A10T", they use a "T2", even though that SoC is just a variant of the A10. So it stands to reason that even though Mac SoCs will share a lot of the same logical units, there will be enough differences to use a different name - just to differentiate their use.

If Apple keeps expanding these entertainment services, I think they should eventually break them out and form a separate company much as they did with Claris (now known as FileMaker) in the 90's.

Media or Entertainment

Music, Music Videos, Music Concerts, Radio, Podcasts, TV Shows, Movies, Books, Magazines, News, Games, Fitness, etc.

Great read, but not much new stuff. Was hoping to hear more about Mac SoCs.

Speaking of which... Who else thinks that with these upcoming ASi Macs we’re going to lose the ability to customize for performance? Today I can buy an iMac with an i5, i7, or i9, but only because Apple can just buy those from Intel. Will Macs move to a more iOS device type of customization, where performance differences are marked by generation, not variant (expect of course for the AnX/AnZ)?

There are currently 4 Mac categories to design SoCs for: consumer desktop, consumer mobile, pro desktop, pro mobile. So that’s already at least four variants on the same generation SoC. Is Apple going to be able to make multiple SoCs for each category so that there’s a method of choosing more or less performance in CPU/GPU?

Or is it going to be... Here’s an iMac... choose your display size, storage and memory, that’s it!

NoFliesOnMe said:

mjtomlin said:

greginprague said:

• Bornstein says that console markets taking 30% is fundamentally different than Apple, since consoles generally operate at a loss

Why is that fundamentally different?  Apple isn’t allowed to make money on the equipment and the App Store?  That seems like a preference of Bornstein but nothing that would hold up in court.  To me the App Store commission percentage between platforms is completely relevant and should stand on its own.  If Epic is fine with Sony and Nintendo charging 30% then he must be fine with Apple doing the same.  How was that not ruled on in summary judgement??

People probably don't remember that we all had to pay for OS upgrades. Mac OS was $129, and if I remember, iOS was $19.99 (or 9.99?). The advent and success of the App Store has allowed Apple to remove the need for revenue from OS upgrade sales (to sustain platform development) and that's when they started offering free upgrades. This in turn has allowed Apple to achieve the unusually high upgrade numbers and move the platform forward at a pace the industry had never seen and no one else can match.

While agree Apple does need to do something, allowing 3rd party App Stores on the platform is not one of them. I'm all for side-loading (from "identified" developers and at user's own risk), and dropping their cut from 30/15% to 20/10%.

Actually, Apple providing “free” OS upgrades has absolutely nothing to do with the App Store. When Apple made that change, I think it was around the release of “Snow Leopard”, said they were using an accounting trick to integrate all future software upgrades into the purchase cost of the Apple device. 

Mac OS X Mavericks was the first free OS upgrade for users of Snow Leopard and up. Snow Leopard was the first OS with a price cut... from $129 to $29.

The value of the operating system has always been baked into the price of the device. Giving away the OS did not bring that about. The accounting "excuse" was created merely to justify the expense of developing the operating system and no longer making a profit directly from OS sales. It allowed them to continue whatever accounting practices they had used for years.

The point I was making is that Apple no longer needed direct revenue from those OS upgrades because of the revenue and profit the App Store was bringing in. For that matter, they also were able to start giving away their iWork apps (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) as well.