tjwolf

This article is, what, 5+ years late?  WeChat has been the dominant social/payment/everything app in China for years now.  Articles on how WeChat *is the operating system" have come and gone for years.  WeChat's *ascent* has been over for awhile.

tmay said:

danvdr said:

10,000? Seems like a pretty small number.

I'm thinking 10,000 wafers. For a 300 mm diameter wafer, that's probably 20 to 30 million processors total, depending on die size and yield.

Completely agree, but the article specifically said "processors".  Proof-reading seems to no longer be part of the publishing process.

" the previous models which typically used stainless steel" - Isn't the "typical" (as in most sold) Apple Watch made from aluminum?  I'm desperately trying to make a magnet stick to mine....nope, no stainless steel in its body.

virgilisleading42 said:

I love Apple's CPU development but it seems like it doesn't make any sense for them to switch anything to arm anymore. It seems like they are giving a lot more power to the ipad pro with mouse support. I love the iPad Pro and it's replaced my laptop already. I'm unclear about what the benefit would be to switch the other mac lines to ARM. It seems like it'd be a lot more issue than benefit to switch all the software, windows compatibility, etc. Plus with Foveros 3D from Intel and AMDs 3d stacking these chips are becoming a lot more power efficient. Can anyone tell me why this would possible be a good thing?

I think there are several reasons why a MacBook Pro w. ARM makes sense: (1) tighter control over hardware/OS integration - an ARM chip could be designed or tweaked to help macOS; Intel isn't rolling out a custom version of x86 for Apple.  (2) cost - one or more ARM chips will cost Apple a lot less than buying a single x86 chip from Intel.  (3) an ARM laptop is going to be less energy draining than an equivalent x86 laptop, allowing Apple to reduce battery size (cost saving) or increase use time (better customer experience).

The only question in my mind is how Apple will transition its customers from x86 base software packages to ARM-based ones.  I imagine much of the open source apps as well as currently supported commercial software will be recompiled/tweaked for the new processor, but what about the existing x86 stuff that isn't upgradeable?  In past transitions, Apple included an emulator (e.g. Rosetta) - but that only works if the new processor has clearly more power than the one it replaces - otherwise the user experience for emulated software will suck.

randominternetperson said:

It seems funny to talk about "in Q1" when there are only a few weeks left in Q1.  Unless we're talking about Apple's fiscal Q1 (which I don't think is the case).

Apple's Q1 would be even more ridiculous since that ended Dec. 31, 2019.