swineone

melgross said:

swineone said:

"This works with any Intel Mac app" [quoted from the article, regarding Rosetta 2]

Are you sure? Does that include Parallels running x86-64 Windows? It's quite telling that they mentioned Rosetta and virtualization, yet made no mention of this, which could alleviate concerns on many pro users' minds (myself included).

I doubt they meant that. But as Apple has said, only 2% of Macs coming in for service had Windows installed in Bootcamp. How many are using Parallels or other virtualization software with Windows, I don’t know, but it’s not a lot. I have it too, but I haven’t run Windows for more than a year. I still do Run Linux occasionally though. So likely, from what I hear, that’s more important.

i doubt I’d too many pro users use Windows on their Mac these days. It’s mostly used by gamers.

I have zero games on my Windows installation under Parallels. I do have EDA software (electronics simulation, schematic capture, PCB routing, FPGAs, etc.), test & measurement software to interface with electronics T&M gear, MCAD software, software development apps (Visual Studio, the real one not the toy Code version, plus various embedded software tools), etc.

Another group of people will have in-house apps that are Windows only.

pslice said:

Is Apple going to offer an AppleCare extension to bridge Intel users to the Apple Silicon? My AppleCare expired on 6/15. I had hoped Apple would announce new iMacs. Right now I feel naked without AppleCare coverage.

You want Apple to replace parts for free on an 8-year old computer? Does that sound reasonable?

EDIT: OK, looks like I made a mistake, I read that as June of 2015, but you probably meant June 15th, 2020.

Either way I don't think they'll offer an extension for free. Maybe they could sell an extended Apple Care at a considerably higher rate (3-5 year old computers fail more often than 1-3 year old ones), but I don't expect them to do so.

lkrupp said:

AppleInsider said:

So do expect some complaints, and also expect some bargain Intel-based Mac Pro machines to turn up on eBay. However, it's not that anyone need ditch their current Intel Mac, nor should anyone should put off buying one if they need it now.



Something I've never understood about some users. Your current machine is running perfectly fine, it's fast and it does what you want it to very well. Now something new and different comes along and somehow, someway , the machine you are using becomes an obsolete piece of crap not worth keeping. And you blame Apple for bringing out a new technology before you are damn good and ready for it. You rage at Apple for making your perfectly fine machine 'useless'. 

When you invest a substantial amount of money in some pro gear, you hardly do so with the expectation to use it for a couple of years and then discard it. In fact you sell it for a good fraction of what you paid for it. That's part of the economic calculation of buying a piece of pro gear.

Now suddenly your pro gear uses a fundamentally incompatible architecture, which will be supported for "some (unstated amount of) years". There's no guarantee developers will continue performing software maintenance for the Intel port, or even Apple itself, for that matter. Now your expensive pro gear may not last as long as you initially planned, and by the time you sell it, it will probably be worthless. I mean really, if you paid upwards of $10,000 on a Mac Pro recently (quite easy with CPU, RAM, storage and GPU upgrades), who's going to pay more than, say, $3,000 or $4,000 for it in three years, knowing the fate of Intel hardware?

Compare that to other pro gear. I work with electronics design, where you can get upgrades for decades-old test equipment from the likes of Keysight, Fluke or Tektronix. An HP 3458A DMM, the gold standard in high-precision metrology, is a design from 1989 (IIRC) which holds its value quite well, and is still sold today with minimal, user-facing changes only. The lens mounts for DSLR cameras are the same for decades, you can use a good lens from the previous century on a current Canon or Nikon camera. I know computer technology is faster paced than this, but still, the timeframes in the pro market are quite different from the consumer market.

If Apple really cared about its pro users, they should have stated Mac Pros will be supported by macOS and pro apps for, at the very least, 5 years, and for them to keep a modicum of resale value, 10 years. They could go even further by requiring fat Intel/ARM builds in the Mac App Store for a similar amount of time, but macOS and pro app support for 5-10 years is the bare minimum.

 mjtomlin said:

Even then, I don't see a big issue... If Apple does move the Mac to ARM, isn't there an ARM version of Windows now? Aren't pretty much all distros of Linux and UNIX supporting / starting to support armv8?

There's more to it than just running Windows on ARM -- you need to run the actual apps that keep you tied to Windows, and those that run on ARM are few and far between. Certainly most people don't run Windows just because they need to run Solitaire and MS Paint.

First of all, I could barely believe this is a DED piece; the only giveaway was its size, but still, I read through half of it before I went back to the start to check the author. A very welcome change from the usual rant-filled, foaming-at-the-mouth display of anger at anyone who doesn't unconditionally praise Apple. I may even read more articles by him in the future (usually, at the first sign of the above characteristics, I go back to the start, confirm it's a DED piece and close the tab).

The transition to ARM has certainly been possible for a few years already, so one has to question what prompted it at this time, especially considering the decision certainly hasn't been made this year, or even last year (for those not familiar with it, it takes quite a few years to develop hardware; it's not like software where you can release a crappy version and update it later). Surely Intel's lack of progress in the last few years was a major motivator, but without an x86 emulation layer, the first couple of years are going to be rocky for the early adopter. I expect a repeat of the Intel transition where major apps (like Adobe's) took a while to be released. Now there's an extra issue with the loss of x86 virtualization, which despite what many people say, is going to be a factor to a large segment of the user base. Let's face it, there are many apps that are Windows only, from in-house apps to specialized apps such as a lot of stuff in the engineering field (e.g. SolidWorks, Altium Designer, etc.) Despite the general opinion, there are pro users who do things other than media editing.

I'll go on a limb here and say that part of why Apple took so long is that they're perfecting an x86 emulation layer that's going to run, if not at close to native speed, fast enough to entice users of such software to stay on the Apple ecosystem. Additionally it's going to help with sales in the first few years, while certain important apps haven't yet migrated to ARM.

Recall that Apple licensed the Rosetta layer for the PowerPC-to-Intel migration, but it was a much smaller company back then. They're huge now, and they even have their own compiler infrastructure in the form of LLVM; the expertise there might help to develop such an emulation layer.

In closing, I wager a part of the announcement is going to be an x86 emulation layer with never-seen-before performance. I guess we'll see soon enough.