esummers

rob53 said:

What about GPU performance? Is it good enough for an ARM Mac?

An ARM Mac would probably have its own processor since a MacBook Pro has much different I/O requirements.  If it did share a processor, it would be with the iPad since GPU requirements are similar.  I would expect it would be good compared to Intel graphics, but it would have different performance characteristics since it is a tile based processor.  It is possible Apple might still pair it with a discrete GPU from AMD on some models if it turns out the differences matter enough for pro apps.

echosonic said:

This is the most overblown BS I have seen in my lifetime.  Pure hype.  The entirety of the American media should be dissolved for creating this panic.

Corona killed what, less than 100 Americans?  Swine Flu killed 23,000 Americans, nothing.  Measles?  Nothing.  H1N1?  Nothing.  EBOLA?  Not a damned thing.  

One basketball player gets a cold and the whole country loses its f#$(%(&  mind.  

Glad I have cash on hand because the market is having the sale of the century, and all its going to cost is the economy, and thousands of jobs.

Shame on all of you lemmings who are playing along.

Learn about the situation.  100 people is only in this very early phase.  This spreads easily without you knowing you have it to others for 2 weeks.  Most people will have few or mild symptoms, but the remainder will have very severe life threatening symptoms that require them to go on ventilators.  There are not nearly enough ventilators for the number of people expected to catch Corona virus, so doctors will need to decide who lives and dies.  We run out of ventilators and the death rate goes up much higher.  It is important we slow the spread to prevent this.  We are poorly prepared and should have more ventilators stockpiled, but other countries are in the same situation.  The severe symptoms are more likely in older people, but young healthy people also have a chance of severe symptoms.  If you accidentally kill your friends and family, maybe you would have another opinion on this.

loopless said:

Anyone who works in or develops HPC software cringes at this.  Sure it's likely you can make an ARM chip with the performance of high-end Xeons, but the world of HPC software is a million years away from XCode app development where you can flip a switch to build for a new architecture. There are so many bespoke libraries (e.g. Intel MKL) and years of optimization that have gone into getting HPC code to run fast on AVX Xeons.

Apple is a bit-player in HPC with the Mac Pro because of their 'war' with nVIDIA ( cutting off access to the compute power of their massively parallel GPUs)  - it would just sideline them even more if they went ARM.

I don't think Apple goes after the HPC market.  These are mostly high powered machines for creatives.  I don't build for HPC, but I think it is generally run on clusters of Linux machines.  Despite that, there may be HPC applications for ARM chips on Linux.  If you only burn 200 watts for the same performance of 400 watts on Xeon, that may be compelling for some HPC project.  Particularly if designing something new from square one.

Nice!  I’ve wanted better cursor repositioning.  Now just need easier multitasking.  Something as simple as returning to the home screen for half of a split screen would help significantly.  

GeorgeBMac said:

I don't see how a Post-Jobs Apple could hope to compete against Musk.  

The success of both was largely / mostly due to an overwhelming and obsessive drive to accomplish a lofty goal.   Musk has it.   Steve did too.

Tesla was definitely the trendsetter with probably a 5 year lead over other automakers in technology and the only company with anywhere near an adequate battery supply for current demand.  I'm not sure where Apple fits in, but other automakers are still struggling with just building the software and hardware around a basic human driven electric car.  Apple isn't going to be a first mover in electric cars, but it is possible they could gain an edge in self-driving.  This certainly feels riskier than other successes where Apple had a longer head start.  If the plan is to license to automakers it is probably more likely to be successful.  Apple is not normally one to license, but not licensing just because it didn't work for Macs is somewhat shortsighted.  I don't have any confidence traditional non-vertically integrated automakers will produce a decent self driving car without help from a company like Apple.  I think the main reason this project still exists is because of the parity with machine learning and augmented reality.  Even if the project is a complete failure, it probably contributed to those other efforts.