Mac considering ARM for laptops/Desktops: Your thoughts PowerPC Owners

SuperJudge said:

I think that's a gross oversimplification. iOS isn't a general purpose OS. You can't install apps that aren't in the App Store without jailbreaking other black magic. We're talking about an apples and oranges comparison.

A move to ARM could be another salvo in the war against general computing. That's what I'm afraid of. Not the hardware, mind you, but the kind of software that goes on top of it. I would be sad to see Apple move entirely away from general purpose computing.

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Pretty much how I feel about any kind of move to ARM. An MBA running on ARM with a stripped down OS X or iOS with a pumped-up GUI would just be.... I dunno, I guess I've have to call it a toy.

dukebound85 said:

excuse my ignorance but weren't the PPC chips based heavily on RISC? If so, wouldn't this move more or less be a move back to a similar architecture such as PPC?

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About the only thing that's common between ARM and PPC archs is that they're both RISC apart from that they're worlds apart. Either way Intel and AMD are basically MISC these days that is a median between the two. CISC computing is basically dead, there is a real move towards RISC but what shape that comes in, we don't know yet.

Apple had better do one hell of a transition because the PPC to Intel wasn't terribly graceful, luckily for them there were only a fraction of Mac users out there compared to today.

I for one can not wait. PPC and ARM are the same they both run on RISC the ARM's are 32bit and PPC left off at 64bit, that's about the difference. Intel has always ran on x86 and still does to this day.

Apple is not so far behind with RISC considering they coded and support up until 2009 w/Leopard. And they have spent the last 3-4 working on iOS which is RISC based. I wish they'd move back or atleast partner with IBM or SONY and license POWER back. I think they still own by acquiring PA Semi, the IBM POWER patents and licenses IBM sold PA Semi, they just didn't have to pay IBM.

Nameci said:

But the things are going now with the softwares needs to be published and installed from the MAS, I would say it is just a matter of time that you have to JB your mac to install a third party app.

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Yeah. I had to make the leap to Mountain Lion when I started my current job about two months ago. I like that ARD is only $80 now, but using the App Store to install it and Server.app (which is another complaint unto itself!) just made me feel really dirty. Like borderline Crying Game shower dirty.

drorpheus said:

I for one can not wait. PPC and ARM are the same they both run on RISC the ARM's are 32bit and PPC left off at 64bit, that's about the difference. Intel has always ran on x86 and still does to this day.

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I scarcely know where to start with this or with the rest of your comment.

PowerPC != ARM.

There are 64 bit ARM procs out there. G5s were 64 bit, but the Mac OS never leveraged that fact.

x86 is so different today from what it was in the 90s it's not even funny.

As orestes1984 noted, CISC is dead for all intents and purposes. RISC has been borrowed from heavily in both Intel and AMD procs since the turn of the century.

Please stop.

It sounds nice... it would have a cheaper price, less power consumption, and they could fit it into a smaller case. With NEON (Sort of like AltiVec) being added, and with them at decent speeds around 1.5 GHz with multiple cores, it sounds nice.... I've always wanted ARM to move to the mainstream, and they're using different components than PC's, which is fun . What it would mean about the direction Apple is heading though wouldn't be that good in general .

SuperJudge said:

I scarcely know where to start with this or with the rest of your comment.

PowerPC != ARM.

There are 64 bit ARM procs out there. G5s were 64 bit, but the Mac OS never leveraged that fact.

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So let's see,

PowerPC (Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing)

ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) and (Acorn RISC Machine)

Do you see any words that turn up in both in regards to cpu architecture? I don't know probably not. I mean the probability that the chips run on RISC is like 1 in 2 billion. ARM's currently in the market place are lower power/low watt 32bit RISC chips. Don't be so dense.

SuperJudge said:

x86 is so different today from what it was in the 90s it's not even funny.

As orestes1984 noted, CISC is dead for all intents and purposes. RISC has been borrowed from heavily in both Intel and AMD procs since the turn of the century.

Please stop.

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That's super its so different, ITS STILL x86. When Safari crashes on an Intel mac look at the crash log, you'll see x86 or references to it. And again to preserve ignorance Intel has never had any RISC processors outside there Itanium series that flopped because it was behind right out of the gate. Nothing was ever borrowed from Intel, it existed long before Intel. AMD had learned to adapt to multiple architectures, that's why they're in multiple super computers running cross platform today and Intel isn't.

It must be awesome to be so confident, speaking pure ************ like an uninformed child.

Stop.

People are forgetting that iOS is derived from OSX. Half the work has already been done in terms of porting the kernel etc. - only the userland tools and frameworks like Cocoa would need to be ported (still a mighty task!)
I don't see any reason why we should be limited to a half-assed OS though, when ARM chips today are more than up to the task of running a full blown OS (Ubuntu 12.10 for example).

Wildy said:

People are forgetting that iOS is derived from OSX. Half the work has already been done in terms of porting the kernel etc. - only the userland tools and frameworks like Cocoa would need to be ported (still a mighty task!)
I don't see any reason why we should be limited to a half-assed OS though, when ARM chips today are more than up to the task of running a full blown OS (Ubuntu 12.10 for example).

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I still don't know why people seem to support moving OS X to ARM.

ARM performance is *way* behind Intel - check out the Geekbench scores of the fastest ARM chips vs those from the fastest Intel Xeon chips.

Intel is good, they do a great job, they consistently improve, there's frankly no reason to move.

drorpheus said:

That's super its so different, ITS STILL x86. When Safari crashes on an Intel mac look at the crash log, you'll see x86 or references to it. And again to preserve ignorance Intel has never had any RISC processors outside there Itanium series that flopped because it was behind right out of the gate. Nothing was ever borrowed from Intel, it existed long before Intel. AMD had learned to adapt to multiple architectures, that's why they're in multiple super computers running cross platform today and Intel isn't.

Stop.

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You need to back up a few steps, when Intel lost they basically copied the AMD64 arch and added hyper-threading while reintroducing their turbo boost technology. The AMD64 arch which is what OS X runs on is a happy median between complex and reduced instruction set computing. AMD pioneered and got so far ahead it wasn't funny, they added RISC instructions, on dye memory controllers to reduce latency between the memory controller and Front Side Bus as well as hyper transport technology then Intel basically copied it all and we ended up with Netburst.

We are now neither running IA (Intel Itanium) or x86 architecture no matter what your activity monitor tells you this is incorrect. The correct name for the arch we are now on is AMD64 as AMD were first to the punch. Neither x86 (32bit) or IA (Intel Itanium) is compatible with AMD64. AMD64 is its own arch with some 32bit backwards compatibility that could now basically be dropped.

Chip technology all goes in cycles, I remember the AMD K6 chips (bloody awful), then the AthlonXP/MP (bloody good), then the Pentium III Tualatin (only the Tualatin!) bloody good, then the Pentium IV (bloody terrible), Athlon64/X2 (good) then the Core2 (million times better than IV), then the 'i' series (fantastic). ARM is really coming along in leaps and bounds in a market that is by far the fastest growing (portable computing) while the old Goliaths remain in the possibly-soon-to-be-much-reduced old core computing market.

Remember today Apple gets just 3%, yes 3% of its revenue from desktop sales!

I couldnt care less which CPU they use I just hope if they do switch they realise that they have a responsibility to support the previous hardware for a little longer than they did last time.

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Wildy said:

I don't see any reason why we should be limited to a half-assed OS though, when ARM chips today are more than up to the task of running a full blown OS (Ubuntu 12.10 for example).

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Very good point...

Nevermind.

This thread was here first, thank you very much.

I take it back.

I was here first. Back in 2013.

This thread has been dead for eight years. Why resurrect it?