Apple Considering Switch From Intel Chips in Future Macs

[zephonic]

I think the cross-platform compatibility between OSX and iOS indicates that abandoning x86 need not be as draconian as abandoning PPC.

 

[nuckinfutz]

"back in 2005, dropping PowerPC chips because of issues with power consumption and limited availability of high-performance processors."


It was the move to intel that got me to purchase a Mac. Moving away to a proprietary chip will likely mean that all the third-party software I depend on will be gone for months if not years. BAD IDEA. I really hope Mountain Lion is not my last Mac OS.

We're talking years away potentially. We'd be on OS X 10.11 or OS XI before this takes a hold.

 

[lordofthereef]

Maps turned out great. People need to stop bashing Maps and use it for themselves. The problems are few and localized and aesthetic and have since been fixed. And even when they existed, it didn't interfere with the functionality of Maps. It was just some 3D glitches in Flyover and some errors in the streets/roads database. Google Maps was also like this and still is today. But Maps as a whole is great. I use it every day and I have zero problems. I had one error where it would tell me to turn left when the road is one way (only turn right) but that has been fixed.

This is off topic but I couldn't let it go. We just moved to Boston from Iowa. Needless to say navigating roads is a bit more complex. I have been taken to the wrong place four times now. Restaurants that had been on the same location for decades and that show up on the map at a completely wrong address. It's also unable to find places often times (I am forced to find them on google, copy te address, and paste it into maps).

So no, it hasn't been fixed. It's really, REALLY bad. And this is Boston we are talking about. Not some ace in the middle of rural Kentucky.

I agree that some people like to just hop on the "lets complain" bandwagon, but that is not the case here. Maps is currently God awful.

 

[G51989]

Lol businesses are turning to tablets? I work at one of the biggest companies in the world and i have yet to see a single company tablet.

I work at Intercourse Blue Machine ( HINT HINT ), and I have yet to see a single tablet either, Ive seen some full blown tablet PCs and convertibles over the years, but not one iPad, or any other tablet, we are thinking about the surface pro, and we've had our share of fruit phones ( berrys and Apples, but mostly dumb phones and berrys ), but no tablets really. They're to limited.

Also.

The fastest ARM chips in existence can barely touch a decade old Pentium 4 without HT, I doubt intel is worried on the performance front.

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or add a RAM today?

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or add a RAM today?

 

[2IS]

Lol businesses are turning to tablets? I work at one of the biggest companies in the world and i have yet to see a single company tablet.

Agreed, not a single one of my clients has "moved to" tablets. A few have an employee here and there that uses one when they're on the go for easy access to email and internet, but when you're at your desk doing actual work, it's all PC's with a handful of mac's

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or add a RAM today?

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or say add RAM to their computer?

 

[G51989]

yes, and they're failing massively. RT is a piece of crap that won't run any decent software. I'm sure Apple thinks that's a great idea now.

Yep! Thats why the worldwide supply of Surfaces is completely sold out. Crap that no one wanted.

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or say add RAM to their computer?

 

[G51989]

yes, and they're failing massively. RT is a piece of crap that won't run any decent software. I'm sure Apple thinks that's a great idea now.

Yep! Thats why the worldwide supply of Surfaces is completely sold out. Crap that no one wanted.

 

[ReanimationN]

The whole reason I gave a Mac a shot in the first place was the fact that I could install Windows on it and use all my PC programs, regardless of whether Mac OS was any good or not.

 

[ReanimationN]

The whole reason I gave a Mac a shot in the first place was the fact that I could install Windows on it and use all my PC programs, regardless of whether Mac OS was any good or not.

 

[G51989]

Jump ship to where? It's conceivable that all or most PCs will become ARM-based in the next decade. This is the tech battle of a generation coming up (intel vs. Arm). Intel is reaching down, ARM is reaching up, becoming more and more powerful.

Yeah guess what, Intel is the best Chip maker in the world, they've already proven they can match ARM chips in power consumption, now the next step is to rape them in performance, which haswell will do.

 

[makingdots]

I work at Intercourse Blue Machine ( HINT HINT ), and I have yet to see a single tablet either, Ive seen some full blown tablet PCs and convertibles over the years, but not one iPad, or any other tablet, we are thinking about the surface pro, and we've had our share of fruit phones ( berrys and Apples, but mostly dumb phones and berrys ), but no tablets really. They're to limited.

You guys don't get it. It's not an individual employee who will decide about that. If the IT department of your company made an app and they think the employee will be more productive using a tablet. That's the time they will issue it to employees.

 

[G51989]

Jump ship to where? It's conceivable that all or most PCs will become ARM-based in the next decade. This is the tech battle of a generation coming up (intel vs. Arm). Intel is reaching down, ARM is reaching up, becoming more and more powerful.

And, are you even aware that the best ARM has to offer is slower than a Pentium 4 from a decade ago?

 

[G51989]

Jump ship to where? It's conceivable that all or most PCs will become ARM-based in the next decade. This is the tech battle of a generation coming up (intel vs. Arm). Intel is reaching down, ARM is reaching up, becoming more and more powerful.

And, are you even aware that the best ARM has to offer is slower than a Pentium 4 from a decade ago?

 

[AppleMacFinder]

Actually, that could be good! x86 architecture has so much flaws and unnecessary legacy stuff...

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or say add RAM to their computer?

 

[makingdots]

I work at Intercourse Blue Machine ( HINT HINT ), and I have yet to see a single tablet either, Ive seen some full blown tablet PCs and convertibles over the years, but not one iPad, or any other tablet, we are thinking about the surface pro, and we've had our share of fruit phones ( berrys and Apples, but mostly dumb phones and berrys ), but no tablets really. They're to limited.

You guys don't get it. It's not an individual employee who will decide about that. If the IT department of your company made an app and they think the employee will be more productive using a tablet. That's the time they will issue it to employees.

 

[makingdots]

I work at Intercourse Blue Machine ( HINT HINT ), and I have yet to see a single tablet either, Ive seen some full blown tablet PCs and convertibles over the years, but not one iPad, or any other tablet, we are thinking about the surface pro, and we've had our share of fruit phones ( berrys and Apples, but mostly dumb phones and berrys ), but no tablets really. They're to limited.

You guys don't get it. It's not an individual employee who will decide about that. If the IT department of your company made an app and they think the employee will be more productive using a tablet. That's the time they will issue it to employees.

 

[jaw04005]

I wondered about this when I was reading Steve Jobs biography and he was quoted as saying this:

“At the high-performance end, Intel is the best. They build the fastest chip, if you don’t care about power and cost. But they build just the processor on one chip, so it takes a lot of other parts. Our A4 has the processor and the graphics, mobile operating system, and memory control all in the chip. We tried to help Intel, but they don’t listen much. We’ve been telling them for years that their graphics suck. Every quarter we schedule a meeting with me and our top three guys and Paul Otellini. At the beginning, we were doing wonderful things together. They wanted this big joint project to do chips for future iPhones. There were two reasons we didn’t go with them. One was that they are just really slow. They’re like a steamship, not very flexible. We’re used to going pretty fast. Second is that we just didn’t want to teach them everything, which they could go and sell to our competitors.”

Excerpt From: Isaacson, Walter. “Steve Jobs.” Simon & Schuster, 2011. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/steve-jobs/id431617578?mt=11

 

[namethisfile]

Because programming such a machine would be a nightmare, and Amdahl's law rears its ugly head. Most consumer tasks (outside of graphics) have a limited amount of thread level parallelism, which is why CPU designs favor a handful of very complex cores instead of a vast array of simple cores. There's a reason Intel makes the choices it does. It's not stupid.

except, apple is also a software company. i am sure they can program a mass amount of cores to good use in an operating system. my question is what cpu architecture is better for this mass-core/multi-core computing? is it ARM or INTEL? i know intel chips are more powerful today. but what if ARM in a couple yrs has a system where one can add cores willy-nilly to a laptop and the laptop becomes a multi-core beast as easy as one plugs in an external hdd or say add RAM to their computer?

 

[AppleMacFinder]

Actually, that could be good! x86 architecture has so much flaws and unnecessary legacy stuff...