Apple Plans to Ditch Intel and Use Custom Mac Chips Starting in 2020

[Regime2008]

I think it’s foolish to be closed to the possibility. Anything and everything is possible.

Let’s revisit this in 2020 and then we will truly see who is going to eat some crow.

Let's see....The same company that limits cpu performance on several of their devices, removes TB2 compatibility in software, and several other annoyances... The same company that solders ram to its boards, limits clock speed on components due to thermal throttling from bad designs? Yeah, let's see who eats crow in 2020.

 

[DjanSeriyAnaplian]

I'm a little frightened that all this will ultimately result in a closed ecosystem similar to iOS

 

[PowerGala]

I have been expecting it for their 12 inch MacBooks, minis and maybe for an iMac eventually, but for the whole Macintosh line by 2020? Have their ARM chips really gotten that good?

It seems unbelievable that they’d be able to put it into a MacPro, but I guess we’ll see. I’m really interested to see their new chips and what they can do. If it outperforms X86, then I’m all for it.

 

[tdar]

Apple is slowly moving toward the now abandoned Ubuntu goal of docking the phone and using it as a desktop PC. You folks in the USA have no idea how many people in the world cannot afford both a computer and a smart phone. The demand for this if offered economically would probably be a billion units.

I used to say that whoever successfully developed this would become the next Apple. Maybe it will be apple, because the rest of the tech world is too stupid to figure this out. Apple realizes it has reached peak phone revenue, and is looking for new directions.

Apple now has the capability of adding a GPU to their systems using a doc. There is already a monitor and USB connector on these docks. They only need a slot for docking the phone. You can bet your ass apple has one of these running in a lab.

Apple's handheld chips have had desktop computing power for the last three iterations. The iPhone X has more computing power than the first Cray computer.

Think about it, plug your $300 (or less) phone into a dock with a $100 monitor and a $10 keyboard, connect to the cloud and you have everything wherever you go. If you need graphics, you just buy/rent a more expensive dock. Schools would buy these docks and phones by the millions.

You are of course aware that this product was developed and brought to market by the largest software developer in the world in concert with the number one seller of PC's in the world. It was a complete and total failure. Quickly discontinued.

Now if Apple could provide a Dock for iPhone's and iPad's that allows one to connect a real keyboard, mouse or track-pad, and a monitor that would be wonderful for many people. But that has nothing to do with Apple destroying the Mac by moving in this foolish direction.

 

[jerryk]

I suspect Apple is looking at Chromebooks for some of their future direction. Do the lighter stuff locally and push to cloud servers for heavy lifting.

 

[sputnikBA]

Isn’t intel already supposed to be doing a major shakeup of its architecture to get rid of the older stuff that isn’t needed anymore?

Also we’ve only just got the iMac Pro, and still yet to even see a glimpse of the Mac Pro... so do they only get 2 incarnations before everything goes ARM? That sounds super odd to me.

Do we get arm for the notebooks / Mac Mini replacement, while retaining Intel / Xeon / (AMD?) for the “Pro” line instead/

 

[DNichter]

Someone has to write apps for these toys. And at least I won't do that on a device such as iPad Pro. No, thanks.

Yes, they will be built on an ARM Mac.

 

[jeabraham]

And Parallels or Fusion won’t allow you to do so?

Probably not very quickly. Parallels and Fusion use the virtualization features in the chip, so although it's called a "virtual" machine it's actually just a sandboxed version of the same chip, running basically as fast as it would natively in Windows. Faking another type of chip inside a chip is slower and more complex than sandboxing the same chip within the chip.

Of course this assumes that Window and Linux still stay with (and required) the Intel x86 architecture. And, it also assumes that Apple's custom chips depart from the x86 architecture. Both of these assumptions could be wrong.

 

[gkarris]

Especially with crazy PC component prices, mainly DRAM and GPU, some say the "Future of Gaming" is in Streaming:

So platform won't matter.

Hence why you see Sony is more into streaming old games rather than backwards compatibility like MS....

No. No it is not

Well, Sony, nVidia, and now Apple, will beg to differ...

It's "seriously cool"

 

[coolfactor]

Well, so it's beginning. I wonder how many people will choose to move on from Apple due to lack of X86 support. I for one will not be buying a Mac that I cannot run windows on

That's your choice, but why is Windows so critical to your daily computer use? That's the real question.

I see Intel as being a major roadblock for Apple moving the Mac lineup forward, and I am SUPER excited by this news. It's the right move for Apple. Prior to Intel, Macs were on "alternative" chipsets ... PowerPC... developed in partnership between Apple and Motorola. But that tech hit a wall, so Apple moved on. Now Intel's tech has hit a wall, and it's time for Apple to embrace its own future again, not just be another PC manufacturer.

 

[brofkand]

That's probably why they've try to do everything wirelessly and started removing ports.

With TB3, aren't devices less dependant on drivers?

Everything still needs a driver, regardless of the connector the device uses.

 

[groove-agent]

The interesting thing is that they are converging technology like Microsoft did with Surface etc only doing it backwards. Microsoft is converging all their mobile devices to laptop processors while Apple is converging all their laptops to their mobile processors.

 

[dirt_farmer]

People forget that Apple became famous by servicing those who were new to computers -- those for whom adapting to the digital world was utterly overwhelming.

Fewer features, less to understand, less to go wrong. That is their mantra and it appeals to my Dad and used to appeal to me too.

But what Apple needs to remember is that those who were born into the digital world adapt as easily to new paradigms and new platforms as a fish adapts to a new tank.

Apple's business model (digital immigrants) is literally dying. Digital natives are taking over and they don't need the "one button instead of two" approach.

To think that some loyal fanbase (out of their single-digit market penetration) is going to suffer through the planned obsolescence of all they expensive machines again is absurd.

For example, I have been thinking recently that an iMac would make an overpriced but handsome addition to the living room.

Now that I know that my iMac will be "obsolete architecture" in 18 months, I couldn't possibly imagine it.

Imagine your $3000 machine running its' own OS via instruction translation at 40% of native speed.

Don't believe me? Ask anyone who bought G4 and G5 machine in 2006, only to find out that the 2007 OS release would be the last OS they could run natively.

"Apple is a vertically-integrated marketing company."

Never forget.

 

[DanBig]

While this is a gutsy move, I don't think its whats needed today!

Apple has the tech to make some great things without having to go this far. CPU tech from (both Intel & AMD) is still ahead of what most of us use day to day. Granted, Apple (and us) pay for their chips, I don't think thats the real issue here. Sure, in the future it would help them but we have so much that is needed today to either fix, or just improve the products we have now.

* How about intro'ing a higher end MacBook Pro for the folks that really need more RAM, removable storage as well as USB-A & MagSafe ports and has the older keyboard!
* How about creating a home server solution, A hub for a HomeKit and offer media services for HomePod Vs using ones iPhone.
* Take the iPad Mini reconfigure it into a desk or wall mountable info system for the home using TouchID & FaceID services.
* Get the 2018 Mac Pro out. The Pro's have waited long enough for the top end extendable & serviceable system.
* How about getting Siri improved and the other Apple Apps

None of this needs more CPU power than whats available now.

 

[Regime2008]

Well, Sony, nVidia, and now Apple, will beg to differ...

It's "seriously cool"

Try it out streaming, and then try the real thing. Night and day differences. Nvidia has gotten really good at prediction while streaming, but this will NOT replace the real deal. There is still too much latency for this to become something viable and mainstream. Not to mention the amount of bandwidth it uses.

 

[rme]

I wouldn't be too sure about this...

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks
versus
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Indeed. And imagine with Apple could build with a 35W power envelope.

 

[alex2792]

That would destroy the Mac since it wouldn’t be able to run Windows. The reason why Macs are so popular is because it’s the only platform that allows you to (legally) run every operating system.

 

[EdT]

Maybe Apple will a "Bridgecard" concept like Commodore did with the Amiga back in the 1980's. Basically have Intel hardware in a card that you connect to your Thunderbolt 3 (or 4) port that gives you hardware based compatibility for your Intel based operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc).

I had several Amigas in the mid to late 1980’s, including the Amiga 1000, the Amiga 3000, and the Amiga 4000. I tried in vain to find and buy the Bridgecard but they were always in short supply, had lots of compatibility problems wth hard and floppy drives, and didn’t stay on the market that long.

The Bridgeboard wasn’t a very good way to run IBM (Windows wasn’t widely adopted until V 3.1) software.

 

[alex2792]

That's an interesting question. I'm assuming a minority of users, but how big that minority is, I don't know...

I’m pretty sure that 90% of college students and 95% of enterprises isn’t a minority.

 

[dirt_farmer]

Windows S runs on ARM

Correct and IT IS NOT SELLING. And IT IS STUPID. And IT DOESN'T DO MUCH. And THEY HAVE BEEN PUSHING IT FOR YEARS WITH NO SUCCESS. And NOT EVEN STRONGARMING DEVELOPERS WAS SUFFICIENT TO DRIVE ADOPTION.

 

[Doctor Q]

For some perspective, re-read the following post from 2005. The thread was named Really switching to Intel!!??

68K -> PPC -> x86

A lot of people here are complaining about things like recompiling software and making current hardware obsolete and such, but you all have to go back in time and remember the original transition to the PowerPC platform.

Back in the glory days of beige boxes and six-color apples, Mac users has a nifty little series of processors based on the 68000. And Mac users loved their old LCIIs and PowerbookDuos based on these great processors.

Seeing the end of the 68K, Apple switched to the PowerPC class of porcessors. They were in some of the fastest desktop computers in the world at the time and could give Apple the performance boost it needed to continue riding to early 90s PC revolution. The only problem was that developers were going to have to port their software over in order for it to run on the new system natively. This would require a significant investment in new software by all customers and the last thing Apple wanted to do was screw every loyal Mac user. So a compatiblity layer was done in (what I believe was mostly) software, allowing apps for the 68K and PPC systems to sun side by side seamlessly with no special configuration by the user. Things still ran perfectly, as they do today on PowerPC based systems running even MacOS 9.

Now something tells me that Apple isn't looking to screw everyone. It's a company, it's not there to screw customers, employees and shareholders. Apple needs to make money. This would be a seamless transition thanks to the wonderful emulation software that Apple always seems to be able to come up with (such as in the 68K case and the colored boxes in all the Rhapsody developer releases).

This can only be a good thing for Apple. The x86 platform has just as much up on PPC as PPC has on x86. Granted, Apple won't be as cool as it was since all of us Mac freaks won't be able to argue the advantages we have in architecture and we won't be able the pull the copy of Jon Rubenstein's speech at MacWorld about the megahertz myth, but it's a wonderful way to expand the use of the platform in business circles as well as to lower prices (great for everyone, a bigger userbase can only be good as long as Apple maintains software and hardware configuration control).

We all need to calm down and look at this from a historical prospective. It's a transition Apple has made before and can easily make again. Intel isn't the great satan - it's actually a very good company with a lot of backing in the industry. The only thing better for Apple would be if Microsoft killed Windows and took them over.

 

[Mikael H]

A MacBook running an An chip, providing 20+ hours of battery life, would be my preferred device for the majority of my casual computer usage, and for a significant part of my work, given that it wasn’t nerfed within its operating system.
I still need to run x86 VM labs some of the time, but mostly I run relatively lightweight software locally, with the heavy lifting done in the data center.

 

[mkoesel]

They have time to make it better, but things are already moving in that direction.

Or, emulation might not be as important as it seems like it should be through today's lens.

With mobile/desktop OS convergence now clearly an industry-wide goal, if Apple/Google/Microsoft can get their app developers to support the push for single binary for phone/tablet/pc, then legacy app support might not turn out to be that big a piece of the puzzle.

In other words, if the app stores become the defacto place for *all* relevant software, the big players are going to port everything important (including the Photoshop's and Office Suite's and CAD software of the world, and whatever else) over to those platforms anyway, and maybe Win32 apps don't matter as much anymore.

 

[alex2792]

Correct and IT IS NOT SELLING. And IT IS STUPID. And IT DOESN'T DO MUCH. And THEY HAVE BEEN PUSHING IT FOR YEARS WITH NO SUCCESS. And NOT EVEN STRONGARMING DEVELOPERS WAS SUFFICIENT TO DRIVE ADOPTION.

It also only runs on ONE Qualcomm chip so unless Apple forks over a bunch of money to MS the fact that it runs on ARM is a moot point.

 

[nbritton]

I'm on board with this, a 12-core A13 chip with 64GB of RAM would kick butt in a MacBook Pro. Just don't screw with my bash terminal or my ability to run Windows applications inside of a virtual machine. While we're at it, I recommend porting macOS 11 to use the Linux kernel.

Let's be clear; I use macOS because it's Unix, if you take that away I'm moving to a Linux desktop... Ubuntu 18.04 is shaping up to be a nice release.