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

[apolloa]

April fools joke I’m guessing? I mean it must be as this would be a suicidle move to its Apple computer business..
I would never buy a none Intel Mac, unless it was running AMD processors.

 

[techwhiz]

Do you really think an A-series processor could really beat a desktop grade processor? I really hope that people don't truly believe this mess after seeing a geekbench result...

They don't understand a balanced system.
They don't understand that the MMU in an Intel CPU is far superior to ARM.
Getting cache coherency across two clusters in a BIG.little ARM architecture is a whole lot different than a Quad Socket Xeon 7 system. You can have up to 96 processor cores and 192 threads.

You just can't compare ARM to Intel.
Replacing a Xeon with an ARM is some analysts wet dream. But that's all it is.

 

[Mal Blackadder]

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

At present Parallels or Fusion do not emulate another CPU architecture so if the companies behind those products were to port their products to the new Apple CPU they would need to find a way to emulate x64 instructions. Parallels or Fusion only work because Macs use the same chips as windows machines. maybe they could use something like Qemu to get around this problem, but there would be a huge hit in performance.

 

[groove-agent]

No I didn't hear that but thanks for the info. It doesn't surprise me though as Microsoft is notorious for failing at special hardware projects (Zune, Microsoft Phone etc).

You do realize that Microsoft pumped billions into the opposite approach (what Apple is trying to do now) over almost a decade, completely failing and having to write the entire effort off right?

 

[EdT]

That is my point. If you have a Mac games are the last thing you will do on it.

I quit gaming years ago but I never understood Apple’s hard core resistance to providing a top of the line quality game machine. At one time Apple was considered a pioneer graphics machine, and being a game platform could heighten that perception. Apple also was in a lot of other ‘niche’ markets where there wasn’t huge numbers of users, graphic design for instance, but people in those businesses were willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money on the hardware and software to have ‘the best’ machine possible. They could have been perceived the same with games and gaming. It’s a small market but it’s a very dedicated market that spends a lot of money, like desktop publishing and graphic design people have done for decades by loyalty buying Apple products. Neither of those markets were huge either.

 

[tdar]

There is only one way that this could make any sense. Windows in the cloud. Microsoft is offering certain groups of customers something called Microsoft 365. It's somewhat like Office 365 but has more services and includes a Windows 10 Enterprise license. If Microsoft or a major partner were able to host Windows 10 VM's for public cloud (internet) at major scale and offer a remote VM client that would run on these new Macs, you could have a best of both worlds approach. This is already being done at lower scale.

 

[old-school]

Wonder if there'll be a "macOS has been living a double life" announcement at this WWDC or maybe next year then.

 

[mindsaspire]

The assumption seems to be that Apple will completely remove Intel processors, but I wonder if it's possible that they are more planning on making ARM an energy-efficient co-processor like how the A11 chip is used for the iPhone 8 and X, which has both energy-efficient and high-performance cores. So, they'd be elevating the usage of the T1/ARM chip (currently used for the Touch Bar) for energy-efficient tasks, and the x86 cores would be seamlessly used for high-performance tasks, backwards compatibility, and virtualization (Windows compatibility). Typically, this isn't possible since an application is built to run on a specific architecture, however, Xcode already builds universal binaries that target multiple architectures. Perhaps the new Mac lines will also include the hardware magic to make running such binaries across both x86 and ARM architectures "just work" as well.

 

[apolloa]

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

Don’t worry buddy, see this as an April fools joke rumour, it’s the only way it actually makes sense, I can’t see Apple willingly killing its Mac business stone dead after all? No X86 platform hardware?? Yeah right...

 

[satchmo]

Now I'm convinced, we're getting a new Mac mini!...in 2020.

 

[TAJones99]

Expect lots of support issues.

 

[Little Endian]

I guess I should start making plans for my exit from the Apple ecosystem.

While I've been able to tolerate the closed nature of the iPhone and iPad, since I treat them mostly as appliances, I would not be able to tolerate the same thing on the Mac.

Using Intel CPUs maintains compatibility with the rest of the industry. I can run virtual machines on my Mac running Linux, Windows, or pretty much any x86-based OS. This is crucial to my usage of the platform.

It's unfortunate if this is true and I really hope it isn't.

Even if Apple did switch to it's own custom chips it doesn't mean that you won't be able to run multiple operating systems. Back during the PowerPC days there were multiple versions of Linux that ran natively under PowerPC and I even had Windows running on my PowerMac G5 with virtual PC.

Virtulization software has made leaps and bounds since those days and I can see the possibility of a high powered ARM based chip being able to still run X86 software at near native speeds. Remember the switch from PowerPC to Intel? Most apps in the beginning were still PowerPC based but Apple still got them to run on x86 based macs at usable speed

 

[DesertNomad]

Wow! I remember the transition from power PC chips to Intel.

But do you remember the transition from 68K to PowerPC? My first Mac was powered by a 68030... a IIcx in 1989. With the switch to PowerPC, we switched our development software from MPW to CodeWarrior.

 

[MRrainer]

What if MSFT ported its Office to that architecture? I mean, there's already an Office for the iPad - it can't be that hard, given they're doing this because they (MSFT) really want it.
You'd just need to wait a decade for Adobe to come around.

It could be awesome.

 

[groove-agent]

There was a program back in the day of the Motorola processors (Powerbook G4 etc) that would allow you to run windows in OSX (anyone remember its name?). Could something like that be used?

I wonder if Parallels is crapping its pants.

At present Parallels or Fusion do not emulate another CPU architecture so if the companies behind those products were to port their products to the new Apple CPU they would need to find a way to emulate x64 instructions. Parallels or Fusion only work because Macs use the same chis as windows machines. maybe they could use something like Qemu to get around this problem, but there would be a huge hit in performance.

 

[nt5672]

Apple’s move to X86 is what made the Mac finally popular. Moving away would be a poor decision on Apple’s part that would not end well.

You forget about Apple's main advertising strategy these days, "What's a computer?" Thats all you need to know, to know that Apple will development something they call a Mac. It will not be something I'll use, but they will sell them and they will be "absolutely amazing", according to Cook.

Those of us that want freedom to control our computers or want real computing power will have to migrate to something else.

The only saving grace would be if Apple releases the macOS AppKit UI framework as open source so we could use it on Linux OSs. Don't expect them to, because Apple is the new Microsoft and will want to force users to use the more expensive, less capable, lower performance, locked in Apple hardware.

This is a sad day for computing.

 

[MRrainer]

I don't need to run Windows (hm, there's an XP VM around that I needed to export Garmin Map data).
But I need to run Linux and FreeBSD in VMs.

 

[rme]

"

Wonder if there'll be a "macOS has been living a double life" announcement at this WWDC or maybe next year then.

I won't be surprised.
And "the power of a top of the line desktop cpu...in a laptop!"

 

[Hps1]

AMD GPUs absolutely SMOKE Nvidia on the MacOS platform. This has been my personal experience for a long time.

I'm speaking purely and arrogantly of my own use for rendering. However craptacular their drivers may be otherwise, in 3D land Nvidia cards in a Mac bench the same as they do in Windows and Linux.

 

[baryon]

Oh how I hated the transition period from Power PC to Intel. Every app had to be updated and of course for a very long time that didn't happen, so we used Rosetta to emulate Power PC on Intel. Finally at some point Rosetta became obsolete and a few years ago, all apps are natively Intel. You'd think that no one would ever want to go through such a transition again...

I guess in 20 years we'll look back and it will have been worth it. But it's not like Intel is making bad processors either.

 

[tdar]

What if MSFT ported its Office to that architecture? I mean, there's already an Office for the iPad - it can't be that hard, given they're doing this because they (MSFT) really want it.
You'd just need to wait a decade for Adobe to come around.

It could be awesome.

That's a limited office version. The only full office version is on Windows.

 

[groove-agent]

Also the fact remains that the consumer/prosumer listens to the pros for advice. So if you lose the pros, that eventually trickles downwards to the masses.

Let's not forget, though, that the "pros" are what helped keep Apple afloat in the early-to-mid nineties when things were looking bleak. They're the group that has invested a lot in Apple over the years--piss them off and Apple may come to regret it.

 

[Sincci]

Yes it does. Now let's review. Windows 10 S is an operating system designed for kindergartners and elementary school kids. It sucks so bad that Microsoft has already decided to give up on it.
Windows on Arm is not designed for mainstream usage. It is designed for a single use case. Low power mobile devices. It has no support for x64 and not even full x86 support. Every device driver must be rewritten. No virtual machine support. Extremely limited,and not by any stretch of the imagination the future of Windows. The future of Windows is the same as the present. X64.

Also, I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't let you boot into any other OS with their custom chips to make sure you are fully locked into their walled garden, but even if you could, there's no way to install Windows 10 S ARM to your ARM Mac since Microsoft doesn't sell Windows 10 S ARM licenses to end users.

 

[groove-agent]

Yeah, not looking forward to a transition, but anything you're using on an iPad should port more easily.

I guess now it makes sense why Apple has been very focused on the iPad the last few years.

Oh how I hated the transition period from Power PC to Intel. Every app had to be updated and of course for a very long time that didn't happen, so we used Rosetta to emulate Power PC on Intel. Finally at some point Rosetta became obsolete and a few years ago, all apps are natively Intel. You'd think that no one would ever want to go through such a transition again...

I guess in 20 years we'll look back and it will have been worth it. But it's not like Intel is making bad processors either.

 

[kemal]

I just hope to not have to purchase Apple hardware.