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

[deanthedev]

Mobile apps are baby software.

How big is the team that Adobe has to mount to port CS to a new architecture on Mac?

How about Autodesk?

This is an up-front cost of untold millions to these companies before they see a single dollar of revenue.

That's one of 10,000 reasons why there is very little development for OS X. And a brutally vacant software catalogue including almost zero point zero enterprise software.

Baby Apps? I’ve got several iOS Apps that I’d hardly call “baby”. Perhaps you’re thinking of that other mobile OS?

Do you also think developers for iOS are “baby developers”? Lower class software engineers compared to the “adult” engineers that code for Windows or macOS?

 

[LordVic]

Because it was the result of a massive lawsuit and our government would likely step in. The agreement is for mutual benefit. AMD needs and requires x86 on their processors. Intel needs x86-64 AKA AMD64, which AMD owns the IP to. If Intel said screw you, then AMD could revoke Intel's license to use AMD64. This would effectively crippled the non-RISC CPU market and research.

But if you were Apple, would that be worth the risk? And possible years of lawsuits?

If the choice is go arm or buy amd, it does make a lot more sense to go arm, which Apple does well already.

The more logical answer would be a mutual deal with AMd since they already have one for gpus. Add CPUs to that for a pure AMD x86 based computer.

Wasn’t till 2017 that this was possible, but AMD does amd will do more customizable solutions for Apple. (Similar to how a,d does for the Xbox or PS4)

 

[0388631]

not sure if the current MacBook Pro's are throttling. once i saw what they were and price i said "Nope"

But they have had problems in other devices with thermal throttling due to "form over function". the i7-7700k iMac is notorious for thermal throttling under heavy load. (I've heard the iMac Pro's have a new thermal design to avoid this)

the MacBook's also thermal throttle under sustained load due to no fans.

The user you were posting was being hyperbolic, but it is a fctor with several of their devices in the past

Welcome to the last 20 years of mobile computers. Laptops have been throttling down due to thermal load for as long as I can remember. Modern home appliances are known to throttle by switch off and won't turn on until they've cooled down enough. I've bought close to 20 laptops in the last 18 years and they've all throttled when they got too hot.

 

[LordVic]

Welcome to the last 20 years of mobile computers. Laptops have been throttling down due to thermal load for as long as I can remember. Modern home appliances are known to throttle by switch off and won't turn on until they've cooled down enough. I've bought close to 20 laptops in the last 18 years and they've all throttled when they got too hot.

I’ve bought several that never get to hot... they exist if you’re paying attention to devices that don’t put form over function. It’s not bad if you do, your choice, but there are absolutely devices that don’t suffer from this.

 

[0388631]

But if you were Apple, would that be worth the risk? And possible years of lawsuits?

If the choice is go arm or buy amd, it does make a lot more sense to go arm, which Apple does well already.

I don't think you follow. The licensing deal is done and can be redone. As a company, you don't want to face litigation from your license dealer and possibly the government. Apple could buy AMD or just about any similar sized company. But why would they? It would take years and years to get that money back. Just because you have the money to buy a very large company doesn't mean you should or that the company would be open to selling.

Besides, if Apple were to go ARM on their lower end units and still use a "translator" or side chip, they'd still have have to pay for licensing.

 

[LordVic]

No, you would not. Not well anyway.

Virtualized PLUS emulated? Might as well run it on a raspberry pi.

I once for pure giggles emulated ppc on my pentium 4, got os9 running, then emulated x86 and ran windows


It was ridiculously stupid and painful to use. But I was bored

 

[wbeasley]

Wow. That would be terrible.

Higher prices, less compatibility, no upgradability, all epoxied together, and will probably require a Courage loan.

​

Lol. Like the mac pro, or mini, or macbook pro that were stagnant for years through many intel chip revisions?

Gimme a break.

Yeah I knew it was all Intel's fault there's been no new Mac Mini in four years.

As for higher prices (well Apple just wont disclose the price), less compatible (huh mostly they only run Apple programs anyway - might impact, maybe, on Windows programs), no upgrades (um, ever known anyone who upgrades a processor chip? even 20 years ago this was talked about as a "good feature" and no one did it because too many other things changed in two years), expoxied (got to get that upgrade rating of 1 from FixIt sites somehow), and price (well if youve been around a while hardware is almost disposable these days - value lies in content you own).

 

[0388631]

I’ve bought several that never get to hot... they exist if you’re paying attention to devices that don’t put form over function. It’s not bad if you do, your choice, but there are absolutely devices that don’t suffer from this.

Depends on use case. But generally anything can get hot. This gets complicated when you turn to custom loops or unique ways of cooling a computer's processor. At that point, you may still see a hot spot or the voltage will kill the chip (in an OC'd machine).

 

[Nicky G]

Wow! I remember the transition from power PC chips to Intel. Yes, I am that old and have been around Apple that long.

Now I feel really old, I remember the transition from Motorola TO PowerPC!

 

[falainber]

People say this about iOS vs Android all the time. Why develop for 15% of the market (iOS) instead on 85% (Android)?

Except that devs still prefer iOS over Android because iOS pays the bills (much higher revenues for developers).

I don’t think it’s a stretch to think all those iOS developers who are starting to run out of ideas (the App Store has an App for almost everything) wouldn’t take their existing skills to the next frontier in Apps (Macs).

You are comparing mobile to desktop. They are different. very few developers are making any money on the desktop unless the desktop application is for enterprise users. Most home desktop users just use free apps (e-mail, web browser etc.). And since Macs are not used by enterprises (and any businesses for the most part) I am not sure Mac desktop developers will make any money. Add to this the fact that now all the companies selling camera/printer/all devices connecting to computers device will have to develop new drivers for ARM architecture and you get a potential disaster scenario.

 

[0388631]

The more logical answer would be a mutual deal with AMd since they already have one for gpus. Add CPUs to that for a pure AMD x86 based computer.

I'm not sure how the current deal with Intel is when it comes to their x86 being cross licensible. Though I do know that if Apple can't license x86 from Intel and AMD can't cross license, then Apple is up a dark creek. For AMD64 to work (x64), you need components of x86.

 

[LordVic]

Depends on use case. But generally anything can get hot. This gets complicated when you turn to custom loops or unique ways of cooling a computer's processor. At that point, you may still see a hot spot or the voltage will kill the chip (in an OC'd machine).

I’m talking laptops and closed solutions . It all comes down to the cooling solution being designed properly to cool the chip within its thermal load. Yes, all CPUs will generally throttle when they reach a certain heat lelvel, the goal is to prevent that level from being reached. There are plenty of laptops that do this fine, that aren’t 10” thick with custom loops. Apple has tended historically to be on the weaker side of this, prioritizing size / looks over cooling solution.

 

[dirt_farmer]

Baby Apps? I’ve got several iOS Apps that I’d hardly call “baby”. Perhaps you’re thinking of that other mobile OS?

Do you also think developers for iOS are “baby developers”? Lower class software engineers compared to the “adult” engineers that code for Windows or macOS?

How many on your team?

Adobe ships ~40 applications and ~4 services and has a team of 17,000.

SAP has 84,000 employees.

That's what I mean.

Neither is lesser; they are just different categories.

Enticing some iOS developers to Mac OS does not mean that you end up with desktop class applications and services on Mac OS.

 

[AtikCzaTok]

The title should read
Apple Plans to Ditch Intel and Use Custom Mac Chips Starting in 2020 as mandated by China

 

[0388631]

I’m talking laptops. It all comes down to the cooling solution being designed properly to cool the chip within its thermal load. Yes, all CPUs will generally throttle when they reach a certain heat lelvel, the goal is to prevent that level from being reached. There are plenty of laptops that do this fine, that aren’t 10” thick with custom loops. Apple has tended historically to be on the weaker side of this, prioritizing size / looks over cooling solution.

Except you can't really do that anymore unless you're using a very low watt processor. 10 years ago, the lowest C2D in mobile format in a large laptop frame with 2-3 internal fans sitting on a pad cooler still couldn't cool down a laptop enough when it was doing processor intensive tasks.

Or, if the laptop came with OS level software, you could set it to throttle speed back so it didn't overheat.


Edit: Oh, just recognized your name from PRSI.

 

[LordVic]

I'm not sure how the current deal with Intel is when it comes to their x86 being cross licensible. Though I do know that if Apple can't license x86 from Intel and AMD can't cross license, then Apple is up a dark creek. For AMD64 to work (x64), you need components of x86.

Yup, it’s not really cut nd old be interesting to know exactly what would be the issues should amd sell (to anyone)

I think that nobody did during the slow days pre 2017 when they did have financial issue might’ve telling how much a deal breaker it might have been.

Hard for us to tell honestly since we’re not really privy to see all these details. Still An interesting thought exercise

 

[jerwin]

Lolololol you must not know much about processors.

It's not as if there's a plethora of architectures competing for my attention. It's not as if SPARC, MIPS, PowerPC, x86, and Alpha were battling it out for supremacy. Processors don't really interest me as much any more.

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

Calm down; it's not like we have a blurry photo of these custom ch—WHAT THE HELL IS UNDER MY DESK?

View attachment 756696

LMAO, Angry Danger's on it again!

 

[Dranix]

Add to this the fact that now all the companies selling camera/printer/all devices connecting to computers device will have to develop new drivers for ARM architecture and you get a potential disaster scenario.

You don't need to develop new drivers, you just have to start Xcode and do a recompile. Mac drivers are c++, not Assembler...

 

[LordVic]

Except you can't really do that anymore unless you're using a very low watt processor. 10 years ago, the lowest C2D in mobile format in a large laptop frame with 2-3 internal fans sitting on a pad cooler still couldn't cool down a laptop enough when it was doing processor intensive tasks.

Or, if the laptop came with OS level software, you could set it to throttle speed back so it didn't overheat.


Edit: Oh, just recognized your name from PRSI.

There are lots of current laptops that don’t throttle. My current work Lenovo doesn’t. Though it has different issues... yuck

 

[0388631]

Yup, it’s not really cut nd old be interesting to know exactly what would be the issues should amd sell (to anyone)

I think that nobody did during the slow days pre 2017 when they did have financial issue might’ve telling how much a deal breaker it might have been.

Hard for us to tell honestly since we’re not really privy to see all these details. Still An interesting thought exercise

For the time being, AMD is on a rough but healthy outlook. They're the thorn Intel needed in their bum to get going.

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

The apple of today is not the same apple of 2005 when the switch to intel was announced. Apple is bigger. iOS has made it billions.

Doom and gloom! How many millions of macs are winning windows? 1%? 5%. If Apple loses them, it won’t matter. Pro users have already been abandoned by Apple and the iMac pro’s replacement Mac Pro may be the last pro intel machine ever from Apple.

OSX was running on Intel for 5 years before the announcement was made of the switch. EVERY version of OSX was built for Intel up to the first Release of Tiger. OSX has probably been built and running on ARM since the A7. The A10 is probably running OSX on an iPad-based MacBook in the skunk labs of Apple as we speak. Remember that iOS is just a skin over OSX just like Aqua was. Oh, that’s right. Most don’t remember because tech has a short memory.

By 2020, the world will be a different place. Apple’s road map must look way better than Intel’s. That is... if any of this is true.

 

[0388631]

There are lots of current laptops that don’t throttle. My current work Lenovo doesn’t. Though it has different issues... yuck

As I said, workload matters. Editing documents all day or writing up code? Not resource intensive. Film editing or photo editing for hours? Gaming? Laptops were never meant to do everything a desktop could do. They were meant to be portable computers capable of doing general tasks while on the go. That combined with the fetish of making everything thinner and lighter results in companies like Apple using minimally invasive cooling techniques so their devices are thinner and lighter, yet suffer.

 

[LordVic]

As I said, workload matters. Editing documents all day or writing up code? Not resource intensive. Film editing or photo editing for hours? Gaming? Laptops were never meant to do everything a desktop could do. They were meant to be portable computers capable of doing general tasks while on the go. That combined with the fetish of making everything thinner and lighter results in companies like Apple using minimally invasive cooling techniques so their devices are thinner and lighter, yet suffer.

Database maintenance, virtual machine testing and provisioning. Report generation and IO intense application testing for a large financial institution.


The thing generally works great for a 15”, 7-10 hours battery life while under load. No thermal throttling with resources to spare.


The keyboard and trackpad are unusable. And Lenovo bloat is real... I don’t need a 2nd battery monitor, Lenovo branding on IE, etc.

But for a device that’s about the same thickness as the previous 2016 MacBook Pro, it does a better job cooling.

I’d still prefer the thicker MacBook Pro if I had the option though.

 

[lederermc]

Wanta dump Intel? AMD is a cheap buy at $9B