Apple Silicon: The Complete Guide

[Yoms]

I have no doubt an arm-based Mac will allow Apple to provide a better experience overall, but I have two concerns: The first is running Windows/Parallels, how will that work, if at all? And second, will this mean that Apple will move to a controlled-app ecosystem like iOS?

I don't think the technology imposes the way you can install app on your computer. I think that Apple could already prevent the installation of any apps right now by implementing restrictions in macOS. It's already able to differentiate apps coming from the MAS and apps downloaded from the web.

 

[pilgrim2812]

You can say goodbye to Windows compatibility if the Mac goes ARM. That would be a deal breaker for a large number of Mac users who are still tied to the Windows platform. This article does not mention this very significant downside.

 

[Tivoli_]

It's time for Apple to buy Intel and to own a foundry producing in the US whatever chips they like without having to rely on foreign companies.

 

[CarlJ]

The 2018 iPad Pro models with A12X chips, for example, are close in speed to the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro models.

And keep in mind that those are chips specifically engineered to run in an environment where the machine is 1/4" thick, has no active cooling, and runs on batteries basically 100% of the time.

For an Arm Mac, those limits can come off. Apple has the in-house smarts to optimize their CPU designs for whatever need is at hand - there's nothing stopping them from making a laptop/desktop chip with 4x (or more) the number of cores running at 2x (or more) the clock speed. They absolutely do not have to "settle" for putting iPhone/iPad CPUs in their Arm MacBooks.

Further, since OpenGL is deprecated in Catalina, Apple could build a Metal-only firebreathing GPU in-house. More control over the entire system and how the bits interact, and the ability to tailor the GPU precisely for their needs.

And, given that (if I recall correctly) apps destined for the App Store are now uploaded in bitcode form and then sort of last-stage-compiled for the target machine, there's a possibility they may be able to provide lots of fully functioning Arm Mac apps in the App Store on day one.

 

[Yoms]

To me, the best candidate for an ARM-based Mac would be a new iteration of the 12" MacBook. Basically, you take an iPad Pro and make it run macOS et voilà.

I don't see any hardware issues here. The challenge is to remake macOS for ARM chips which, imho, is probably a bigger challenge than transitioning from PowerPC to Intel chips.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I think a more reasonable first step will be for the iPad to become more mac like. Just a few more features and the Macbook Air is replaced.

Real multi-user support, with fast-user switching like on macOS!!

 

[falkon-engine]

An ARM Mac would spell doom for the x86-based Hackintosh community, but that's fine. Apple could also ditch Intel by incorporating an AMD Ryzen or successor chip. It's not clear why an ARM kernel is better (or worse) than a x86 kernel, from a $/performance perspective. But intel has floundered for years with challenges on 14nm...several years later, it still can't ramp in volume to high performance 10nm.

 

[iBluetooth]

You can say goodbye to Windows compatibility if the Mac goes ARM. That would be a deal breaker for a large number of Mac users who are still tied to the Windows platform. This article does not mention this very significant downside.

Windows has actually told us they will release a Surface device on ARM running Windows, so they will be compatible.

 

[assoc]

God, I hope not. I use a fair amount of Windows apps via bootcamp/wine/vmware. This would force me to maintain two computers.

 

[hawkeye_a]

And keep in mind that those are chips specifically engineered to run in an environment where the machine is 1/4" thick, has no active cooling, and runs on batteries basically 100% of the time.

For an ARM Mac, those limits can come off. Apple has the in-house smarts to optimize their CPU designs for whatever need is at hand - there's nothing stopping them from making a laptop/desktop chip with 4x (or more) the number of cores running at 2x (or more) the clock speed. They absolutely do not have to "settle" for putting iPhone/iPad CPUs in their ARM MacBooks.

Further, since OpenGL is deprecated in Catalina, Apple could build a Metal-only firebreathing GPU in-house. More control over the entire system and how the bits interact, and the ability to tailor the GPU precisely for their needs.

I do like "purpose built" instead of "general purpose" hardware, but while Apple can design GPUs and CPUs, i'm not so sure about their ability(or willingness/dedication) to iterate at the pace required to compete.

I mean, just look at how long it took them to refresh the MacPro and Mac Mini. I do wonder if Apple is dedicated/invested in the Mac to take on such a significant transition.

 

[MikeZTM]

First, the article is a bit confusing. ARM is not the opposite of Intel.

ARM is company that develops several different architectures / instruction sets. Many companies design ARM-licensed or ARM-compatible chips, and many other companies make them. For example, the A13 is a 64-bit ARM architecture chip manufactured by TSMC but designed by Apple.

Second, I think one of the biggest assets to macOS currently is that it can run pretty much all x86/x64 Linux apps, and most x86/x64 Windows apps can be ported over to macOS relatively easily. If they switch to ARM architecture with backwards compatibility, macOS will suffer greatly.

Windows RT failed because it lacked apps. Windows 10 on the Surface Pro X can emulate 32-bit x86 apps, and support for x64 is coming soon supposedly. If that ARM fork of Windows 10 is to be successful, it will be because of the emulation. Apple has to do the same thing, or it will surely fail.

And before someone says "but devs can just port their ARM iOS/ipadOS apps over to macOS," they can, but (1) usually iPad apps are inferior to the current x86-based macOS counterparts, and (2) so far, there have been no good ported apps.

Maybe Apple can dip their toes in the water, like Microsoft is doing, and release a ARM-based Macbook or something, but keep the Air/Pro and iMac lines on x64.

Frankly, I'd rather see Apple use the new 7nm TSMC-made AMD Ryzen CPUs.

Windows On Arm never plan to support x64 app at all.
Emulation is never a solution for a platform. It only make developer lazy and never port app to ARM.

ARM64 basically have have really similar pointer format like x64 and just a recompile is almost enough for most non-driver x64 app to run natively on ARM64. Microsoft's plan was emulate old x86 app and let new x64 app dev recompile the app and run natively on Windows

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Those were the Geekbench 4 results. Your results are Geekbench 5.

Ah, that explains it.

 

[xyz01]

Back in 2006, Apple brought out the first x86 based Macs, and it only took them 12 months to switch them all. A big key back then was Rosetta Stone (to run the old software unchanged). I have to wonder if one reason Apple is ditching 32-bit desktop apps and promoting iPad Apps on Mac is to prepare for such a transition.

This was helped massively by Intel chips being a lot faster than PowerPC.

Doing the same thing on ARM, which would presumably be slower rather than massively faster, would be really, really painful.

Synthetic benchmarks does not translate into realworld performance.

 

[realtuner]

God, I hope not. I use a fair amount of Windows apps via bootcamp/wine/vmware. This would force me to maintain two computers.

Apple isn't going to replace ALL Macs with ARM.

Most likely is the MacBook Air. I don't know anybody running VM's on those devices - they all use the MBP instead.

 

[stars_fan]

To me, the best candidate for an ARM-based Mac would be a new iteration of the 12" MacBook. Basically, you take an iPad Pro and make it run macOS et voilà.

I don't see any hardware issues here. The challenge is to remake macOS for ARM chips which, imho, is probably a bigger challenge than transitioning from PowerPC to Intel chips.

You could call it a powerbook g5

 

[smulji]

Only a matter of time. I can't stand macOS now, but I would be interested in an iOS book with a trackpad and touchscreen keyboard.

People are already pissed about the butterfly keyboard, and now you want Apple to make a keyboard with even less key travel? That'll go over well.

 

[xyz01]

I'm excited about the transition as ARM chips get more powerful. Truth be told, a lot of computational heavy tasks these days seem to be be offloaded onto GP-GPUs. 68000 to PowerPC to Intel to ARM.... if anyone can pull off a transition of this magnitude it's Apple.

That being said, if the year was 1998-2010, i'd be more confident in Apple. Today, I worry that they might throw an ARM CPU into Macs and just to market an ability to run iOS Apps or the Mac with touchscreens or something along those lines.

When it comes to GPU performance, Apple is quite a bit behind for laptops and desktops. They're using Intel embedded graphics and ATI GPUs - low end ATI GPUs at that, because of power consumption (except for iMac Pro and Mac Pro).

NVidia has wiped the floor with ATI GPU performance wise for a long time now, but Apple has a corporate beef with Nvidia - so just embedded or ATI for us.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I want a headless non-pro Mac with a GPU using dual ARMs.

 

[applepuree]

When Apple switched to Intel, there was a massive increase in software from mainstream developers as they were comfortable with Intel. I fear a change to Arm will will cause the opposite to happen and we will loose a lot of good developers. I know in theory this should not happen due to platform development languages, but I can see it happening.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

i know this forum is oddly excited about this idea, but i would much rather apple keep the higher tiers with intel processors.

Looking at the Mac Pro, the most expensive Mac (ever?), it’s clear that it’s geared towards high end users of Apple’s applications. Sure you can virtualize on them, but it wouldn’t matter to Apple if you could or couldn’t (they don’t even mention that on their product pages). Their goal is that there be no better way to run FCPX at incredible speeds.

Now, if they can produce an ARM processor AND a custom build of FCPX that runs circles around the highest spec’d Intel processor... for less than what an Intel machine would cost, you can BET those higher tiers are going to flip. ESPECIALLY if Apple makes it easy for plug-in developers to recompile for ARM.

Plus, it’s not like releasing an ARM Mac Pro in the future would kill the system anyone’s using. All your software, plug-ins, everything still just go on working. At some point in the future, they’ll drop Intel like they dropped PowerPC before it.

 

[shaunp]

I think it's fairly inevitable considering the speed and the end to end control Apple will have over their platform. So long as the application support is there I can't see an issue. Apple have changed architecture more than any other manufactuer and have a track record of making it work. If this means a return to form with hardware too, I can see it working out quite well and this is from someone currently writing on an XPS 13 running Windows 10.

 

[nihil0]

And what about making their own X86 chips? Like AMD does. Would that be impossible? With know how from Ax series of their own chips.

 

[falkon-engine]

I think if Apple is successful in transitioning to ARM, especially if the platform increases performance, we may very well see other laptop manufacturers following suit as well. Particularly if WindowsARM becomes a compelling thing to use. Linux already supports ARM. There will be consumer demand for an ARM processor inside laptops if it is more powerful than its intel/amd counterparts.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

we will loose a lot of good developers.

If they are good developers, I think they’ll manage. Plus, it’s not like anyone will be developing for macOS in the future, they’ll be developing for iOS and then porting over. That’s why...

I have to wonder if one reason Apple is ditching 32-bit desktop apps

A series chips are 64 bit ONLY, so, yes, Apple first gets everyone into 64 bitness, provides a way to release a macOS app using iOS code (Mac Catalyst), and then release the armacOS and platform.

 

[Lozza013]

Don't know about this. I've voiced my concerns before about this but say ARM was geared towards say the Macbook Air and Apple would still use Intel with Macs such as the Macbook Pro and iMac, I would be OK with this but I think we are heading towards ARM Macs.