Apple Testing an ARM (A5) Powered MacBook Air?

[the8thark]

think is just like Apple and Intel. I'll explain.

Apple had OS X running off intel hardware long before the public PPC to intel switch. I'm sure when they started developing OS X for intel they had no need to make it public. Just for their lab testing purposes. But it was a nice insurance policy. If the PPC architecture went belly up Apple would have to spend yeats making OS X work for another architecture. In this case the intel one.

But Apple spent those years making it work for intel much before it was even needed. So when it was needed the transition could immediately take place. They didn't have to wait a few years first to make it work them transition. That wait would have killed Apple.

And it's the same with OS X on ARM. Will Apple ever release a public OS X for ARM? In the foreseeable future probably not. But if anything happened to Intel and ARM suddenly became the architecture to go with, Apple will have already have made it work so they can immediately transition.

Apart from the geek fun factor. It's a little like Apple Care. You probably will not need it. But if on the rare occasion you do need it (The PPC to Intel switch a good example of when they did need it) they'll be so glad they had already did the work in the past.

 

[Alvi]

Makes sense, I wouldn't be surprised to see this on Mac OS 10.8 or 10.9 or even 11/(my theory of a unique OS for both Handheld devices and desktop/Laptop computers)

Some fast iPad-ish chip could be as fast as a Core2Duo Processor that is now in the MacBook Airs

 

[KnightWRX]

(my theory of a unique OS for both Handheld devices and desktop/Laptop computers)

iOS and OS X already are a unique OS.

 

[mabaker]

A5 Powerbooks next Tuesday!

best line ever. Bring them on.

And the idea of having A5 driven MBA is a FANTASTIC one. iPad thinness with the power of a dual A5 processor. A dream.

 

[kdimitt]

If I could downvote this idea I would.

This is starting to suck just as much as Lion (which doesn't feel like a real OS anymore, it simply feels like a closed limited system watered down for dumb people).

Switching to Ubuntu.

Wow, please elaborate. What is a "real" operating system? Convenience does not make it closed. Please tell me every single thing that Lion will not allow you to that you could previously do. Then, explain to me how that is life-changing to you. Seriously.

 

[kdimitt]

best line ever. Bring them on.

And the idea of having A5 driven MBA is a FANTASTIC one. iPad thinness with the power of a dual A5 processor. A dream.

An A5 processor, in it's current generation, running Mac OS X Lion....yeah, definitely sounds like a dream...not.

 

[SeattleMoose]

MBA Is The ONLY Mac For Which This Makes Sense

since MBA is typically used by people to do the same things others do on their iPads.

Otherwise, too whimpy to be used for any serious computer usage (video, audio, etc.).

 

[cirus]

I don't know.

If this is true for the A5 chip then apple will effectively be selling a sub-netbook level computer. Many of the netbooks out there do get 6-9 hour battery life so there would not be a huge jump in battery life (the screen uses quite a bit of power after all).

If this does turn out to be true then apple will be selling a sub netbook level or netbook level device (probably running a version of iOS and so will not be as slow as netbooks running a full OS). However, for this to be economically feasible, it will have to compete with the other netbooks out there which cost $200-$400. The problem is, I don't see apple lowering the price to that level.

 

[Bonte]

This is quite possible. The next era of leadership may try resting on their laurels a bit more. I think I disagree with you about Jobs predicting consumer tastes. I think he actually created it and put in the consumers mind and convinced them that is what they wanted. The consumer didn't know what they wanted.

The iPad/iPhone was internally known as the "Safari Pad" and the first version of the iPhone was basically Safari with web-apps. Apple added real apps later on because the users were demanding them, it goes both ways.

 

[' r i S e n]

This is actually really neat, and will make the Air even more unique in comparison to the other notebook models.

 

[Nameci]

This is what we call progress.

 

[coldmack]

The moment this happens people will be in the street dancing ding dong the witch is dead the wicked Intel witch is dead. Then months later we will see companies like Toshiba, Sony, and Asus will make press releases that they have to leave the computer market because they can't compete with the greatest computer line on the market. Oh h to the e to double hockey sticks yes!

 

[AppleScruff1]

The moment this happens people will be in the street dancing ding dong the witch is dead the wicked Intel witch is dead. Then months later we will see companies like Toshiba, Sony, and Asus will make press releases that they have to leave the computer market because they can't compete with the greatest computer line on the market. Oh h to the e to double hockey sticks yes!

Only a complete moron would think that would be a good thing.

 

[coldmack]

Only a complete moron would think that would be a good thing.

I would beg to differ, and we will see how much more the Apple brand will soar once Intel Mac meets its demise. Mac has been dying in the Pro space, and it mostly has to do with Intel(some of it also has to do Apple focusing on the iPhone and domination in that sector), but once this dark time passes over and we leave Intel(garbagetel really), then the Mac brand will rise back up to Pro prominence it once had before the Intel. Think about it, a CPU that can be designed and made how Apple really wants it, not a company who all they care about is taking your dole as you are tied up in room that smells rancid. Think about a quad core Air that is fanless(or at the very least uses a small fan), 10-12 hours of battery life, thinner than it currently is by a good margin and is extra fun to use like an iPad, but it runs a OSX Lion. Yeah it could be that good our Mac laptops.

 

[AidenShaw]

I would beg to differ, and we will see how much more the Apple brand will soar once Intel Mac meets its demise. Mac has been dying in the Pro space, and it mostly has to do with Intel (some of it also has to do Apple focusing on the iPhone and domination in that sector)

Is Intel refusing to sell Core i7 CPUs to Apple, so that Apple's only choice for an expandable desktop is the oversized, overpriced maxi-tower called the Mac Pro? Is Intel refusing to let Apple produce an affordable, expandable mini-tower? Did Intel tell Apple to stop making the only pro server (the entry-level Xserve)?

Apple is dying in the pro space because Apple isn't providing the systems (e.g. single socket mini-tower, portable workstations rather than anorexic super-thin fashion accessories) and features (e.g. Blu-ray Discs, eSATA, 3G/4G modems) that pros need.

...and we leave Intel (garbagetel really)

Junior high school students like to come up with (what they think are clever) puns on names.

Think about a quad core Air that is fanless(or at the very least uses a small fan), 10-12 hours of battery life, thinner than it currently is by a good margin and is extra fun to use like an iPad, but it runs a OSX Lion.

Who is making such a CPU?

 

[bniu]

Apple has teams testing OS X on all sorts of CPUs. Remember WWDC 2005 where Steve revealed that 10.0 through 10.3 had all been compiled on Intel CPUs? One of the key requirements of OS X is to be processor independent. I'm not surprised they're trying out OS X on the A5. Heck, i'm sure they've even run OSX on the A4 before as well.

 

[maclaptop]

I knew sooner or later Apple would cave in, after spending lots of time convincing their followers they'd never do it. Apple can be predictable at times. Finally we may get an Apple netbook.

Just imagine the premium we'll pay

 

[AidenShaw]

Apple has teams testing OS X on all sorts of CPUs. Remember WWDC 2005 where Steve revealed that 10.0 through 10.3 had all been compiled on Intel CPUs? One of the key requirements of OS X is to be processor independent. I'm not surprised they're trying out OS X on the A5. Heck, i'm sure they've even run OSX on the A4 before as well.

I would also be surprised if Apple isn't building and testing OSX on ARM, PowerPC, and other mainstream architectures frequently.

"Processor independence" isn't free - you not only have to train your development team to think about it, you also have to actually build and test across different architectures.

Even if you don't ship on an architecture, you may want to build and test against it.

For example, PPC is currently dead as far as Apple is concerned -but PPC is "big-endian" where Intel is "little-endian". If Apple wants to verify that "little-endian specific" code doesn't creep into Apple OSX, then continuing to build and test the PPC version of Apple OSX is the way to test.

While I've said "build and test" repeatedly, for some architectures the "test" part can be a problem if reasonable hardware doesn't exist. How could you test Apple OSX on an Ipad? It has no mouse, nor a keyboard. Perhaps the BlueTooth support in Apple OSX will take care of that - or perhaps the BlueTooth controller on the Ipad is one for which there is no driver in Apple OSX.

 

[coldmack]

Who is making such a CPU?

Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Freescale ZiiLabs......take your pick. Nvidia and both TI currently have quad core cpus in the pipeline coming out sometime this year, and I am sure the others have plans of this also.

 

[lilo777]

Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Freescale ZiiLabs......take your pick. Nvidia and both TI currently have quad core cpus in the pipeline coming out sometime this year, and I am sure the others have plans of this also.

The length of the list itself clearly indicates that those are comparatively simple CPUs nowhere near the complexity and performance of x86 devices. Just read a good article suggested by shawmanus here. It explains in details why ARM is not suitable architecture for laptops (or any modern computers to that matter).

 

[Rodimus Prime]

I would beg to differ, and we will see how much more the Apple brand will soar once Intel Mac meets its demise. Mac has been dying in the Pro space, and it mostly has to do with Intel(some of it also has to do Apple focusing on the iPhone and domination in that sector), but once this dark time passes over and we leave Intel(garbagetel really), then the Mac brand will rise back up to Pro prominence it once had before the Intel. Think about it, a CPU that can be designed and made how Apple really wants it, not a company who all they care about is taking your dole as you are tied up in room that smells rancid. Think about a quad core Air that is fanless(or at the very least uses a small fan), 10-12 hours of battery life, thinner than it currently is by a good margin and is extra fun to use like an iPad, but it runs a OSX Lion. Yeah it could be that good our Mac laptops.

Intel was a good thing for it. PPC was killing Apple and if they went back to a RISC design chip again the software gains they have made will drop like a rock. Company will say FU to apple and not dev for it. The cost for the small market will sky rocket compared to now. Now porting over to OSX from windows or dual developing is a hell of a lot easier as they are the same chip as the rest of the world. Most of the stuff can be written and recompliled and have relatively minor changes done to them and require a lot less work to optimise the stuff. Change ARM well now you are going to have a huge shortage of programers who first know how to program for ARM. 2nd most of the compililers out there sure as hell are NOT opimises for ARM and then doing clean up between different OS will be a lot nastier and a lot harder.

Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Freescale ZiiLabs......take your pick. Nvidia and both TI currently have quad core cpus in the pipeline coming out sometime this year, and I am sure the others have plans of this also.

umm cores does not mean much. You are believe a multicore myth like the Mhz myth of the past. More cores does not mean faster.
ARM does not scale very well. It is great at low speeds and things that a phone needs in terms of power but when you scale that up to laptop or desktop power demands they suck. They just do not have the power to handle the stuff plane and simple. Power effeminacy goes out the window and it can take 10x more power to do the same task as an x86-64 chip.

Yes they can and do make dual core 1.2Ghz ARM chip but that does not mean much when you put the demands of a modern laptop on them. I am willing to bet good money that my i7 laptop running on 1 of it cores and at a clock down speed of 1 ghz (from its standard 1.6) would still out perform it.

 

[bimmzy]

developers and ARM

Just because ARM hasn't been used for desktop style computing (mac os based rather than iso based) doesn't mean it can't or won't happen.

Remember porting applications to ARM is not a world apart from porting them to PPC. After all they both use a similar instruction set (RISC). Furthermore PPC was a developmental step-up from ARM style processing. Of course there have been advances in ARM processors since the 90s when IBM and Apple started their collaboration.

I'm quite sure Apple's version of Xcode at Cupertino is already porting across multiple platforms. A good example would be iMovie 11, a 64 bit X86 application happily running on 32 bit ARM.
How much time it took to debug after compiling is anyones guess, but i suspect it wasn't that long, as the same team developing video products at apple, are currently up to there eyeballs working on the new Final Cut Pro.

It's worth noting that there are already allot of programmers capable of writing RISC code, and they're not just doing it for Apple.
ARM processors can be found in almost any kind of electronics, or machines that require cheep computing power, and not just found in tablet or palm computers.
Now add the developers writing code for the iphone and ipad, and dare i say those writing for Android devices too. All in all there are a lot of ARM programmers out there! But more than that. Not so long ago the big developers like Adobe wrote all their OS X software for Apples RISC processors.

What it will take for ARM to run Lion or its successor, will be a bump in performance. Maybe the rumour about MAC OS and ARM is less about the desktop and more about a faster chip in the pipeline!

 

[diamond.g]

Just because ARM hasn't been used for desktop style computing (mac os based rather than iso based) doesn't mean it can't or won't happen.

Remember porting applications to ARM is not a world apart from porting them to PPC. After all they both use a similar instruction set (RISC). Furthermore PPC was a developmental step-up from ARM style processing. Of course there have been advances in ARM processors since the 90s when IBM and Apple started their collaboration.

I'm quite sure Apple's version of Xcode at Cupertino is already porting across multiple platforms. A good example would be iMovie 11, a 64 bit X86 application happily running on 32 bit ARM.
How much time it took to debug after compiling is anyones guess, but i suspect it wasn't that long, as the same team developing video products at apple, are currently up to there eyeballs working on the new Final Cut Pro.

It's worth noting that there are already allot of programmers capable of writing RISC code, and they're not just doing it for Apple.
ARM processors can be found in almost any kind of electronics, or machines that require cheep computing power, and not just found in tablet or palm computers.
Now add the developers writing code for the iphone and ipad, and dare i say those writing for Android devices too. All in all there are a lot of ARM programmers out there! But more than that. Not so long ago the big developers like Adobe wrote all their OS X software for Apples RISC processors.

What it will take for ARM to run Lion or its successor, will be a bump in performance. Maybe the rumour about MAC OS and ARM is less about the desktop and more about a faster chip in the pipeline!

iMovie isn't 64 bit. You also notice you can't share projects across platforms either.

 

[KnightWRX]

Remember porting applications to ARM is not a world apart from porting them to PPC. After all they both use a similar instruction set (RISC).

Uh... I think someone hasn't programmed in a long time. Porting applications and the complexity behind it has nothing to do with CISC and RISC anymore. Almost no one writes assembly these days.

 

[MacNewsFix]

...and before too long, any man is history.

Exactly. Hey, we finally agree on something!