I am not sure about the A7 but the presentation with Metal was an eye opener. An A8 MacBook certainly looks possible. I am still not sure why folks are so opposed to an ARM processor.
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Apple Testing ARM Based Mac Prototypes with Large Magic Trackpad?
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Swift sounds like they're trying to make it easier. I'm sure it's to make coding a lot easier too. The chips would have to be at least A8's if they do though, depending on when they decide to do it.
So he's a respected reviewer. That does not automatically make him a soothsayer as the previous poster seems to imply nor an engineer that designs chips or an economic forecaster. Declaring a chip "desktop class" does not make ANY of the other problems go away, even if it matched Intel performance some day. I'm surprised you don't comprehend that. I'm not saying he's not good at analyzing and reviewing performance factors. But this isn't about measuring equipment. This is about an ECOSYSTEM. If Apple were to announce they were suddenly switching ALL Macs over to ARM, it would be like GM declaring they're switching ALL of their cars over to electric. It would hurt their immediate sales and change who buys their cars. They would no longer be mainstream. I doubt the company could survive. While Apple might still have strong sales in iOS for now, it would still have a major impact.
If GM only converts say half their fleet to electric, their gas vehicles would still function normally as would all existing cars. It would only hurt their future sales. You could say the same about the Mac, except that it would start to hurt existing sales as all software starts to dry up for Intel Macs and many developers abandon the Mac market as being a tiny niche (like with PPC) once again. The Mac has benefited greatly from Intel compatibility with a LOT more software appearing (due to ease of conversion compared to PPC code) as a result. ARM would destroy that advantage, turn it on its side and ultimately put the Mac's existence in jeopardy.
For Mac fans, this could be BEYOND devastating because the entire Mac platform and its history of being an open system would then be at risk. Apple could then easily use this as their excuse to fully merge iOS with the Mac and instead of the power computers many of us existing Mac users love, you would have little more than glorified smart phone/tablets as Apple's ONLY computer line. And by that I mean "computers" that are 100% controlled by Apple, their App store and a great loss of developers. "Apps" would become the main stay of the Mac instead of full blown software. If all you do is surf the web and don't mind using ONLY Safari and ONLY Apple email and ONLY whatever Apple APPROVES of you using on your computer (blocking ALL material at a whim they don't agree with and taking away ALL of your freedom to do what YOU want with YOUR computer), then I guess it won't matter.
Who needs choice, freedom or large libraries of software when you can have Angry Birds, Candy Crush Saga and Fart Apps as your software mainstay?
A good summary of everything i had to say myself
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Its pretty obvious i think, just read what @MagnusVonMagnum wrote.
Having a totally different architecture is just a blow to all the uers and developers out there. It will crush everything you can do today. It not like people can turn a switch and continue using all their software.
A good summary of everything i had to say myself
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Its pretty obvious i think, just read what @MagnusVonMagnum wrote.
Having a totally different architecture is just a blow to all the uers and developers out there. It will crush everything you can do today. It not like people can turn a switch and continue using all their software.
I sincerely doubt that Apple, a company that has shown this week just how deeply they think about their developers, wouldn't have a transition plan that eases the switch. This isn't going to be a U-turn out of no where.
Of course they will able to use their software. The "sky is falling" posts are getting annoying.
If Apple continues increasing I/O speeds, like offering a proprietary 20 Gbps SSD drive plus a 8 or 16-core ARM, I think it would represent a performance advantage over Intel in the low-power segment. I imagine a large multicore array would benefit games that do a lot of AI or even running parallel, low-consumption AI tasks while you're editing text -- i.e. automatic summarization, speech-to-text writing and so on. Your cloud data (iCloud, Google services, etc) could be indexed locally while you're doing other stuff. Going multicore is going towards AI.
Actually, there's some overlap between Macbook Air 13" and Retina Macbook 13". Apple could start offering a 12" Arm-based Retina Macbook Air. If you use mainly Safari and text-editing, you're probably an early adopter candidate to these Macs.
AmigaOS, NeXT, BeOS...
And yes I realise that next was cost prohibitve for most people but it was so far ahead of everything else
Good in theory bad in practice.Look at PS3 with its 7 core CPU, they thought it would be revolutionary but xbox with its intel chip pretty much was a better system. Easier to program for and more powerful since not many companies put enough time optimizing for the cell chip.
Also if all yo u need is surf then there is a product for that = iPad
No, the "let's switch just for the HELL OF IT" posts are what is ANNOYING. So little thought has been put into it. I'd wager 99.999% of you have NO IDEA what the differences even are between ARM and Intel architectures beyond some low power suggestion but want it anyway because the iPhone and iPad are so "kool" or something to that effect. They're just processors. Who gives a crap about the instructions. Compatibility with the Windows code base and therefore easier porting and larger software bases is the ONLY thing that is important. There is no reason Intel can't use less power in the future if that were a priority. Windows new Surface Pro isn't using ARM, people. It's using INTEL. It will KEEP using Intel. If Apple jumps ship, I GUARANTEE there will be a heavy price to pay. But some of you just don't GET that at all. But you are the same people that only use email and Safari (and of course text messages) and have no other use/need for a computer in the first place. Keep your iPad and be happy. The rest of us would like a vibrant future for the Mac, not a repeat of the '90s.
Its hard for me to reflect on AmigaOS as being more advanced than the original windows... NeXT, BeOS... definitely but they didnt appeal to a wide audience.
Personally I stand in my corner and reflect dimly on the demise of the systems I used to manage - VAX/Alpha VMS... essentially dead for decades but still had elements which have not been surpassed, especially around distributed workload and file management (when comparing to either modern windows or linux).
AmigaOS had preemptive multitasking, which did not appear in Windows until Windows NT was released. The GUI was also significantly better than that found in pre-Windows 95 releases (in my opinion). It was also extremely resource efficient....
Given, among other things, there is no Intel MKL for ARM processors, this is manifestly not true. Maybe "any app" you can think of, but not any app.
The transition from PPC to Intel made sense because Apple was out of step with the rest of the market. On Intel, they're with the rest of the market. If they go their own way, they risk getting out of step again.
And I personally won't be following them. It would make me *very* sad to move to another brand as my primary computer, but at this point, the processor matters more to me than running OS X natively.
Well it did have a decent 32 bit processor architecture, something the early PC's lacked. NT required the same from recollection, no 32bit... no NT.
Because, as mentioned, there's no guarantee that my programs *will* run.
There is no Intel MKL for ARM. There's a number of other things that exploit Intel's extensive R&D work. Switching chip architectures will slow down my work.
The Amiga was awesome for its day. I used an Amiga 3000 right up until 1999 even. The stock OS, however, was pretty lousy on the GUI front, IMO. With the addition of the MCP utility, Magic Icon makeover, a docking system and a file manager like Diskmaster II, it was a LOT better. Of course, to do things it was never meant to do like the Internet, it needed even more 3rd party programs (e.g. I had Miami TCP to handle the dial-up network early on) and the Browsers quickly lost pace with Netscape, etc.
But there was some awesome stuff available for it (beyond games, which blew away the Mac and PC versions well into the early '90s for the most part). Deluxe Paint III/IV were excellent for quick animations. I did a college honors project (CD/Movie database with GUI) with Amiga Vision and got an A with it. Of course, the Video Toaster system was unheard of when it first came out, etc. as well.
Using my brother's $3000 Pentium 90 PC when he got it with Dos (to play Day of the Tentacle for one thing) felt pretty darn primitive and Windows 3.1 was miserable, IMO. Not until Win95 came out and games like The Curse of Monkey Island worked in Windows did I start to see the Amiga was becoming out of date (thanks to Commodore burying itself). The custom chip thing wouldn't have worked forever, anyway. They would have had to move to a similar PCI type bus, etc. to keep up in the long run unless they were willing to put a LOT of money into staying ahead of the GPU makers, etc. The OS could have evolved and if things had been different, it might very well be in a similar place as OS X now. But frankly, OS X reminds me more of the Amiga than Classic Mac OS by FAR. I think that's because AmigaDos had a lot of UNIX underpinnings (preemptive multitasking, similar CLI, etc.) already in it. So OSX isn't a bad trade-off. I never liked the Classic Macs at all.
Sorry, didn't read 28 pages if that was mentiond before: a 48 core ARM design
http://www.servethehome.com/cavium-thunderx-48-core-arm-design-announced/
That could give some power ...
http://www.servethehome.com/cavium-thunderx-48-core-arm-design-announced/
That could give some power ...
Seems something aimed at server farms for LAMP serving , not for general purpose computing.
Already LAMP have been fully ported to ARM64 and is in use mostly on Linux based sites and dedicated hosting, server farms are focused on this developments due unparalleled power savings, and because for LAMP Market and Linux dedicated hosting it's transparent.
You could have a MILLION cores and it wouldn't make most typical home user individual apps much faster than a one or two cores. Most software isn't well designed to be multi-threaded and efficient at it because it's a royal PITA (parallel tasks are essentially needed instead of sequential) to write it that way compared to not doing it unless it's a 3D renderer or something naturally suited for it like Handbrake (many frames any of which could be divided into segments). Faster single cores are vastly more useful than a bunch of mediocre multi-cores to the average consumer. That won't easily change.
Depending on how the OS is designed, it could be great for multitasking. Thing is, with 48 cores, you're more likely to be bottlenecked by the amount of memory you have before you even begin utilizing the processor to its full potential.
It was disappointing when Apple moved to Intel. It was a few years after I moved all my equipment to RISC processors and promised myself to never use an Intel CPU again. Now all my desktop and laptop CPUs are Intel. I'd very happily switch to an ARM desktop. My code doesn't depend on Intel, and in fact it was largely developed on RISC processors.
So, please, Apple proceed. And make it plenty of silicon: the more cores, the better
So, please, Apple proceed. And make it plenty of silicon: the more cores, the better
Really funny to go over some of the comments in this thread. Now, 6 years later we're here!