Apple Testing ARM Based Mac Prototypes with Large Magic Trackpad?

[macduke]

I don't get all the hate. I guess it will be a pain for a while when apps are being updated, but as far as performance goes? The A7 in the iPad Air geekbenches 2500 as a dual core. Now take an A8 chip, scale it up to 4 times the cores of its predecessor and where do you think it will be performance-wise? Should be at least on-par with the i7 in the MacBook Pros.

Apple takes their time with these things. First putting a desktop class 64-bit chip in their phone and tablets. Next I'd expect to see a quad-core A8 in the iPad Pro. This would get software companies on board with making more professional quality software for ARM-based chips? They would learn how to optimize performance. I don't know exactly how Xcode differs between iOS and Mac versions, but there could be some announcements of new features that could suggest making apps for both platforms could become increasingly similar. Apple thinks about the whole integration from top to bottom. Then the Arm MacBook Air will come, shortly followed by the MacBook Pros and the iMac, and lastly the Mac Pro once the hardware and software have more time to mature. I could imagine that cylindrical design stacked with 32 A9 chips and a new version of Mac OS that takes advantage of that in new and exciting ways.

 

[bwillwall]

If they can do their dynamic translation magic like they have in the past, nobody will care - especially if it comes with a lower price.

I'm still recovering from the PowerPC to Intel transition... old computers are fast but rendered useless and old software doesn't work on new machines.

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If they call their Apple made Mac processors AppleCore processors that would make my life

 

[RedWeasel]

I see ARM-based MacBooks facing some of the very same hurdles as Surface RT products. Mainly, what apps would run on one, besides Apple applications? Unless an emulator was provided, but that would be inefficient as hell in terms of battery consumption.

The difference being that OS X (and its grand daddy NextStep) are built for multi-platform environments from the ground up. Applications would need to get recompiled, but for many apps this would be very easy. Literally not much more than a click of a button.

 

[Diseal3]

Guess this is my last mac. If it happens i'll switch to Sony's line of machines. They make some good looking laptops.

I don't get all the hate. I guess it will be a pain for a while when apps are being updated, but as far as performance goes? The A7 in the iPad Air geekbenches 2500 as a dual core. Now take an A8 chip, scale it up to 4 times the cores of its predecessor and where do you think it will be performance-wise? Should be at least on-par with the i7 in the MacBook Pros.

Apple takes their time with these things. First putting a desktop class 64-bit chip in their phone and tablets. Next I'd expect to see a quad-core A8 in the iPad Pro. This would get software companies on board with making more professional quality software for ARM-based chips? They would learn how to optimize performance. I don't know exactly how Xcode differs between iOS and Mac versions, but there could be some announcements of new features that could suggest making apps for both platforms could become increasingly similar. Apple thinks about the whole integration from top to bottom. Then the Arm MacBook Air will come, shortly followed by the MacBook Pros and the iMac, and lastly the Mac Pro once the hardware and software have more time to mature. I could imagine that cylindrical design stacked with 32 A9 chips and a new version of Mac OS that takes advantage of that in new and exciting ways.

You do understand none of your programs will work right? Different processor instructions which will require emulation if available at all to work. Plus you won't be able to dual boot windows.

 

[leman]

This would only work if its easy for developers to port their code to the arm based systems, and there was no performance degradation.

There is no need to port anything. Any modern Cocoa application which works with a 64-bit Intel CPU will also compile to ARMv8 as the sizes of fundamental data sizes are the same. The only potential problem is assembler code, but practically nobody does that nowadays.

Nobody will pay apples prices to receive a weaker cpu, poorer performing software. Then we go back to the **** old days of ppc vs intel.

Well, I don't think that a CPU would be a major problem here... The A7 in the iPad is already around 50% performance of the Haswell in the MBA. If they can clock the A7 higher, it would be still delivering acceptable performance for an average consumer. The GPU is a bigger concern. Also, a ARM MBA is likely to be cheaper — its MUCH less expensive for Apple to use an A7 vs. paying Intel for the CPUs...

 

[Limboistik]

I can see them phasing this in with the less power hungry Macbook Airs.
Probably keep the Pros on the intel chips for a bit for power users.

 

[booyahbooyah]

If this is true, then I'm doubling down on my $AAPL stock.

Holeeeeeeee shizzzzzzzle.

 

[leman]

I don't get all the hate. I guess it will be a pain for a while when apps are being updated, but as far as performance goes? The A7 in the iPad Air geekbenches 2500 as a dual core. Now take an A8 chip, scale it up to 4 times the cores of its predecessor and where do you think it will be performance-wise? Should be at least on-par with the i7 in the MacBook Pros.

Well, yes, but in the end its still the single-core performance which matters the most for the 'normal' user. It is very difficult to parallelize many algorithms. A machine with 16 A7 cores will clearly outperform the current MBA with Photoshop filter application, but it will be laggier on Gmail or Office, which is what an MBA user cares most.

 

[Mindcrime]

Ultra Low Cost Macbooks

This could be an exploration of ultra-low cost macbooks.

We're already seeing this in the PC world, with the ARM notebooks that all run Chrome and Android OS. An ARM macbook would likely run iOS.

 

[leman]

You do understand none of your programs will work right? Different processor instructions which will require emulation if available at all to work. Plus you won't be able to dual boot windows.

Sorry, but its you who don't seem to understand how things work. Recompiling a modern OS X application to ARM takes literally one push of a button. There is no additional optimisation needed, no fixes and no rewrites — unless you are doing something extremely exotic in your app. Its just download the new Xcode version, rebuild your app and resubmit it to the app store. The same application can contain native code for both Intel and ARM version. OS X was designed with this kind of flexibility in mind from the start.



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We're already seeing this in the PC world, with the ARM notebooks that all run Chrome and Android OS. An ARM macbook would likely run iOS.

An iOS interface does not make any sense on a notebook. And basically the only difference between iOS and OS X is that they use different interface frontends. Most of the code is shared between both OSes. Or do you think that Apple would develop a custom OS only for a ARM notebook line? Why would they do that if they can just natively compile OS X to ARM?

 

[Simoleon547]

This should be an obvious move. Look at the benchmarks and their progress. We'll use geekbench for simplicity, not perfect, but it's well rounded. The A7 scores about 2,600, double the A6's 1,200-1,300. Even if Apple did nothing to improve the ARM architecture, the A8 is expected to have a quad core with the die shrink to 20nm. Doubling the die size to fit the power availability in a laptop would yield 8 cores. 8 x 1,300 (per core) is about 10,400. That easily beats the performance of the current Retina Macbook Pro with about 7,000. If they double the core clock to 2.6Ghz, like some rumors say they have, they could beat the Core i7 with the same number and only 4 cores, giving good single-threaded performance. That's all assuming Apple hasn't done anything to improve their architecture, which they most certainly have.

Intel's days are numbered at Apple.

 

[pragmatous]

Apple is nowhere near the level of performance Intel is and it never will be. Why? Apple's focus is on hardware. Intel's focus is on CPU's and chipsets. Ya you forgot about chipsets. There's not a chipset in the world that will support the ARM processor. You will be stupid in thinking that Intel's chipset will support ARM.

Computers have chipsets because it's a lot more complicated then tablets. It has multiple IO's, a BIOS, Multiple PCI-e lanes, and CPU to support where the tablet doesn't.

The real reason is because there's no chipset that supports Apple's ARM CPU. Apple is stuck with Intel.

 

[pika2000]

I've been saying this the moment Apple switched to 64bit. Just like the switch from OS 9 to OS X, and from Power PC to intel, the next big thing is OS X on ARM. And no, I don't think Apple would ditch intel completely. Intel still holds the performance king. I can see this ARM Macs to be the return of the regular Macbook brand. The basic computer for everybody, with even better battery life than the Macbook Air.

I can see it to also be focused on iCloud, possibly with built-in cellular radio like the iPad. The hints are all there. Apple focused on efficiency on Mavericks. Then there's the more hiding of the file system, and focus on tagging and iCloud. But unlike a Chromebook, this will still run OS X.

The mystery will be apps. Obviously current x86 apps won't run unless Apple does some kind of voodoo magic. Maybe it will run iOS/iPad apps, but then those apps are touch centric. But then again, Apple might have prepared the iLife and iWork apps for it, so for many people, it would probably be good enough out of the box, giving time for developers. But running a third ecosystem can be an issue, unless Apple offers some easy porting from iOS apps.

It would be an interesting transition. We have Chromebook and Windows RT, both arguably are not going anywhere. It will be curious to see the Apple way. And I don't think this will happen this year, or even next year. As powerful the A7 is, I think it would take another two or three iteration. And once it's powerful enough, I can see it replacing the current Macbook Air (leaving intel for the Pro machines).

 

[dazed]

So those of us who use windows via bootcamp or in vmware would have to shift to an arm based windows?

Seems like a lot of effort, hopefully they wouldn't abandon intel completely but I can see why they would want to shift chip development in house (they can certainly afford it )

 

[smoketetsu]

Transitioning to a new architecture is never just a push a button and it automagically recompiles for you for anything but simple apps. There's a lot more to it than that. And often times performance sensitive apps (such as games and emulators) have specific optimizations that are left behind. From what I could tell... In the case of the intel transition apps actually GAINED x86 specific optimizations (especially emulators) when ported to the newer architecture because there was a lot of desktop ready code available due to the larger market.

Even now certain applications and games haven't been upgraded to intel or universal binary. That software was also rendered unusable when Apple dropped Rosetta from OS X.

Also, at the time when we where on powerpc lack of PPC versions of certain middleware such as Havok kept certain games off of the Mac from all I've ever heard.

Ask, companies like Feral and Aspyr if all they had to do is hit the recompile button and push out an intel version of their stuff.

Also, ARM based Windows doesn't run your x86 based programs without CPU emulation.

 

[Simoleon547]

Apple is nowhere near the level of performance Intel is and it never will be. Why? Apple's focus is on hardware. Intel's focus is on CPU's and chipsets. Ya you forgot about chipsets. There's not a chipset in the world that will support the ARM processor. You will be stupid in thinking that Intel's chipset will support ARM.

Computers have chipsets because it's a lot more complicated then tablets. It has multiple IO's, a BIOS, Multiple PCI-e lanes, and CPU to support where the tablet doesn't.

The real reason is because there's no chipset that supports Apple's ARM CPU. Apple is stuck with Intel.

Apple has no problem designing their own chipsets. They want the power consumption taken down so they already want to design their own chipsets. I don't have a source handy but I think I read they already wanted to design the more power hungry chips in their macbooks. Besides that, AMD already has a solution. They're launching their own ARM architecture for servers. AMD would be happy to design a chipset for Apple to help them move from Intel.

I'm sure they would keep xeons in the Mac Pro though. For Marketing and compatibility reasons.

 

[JustinePaula]

ARM is fine, I could care less if it was motorola, Intel, ARM, LEG, EYE, as long as the idiot that does the design is stripped of all hard solder and epoxy products...Leave the epoxy and hard solder for cheap products, for professional devices, let the professionals be able to change out RAM, SSD and GPU/CPU units...Please!!! For the love of fruit from California do not use epoxy and hard solder Mr Ive...Please!!!

 

[Macyourdayy]

Dual boot Windows RT BOOYAH!

Exactly. You couldn't dual boot or virtualise "real work enabled" winblows and would likely slow down new user adoption who wouldn't have their "safety" blanket available, even if they don't use it again after a couple of months, never mind we'd have to buy new versions of non app store apps. Isn't battery life on the current airs pretty amazing enough? Is there a big financial incentive to do this? Almost makes you sorry for intel.

 

[leman]

Computers have chipsets because it's a lot more complicated then tablets. It has multiple IO's, a BIOS, Multiple PCI-e lanes, and CPU to support where the tablet doesn't.

The real reason is because there's no chipset that supports Apple's ARM CPU. Apple is stuck with Intel.

That doesn't make any sense. Why would an ARM MBA need any PCI-e lanes? All it needs is some USB3 and Thunderbolt. And of course tables have IO ports and a 'BIOS'. The traditional chipset functionality on a tablet is usually split between the CPU itself and additional controllers.

FYI, most of the PCI-e lanes on a modern Intel platform are provided by the CPU itself.

The mystery will be apps. Obviously current x86 apps won't run unless Apple does some kind of voodoo magic.

Again, they will once recompiled.

 

[Peace]

Apple isn't "transitioning" from Intel. They are probably just supplementing ultra books that run ARM and a variation of MacOS and IOS which would justify the OS 11 naming. Or OSXI if you will.

 

[Iconoclysm]

I had the exact same reaction when I read this article. If the 12" "Macbook Air" even exists and is indeed fan-less, it almost definitely use an ARM-based processor. I've always had a hunch that this Macbook Air is actually an iPad with a keyboard.

It would combine rumors of a 12" retina MBA and the 12" iPad Pro - meaning that everything everyone's heard is exactly true.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

Question the first, does this mean we'll see G5 Powerbooks soon?

Though I'm really not surprised if Apple used ARM for the consumer goods, Intel for professional. It would be a nice differentiator on their part.

There are many out there who wouldn't be fazed by an ARM Macbook Air, but as for myself I really wouldn't buy one.

 

[Iconoclysm]

Wouldn't exactly call Motorola a "small company."

3600 employees is definitely small, not sure you can even call that an enterprise level company.

 

[JustinePaula]

15 inch and larger is PRO, as in for the use by "professionals", anything less than 15 inches is simply too small a screen to be of any professional use, Mr Ive knows this and chooses to be a complete fool to stick the label Pro to 13inch devices, Is Mr Ive considering calling the iphone 7 next week the new MacBook Pro...After all small is better...

What is worse is the "professionals" in the world of creative said nothing, did not blog and demand 17inch professional grade laptops...

 

[Simoleon547]

Exactly. You couldn't dual boot or virtualise "real work enabled" winblows and would likely slow down new user adoption who wouldn't have their "safety" blanket available, even if they don't use it again after a couple of months, never mind we'd have to buy new versions of non app store apps. Isn't battery life on the current airs pretty amazing enough? Is there a big financial incentive to do this? Almost makes you sorry for intel.

I think the real motivation to do this is because Intel doesn't have enough competition from AMD to release new chips on time. They keep delaying them and Apple is sick of it. The Broadwell architecture is coming in December at the latest. It'll be about a year late. Delayed at least twice. Apple's going to miss the back to school season because Intel knows people will buy their chips anyway because AMD isn't releasing anything competitive yet. That must make them mad. On top of that, the basic math is that Apple can crank up clock speed, core count and redesign their architecture enough to soundly beat Intel chips at the same power consumption. It's probably not about power consumption. Just performance and Intel hurting Apple's bottom line. Nobody should be happy that their Mac costs $300-$400 more because intel charges an arm and a leg (no punn intended). Compare that to maybe $40-$50 for an ARM chip.