Apple Transitioning Macs to Custom Chips With 'Incredible' Performance Starting Later This Year

[Wags]

Same. Was about drop $2k on one for my daughter's graduation gift. Now idk. I wouldn’t expect it to be usable 6/7 years later like my current one.

Still can use my 2006 MBP using 2g ram on 10.6.8
So why not last.

 

[User 6502]

That’s great, I’m glad to see this finally happening.

 

[rockinaut59]

I wonder if the Thunderbolt 3 ports on the back of the Mac mini work on the new DTK model? If it has them at all? Since Thunderbolt is an Intel Technology, and the DTK doesn't have an Intel Processor at all. Maybe USB4??

 

[ScreenSavers]

I think that with these new Mac Pros they have to at least keep the support going for 7 years

I'm wondering if they might make a drop in Apple A-series chip for the 2019 Mac Pro? In theory they could, but I sort of doubt it...

 

[icanhazmac]

Well, guess my 2017 15" needs to last 2 more years. Hopefully the 3rd keyboard will be the one that works.

 

[villagehiker]

macbook is dead to me, i dont want an enlarged ipad

I don't participate here a lot, but your comment recalled something. When working for Apple Retail in 2011, a known customer said, "The new iPads are just large iPhones, correct?" I said, "Aah, Yes! In fact Apple contracted with The Gap to create new jeans with an extra large rear pocket for carrying the iPad." The guy looked surprise, then caught the joke.

I actually use a MacBook Pro for doing video, audio and typesetting production, none of which an iPad could mimic at this time. I would love desktop production power, but need the portability. My only iPad continues to be an original Mini, permanently stuck in iOS9, but good enough.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Why are people saying 2020, 2019, and earlier Intel Macs are “dead” or that those who bought them aren’t happy with this announcement? Despite my being here for many years, I’m
not super tech literate. I just bought a 2020 MBP. What does this switch to Apple Silicon mean for me and others who bought one?

Just bought a MBP16, wondering the same.

 

[Stephen.R]

Plus the ability to run iOS apps natively out of the box now will be slick

while it may work as a stop gap (due to the number of existing iOS apps and the potential for missing/slow x86 apps on an arm Mac) I doubt it’ll be “slick”. they wouldn’t have spent all that time and effort trying to get iPad developers to use catalyst if they were going to get as-good (which is still not as good as truly native macOS) apps for free with the arm transition

 

[mistasopz]

The new era of Mac!

I wonder if people will look back on this thread in 10 years like the iPod and iPhone threads

Or perhaps like the Apple III, Pippin, or Newton...

 

[jvlfilms]

The gaming performance looked quite unremarkable. I have played Shadow of Tomb Raider and the graphics are far superior on any gaming PC. They got smooth framerate by going to a VERY low resolution (nobody plays in 1080p anymore), and the graphics quality was set extremely low - it looked like the old Tomb Raider games from the 00's.

That was only through emulation, not native code.

I can tell you I have played Fortnite on my iPad Pro in native resolution at 60 FPS with very few dips. Am very very excited for these ARM processors on desktop machines.

 

[Squeak825]

Based on the info and dev kit
-bootcamp will still available after sept/oct with the release of windows10 arm to buy
- first mac with arm will be after sept based on the next a14 silicon 5nm vs intel 14nm
The apps that are not build for arm will lose between 4-10% performance thanks to the perfect emulation
While on surface proX the emulation can lose up to 62% of performance

Where are you seeing this specifically?

 

[Woochoo]

They didn't really share any benchmarks or comparisons beyond that vague graph.

The Big Sur demoes were running on an A12Z, that means they don't have the A14's that will be used in the final Macs yet. Benchmarking an A12Z wouldn't have been really impressive at all (it's basically a 2018's A12X with better GPU), neither it was designed for a desktop but for tablets.

The fact a tablet SoC was able to run that Maya demo (even with the handicap of emulation) is quite remarkable though

 

[Substance90]

The only thing that has me worried is VST support for audio software. Otherwise the transition to efficient Arm CPUs can’t come soon enough!

 

[Coconut Bean]

How the hell did they run Tomb Raider for the INTEL MAC on an iPad SoC that fluently? That looks insane.

Again, they are running an emulated game, which is already a taxing game on Mac chips, on an iPad SoC???!??!!?!?

It was the Metal version.

 

[Jovinyl]

99.999% chance that will not happen. It is optimized as a 1-way translation layer, and most likely is compiled natively for ARM

This is most unfortunate...

 

[Hori]

The gaming performance looked quite unremarkable. I have played Shadow of Tomb Raider and the graphics are far superior on any gaming PC. They got smooth framerate by going to a VERY low resolution (nobody plays in 1080p anymore), and the graphics quality was set extremely low - it looked like the old Tomb Raider games from the 00's.

I don’t understand why you guys don’t get this is the A12 and not the A14 that these new Macs will be shipping with.

look at it like this they got the iPad Pro 2020 to run tomb raider. Not the new Macs that are coming will be a lot stronger.

 

[DQ11]

So I was wanting to buy the 2019 27" imac to use for making music with Logic Pro.

* It's great they announced the new chips are already compatible, but I don't know when the new chip imacs will release.....(probably not until late 2021), and there are new intel imacs coming out now.

* I like the 2019 27"..........Do I buy now....wait for fall to see what the new intel macs are, or wait until 2021 for new chips.

* I'm not waiting until 2021, so that rules that out, and I don't know how it will work with Logic yet.
* I don't want to wait 4-5 more months to find out if the new imacs are any better.
* Could run the risk of the new imacs being "better", but also running hotter like the 2017 imacs....
* 2019 imacs seemed to have fixed that heat issue so maybe should just go with that....

I guess I won't need a ton of updated apps....Just get my set up where I need it to be, and make music. I'm just hoping they continue to support it for 5+ years.

 

[pearvsapple]

They need to get rid of ****** AMD graphics next. Boy are they hot and slow!

 

[RowellE]

But why say new intel Macs are coming????

Maybe they'll be used for budget-friendly configurations of the Macs?

 

[monkeybagel]

I like how during the Virtualization feature demo, they only mention Linux and not Windows. As a full stack web developer, I need all environments, so it makes me nervous. Need more info before deciding if I'm going to make the jump to their silicon or begrudgingly transition my primary machine to a PC. Here's hoping...

I am in the same boat. While the majority of my work does not take place out of OS X or VMware, 50% of it does. With this in mind, I have to question if a new 16" MacBook Pro to replace a 2012 non-retina is in order, or will VMware put little development effort into Fusion now they know it is a dead end?

I jumped on the Macintosh platform when Boot Camp became available with 10.4, and it was certainly a nice and fun experience. I hate to leave the platform, but that is big productivity loss if x64 and x86 is not an option either native or virtual. I expect that the demonstration of Parallels running a w3 server would function for that, but for running nested virtualization, Exchange, or anything similar, I feel it would fall short.

 

[TheKDub]

How is your Mac obsolete? It still does everything it did 4 hours before you posted?
How is it an "enlarged ipad" when it is running macOS and apps not available on the iPad like Maya (if that isn't "pro" enough for you, what is?)

Enough with the doom and gloom already. If you are on the bleeding edge of performance, you aren't keeping your computer for the 5-6 years it would take to actually end the life of the Mac you bought this morning. If you are a pro, you don't care about the silicon, only what it can do for you. Do you really care about Intel, AMD, PowerPC, or A12Z if it delivers your product to your clients faster than the last one with fewer bugs? If so, why?

I would have liked to see more specific benchmarks, and I suspect we did not because they were not impressive enough.
A12Z might be a placeholder for A14Z, for the really "wow" numbers.

So my use case scenario is that I'm looking to get a laptop with at least 5-7 years of software updates, like my previous 2013 MBP. Given that I just received a 2020 MBP, this announcement makes it much less likely to do so.

If I get at least 5 years of Intel support from Apple, I'll be happy. If it's only 3-5 years, I'll live with it, but realistically, I really was hoping that my 2020 MBP would also last me the 7 years that my 2013 MBP did.

 

[mguzzi]

Holy crap, all that performance running on an iPad chip?!

The 2018 iPad Pro was benchmarking as fast as a MacBook Pro, and in some cases faster last year. If you use a keyboard and Mouse with an iPad and attach it to a monitor using USB-C you basically have an Arm laptop. However for my needs I have a lot of concerns.

 

[dooyou]

Yeah, look! Smooth smoothing back and forth! Wow! Playback works! We can also play native Tomb Raider in 1080p...

You don't want to confuse customers with details

 

[Squozen]

But powerpc to intel was moving towards an industry standard rather than away from it

ARM is used on far more devices than Intel these days.

 

[ssmed]

I just bought a 2020 MBP. What does this switch to Apple Silicon mean for me and others who bought one?

You are in a good position, having a relatively recent Mac that works and will be supported for sometime without all the angst of whether to upgrade into the old system or wait for the new. There will be a heap of people who have waited for the new keyboards to prove themselves, but have much older machines really wondering what to do.

The interesting thing for me will be how fast Adobe, Microsoft and on a very niche note 4D respond to this over time. How quickly and how well, being left hanging for programmes for the work was the biggest pain last time this happened.