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Apple Transitioning Macs to Custom Chips With 'Incredible' Performance Starting Later This Year
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Apple wouldn’t be exploring this route if they couldn’t match or beat the performance of Intel’s roadmap. I’m sure we will see some promising benchmarks in the not too distance future
Survived badly, my last G5 was an awful machine, couldnt sell it 2 years after, and my first macintel was also a crap, but O know this will be different as latest macintel are awesome , though lets see what happens in software sideYou guys will be fine - Us who were in the PowerPC to Intel transition feared the same thing, but survived
Yes, I think Craig federigi explained that you can build the same source on Apple Silicon and it should work barring some specific changes which is why he referred to it as "be able to run it in days". But I am talking about how the translation technology might be working. And it could very well be really good.
And the transition is including both Intel and ARM, so why not allow at first the end-user to choose between ARM and Intel on all MacBooks/Macs, then slowly fade out Intel? You could lower the price of the ARM component to get more on-board with it.
I'm not getting sucked in to the Rosetta 2 ruse. Running old apps on the new architecture will actually be slower. It's only when the apps are re-written and native that they can take advantage of the new Apple Silicon architecture. Lot of frustration back when Apple switched to PowerPC, then again with Intel, with both Apple and developers bloviating about how great simulation mode works.
The Wikipedia page on the topic would disagree.
the a13 is an arm 8.4a design, apparently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Cores
I myself use my iPad for photo editing more than I do my iMac nowadays. iPad is faster using the same app.
iPads do run quite well under sustained loads. My only complaint that when they get too hot, screen is dimmed.
Nothing will prevent you to put in a Nvidia or AMD discrete GPU into one of the PCIe slots of your ARM Mac Pro.
This is going to make Hackintoshes even more popular and practical. I can imagine lots of people want to run Mac and Windows side by side and/or have a lot of legacy x86 stuff they still want to run natively. It's unlikely that Apple will stop having Intel OS builds for at least 5 years, maybe even longer.
The Hackintosh development community's purpose in life has been to work around Apple's hardware and software development choices. This is more of the same. It's just another challenge.
But of course they will! Looks the iPhone , is so cheap
Anyway, They always would have RAM and SSD upgrades...
When Apple transitioned from PowerPC to Intel 10.5.8 was the last Mac OS that would run on PowerPC. The Power Mac (PowerPC) was discontinued in August 2006 and 10.6 (Intel only) was introduced in August 2009. I'd say you'll get 3 years support at best. Maybe less.
Well yeah, but the 5600M is a $700 add on part to a $2400 laptop. Apple powered 13” laptops are probably going to start around $1300 and rival the performance of a 5500M. I’m just conjecturing, we’ll see!
Yes, but Apple can stop it from actually working, like it does by denying Nvidia driver support.
They probably will, because they mentioned gaming specifically.
This has one meaning , Apple is killing the macpro desktop . noway ARM can beat 64 cores chips running at 5ghz each after 2 years from AMD and intel.
Well - being able to 'run in days' is different from easily cross compiling for a different instruction set. I'm not as optimistic as you, but we should see how this shakes out with these DTKs.
(Again, I'm talking mostly about CLI apps/services that can run via linux and macos, say, like Redis)
First, Windows on ARM is almost worse than not having Windows at all. It doesn't work well at all, and it's not compatible with 64 bit apps.
Second, in the history of apple using ARM, when have they ever allowed another OS to be installed? I fully expect it to require signed OS updates like iOS does.
This will either turn into success or near bankruptcy like back in the 90's for apple. But there is no steven p jobs to come back and resurrect Apple.
#1 reason for their custom processors: Control and pricing. It's all about the $ - nothing more.
#2 monopoly over software and/or developer fees, again, all about about the benjimen's.
Aside from those two reasons, of course their marketing dept will tout you can't compare an apple device to anything else because technically you can't!
I will want to see apple fail badly because after owning an Ipad 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8th iterations, I've come to believe iOS/iPad apps are just not good enough. At the end of the work day I finish off with a real computer and that $500 developer fee is just stupid for developers. Apple SHOULD BE PAYING developers to hop on board with free incentives. Arrogant company I have zero empathy for when they fail and fail hard. 90% of the world rely on software that runs on x86 and there's just no way a majority of legacy and mainstream apps they are going to port over to an ultra expensive starbuck's millenial computer just because it has an apple logo on it.
Nearly all the features you see today is catchup to the competition. I've waited 14 iterations of iOS just so I can put a photos icon taking up 4 icon spaces on the same exact screen. You guys think it's expensive now for iproducts just you wait; it's gonna be much more expensive and much less compatible!
#1 reason for their custom processors: Control and pricing. It's all about the $ - nothing more.
#2 monopoly over software and/or developer fees, again, all about about the benjimen's.
Aside from those two reasons, of course their marketing dept will tout you can't compare an apple device to anything else because technically you can't!
I will want to see apple fail badly because after owning an Ipad 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8th iterations, I've come to believe iOS/iPad apps are just not good enough. At the end of the work day I finish off with a real computer and that $500 developer fee is just stupid for developers. Apple SHOULD BE PAYING developers to hop on board with free incentives. Arrogant company I have zero empathy for when they fail and fail hard. 90% of the world rely on software that runs on x86 and there's just no way a majority of legacy and mainstream apps they are going to port over to an ultra expensive starbuck's millenial computer just because it has an apple logo on it.
Nearly all the features you see today is catchup to the competition. I've waited 14 iterations of iOS just so I can put a photos icon taking up 4 icon spaces on the same exact screen. You guys think it's expensive now for iproducts just you wait; it's gonna be much more expensive and much less compatible!
Doesn’t that just mean it complies to the 8.4a instruction set?
I’m trying to find a recent article I read about how Apple licenses the instruction set, and makes its chip compliant to that set, but the chip itself is not merely a modified reference design.
I’ll see if I can dig it up in my history.
In the meantime, can anyone with a CPU background (like cmaier) chime in on this?
Apple silicon is just a Marketing name for apples arm chips.
the real question is whether the software you use, (a) can compile on arm and (b) if the “brew” for it needs/gets patches to make it compile on arm.
a is probably the bigger concern. If it can be compiled on arm, home brew will generally grab the patches from another distro if available. But if it can’t, don’t expect homebrew “developers” to port a program to arm.
I think with this ARM route a dGPU will be a thing of the past for Apple computers. Especially with Apples current stance on Nvidia drivers
Lasta time was 3 years (snow leopard 2007, extra year for uodates, not counting 3rd party developers dropping sooner the support)
