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

[Waragainstsleep]

And all those poor sods that bought a New MAC Pro, how long before that’s dropped form the OS plus developers are not going to support both for long. What a blow to the pro Mac users ! But iPhone users out number them so much I can see why Apple wants to move on...I’ll keep my iPhone & iPad but this will be my last work Mac. It’s too much pain
I can easily switch to PC & run the same software ( as horrid as it will be on Windows) & with AMD bring out some far more exciting multi core CPU‘s it has to be that for the future for me.

What makes you think AMD have more exciting CPUs? Intel is keeping up or slightly exceeding AMD's consumer chips with a 14nm process vs. AMD's 7nm. Apple's A12Z in the iPad Pro is faster than a lot of curren tIntel mobile CPUs. They part of that comparison is that the Intel and AMD CPUs have big ass heatsinks and fans and are clocked 3-4GHz. The A12Z has no fan, a heatsink that's about 1mm thick and they live in a space that's much smaller than either of the other two. Oh and they are clocked more like 2GHz. And those are nearly two generations old now. An A14_ designed for a bigger machine, bigger enclosure, actual heatsink, maybe a fan (probably not in the MacBook Air but not an issue in desktops and maybe MBPs) should be able to clock much closer to the others. Which means it will absolutely smoke them. While using less juice and not getting as hot.

Have you used an iPad Pro? Those things are smooth as butter.

 

[Anarchy99]

That level of performance times three to match the same thermal/energy envelope of a MPB with a dGPU. An iPad Pro runs 29w vs the 96w of a 15" MBP.

you're assuming linear scaling based on power delivery and/or thermal tolerances, so far we've seen no data on the highend scalability considering all our data has been on machines whose goals are low power and physically thin.


i'm cautiously pessimistic till we see more

 

[macduke]

My new MacBook Pro will be powered by Apple Silicon and I cannot wait.

 

[carlos700]

I don't think a dev conf was the place to talk specifics over hardware but I do think Apple is going to in some forum. The fact they kept calling it "Apple Silicon" was extremely vague and I suspect intentionally so. I'm excited to see the user feedback to the Mac mini DTKs with A12Z and how "useable" those are.

 

[cmaier]

I don't think a dev conf was the place to talk specifics over hardware but I do think Apple is going to in some forum. The fact they kept calling it "Apple Silicon" was extremely vague and I suspect intentionally so. I'm excited to see the user feedback to the Mac mini DTKs with A12Z and how "useable" those are.

I think marketing hasn’t yet invented a name for this thing.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I'm cautiously optimistic. Apple have a lot riding on this, so I'd hope they've put a ton of resources into getting it right. The quality control of Macs have been very patchy of late. Fingers crossed they turn out a great product.

 

[joeblough]

I think he’s saying ARM, like PowerPC, is a risc architecture. I don’t think he’s saying that RISC is an ISA

i guess i was mostly reacting to this:

Apple isn't actually moving to ARM. They are using ARM as the basis to create their own silicon in order to return to RISC.

i guess this is my misunderstanding - "moving to ARM" would have to be interpreted as "buying processors from ARM" for the sentence above to make sense. does Acorn even make processors at this point?

IMO this has little to do with RISC vs. CISC or returning to RISC; it's just that they specified an off the shelf ARM processor for the first iPhone (for power reasons) and have since become the world's leading ARM design house. if they had chosen MIPS or some other ISA that they could license then we'd be talking about that architecture right now.

 

[Billiejoe87]

What exactly does “obsolete” mean to you in this regard?

To me personally it means my mac is instantly worth a fraction of what I purchased it a month ago and it means I'm worried Apple will totally discontinue providing mac os updates within the next couple of years.

Apple has said itself that the transition alone will take about 2 years, but so many in here have said they wouldn't buy an intel mac now, that it makes me think apple stops intel support a lot quicker.

 

[typonaut]

I really don't think making comparisons to the PPC -> Intel transition is at all appropriate. When we speak of phones and tablets as though they're somehow "toys", we're actually way off the mark. The iPad is a very capable computer; it's just currently in a software niche where many developers/companies fail to exploit its power—at least partly because they're probably only developing for Mac and can't afford to target iPad as well. Once Apple is able to include the Mac in essentially the same device category as the iPad, I think things will change a lot for developers. You also have to keep in mind that developers looking at "supporting the Mac" now won't be limited to the Mac, but will be opening up their product(s) to the whole Apple hardware ecosystem. Which is to say that the Mac being on its own as a platform in the past offered less of a business opportunity than what we'll see going forward. Now it won't be a question of offering "Mac" support, but rather complete "Apple" support. That means billions of users; nothing like the PPC to Intel days.

This is way off the mark. Developing for both MacOS and iPads/iPhones has nothing to do with the processor. It's more to do with the interfaces being completely different. If it is Apple's intent to turn MacOS into a desktop iPad, then I think you will see professional users migrate away - not because of the chipset, but because of the interface.

 

[Waragainstsleep]

Yeah, I've been wondering about this. Windows apps like Office are 64-bit and don't run on ARM. So I don't know how Apple is going to be able to keep Bootcamp. They could develop special drivers, but I imagine they would be even worse than the current Bootcamp drivers are. Unless I see evidence to the contrary, I think Apple is going to abandon Bootcamp, and just let people use Parallels. They've got Microsoft working on porting the Mac version of Office to ARM, so those kind of big productivity programs will still be available, but only as Mac versions.

Once its done, you won't need to run the Windows versions. You'd be running them in emulation anyway which only slows them down or uses up your system's resources needlessly since more than likely you have a subscription license of some kind which allows you to choose which platform you use them on. Don't forget Office already exists on iPad so that version can already run on ARM Macs without changes required.

 

[Zdigital2015]

I really don't think making comparisons to the PPC -> Intel transition is at all appropriate. When we speak of phones and tablets as though they're somehow "toys", we're actually way off the mark. The iPad is a very capable computer; it's just currently in a software niche where many developers/companies fail to exploit its power—at least partly because they're probably only developing for Mac and can't afford to target iPad as well. Once Apple is able to include the Mac in essentially the same device category as the iPad, I think things will change a lot for developers. You also have to keep in mind that developers looking at "supporting the Mac" now won't be limited to the Mac, but will be opening up their product(s) to the whole Apple hardware ecosystem. Which is to say that the Mac being on its own as a platform in the past offered less of a business opportunity than what we'll see going forward. Now it won't be a question of offering "Mac" support, but rather complete "Apple" support. That means billions of users; nothing like the PPC to Intel days.

So many people think the need an F-250 to do their job when a Honda Ridgeline will do everything and more, but their egos, pocketbook and insecurities take over, and everything but a desktop tower breathing fire is a toy to them. It gets old really fast and the “iPad is a just toy” crowd just need to take a flying leap. That’s all this is about now, outside of those for whom x86 VM compatibility and Bootcamp are their daily drivers and bread and butter, 90% ofthe rest are just posing because no way could a mobile SoC beat their 16-Core Xeon EVAH, cause they are PROS. It’s hilarious...it’s like watching gibbons showing us their genitalia during mating season. There is so much resistance to change here, it borders on the pathological. Cannot wait until the “a proper computer“ jackwangs show up. Not.

 

[cmaier]

i guess i was mostly reacting to this:



i guess this is my misunderstanding - "moving to ARM" would have to be interpreted as "buying processors from ARM" for the sentence above to make sense. does Acorn even make processors at this point?

IMO this has little to do with RISC vs. CISC or returning to RISC; it's just that they specified an off the shelf ARM processor for the first iPhone (for power reasons) and have since become the world's leading ARM design house. if they had chosen MIPS or some other ISA that they could license then we'd be talking about that architecture right now.

Yes, I agree with every fact you just said.

 

[buckwheet]

To me personally it means my mac is instantly worth a fraction of what I purchased it a month ago and it means I'm worried Apple will totally discontinue providing mac os updates within the next couple of years.

Apple has said itself that the transition alone will take about 2 years, but so many in here have said they wouldn't buy an intel mac now, that it makes me think apple stops intel support a lot quicker.

I really don't think that's accurate. Your Mac will retain its value for quite a while because there will be a lot of die-hard Intel hold-outs willing Apple Silicon to fail. You just have to sell to the right buyer! Ha... (I'm in the same boat, btw, having a 2019 16" MacBook Pro... but I'm looking forward to Apple Silicon, personally.)

 

[sbarton]

I for one can't wait for this new generation to experience the glory of Photoshop "bakeoffs"

 

[Waragainstsleep]

To me personally it means my mac is instantly worth a fraction of what I purchased it a month ago and it means I'm worried Apple will totally discontinue providing mac os updates within the next couple of years.

Apple has said itself that the transition alone will take about 2 years, but so many in here have said they wouldn't buy an intel mac now, that it makes me think apple stops intel support a lot quicker.

Apple will provide support for a minimum of 5 years (from when the last model was discontinued) as a rule. That means parts for repairs and these days tends to include at least security updates to the OS as well.

Many will be put off buying Intel Macs knowing thet something new, different and potentially better is around the corner but many will also buy them while they can get them to stave off having to plan and execute a big change quicker than they'd like.

 

[Gerdi]

IMO this has little to do with RISC vs. CISC or returning to RISC; it's just that they specified an off the shelf ARM processor for the first iPhone (for power reasons) and have since become the world's leading ARM design house. if they had chosen MIPS or some other ISA that they could license then we'd be talking about that architecture right now.

The worlds leading ARM design house would be ARM holdings itself

 

[otakuon]

I am sure most of us knew this day was coming sooner rather than later. Apple unifying their architecture across all devices only makes sense. I am glad however that I just bought a 16" MacBoook Pro as it will take a while for all the pro apps from every vendor to make the transition and I suspect that quite a few of the applications I use today will not make the transition (not to mention running Windows without virtualization since most of the world still runs on the Windows platform). I remember the transition from PowerPC and while that was pretty painful, I am expecting it to be a little bit smoother this time around.

I suspect that the MacBook Air will be the first product to implement the new chips. Will be interesting to see how Apple differentiates their product lines now that there will be more overlap in certain segments. Like, what is the advantage of getting a Axxx powered MacBook Air over an iPad Pro with the same chip, especially when an iPad can be paired with a case that provides both a keyboard and a trackpad (and has touch and pencil capability)? Maybe the MacBook Air goes away then. I am also concerned that with this, there will no longer be the option to install and run any apps outside of the App Store. We know that Apple, if it has its way, will want to push all would be developers into the walled garden so that they can get their piece of the pie.

As much as I like the idea of running iOS apps on a Mac, I can't really think of any iOS apps that I would want to actually use on a Mac, nor would I care to spend all day working with, say, PhotoShop on an iPad. There is a reason I have a MacBook Pro in addition to an iPhone and an iPad. Plus, emulating most (if not all) iOS App on an Intel Mac would not be that hard to implement (XCODE has included an iOS emulator for a while now). Of course, that's just me. I can see why someone might just what to forgo Mac altogether but still be able to run "Mac apps" on their iPad, for instance.

Overall, I remain cautiously optimistic about this and maybe in 5 years time, when it's time for me to upgrade my MacBook Pro again, things will have shaken out into a mature, unified ecosystem.

 

[Stridr69]

Means Big Sur and Big Mama are your last Mac OS you gunna get 😂

Make it Big Sur and Death Valley.

 

[joeblough]

The worlds leading ARM design house would be ARM holdings itself

holy smokes - this reminded me that apple's been thru all this once before with the Newton! that also sported an ARM cpu.

but what i meant is that apple is for sure, hands down, making the highest performance ARM processors on this planet right now.

 

[Zdigital2015]

This is way off the mark. Developing for both MacOS and iPads/iPhones has nothing to do with the processor. It's more to do with the interfaces being completely different. If it is Apple's intent to turn MacOS into a desktop iPad, then I think you will see professional users migrate away - not because of the chipset, but because of the interface.

Because Pros want a complicated interface instead? That would explain Windows 10 and their 5 layer dip to do anything useful in Control Panel/Settings (whichever one I’m supposed to actually use?). Windows NT and 2000 we’re only a click or two to useful stuff. Win Xp and subsequent give me layers of cruft to get simple things done. Why? To piss me off? To test my intelligence at navigating a UI designed by over-caffeinated squirrels and evil Clippy? People here preach about how much easier and more stable Windows 10 is and how it never crashes and they are full of it. It doesn’t crash on my 2012 MacBook Pro, but I would go nuts trying to navigate that UI day after day in my job. My wife uses Windows 10, but her apps are all web-based and IT manages the system to keep it up and running. Still, I had to get her VPN access up and running, which was a convoluted nightmare. Pros think they’re more in control with Windows 10? HAH!!! No way. It’s controlling them.

We’ll see how well Big Sur does shortly. I am not swayed by the eye candy changes that seem to scare the big bad Pros. Maybe THEY need to work up some “Courage”!

 

[firewood]

How does one start looking for the “beginner” type information to start understanding these concepts. I’m always fascinated by the chip tear down articles but at a certain point I start drowning in jargon and nuance.

“Computer Architecture“, by Hennessy & Patterson, maybe an older edition, used.

 

[Alan Wynn]

It's so embedded in their beliefs no one can change their views.

Seems like this is true of those who are sure that Apple cannot produce systems that out perform Intel/AMD.

These are the same people who also believe (before they have even tested it let alone seen it) this new apple ARM will defeat x86 and will rule the world. SMH.

I guess that depends on your definition of “defeat x86 and rule the world”, does it not? I am confident that Apple will be able to build A-series chips that will produce better Mac systems than could be built with commodity Intel or AMD hardware. I am confident of that based on their 10 year track record.

How confident are you? Define your terms (what would you consider success for Apple to be with these chips? What would you consider failure?), and let us check in with the first machine, and after each release through the transition and see who is right.

I expect that Apple Silicon-based Macintosh systems will comparatively priced Intel systems. I also expect that their prices will stay the same or drop (inflation-adjusted).

 

[Zdigital2015]

I think marketing hasn’t yet invented a name for this thing.

Bingo! I’m sure they want to name it something catchy to differentiate it from the iOS SoC, especially when they start scaling CPUs to higher TDP and more cores. Like G14z or Z14x. Which aren’t catchy at all. Phill and crew better be burning the midnight oil on this one.

 

[firewood]

holy smokes - this reminded me that apple's been thru all this once before with the Newton! that also sported an ARM cpu.

Apple helped created ARM as a spin off from Acorn Computers, and ARM stock likely saved Apple from bankruptcy.

 

[typonaut]

Because Pros want a complicated interface instead?

If by complicated you mean mice and scrollbars and multiple windows and pallettes and menus and keyboards and shortcuts, then, duh, yes, pros want complicated. As an example: the removal of scroll arrows always puzzled me. Great if you've 20 files in a folder, or a list of 30 names… not so great when you’ve got hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands.

I’m not supporting Windows in any way, and didn’t mention it. I’m actually thinking a bit more radical.