Small correction - but Apple didn't transistion from "Motorola" to Intel. They transitioned from IBM and Freescale (the former Semiconductor Product Sector division of Motorola that spun off in 2004) to Intel. I worked for Freescale at the time and was at that 2005 keynote (although had nothing to do with chip production/sales etc.)
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Apple Transitioning Macs to Custom Chips With 'Incredible' Performance Starting Later This Year
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Small correction - but Apple didn't transistion from "Motorola" to Intel. They transitioned from IBM and Freescale (the former Semiconductor Product Sector division of Motorola that spun off in 2004) to Intel. I worked for Freescale at the time and was at that 2005 keynote (although had nothing to do with chip production/sales etc.)
Did they actually say so or are you assuming it based on the info that was pulled up on stage? I agree that when they demoed the new UI on stage, thy used the DK Mac Mini.
When they went deep underground to their secret lab and were actually running X86 games under Rosetta 2, did they use the DK Mac Mini? I don’t recall them specifically mentioning the silicon they were using for it. My guess is they were using the new A14X for those purposes. There is no reason for them not to. If the new silicon is to be released later this year, they for sure have it already in their secret lab.
In 2 years TSMC will be on N5P, and on the cusp of N3.
And Intel will be on 14++++++.
And more cores is better than more threads per core. And AMD will have no fab advantage over Apple.
And Intel’s new architecture will be no better in terms of CPI than its current one.
I really doubt AMD or Intel can compete with Apple.
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Oh yeah? When are they going to get rid of FireWire ports, SD card slots, USB-A ports, and floppy disks if you’re so smart?
Look closer. Wikipedia says the instruction set, not the core design. And even by then they were using tweaked customized instruction sets. ARM Cortex Core reference designs haven’t been used in years by Apple. In fact according to Wikipedia it is in fact the A6 that was Apple’s first custom core designed chip:
So you see, it is much more accurate to say that Apple Silicon is ARM-based rather than saying it is ARM.
Mostly agree, but they aren’t going to work out boot camp anymore than they will work hard to make iphones dual boot android. They don’t care about it. They got it for free when they switched to Intel, and they NEEDED that to convince switchers to switch back then. They don’t need it now - if you really need windows in this cloud-based bring-your-own-device world, you’re in a relatively small minority of mac users.
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That will come when the hardware is announced.
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Motorola chips moved to IBM. IBM moved to Intel.
shortsightedness would be staying with x86 and not moving to the solution with the better technical future.
They never said anything about running anything other than the A12Z, which is part of the selling point. Everything we saw yesterday was on A12Z.
Yes, as a minimum a paid dev account, and they are prioritizing developers that have apps on the Mac App store first. These are not for consumers.
Since Apple are still selling Intel machines, and plan to sell more, and have millions in use already, they should be supporting them for at least 5 years including up to date OS releases. Those Mac Pro customers, mostly corporate, are going to be pissed if support is dropped so suddenly.
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There's a huge risk that developers will just target the most common dominator and just write mobile apps, and don't bother to use the extra capabilities of Mac OS. In effect, Mac OS apps in the Appstore will just consist of mobile apps. Not great.
At that point I have to say no thanks. I only use macs now because I can run windows. I’d love to live in a world where I could use limited Mac arm apps for everything. But that’s not the case. Why would you bother? Apple is basically starting over and most likely looking to nail things down with its App Store only method. Another no thanks.
Lite versions of office and photoshop won’t cut it.
After some sleep I suddenly realized that yesterday's event was indeed the biggest event of two decades (for Mac). OMG: both OS X 11 and ARM Macs! An era is about to fade.
As for the hottest question of running Windows 10 for ARM non-virtually: I've already talked with few other geeks, and I think we may eventually end up having it bootable, even if Apple wouldn't officially support Boot Camp anymore. However, bootable and usable are so much different things, right? As for me: I'd definitely participate in this 'ARM Camp' project, if story comes to the point where we have bootable Windows 10 running on e.g. A14 Mac.
I'm a coder of some third-party drivers for Boot Camp (e.g. Trackpad++), so I could try to develop some of the essential drivers (aha, hope is a good thing
).What makes me most worried, though, is GPU driver. It's a weirdly complex thing (even if you got perfect documentation from chip maker...). And by the way, folks, nobody talks about it, but what if at least some new Macs will get multiple GPUs? Apple's for low power, AMD's for performance. Does anyone believe Apple silicon would compete with soon available RDNA2 GPU products from AMD? Honestly I don't believe in this.
Apple has always been a company of big bets. I remember when my brother sold his Apple stock when they come out with us stupid product called iPod. Who’s going to want one of those? If I’m not mistaken, I think he bought Nortel stock instead.
Well he is correct that the Dock app icon was of an iMac with a Windows logo on it...I guess he is implying that this means Windows through Parallels is hopefully going to continue to be a thing??
No, because iOS doesn't support all the API calls that Mac OS does, so you won't be running Mac OS apps on your iPhone. Also, in some cases, they'll be a lack of RAM.
More and more mac apps will be running almost entirely on sdks supported on ios, though. The sdks are clearly converging, especially given new catalyst features. Over time seems likely that UIKit will be the one-and-only kit. Looking forward to people moaning about that here.
The converse is also true...if your needs are so specialized, why do you attach to Macs in the first place? You would be better served by a Windows laptop or a desktop if you don’t mind me tied down to a desk.
In your argument, you provide a use case of losing Windows apps and Bootcamp functionality. And you say it with a straight face. Apple is supposed to keep going down this road of using x86 because some people use Windows on a Mac and that should be preserved? Are you f***ing serious? The rest of us should be held captive on our own independent platform by Windows and its users? I use a Mac so that I don’t have to use Windows and if Apple has decided its time to change CPUs and has a legitimate reason to do so (they do), a bunch of Bootcampers and gamers are simply SOL. Go buy a Windows machine. Go to that world and stay in it. You have all the other damn PC OEMs and you can build your own desktop. Go away. I don’t give a s*** if you can’t play PC games on a Bootcamp Mac anymore. Go buy a gaming PC or a console. Unbelievable, the presumptuousness that you have everything else and you should have Apple cater to you and every other PC user because you dropped some coin on a Mac. The sooner the switch happens, the sooner the Intel people will go away.
But Apple already deliver mobile solutions with ARM. The entire mobile industry - Apple or Android or Windows for that matter - is on ARM, be that Apple or Qualcomm or Kirin whatever. I am not suggesting ARM will not or has not won the battle for mobile.
What's changing (completely unnecessarily and to the detriment of the consumer in my view) is that they are changing their desktop solutions to ARM.
I could see this coming for quite a while - though since I'm not a professional whose livelihood depends on a Mac, I'm not going to try and make any predictions on what kind of effect this will have.
As long as the Macs I do have can function as strict media servers/streamers, I'll be happy. (Would have no qualms about throwing down on another Mac Mini when my old one or my iMac here die out).
As long as the Macs I do have can function as strict media servers/streamers, I'll be happy. (Would have no qualms about throwing down on another Mac Mini when my old one or my iMac here die out).
Assuming you can get the new ARM Mac in the config you want, like with little details like it having the right size screen, and other trivia ;-)
No joke whatsoever. How could they possibly compete given that they have no fab advantage and they are saddled with an architecture that has inherent technical disadvantages?
And who is to say they are.
Sounds rather like some people are desperate to see only good in any move Apple makes.
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I don't think a $75bn organisation is "saddled" with anything. You could equally say Apple are "saddled" with zero experience of making high-end desktop and professionally oriented CPUs. But of course that doesn't fit the "Apple are marvellous" narrative.
I don’t understand your point. Intel has money, therefore x86 suddenly doesn’t have all the technical debt caused by being a crappy old CISC architecture?
Or is your point that they could switch to a risc architecture? And if so, why would that be an advantage? It would be compatible with nothing unless it was Arm. And if it’s Arm, it would be designed for the least-common denominator of Intel’s customers, not for apple specifically, so Apple’s own chips would still have an advantage in apple’s own machines.
Where did you get this "technical debt caused CISC" nonsense from? The assumptions underpinning your entire argument are flawed. And do you *honestly* think Intel with all their resources could not develop a RISC architecture CPU platform is they wanted to or saw a need to? Really?
I like Apple and I have enjoyed using my iMac over the years. And I hate Windows. Loathe it. But that does not mean I am a blind Apple fanboy oblivious to any mistakes Apple may make or that I feel obliged to coo over every announcement.
I think moving their desktop business to Apple silicon is a really bad move from the customers' perspective. It might be a good idea from Apples' but that is not the same thing. I mean honestly, who is going to get excited because some stupid iphone app can run unmodified on a 27" monitor? It's nonsense.
I don't see why Intel or AMD need a fab advantage in the first place when they have a clear advantage in manufacturing thanks to way higher volume. That also means they can have way more SKUs for sale. Not to mention the entire hardware and software infrastructure around their CPUs.
Anyway both AMD and Intel are transitioning to new X86 CPUs in the near future, it's not like the X86 improvements will stop the moment Apple will launch a Mac with an ARM CPU.