Apple's $500 Developer Program Includes Tools and Resources for Transitioning to Apple Silicon, Plus a Loaner A12Z-Based Mac Mini

[DesertNomad]

Looks at Developer quizzically... waits for the OOOOOhhhhhhh.

Redirect From an HTML takes about 3 seconds.

Yup. I thought about adding a redirect, but I would think a trillion dollar company would be aware that not every page ends in html.

 

[CarlJ]

Yup. I thought about adding a redirect, but I would think a trillion dollar company would be aware that not every page ends in html.

Oh they're aware. They're just looking for a higher quality of web page.

 

[ictiosapiens]

I hope this opens the door to running macos on ipad pro. It'll make an ipad pro 11 an amazingly portable laptop/tablet. Dual OS? Yes please!

 

[DesertNomad]

Oh they're aware. They're just looking for a higher quality of web page.

It's been this way for about 20 years and I had never run into a problem until now - I updated it, but still seems like they didn't anticipate this.

 

[firewood]

How long will it take for someone to extract the ISO for Big Sur for Arm and port it to another Arm processor? Let's say Microsoft SQ1 or Qualcomm 8CX?

Good luck with that. Apple has an ARM architecture license. That may mean they can modify the ISA to include registers and kernel mode instructions that other ARM processors can’t execute. A lot of other custom IP is probably required for boot or any type of IO.

 

[mannyvel]

No sane production person is going to buy a first-generation ARM mac for anything except curiosity, so the lack of TB3 isn't going to be a deal breaker for Gen1. Down the road it'll be an issue, because storage and other peripherals are using that bandwidth and they'll need a solution.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

USB-A, wow, what's going on 😀

 

[BeatCrazy]

USB-A, wow, what's going on 😀

Wired keyboard and mouse FTW.

 

[Gasu E.]

With no Thunderbolt 3 support, I am curious if this is just with the dev version or if TB 3 or TB 4 will be supported in the final hardware?

This isn't a dev version of a planned product. It's just a software development kit.

 

[SocialKonstruct]

Anyone know what the Z stands for?

 

[Gasu E.]

I am wondering how companies that produce Thunderbolt devices are supposed to get their software updated when Apple doesn’t have a Thunderbolt ARM device to offer them to develop on?

How many such companies are there? There may be a separate, more focused development program for them. I can tell you, from industry experience, not all developers are treated equal. The program announced today is for developers who don't get the VIP treatment.

 

[dspdoc]

How many such companies are there? There may be a separate, more focused development program for them. I can tell you, from industry experience, not all developers are treated equal. The program announced today is for developers who don't get the VIP treatment.

There are a LOT in the professional audio segment!

 

[Gasu E.]

I am an iOS developer. Does it mean I am not entitled to purchase this if I do not have an existing Mac app?

I hope you mean "eligible". They call this a "transition kit", which suggests it has the purpose of making sure existing applications on the Mac work with this future Mac generation. These programs are expensive to run, and the company makes some effort to make sure the participants really intend to port applications to the Mac. If I were running this program, I would ask why you have not already ported your app to the Mac. It's a valid qualifying criterion.

 

[ErikGrim]

I can 90% guarantee that the $500 will be taken off a production Mac at the end of the program

 

[CWallace]

Anyone know what the Z stands for?

The A12Z is a process refinement of the A12X in the 2018 iPad Pros that now utilizes all 8 GPU cores.

Effectively the wafer yields are now good enough that all 8 GPU cores work instead of the 7 on the A12X.

 

[Moonjumper]

I hope this opens the door to running macos on ipad pro. It'll make an ipad pro 11 an amazingly portable laptop/tablet. Dual OS? Yes please!

It’s unlikely with the current iPad Pros as even the latest ones only have 6GB RAM. The Developer Transition Kit has 16GB.

 

[Scottsdale]

I doubt they will be on eBay as they must be returned to Apple. I’m sure that if you don’t return it, Apple and the police would be knocking on your door. I don’t think any of the Pentium PowerMacs ended up on eBay.

The police knocking???? LMAO

 

[sammich]

So, how are these systems powering a 6K XDR display without TB3?

 

[Apple Macintosh 128K]

I am an iOS developer. Does it mean I am not entitled to purchase this if I do not have an existing Mac app?

Not every developer will be granted one. They review case by case and don't have enough machines for everyone. Preference is given to people with an existing Mac app that will benefit from the new platform.

If you're not developing for Mac, there's really no purpose in putting down the money for the machine. It won't run any software that hasn't been updated and at this point that's only the built-in macOS apps.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Wired keyboard and mouse FTW.

Obviously there are a lot of usages for USB-A, but I thought they'd already moved everything to USB-C 😀

PS - will there be a jack 😎

 

[BeatCrazy]

So, how are these systems powering a 6K XDR display without TB3?

XDR @6K only needs DSC via USB-C, not necessarily TB3.

 

[Tagbert]

Looks like they are discouraging people who just want a developer mac to experiment/mess around with.

I think they need to limit the dev units for this to only serious developers. Hobbyist developers will have to wait until the commercial units ship.

 

[Falcon80]

Not every developer will be granted one. They review case by case and don't have enough machines for everyone. Preference is given to people with an existing Mac app that will benefit from the new platform.

If you're not developing for Mac, there's really no purpose in putting down the money for the machine. It won't run any software that hasn't been updated and at this point that's only the built-in macOS apps.

My understanding is that all existing iOS apps will just run on the Macs without code change.

 

[rp2011]

Were all the demos done on the A12Z dev Mac Min? If so that is amazing. Imagine what it could do on a dedicated Mac chip instead of an iPad chip?

 

[amartinez1660]

I purchased a 16-inch MacBook just a few months ago... How long will Apple provide macOS updates for Intel macs? And will apps developed for Apple Silicon work on Intel macs? Honestly not happy about this transition...

I bought an iMac 2 weeks ago and could still return it tomorrow as the last day (which I won’t, since not even spec bumps were announced)... so I’m in the same “concerned” boat. However all the responses here to your concern are positively hopeful, 5 years at least would make me a happy customer. Still worried that understandably the focus will be on the ARM side of things... bugs, performance tweaks, etc will understandably be done first (if not mostly only barring workaround patches) for the ARM side. Plus all the hardwares addons, coprocessor satellites, hw engines, etc that the Axx chips have that have no equivalent on a x86 architecture means that those features might have to be emulated, meaning it would run slower.
I’m thinking FCPX for example... that “track subject” feature that uses the neural engine, what will the x86 land get? Will we start seeing declining performance as the focus is shifted more and more towards ARM?
I welcome the change though, looks like a potential interesting future where the stalemate we are at CPU wise could come to an end.
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My understanding is that all existing iOS apps will just run on the Macs without code change.

And those Mac apps that haven’t been changed nor updated will auto-magically run too with Rosetta 2