Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's Path to Arm-Based Macs Could Start With a New 12-Inch MacBook
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Everything 'Mac' will be smooth.
Bootcamp isn't really their problem. If M$ makes Windows play 'nice' with ARM then Bootcamp could be a thing for Mac ARM chips without penalty.
But they're not going to emulate to make their brand new chips seem 'slow' when running Native Mac ARM they eat Intel Mac for breakfast.
They won't muddy the performance PR with that.
Bootcamp is 'nice' but it's not essential. Any PC tower from £799 and up can do a better job than year old iMacs.
Azrael.
There's no ruling out a 'new' device eg. Surface like.
But Mac ARM seems like it's inevitable. Intel's single core performance is a sitting duck. Intel are running hot.
Apple clearly wanted to go 'Macbook' 12 inch style product. They've probably decided it's just worth it with Intel.
It's been a 15 year relationship. But bar the initial efficiency gains, the last 5 years or so have been huff and puff.
They're only on 6, 8 or 10 cores because AMD lit a fire underneath them.
Azrael.
Zhaoxin - Wikipedia
7nm in 2021 supposedly. Cyrex > Via > Zhaoxin
made for the Chinese market.
Never been offered? This is exactly what is happening already with T2 running the touch bar. T3 will run full apps on main screen.
That’s kind of a double-edged example, isn’t it? Early adopters certainly got a cool car, but as far as I’ve heard there were reliability issues (e.g., the “50-cent shim” drive unit failure) until about 2014...
The T chips are a sign that the 'ARM' takeover by covert osmosis is well under way...assuming more of the responsibility for running a 'Mac.'
The next 'T' chip will run the apps. Mac 'ARM.'
Azrael.
Immaterial, this isn’t even a consideration for Apple at this point. If Apple builds their own CPUs for the Mac, they will be Arm-based. x86 is done on the Mac platform.
What happens to Thunderbolt in all this? I could be wrong, but last I read there are 0 ARM-based Thunderbolt-certified devices, and I believe only two non-Intel Thunderbolt-certified motherboards for AMD. If Apple releases an ARM-based Mac with Thunderbolt, I think it would be the first major OEM to release a non-Intel Thunderbolt-certified device.
The 64bit requirement makes a lot of sense in Catalina if you think they might be licensing X64 from AMD. No X86, no Intel, no problems. Probably a few lawsuits but it’ll take decades. It’d be amusing if it’s not ARM at all and we find out Apple has made their own x64 chips with embedded T2 cores.
He's only a couple months late. The original prediction about a 12" ARM MacBook was made in March by LTD.
If anyone buys AMD or Intel, their cross-licenses are cancelled.no - AMD is the only company that has this license and intel fought them pretty hard (and lost) to limit them a long while back. they will never issue another license like AMD has again.
maybe apple should just buy AMD
That‘s incorrect. Just check Nvidia‘s Jetson series: ARM CPUs with Nvidia graphics on top
Last edited:
I have the 12”MacBook it’s lighter than the new MacBook Air and the keyboard has never been a problem 3yrs and running. Hope they bring it back
Apple probably assumes they can blow off this class of customers, as there is a potentially larger group of future customers to replace them. Customers who much prefer longer battery life, less or no fan noise, lighter laptops, better AI assistants, possibly 5G cellular options, etc., to running Windows apps (if they even know what those are).
It's only a matter certification fees. So far, no ARM-based device has been worth putting in TB3.
no - AMD is the only company that has this license and intel fought them pretty hard (and lost) to limit them a long while back. they will never issue another license like AMD has again.
maybe apple should just buy AMD
Good idea but sadly due to the licensing deal that AMD has with Intel if any company buys AMD then they lose the right to all X86 based tech.
Mac App Store Apps does not guarantee working on ARM Mac. We have been though through that for years. Why are we keep repeating the same thing.
Even the iOS App Store only gurantess the compatibility within the same ISA, i.e ARM. Bitcode only helps to take new optimisation in newer ARM models.
Why are we even talking about RISC vs CISC in 2020? aarch64 isn't even RISC by classic definition.
It is nice they are still working on perfecting the butterfly keyboard. Hopefully they will use that for thinner Macbook, but please give me back the old 1.5mm key travel scissors keyboard.
Even the iOS App Store only gurantess the compatibility within the same ISA, i.e ARM. Bitcode only helps to take new optimisation in newer ARM models.
Why are we even talking about RISC vs CISC in 2020? aarch64 isn't even RISC by classic definition.
It is nice they are still working on perfecting the butterfly keyboard. Hopefully they will use that for thinner Macbook, but please give me back the old 1.5mm key travel scissors keyboard.
Then that is your choice but please do not forget to shut the door on your way out. Thank you and goodbye!
As of this moment. Intel still has yet to relinquish its position on Thunderbolt certification. Although the spec is now free, and most part of it, is inside USB4 ( and again not mandatory part of the spec ).
Not saying it is the fault of Intel.
You're braver than I am. I'll give it at least five years. I'm hoping to get at least that from my new mini. Then I'll see what the Apple landscape looks like. I run many crucial apps I bought outside the App Store ecosystem. I'm curious as to whether those software companies will update their apps for ARM or just throw up their hands and walk away from Apple.
As someone who only jumped to Mac in 2011 after 15 years of using Windows/x86 exclusively i am really concerned about application compatibility with this ARM move.
When i first got a Mac running Lion 10.7 (2011 Air 13"), PowerPC compatibility using Rosetta had just been removed so i missed out on running some of my favourite Windows games with ease as there was PowerPC versions of those games . I did find work arounds using WINE or buying Parallels but i just wanted the native Mac version to work
Slowly since owning one i had noticed the amount of programs for Mac had become the strongest it had ever been, and even games were slowly but surely becoming available more on Mac. Then Apple kill 32bit in Catalina and half the games no longer run and other old apps have been killed, so now thats all the Power PC software and all the 32 Bit gone.
Now we move to ARM what happens to the apps? Will the 64 bit apps i run today still be allowed to be run in years to come on ARM using emulation or will Apple pull the equivalent of the Rosetta engine for x64 emulation out in 4 years time and even worse with their new OS every year make holding onto the older OS that can run them even harder.
It does not matter how amazing an OS is to use , and MacOS has had a crisp clean consistent UI for 20 years that is very reliable, but if there are no apps to actually run i'm going to have a big problem.
Relax, I can guarantee you that Apple is not about to move to ARM Macs and then stuck two fingers up to you saying "**** you! and goodnight". I am sure that your apps will run just fine.
good. butterfly issues were overblown. maybe bringing down a 0.5% defect rate to a 0.1% defect rate would be possible.