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Arm Processors with Mac Pro Level Performance Possible Today
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This is encouraging. If Apple is to transition to ARM on the Mac then it needs to quickly transition the entire line to ARM. That way they force developers to update their applications for the new architecture. A scenario where the high end Macs stay with Intel and the low end Macs go ARM would in my opinion be a huge mistake for the platform going forward.
I make that $267 per year. Find me another laptop at that price.
As a current Hackintosh user my biggest concern is when the OS goes ARM only. I guess I'm one of the very few on here who grew up with an ARM based desktop and have fond memories of the the performance and lack of fan 
Yes... the Altra is a high-wattage server chip.
But there will be other ARM chips for other devices... such as a thin-n-light Macbook replacement.
It's funny... it seems that ARM chips are finally able to scale up to reach the performance levels of some Intel chips.
But Intel has had a terrible history of scaling down their power requirements to make decent mobile-style chips. Remember... Intel cancelled their plans to make power-sipping mobile chips a few years ago.
And this is why ARM is sounding better and better as time goes on. It means that Apple could make ARM chips for their phones (like they already do)... and they could also make powerful yet power-efficient ARM chips for their laptops and desktops.
It sounds good to me.
Well, my machine is pretty much keeping up with me at the moment - enough for me to be happy with it for now, at least. Always keen to see what developments Apple come up with, though (remembering back to the days when the Pentiums and G3s/G4s fought it out and used to leapfrog each other constantly, which made each Tuesday keynote something to actually look forward to, knowing that the next Macs were going to be smokin' 😛). I think if Adobe got their act together and properly saw to it that Creative Cloud utilised the system to its full potential, that's all the upgrade I'd need!!
We're not getting Mac Pro-level processing power in a laptop, not nowadays at least. We're not there yet.
Windows on ARM devices serve as a pretty real warning here : the promised increased battery life for (roughly) the same processing power is largely MIA and was nothing more than marketing.
Now if we're talking Mac Pro-level processing power in a desktop/workstation/server (which is what Ampere up here is proposing), why not, but I still don't the see the benefit in switching over if the processing power is about the same, you lose x86 compatibility, and all you get is less heat output.
But the Windows ARM Laptops are hamstrung by having to use non-Apple ARM CPUs. Apple are so far in front in terms of performance and power consumption on these classes of CPUs (basically phone/tablet SOCs) that it's not really fair.
Now none of us know what sort of performance Apple might be able to bring to a higher wattage package. But we are all assuming it would be pretty good
Saw this article on Engadget this weekend
AMD CPUs for the past 9 years are vulnerable to data leak attacks
It's not just Intel chips that are vulnerable to hard-to-fix security flaws. Researchers at the Graz University of Technology have detailed a pair of side channel attacks under the "Take A Way" name that can leak data from AMD processors dating back to 2011, whether it's an old Athlon 64 X2, a...www.engadget.com
The Intel processors have always worked great for Apple so I don't know why they would want to switch to ARM
What?
Do you know what an ARM based Mac could mean?
Incredible Performance
Low TDP -> Extended Battery Life -> less fan noise
Do you know that an iPad Pro already has the performance of a Macbook while beeing completely silent?
I‘m sure at the time an ARM based OSX Mac is being released, Apple has already migrated their biggest applications like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro etc...
Odds are macOS is already living a secret double life on ARM processors!
Do you know that Apple has gathered way more experience through the years than MS? They don’t need to promise something, look at the incredible performance of their iPhones & iPads.
Apple motivation is improving Mac margins, thus suspect they will split the Mac into two product lines. ARM and Pro Intel/AMD. I think Apple handled the PPC to Intel transition pretty well.
I can hear SJ now....
What are some of the things you do today on a Mac?
1. Apple productivity and creativity apps - It just works!
2. Third party apps created with Xcode - Just click the ARM checkbox and recompile.
3. Third party apps not created with Xcode - Move to Xcode.
4. Existing apps complied for Intel - Rosetta 2.0.
5. Native or VM Windows - Buy the "Pro" version of our Macs with AMD processors or run a Windows VM on a NAS (QNAP, Synology, etc.)
I can hear SJ now....
What are some of the things you do today on a Mac?
1. Apple productivity and creativity apps - It just works!
2. Third party apps created with Xcode - Just click the ARM checkbox and recompile.
3. Third party apps not created with Xcode - Move to Xcode.
4. Existing apps complied for Intel - Rosetta 2.0.
5. Native or VM Windows - Buy the "Pro" version of our Macs with AMD processors or run a Windows VM on a NAS (QNAP, Synology, etc.)
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Ax processors are good, but we're consistently comparing apples and oranges - iOS devices powered by Ax chips are not multi-tasking, do not run applications as complex as those we're used to on desktops/laptops,.
So far the only realistic use case for an ARM Macbook is to essentially have an iPad in a laptop enclosure, running iOS - which is fine for watching videos, playing games, and good enough for professionals who use email and web-based tools.
But then, what do we gain besides a thinner device? Not to mention losing x86 compatibility is a huge deal for many.
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Apples and oranges.
The Ax chips are certainly multitasking. Even if you don't count multiple apps (my iPad Pro can have 3 on screen at once all running) the OS has lots of stuff running in the background all the time.
I have no desire for a thinner device. But I already transitioned my mobile computing to ARM. I am all in on iPad for mobile. Would an ARM MacBook the same size as an iPad with a Brydge keyboard and with the same battery life and price be interesting? Yes, but I would quite possibly stick with my iPad
I think this is a device that a lot of people are interested in but this is not a Mac. This is an iOS notebook device. Maybe the old iBook name could come back. Maybe even with all the fun colours they used to come in!
Have you used iPad OS recently? The multitasking has so much improved lately. Tell me more about „complex“ applications. What do you mean with that?
Err. Except the Snapdragon 865 almost certainly won't be a better chip than the A13.
We don't actually know, since it isn't actually shipping yet, but we do know that it's predecessor, the 855+, is 43% worse at single-core, and 21% worse at multi-core (despite having 33% more cores). IOW, Apple's chip is almost twice as fast. It's fairly unlikely that the 865 makes the 75% jump needed to catch up, much less be better than Apple's chip.
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It might someday, but as of today, it is neither shipping, nor are there reviews, so no, it doesn't show that.
3Ghz turbo would be a big no-go for the pro audio community. VI's need all the single core CPU possible in order to work.
The multitasking is a crutch. The gestures are unintuitive, limited, and error-prone.
For example:
The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10
To reach its potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite — that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down...
daringfireball.net
It’s Not About Intuitiveness
That’s what makes the state of iPadOS so crushingly disappointing — it has an inherent leg up on MacOS on intuitiveness by nature of its conceptual foundation. The problems with the iPad are about *consistency*, *coherence*, and *discoverability*.
daringfireball.net
A Deceptively Simple iPad Multitasking Concept
Link to: https://twitter.com/rutherling/status/1232062925570891779
daringfireball.net
The multitasking is a crutch. The gestures are unintuitive, limited, and error-prone.
For example:
The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10
To reach its potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite — that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down...It’s Not About Intuitiveness
That’s what makes the state of iPadOS so crushingly disappointing — it has an inherent leg up on MacOS on intuitiveness by nature of its conceptual foundation. The problems with the iPad are about *consistency*, *coherence*, and *discoverability*.A Deceptively Simple iPad Multitasking Concept
Link to: https://twitter.com/rutherling/status/1232062925570891779
None of this has anything to do with the CPUs capability to multitask well: the hardware works just fine. This is a software issue.
So you are saying the 865 is better because a chip maker makes it? None of what you said in this quote makes any sense to me. I care about tight integration between hardware and software, performance, power consumption, etc. Apple has been ahead of other ARM mobile chips for years.
Apple doesn’t have their own fab anyways, they augment the ARM designs with their own designs and them have another fab actually build them.
My 2011 MBP died in 2018 because of the motherboard problem (it had already been replaced once under the replacement program, but that ended). So I got zero - broken laptop, and zero worth, after 6-7 years.