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Let’s hope they don’t wait till then for the iMac redesign, but I suspect they will. Don’t see them introducing a new design if the internals will drastically change less than a year later. However I still hope for that iMac redesign every day.
 
My wallet just cried out. Starting with 12 cores? I’m wondering how much these will cost when introduced. It will be a magical price because that R&D cost factor... yeah.

It’s an understatement that the transition will be complex, but the road has been paved for years. This isn’t a swift pivot on Apple’s part by any means. Still, not sure when I’ll jump in personally, definitely not on Day 1, but will follow events as always.
 
Funny how most people think this is the death of the Mac. I think this could be the death of Windows notebooks just like Netbooks were killed by Apple. These machines probably have days of battery time combined with an enormous amount of power. People keep saying ARM cannot match x86 performance but this is just not true. Also the whole macOS on ARM discussion is unnecessary. macOS has been running on ARM for at least 13 years, it's fine and the transition will be fine as well. They've more than a few labs running macOS on different architectures, they've been doing that since the NeXT days in the 80's.
 
Against Intel's chips that haven't progressed in 8 years, going ARM makes sense. However, AMD's new chips are also leaving Intel behind with needing to rewrite all your x86 software.
They both require a full redesign of the motherboard. One of the reasons Apple is switching is that Apple wants the ability to upgrade when and how they see fit. Moving to AMD just means moving from Intel timeline to AMD timeline. They’re not getting the control they need.
 
I couldn’t care less, BUT the real question is Not arm or ... but what happens to the os and will there be a touch screen. What will be the difference to the now, late but ... iPadOS.

i mean Apple tested the usage of iPad apps on Mac, what’s going on there?

for me all these ‚leaks‘ are on purpose to hide the REAL changes and aspects of all that still stand over years now.

a new transparency paradigm wouldbe good for Apple and all the devs and customers. The old jobs hide away thing was cool yesteryears!

I don't believe there will be touch screens on Macs any time soon. I believe the intention of this is that developers will be able to (and eventually required to) develop universal apps that will work on a Mac, iPad, or Phone. No more purchasing or maintaining different versions. This is already happening to an extent from the iPad side of things.
 
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This is going to be the death of the Mac computers as a whole. Arm Macs won’t have any compatability with any of the software available until the software developers update their software and most will be left behind. Microsoft tried to transition to ARM with the Surface Pro X and Windows 10 on ARM has been a failure. I expect this to fail as well, especially since ARM will probably not have the same performance for all tasks compared to X86-64.

It’s certainly possible to emulate x86/64 on iOS - Qemu even works on it and I have alpine up and running. People have even gotten Windows running in a VM on the iPad.

It’s just slow.
 
A new passively cooled 12 or 11" could make sense to serve as a testbed for performance of MacOS on ARM.
If they want software developers to jump on board they'll probably have to do better than that and release at least a more "pro" model or desktop as well.
 
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In line with a timeframe shared by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo last month, Bloomberg today reports that Apple is planning to release at least one Mac with its own custom-designed ARM-based processor by 2021.

macbook-pro-13-inch.jpg

The report claims that Apple is developing three Mac processors based on the A14 chip in upcoming iPhone 12 models. At least one of these processors will apparently be much faster than the A-series chips in the iPhone and iPad. Like the A14 chip, the Mac processors are expected to be manufactured by TSMC based on its 5nm process.

Apple's first Mac processors will have 12 cores, including eight high-performance cores and at least four energy-efficient cores, according to the report. Apple is said to be exploring Mac processors with more than 12 cores for further in the future, with the company already designing a second generation of Mac processors based on the A15 chip.

The first ARM-based Mac is likely to be a notebook, but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects at least one Mac desktop with an Apple processor next year too.

Article Link: Bloomberg: Apple's First ARM Mac to Launch by 2021 With 12-Core Processor
How does this relate to Joe Prosser rumour of a MacBook 12” with ARM launching at WWDC?
The only way both rumours are right is if the WWDC model launching in June is a developers only thing, just like Apple released some Dev only X86 Macs when they announced the switch to X86.
 
For photo and video editing and normal desktop stuff I really don't see a downside to ARM. In a way it would be like returning to the PPC days where Mac's really excelled at graphics based stuff. However, for developing server side apps this seems like more of a bother. Though I am pretty sure a lot of server side stuff will move to ARM sooner than later, we did a test build of a Ruby+Grape API on ARM and there was no difference in performance.
 
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Will there be a need to differentiate appletv from an ARM Mac mini? Obviously software will be different, or perhaps could be chosen depending on implementation.

I’d love a truly mini mac mini that’s cheaper and more powerful than the bottom end one.
 
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