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Bloomberg: Apple's First Arm Mac to Launch by 2021 With 12-Core Processor

chikorita157 said:
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.
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This is what people said when Apple switched to MacOS X from legacy OS9, when they switched from Motorola's chips, Apple knows how to make these transitions and how to get developers to make the jump. All of the things you are "predicting" have been something Apple has faced and handled — even before they were as popular as they are now.

They will be fine, they have been prepping for this for a while and if the X86 transition was any indication, I'd be surprised if they haven't already done a ton of the work to prep for this already.
 
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ARM based Macbook Pro; count me in. I have confident that when Apple releases ARM based MAC, performance will be on par if not better than Intel's offerings. Not only that but Apple will have long term plan to stay ahead in game. At least, it will help Apple to decouple from Intel's pathetic schedule and release updates like iPhone on yearly basis. On software side, long as major titles are ported, rest will follow fast. All good. Apple, just do it.
 
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chikorita157 said:
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.
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Yep.. By that logic the Mac should've been dead a long time ago.

You do realize that Apple has completely switch processor architectures serveral times already in the past right?

This isn't Apple's first rodeo.
 
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azentropy said:
It is going to be interesting. However one of the many reasons I prefer Macs is that they can run anything. I can use VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox or even Bootcamp to run and develop for Linux and Windows at nearly native speeds. Moving to ARM would most likely eliminate that option. I don't know how big of group that is, but I do know that Macs have become many developers primary systems because of that ability.
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Microsoft is working on Windows for ARM too even an x86 emulation. So I'm sure that won't be a problem.
Also, I'm sure that the big guys will work this out somehow. I mean, when Apple switched to Intel they had
the big players on board as well. I'm sure a virtual machine will continue to work in some way or the other.

www.androidauthority.com

Windows on Arm in 2020: An ecosystem finally worth buying into?

Windows on Arm laptops promise high performance, 4G LTE connectivity, and multi-day battery life. But is the software ecosystem actually any good?
www.androidauthority.com
 
For a lot, not everyone, then there isn’t going to be an issue with what hardware inside.
Already seeing business move to cloud/web based apps, so going to be less and less that executes locally on machines.
VDI making inroads as well so that what is in front of people is just access to the VDI.

OS will provide the cross platform compatibility it will however require that developers use those API to develop. In which case wether is Arm, amd, intel underneath doesn’t matter.

more and more what is in front of you will become less important For the Majority of users.

The reason that windows on arm didn’t take off was app support, or more accuratelay developers not making the extra effort to support ARM. Old enough to remeber windows nt on dec alpha. Again lack of support for software from developers.

moved on since then and api more prevalent, Microsoft, Apple, google etc put more effort in to abstract the actual hardware from developers so changes of cpu, gpu doesn’t matter.
 
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azentropy said:
It is going to be interesting. However one of the many reasons I prefer Macs is that they can run anything. I can use VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox or even Bootcamp to run and develop for Linux and Windows at nearly native speeds. Moving to ARM would most likely eliminate that option. I don't know how big of group that is, but I do know that Macs have become many developers primary systems because of that ability.
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Why? Windows runs on ARM, Linux runs on ARM, there's no reason you (or the company) can't compile VMWare, Parallels, or VirtualBox for ARM. Many apps, like VS Code, are written in Electron, which is about as platform and architecture agnostic as they come. I actually foresee developers being the least impacted by a move.
 
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ct2k7 said:
Has anyone seen Thunderbolt work in an ARM system before?
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Nope and mainly for legal reasons. Thunderbolt was licensed by intel, however it’s now free, hence USB-4 will include Thunderbolt 3. First hardware with ARM CPUs and USB-4/TB-3 won’t be available until 2022.
 
ph001bi said:
Bootcamp will still be there with the Windows on ARM version.
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This is no use to anyone relying on x86 programs, though. The Windows on ARM version runs x86 programs in emulation and it's slow as molasses.
thejadedmonkey said:
Why? Windows runs on ARM, Linux runs on ARM, there's no reason you (or the company) can't compile VMWare, Parallels, or VirtualBox for ARM.
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It doesn't matter if the OS runs on ARM; it matters if the programs required are x86-only.
 
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When you watch the full keynote of WWDC 2005 at the transition section from 9-10 and also at the end he explains that OS X is set for the next 20 years (in the short clip) and at the end he speaks to us as a fatherly figure or as our boss (around 58 min) to go and recompile our code for the next transition. He'd be saying the same thing today for ARM transition.


 
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The_Interloper said:
This is no use to anyone relying on x86 programs, though. The Windows on ARM version runs x86 programs in emulation and it's slow as molasses.

It doesn't matter if the OS runs on ARM; it matters if the programs required are x86-only.
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The emulation was slow as molasses on the first WoS devices as they were powered by SD835, then 850, (mobile phones CPUs).The latest ones use 8CX or Microsoft SQ1 and are a lot quicker, I expect anything using an Apple chip to fly. The main issue is that emulation is currently limited to X86 although X64 emulation is coming.
 
yaxomoxay said:
wouldn’t this be a nightmare for developers?
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Why? Most Apple (incl. Mac) developers write in Swift, which is platform agnostic. The amount of work needed to make an x86 Windows program run on an Arm Mac probably isn't all that much more than what's needed to make it run on an x86 Mac, in the grand scheme of things. It's not like apps primarily targeting Windows will just work on Macs without any work currently.
 
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MacRumors said:
.....
At least one of these processors will apparently be much faster than the A-series chips in the iPhone and iPad.
​
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The A14X is probably faster than the current A-series chips ( and the A14 ).


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.
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8 'big' cores does appear to be a big jump from from the 4 'big' cores in the A12X. Bigger issue is what Apple is doing with "non core" I/O ( interchip bandwidth connectivity (PCI-e lane count) , memory channel width , etc. ) and also what the associated I/O chipset (if any) that provisions more than just one USB external port.

If the A14X had 4 'big' cores and the this "Mac" variant simply slapped 4 more big cores on it, then it still would only be suitable for a Macbook "one port wonder" Mac system. If Apple is still locked onto the objective that the vast majority of the I/O and secondary systems still have to be on the same chip die then this will be limited.




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.
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A desktop variant back in the old Mac Mini sub $700 space probably would work decently well if dropped the I/O ports also. (e.g., a education lab where just need a keyboard/monitor/mouse set up. ). But for desktop the I/O changes again are going to just as important as "core count".
 
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Websnapx2 said:
This is what people said when Apple switched to MacOS X from legacy OS9, when they switched from Motorola's chips, Apple knows how to make these transitions and how to get developers to make the jump. All of the things you are "predicting" have been something Apple has faced and handled — even before they were as popular as they are now.

They will be fine, they have been prepping for this for a while and if the X86 transition was any indication, I'd be surprised if they haven't already done a ton of the work to prep for this already.
Click to expand...
It is different, when they moved to X86 they didn't need developers to get onboard, Apple were getting onboard into huge world that already existed. This time, they need the developers to get onboard...for what in the first instance will be quite a small market share. You're probably right though, they will sort it
 
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The 12-inch MacBook, despite its unremarkable performance and 480p webcam (still ugh when I think about it), remains to be my favourite MacBook to carry around. I am more than willing to try an ARM-based MacBook near that dimension. Guess this means it can also run iPadOS apps and has cellular connection?
 
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