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

[theorist9]

It’s not that they can’t. It’s that they haven’t. Probably the market share is too small to convince them to focus on it.

Well sure; I mean't "couldn't reasonably produce it". I.e., if it the porting were as easy as suggested by the post to which I responded, I think MS would have done it. I'll rephrase my question.

Bottom line: Isn't it the case that porting the full desktop versions of Office and CC to ARM will be hard? [Yes, there's Office for iOS, but I don't know enough about it to know if it's a port of the full desktop version (I don't think it is), or a lite version written from scratch for iOS/ARM.]

 

[cmaier]

Well sure; I mean't "couldn't with a reasonable amount of resources". I'll rephrase my question.

I guess the question is, at what point does Microsoft decide that a platform is big enough to even allocate *anybody* to it. I’m sure it has nothing to do with it being Arm. Microsoft’s code is reasonably portable already, as they’ve been unifying codebases for awhile to make it easier to build for multiple platforms while reusing code. And they have a history of NOT writing code at the CPU architecture level (no assembly code).

 

[MikeZTM]

But if porting from x86 to ARM is generally that straightforward (referring to your first paragraph), why has MS, with all its understanding of the program, not been able to easily produce a version of Office that runs natively on its ARM-based Surface Pro X? Currently it's limited to running a 32-bit version of Office on an emulator. Would be interested to hear an explanation, plus your thoughts on the implications of this for seeing a native version of Office for ARM (not to mention Adobe CC for ARM) on the Mac.

I can understand how simpler software could be ported straightforwardly, but many of the most important productivity programs (like those in Office and CC) are big and complex. The installed files sizes of Word, Outlook, Excel, and Powerpoint, for instance, average nearly 2 GB each.

Desktop win32 Office (not the mobile UWP Office) was ported to 32bit ARM since Windows RT. That was Office 2013 for ARM (Surface RT Tegra 3).

It's a plugin compatibility choice this time since last time it wasn't possible to emulate x86 software. Microsoft even still default to download 32bit Office on x64 Windows.

And 2GB installation size is mostly image and media instead of binaries. Most of those are CPU independent.

It's already a check box in VS2019 to compile your c++ native app to ARM64 target.
Just like how it was in VS2012 Developer Preview. Microsoft actually enabled win32 app development in that version for Windows RT.
It was just a checkbox and little fix you got your open source app runs on ARM32. It just Microsoft removed such support in released version and lock win32 app to build in apps only due to unknown reasons.

There was a Windows RT jailbreak community that port a lot of good open source software to it.
Now those app should already support Windows 10 ARM natively.

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

x86 ecosystem is much broader than the processors though. Intel leads/promotes tons of industry wide programs related to x86 architecture (memory, bus architectures etc.). AMD contributes too. ARM has its own ecosystem but so far it has been focused on mobile.

Agreed, the market share of x86 is very high that the change from PPC to x86 architecture is undeniably beneficial for the whole computing industry.

The best way for Apple is to continue supporting x86 by using ZEN 3 for its tremendous improvements in core count and single-thread performance. Therefore, Apple will not be worry about the incompatible application due to a switch in ARM architecture and waste tons of money for developing x86-emulator that can be too slow.

 

[johannnn]

So how fast does people think this 1st gen 12 core Mac laptop will be?
I know iPads are extremely fast, but how much is that due to their A13 chips, and how much is due to iOS being more lean than macOS?
I get bugs in macOS e_v_e_r_y single day, while my iPad is rock solid.
My iPad is running 1 app at a time, while my Mac has a dozens of random menu bar apps that run 24/7.
I'm just afraid that macOS is "old and clunky". Am I wrong?
Is even this 1st gen laptop supposed to be faster than current laptops?

 

[pwjone1]

I guess the question is, at what point does Microsoft decide that a platform is big enough to even allocate *anybody* to it. I’m sure it has nothing to do with it being Arm. Microsoft’s code is reasonably portable already, as they’ve been unifying codebases for awhile to make it easier to build for multiple platforms while reusing code. And they have a history of NOT writing code at the CPU architecture level (no assembly code).

You raise a good point, but I would note that common code base or not, the version of Office Microsoft sells for macOS is somewhat inferior to that it sells on Windows (Excel pivot tables, as one example, no Microsoft Access, no embedded file support in Word or PowerPoint, etc.). Microsoft will do whatever maximizes Microsoft revenue, and remember, there is a lot more they can sell on a Windows PC (like Windows itself). Yes, they provide a version of Office for iOS/iPadOS, there they did not have much choice because having Mobile support (and iOS is #1 for businesses, where they make the real money on the Microsoft/Office365 licenses) was becoming a requirement for most businesses (and certainly consumer was ahead of that). Apple cannot assume that all of the ISVs, particularly given the COVID-19 situations, will be porting to a new platform soon. You look at all the problems getting 32-bit apps to update to 64-bit on x86, conversion to ARM would be a similar problem. Hence the need to announce an official direction a year or two ahead, WWDC or similar.

 

[johannnn]

You raise a good point, but I would note that common code base or not, the version of Office Microsoft sells for macOS is somewhat inferior to that it sells on Windows (Excel pivot tables, as one example, no Microsoft Access, no embedded file support in Word or PowerPoint, etc.). Microsoft will do whatever maximizes Microsoft revenue, and remember, there is a lot more they can sell on a Windows PC (like Windows itself). Yes, they provide a version of Office for iOS/iPadOS, there they did not have much choice because having Mobile support (and iOS is #1 for businesses, where they make the real money on the Microsoft/Office365 licenses) was becoming a requirement for most businesses (and certainly consumer was ahead of that). Apple cannot assume that all of the ISVs, particularly given the COVID-19 situations, will be porting to a new platform soon. You look at all the problems getting 32-bit apps to update to 64-bit on x86, conversion to ARM would be a similar problem. Hence the need to announce an official direction a year or two ahead, WWDC or similar.

Just curious, what's the problem with pivot tables in macOS? I use them everyday on my iMac.

 

[ericwn]

Its clear that NVIDA does some anti-competitive stuff - GPP, ”Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” et al. Apple embraced Machine Learning on their devices, NVIDIA does it in the data center. NVIDIA wants to dominate in AI and ML, but has zero influence or footprint with iOS or macOS devices. Perhaps this is not something NVIDIA cares about, but their strategies always seem to come at the expense of someone else and I suspect they tried to play that game with Apple over CUDA, Metal, iOS and macOS and were rebuffed quite harshly. At some point, for better or worse, Apple decided ML was worth taking on themselves along with Metal and they simply have no use for NVIDIA, who is not the type of partner that AMD is and may actually have a larger ego than Apple.

My $64,000 question for everyone is - If NVIDIA is the bees knees from a GPU standpoint, why did both Sony AND Microsoft choose AMD to power the PS5 and Xbox One X?
[automerge]1587751134[/automerge]

Apple does not view x86 as necessary anymore. It worked for a time and that time has passed.

Thank you. If I read your post correctly this MAY have happened that way but just as well it may have not and we are just speculating about the relationship of these companies right now.

Wouldn’t a company like Nvidia give an arm and a leg to be involved in high production runs of any sort of chip and be more than willing to compromise on lots of aspects just to get the pitch? Who knows.

Thanks for taking the time and sharing your thoughts.

 

[theluggage]

But if porting from x86 to ARM is generally that straightforward (referring to your first paragraph), why has MS, with all its understanding of the program, not been able to easily produce a version of Office that runs natively on its ARM-based Surface Pro X?

​

"...Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, [have been] optimized to run on a Windows 10 PC on an ARM-based processor."​

Deploying, managing, and servicing Surface Pro X - Surface

This article provides an overview of key considerations for deploying, managing, and servicing Surface Pro X.

docs.microsoft.com

The confusion is (as far as I can work out) is that Microsoft has decided to only make those versions available via Office 365 subscriptions rather than "perpetual" Office licenses (probably because Microsoft wants to kill those off).

Access and Publisher never made it to Mac anyway, so that's kinda moot. Anyway, it's still early days for Windows on ARM and so far the only ARM Windows machines are tablets like the Surface Pro X, not really intended as platforms for "pro" Apps.

If Apple stop at an ultraportable Mac/iPad "bridge" machine then they can probably live without full Office or Adobe CS. If Apple announce that the whole Mac line will be transitioning (something that Apple can do and Microsoft can't) then any Apple developer who wants to stay an Apple developer will have an incentive to support it. But nobody is claiming that the transition can happen overnight.

 

[pwjone1]

Just curious, what's the problem with pivot tables in macOS? I use them everyday on my iMac.

Pivot Tables does not have all the functionality in Office for Mac that it has in Office for Windows. You can see this on some of the automated functions, dragging stuff around to organize them, some filtering, etc. Probably the better missing-in-action instance to have cited would be Pivot Charts, which seem to be totally absent in the Mac version. Pivot Charts is a graphical or visual means of creating Pivot Tables, lot of drag'n'drop of column and row headers, ability to pick chart type. There are also some restrictions in terms of VBA, calculation speeds, various other things in terms of Excel. Do not get me wrong, I still use Office for Mac, it is in effect an industry standard, and while the price is the same for less functionality on a Mac, it is still a reasonable deal in the Microsoft 365/Office 365 form, but if you do deeper programming or share spreadsheets and files with Windows users, you do run into some limitations, pretty quickly.

 

[theluggage]

I can't exactly tell my CTO that we need to upgrade our entire cloud infrastructure so that I can buy a new MacBook.

I should hope not, because that isn't the answer.

If you're developing for the cloud, the obvious answer is to eat your own dogfood and develop in the cloud. Need an x86 container - spin one up in the cloud (or make a clone of the production server) - it's not like you're developing desktop apps - the difference between working on a local Docker container and working on a cloud-based container is negligible.

It's not like, in this day and age, you can do web/cloud development without a good internet connection. As you said, every time you install a container it pulls in dependencies from all over the shop which will work better if its running in a datacenter with a top-tier pipe to the internet: that's where most of the bandwidth is needed, not between you and the container.

Plus, when you need people to test it, it's easily accessible, with a fixed IP address, no need to drill a hole in your home firewall etc.

Oh, and when you realise you've left your laptop in Starbucks, just log onto the server and change the passwords/keys and that "easier to ask forgiveness than permission" clone of your employers' database is safe...

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

I do not think so.

ARM Mac will make Intel Mac obsolete by their performance.

Just like how Core 2 totally smashed Power G5.

Currently Amazon Graviton 2 is already faster than Mac Pro.

It's not a close comparison. x86 will have lots of improvements down the road by AMD and Intel 7nm CPU will probably be even faster in 2021-2022.

 

[michalm]

The confusion is (as far as I can work out) is that Microsoft has decided to only make those versions available via Office 365 subscriptions rather than "perpetual" Office licenses (probably because Microsoft wants to kill those off).

Access and Publisher never made it to Mac anyway, so that's kinda moot. Anyway, it's still early days for Windows on ARM and so far the only ARM Windows machines are tablets like the Surface Pro X, not really intended as platforms for "pro" Apps.

If Apple stop at an ultraportable Mac/iPad "bridge" machine then they can probably live without full Office or Adobe CS. If Apple announce that the whole Mac line will be transitioning (something that Apple can do and Microsoft can't) then any Apple developer who wants to stay an Apple developer will have an incentive to support it. But nobody is claiming that the transition can happen overnight.

Being a Surface X Pro (MS ARM based device owner) I can tell you it runs very, very well. I get to see into the decission to "run 32 bit" office on this platform, but that is inly what users see in the task manager. The office running on thsi thing is 95% ARM, the rest 5% is running via translation to make it plugin compatible. Sadly it is not a from factor I like.

If Microsoft can pull this off, Apple can do too, namely with the control of the ecosystem they have.

Application compatibility is not a question, it will work. All of it, even bootcamp. The question is battery life when running unoptimised apps and that will get sorted over time (developers will optimise to get that edge).

 

[Gerdi]

The decision of having Office run under emulation is due to 3rd party plugin compatibiliy. Microsoft could have easily compiled Office for ARM64 while loosing plugin compatibility.
However even under emulation Office runs fantastic on the Surface Pro X, so Microsoft went with plugin compatibility instead of dispensable performance.
Having said that, it is incredibly easy to compile an exisiting Visual Studio Win32 Project for ARM64. You just have to add ARM64 to your project settings and press compile. I assume this will be very similar for XCode.

What people might not know about Windows for ARM is, that is fully supports WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux). This means you can install a full Linux ARM kernel (plus userland and apps) under Windows on ARM.

 

[Tagbert]

Uh…I using Home.app which is Marzipan…but usability in desktop is horrible. They not optimized for desktop experience, basically just large iOS apps floating on window. No contextual menu, using large touch screen oriented UI with mouse cursor is very wrong….

Catalyst (aka Marzipan) is a transitional tool to let iPad apps be ported to Mac OS with little rework but, it is limited and will soon be replaced by Swift UI which is a new library that works on all of Apples OSs to allow for universal apps.

Existing apps built for x86 Mac OS should be able to be cross-complied to produce Arm versions without a lot of rework. Most are written in Objective-C and Swift and use system libraries. Only specialized software,like drivers or audio pipeline apps are written at a low enough level where the CPU architecture would matter.

 

[cmaier]

Catalyst (aka Marzipan) is a transitional tool to let iPad apps be ported to Mac OS with little rework but, it is limited and will soon be replaced by Swift UI which is a new library that works on all of Apples OSs to allow for universal apps.

Existing apps built for x86 Mac OS should be able to be cross-complied to produce Arm versions without a lot of rework. Most are written in Objective-C and Swift and use system libraries. Only specialized software,like drivers or audio pipeline apps are written at a low enough level where the CPU architecture would matter.

Marzipan won’t be replaced “soon” by swift ui. And swift ui is not a replacement for Catalyst.

 

[smulji]

Marzipan won’t be replaced “soon” by swift ui. And swift ui is not a replacement for Catalyst.

From everything I've read about Catalyst apps, they certainly leave a lot to be desired

 

[firewood]

Existing apps built for x86 Mac OS should be able to be cross-complied to produce Arm versions without a lot of rework. Most are written in Objective-C and Swift and use system libraries. Only specialized software,like drivers or audio pipeline apps are written at a low enough level where the CPU architecture would matter.

I've found that even audio pipeline apps using Audio Unit callbacks written in low-level C code are not difficult to port between iOS ARM devices and x86 macOS.

Drivers, however, might be a huge problem, due to the very different memory read/write ordering policies between the x86 and ARM ISAs.

 

[smulji]

I know this is slightly off topic but this is per Intel's most recent conference call a few days ago

Intel Confirms 11th Generation Tiger Lake CPUs With Xe Graphics Launching in Mid-2020 - Ice Lake-SP Xeon CPU Sampling Now

Intel has confirmed in its Q1 2020 earnings call that 11th Generation Tiger Lake CPUs for notebooks will be launching in mid of 2020.

wccftech.com

 

[cmaier]

From everything I've read about Catalyst apps, they certainly leave a lot to be desired

Catalyst will doubtless improve. Right now there are still some things that you need to do to make an app ”Mac like” and many of them are not documented. And some of them are more difficult to do than they should be. But with each update it’s getting better, and I expect we’ll hear more at WWDC.

 

[asa_nisi_masa]

You have a time machine? I bought the first gen MacBook Pro with Intel CPUs 2 jobs ago, and that was in 2006. Even did the heat paste replacement to try to gain a bit more efficient cooling.

Mac transition to Intel processors - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The fact that I've been using OS X since day 1 and the fact that I need x86 to do my current job are both true.

 

[ssgbryan]

Well said.

I'll admit I wasn't paying much attention during the PPC transition. But from what I gather... PPC had reached a dead-end and switching to Intel was Apple's obvious (only?) choice.

Intel has certainly had a lot of problems lately... but is Intel today as bad as PPC was back then?

Was anyone else using PPC after Apple left? I think game consoles did, right?

Big Iron was (and continues) to use the Power Architecture.

Apple is (and was) always a small part of the overall PC market. IBM couldn't provide G5 laptop chips at the price Apple was willing to pay. A lot of the stuff we see in the PC world was available much earlier on the Power architecture (multi-threaded cores, PCIe 4.0, etc).

The Power6 architecture was a major breakthrough. Given a choice between a 1,1 Mac Pro or a Power6 based Power Mac - I know which I would have preferred (A 5Ghz Power Mac) - and each succeeding iteration has gone from strength to strength. 8 threads per core, with up to 12 cores in Power9, for example. If we are lucky, we may see 4 threads per core in Zen 4, in comparison.

Intel is having a "bulldozer" moment because they attempted to do too much in one shot (die shrink and process shrink). There is also the fact that Intel didn't have any competition for nearly a decade. It is going to be a rough 1 - 2 years for Intel as far as mindshare, but they still can't meet demands for their 14nm parts to OEMs - which is a majority of PC sales.

 

[PostApple2016BrainWash]

wouldn’t this be a nightmare for developers?

Technically, it can be a disaster and this transition is vastly different from PPC to x86 in 2005. Apple does not need ARM-Based Macs for many reasons and ZEN 2 is the best bet to continue offering high-performance x86-Based Macs at an astonishing price point.

 

[Azrael9]

Technically, it can be a disaster and this transition is vastly different from PPC to x86 in 2005. Apple does not need ARM-Based Macs for many reasons and ZEN 2 is the best bet to continue offering high-performance x86-Based Macs at an astonishing price point.

Well, those references to AMD cpus recently...hopefully promise a higher performance and lower cost Mac future.

I can dream, right?

I remember Apple giving it the large about Intel being more efficient than PPC back on the last transition.

Yet. Strangely, despite AMD having more cores and performance and more efficiency, where are AMD on the Mac platform? (Intel have become PPC. It's ironic.)

AMD only with their 'lagging' GPUs.

Azrael.

 

[ssgbryan]

Well, those references to AMD cpus recently...hopefully promise a higher performance and lower cost Mac future.

I can dream, right?

Azrael.

Higher performance, yes.
Lower prices? Hahahahahahahahahahahahah