No doubt, x86 is not exactly in the same circumstances as PPC and people can be assured that performance increase will be viable in the upcoming years.
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Bloomberg: Apple's First Arm Mac to Launch by 2021 With 12-Core Processor
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No doubt, x86 is not exactly in the same circumstances as PPC and people can be assured that performance increase will be viable in the upcoming years.
That’s exactly what they did with the iMac during the Intel transition though. Introduced the totally redesigned iMac G5 and only 14 months later it was replaced by an Intel iMac in the same design. I think the strategy was to put everyone at ease about the transition by initially keeping hardware in familiar designs. That made the transition more invisible to skeptical users who feared the Mac changing (along with the Rosetta emulation seamlessly running in the background)
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The commenter didn’t insinuate they were x86. His point was that he’d been using OSX since day one and may have to switch
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A scenario that leads to this dramatic change:
The past year's trade war and tariffs cause China to panic. They direct several teams to design their own laptop grade chips that can be run at 10, 25, and 50 watt power levels. These might be of an entirely home grown architecture, or Risc V, but lets say they're Arm based. Never mind that the silicon design is far from optimized. For software, they select Linux and Open Office. Eventually, Windows/Arm is also an option.
Initially these systems are sold domestically. Soon though, these cheap Arm laptops show up in Vietnam, then Indonesia, Thailand, and on to Singapore. American business travelers start bringing samples home for fun and find they are quite capable of typical business and home tasks.
It won't be long before the top OEM names decide that they too need systems that don't require a $300 Intel chip!
As I mentioned in the post above yours, I didn’t know that Intel finally (this year) licensed Thunderbolt to AMD and it’s now available on their MB’s.
And clearly you are a fan of AMD. I don’t blame you, because yes right now AMD is killing it. But a Mac Pro can have up to 28 cores and 768 GB of ECC DDR4 ram. Which fits your definition of a high end system. The third requirement has never been a Mac and will never be a Mac. But you threw that in there because clearly you have something against Apple.
But you are once again proving why Apple needs to move away from Intel. Apple spent a lot of money and R&D on the Mac Pro. It should be able to go head to toe with Ryzen. But it can’t. And yes, Apple could switch to AMD. But then in five years time Apple will be in the same position they are in now. That’s how it works between AMD and Intel.
But if Apple develops its own CPU’s, then Apple would be able to create a custom workstation that runs off of ARM Neoverse N1 architecture and put in as many cores as they see fit. They wouldn’t be held back by another company’s failure.
So thanks for proving why Apple should switch from Intel to ARM 🤩
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It’s true you couldn’t buy an Intel Mac in 2001, but per Steve Jobs OS X has always been processor independent and was “living a secret life” and Apple had been testing OS X on Intel. In fact, the entire presentation was run on an Intel P4 Mac.
The problem with having multiple processors is you will run into the problem Windows has. Where the ARM Macs won’t get updated apps and you will never be able to take full advantage of the machine.
Being on PPC made Apple more identifiable to it's customer base. But it came with pros and cons.
As soon as your performance/efficiency advantage evaporates it's time to move on. And they did for well documented reasons.
If Apple thinks Intel's performance and efficiency delta to have dried up...it won't be long before they move on with ARM looking the likeliest candidate.
And any Mac ARM cpu is going to be no pushover. I'm more than curious. But next year doesn't help me right now. So I'd like Apple to pull their finger out and release a decent Mac desktop. iMac or mid-tower would suit me fine.
It will probably be able to access the hundreds of thousands? Millions of phone/pad apps (something the Mac can only currently dream of...) will be available and then that drag the established apps kicking and screaming over in the gold rush.
Far from the 'Mac' being dead (as many lamented from the death of PPC Mac...) it will just be another phoenix like renaissance.
Azrael.
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The entry level configuration isn't a high end machine. For £6k it's a joke.
You can configure it into a 'high end' machine but you're bathing in a bank account blood bath to get there.
A mid-tower at half the price would still be pricey.
Azrael.
As soon as your performance/efficiency advantage evaporates it's time to move on. And they did for well documented reasons.
If Apple thinks Intel's performance and efficiency delta to have dried up...it won't be long before they move on with ARM looking the likeliest candidate.
And any Mac ARM cpu is going to be no pushover. I'm more than curious. But next year doesn't help me right now. So I'd like Apple to pull their finger out and release a decent Mac desktop. iMac or mid-tower would suit me fine.
It will probably be able to access the hundreds of thousands? Millions of phone/pad apps (something the Mac can only currently dream of...) will be available and then that drag the established apps kicking and screaming over in the gold rush.
Far from the 'Mac' being dead (as many lamented from the death of PPC Mac...) it will just be another phoenix like renaissance.
Azrael.
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The entry level configuration isn't a high end machine. For £6k it's a joke.
You can configure it into a 'high end' machine but you're bathing in a bank account blood bath to get there.
A mid-tower at half the price would still be pricey.
Azrael.
No...
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Thunderbolt won't be a problem on ARM/Arm-based systems. It's simply a controller that plugs into the PCIe bus on the CPU (or PCH). Apple helped Intel invent Thunderbolt, so I have no worries about that.
For @ssgbryan , he believes AMD is the solution, the only solution and basically that AMD can do no wrong. His judgment is based solely on core count versus cost. For what he does (3D modeling) that may be true, but his outlook is incredibly narrow compared to the rest of what the world works on. He's already switched to Windows 10, so I'm still not sure why he's here, other than to agitate.
I don't think that's a given. It really isn't anyone's fault but Microsoft's that they still haven't ported stuff like Microsoft Word to ARM. I don't even think the main reason is the engineering challenge (Word already runs on iPad, albeit at reduced functionality), but internal priority. A lot like in the Ballmer years, there doesn't seem to be an overarching manager who both heads the Surface Pro X / Windows on ARM teams and can make the Office team (and/or some more software teams) fast-track ARM apps.
Apple seems to do a much better job coordinating this sort of thing. They wouldn't release the Magic Keyboard with the iWork (Pages, etc.) team going "trackpad? what trackpad??".
Once you've built a dual-architecture app, there really isn't that much added maintenance cost these days. For 95% of apps, it's zero. You just tick a checkbox. For the few apps where you have architecture-specific code, it's a different matter.
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We can quibble over the pricing (I'd rather not; newsflash: Apple is not a low-cost brand, will never compete with some custom-built Threadripper machine, and really doesn't care to), but it's clearly configurable to the high end. Therefore, to call the Mac Pro as a whole not high end is just silly.
No quibble here. If you can 'clearly' buy a £6k machine with joke specs for that price. Then it's not high end.
Sure, you can 'clearly' configure it to high end. But your wallet will bleed red.
For the Mac Pro to be a 'high end' machine (a term that is relative to the sun) it has to be of a whole value equation to be called a 'high end' machine. You can't have a high end machine with crap specs. Not when you're spending £6k.
'Newsflash' - Apple charge what the market will tolerate.
Apple 'are a low spec' 'high cost' brand in iMacs and Mac Pros. Both entry specs are junk relative to what they are charging.
Apple are competing less now with the value equation than they ever have. Taking the Tower, doubling it's price and adding a further £1k to it and making the 'Mac Tower' market wait 6 years for that tells us all we need to know.
I'd call it 'contempt' or 'incompetence' or 'marketing' or 'disconnect.'
But your mileage may vary.
Meanwhile you can get very high end Towers for a 1/3rd of the price.
Azrael.
I obviously don’t have a Surface Pro X, but when I looked into it, you have to subscribe to Office 360 to be able get the ARM version of Office. If you buy it out right, it’s not going to be compatible with ARM. Assuming this is right (and I got this from Microsoft’s official support community) then this is just Microsoft pushing you to buy a subscription.
But you might be right. But Apple keeping Intel would really mean Apple doesn’t believe they can make Pro level processors. And that doesn’t sound like Apple to me.
true. The new Mac Pro is a waffle maker, brought here by the Illuminati, leaping through time and space to solve crimes, never knowing which jump will be its last, and just wanting a pretty midwestern NVIDIA card for its sockets.
If Apple halved the price of the entry Mac Pro it would still be expensive on specs with an unbecoming GPU.
I'd like a return to the £1500/£2000/£2500 price range.
I'll make the waffles.
Azrael.
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IPC does matter. It's part of what made Ryzen so impressive. That and moving to more cores. And more efficiency.
And an affordable price. And a decent process node. And decent updates.
AMD handed Intel their posterior.
Apple are saddled with a low value high cost partner and puts the Apple premium on top of it. Instead of giving it's customers the 'best.'
Morgonaut or Snazzlabs both have plenty of videos with the Hackintosh cremates Apple's offerings.
Azrael.
I'd like a return to the £1500/£2000/£2500 price range.
I'll make the waffles.
Azrael.
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IPC does matter. It's part of what made Ryzen so impressive. That and moving to more cores. And more efficiency.
And an affordable price. And a decent process node. And decent updates.
AMD handed Intel their posterior.
Apple are saddled with a low value high cost partner and puts the Apple premium on top of it. Instead of giving it's customers the 'best.'
Morgonaut or Snazzlabs both have plenty of videos with the Hackintosh cremates Apple's offerings.
Azrael.
Yeah, it seems the answer is so complicated, even Microsoft's PR thinks Office doesn't run on ARM at all. But supposedly, it partially does.
It's more than just what Apple can do. It's also what Apple is willing to do in terms of volume (they sell hundreds of millions of iPhone processors, tens of millions of iPad processors, maybe tens of millions of Mac processors… but how many for the iMac Pro and Mac Pro, really?). And it's some third-party stuff they can't control, like running Windows.
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Will people eat their hat when Tiger Lake and Alder Lake arrive and AMD no longer looks so impressive?
Not bad for £1300 inc VAT. 12 cores and a decent Radeon 5700XT.
And it's less than a quarter in price of Apple's Mac Pro.
Azrael.
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Will Apple be on ARM by then?
How long is it going to take for Intel to get competitive and show up in Mac systems THIS year..?
Until then, AMD will sell plenty. Until then, Apple's current desktop offerings look over priced and out of date.
Pretty anemic performance wise.
Azrael.
You're taking things out of context.
The assertion I was responding to, which you didn't make, was: "and no, the new Mac Pro isn't a high end machine."
The Mac Pro is absolutely a high-end machine. Is the base config high end? Arguably not. Is it a great value? No. Can you configure it to a much higher end than most computers out there? Yes.
I really don't care. You're barging into a discussion that you apparently didn't even read, and taking it out of context.
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Maybe? But they probably won't be on a Threadripper. And AMD's lead won't be as impressive as it is right now, in an ultimately brief amount of time.
And such is the life of making processors. Intel had a huge gain with their hyperthreading. But before that AMD and Intel and even AMD and NVIDIA would go back and forth between who is the king or not the king.
Exactly. And that's great.
I don't mind at all that AMD is kicking Intel's ass in some areas right now — it keeps Intel on their toes, and Intel clearly had several bad years.
I just wouldn't extrapolate too much from it. Could the Mac Pro be better with Threadripper instead of Cascade Lake-W? Maybe. But the main argument seems to be cheaper, not better, and honestly, Apple isn't going to make a $2k tower no matter how many folks on a random forum who wouldn't buy it anyway want Apple to.
Could the MacBook Air be better with Renoir instead of Ice Lake-Y? It doesn't seem that way.
Could the 13-inch MacBook Pro be better with Renoir instead of Ice Lake-U or Comet Lake-U? Maybe, but Apple hasn't yet upgraded it from Coffee Lake anyway. Are they waiting to move it to AMD? I doubt it. At this point, maybe they want to skip the generation altogether and move straight to Tiger Lake-U in fall.
Could the 16-inch MacBook Pro be better with Renoir instead of Comet Lake-H? Yes, definitely. I think this is the weakest spot right now. Again, Apple hasn't even upgraded to that (from Coffee Lake-H), but even if they had, it wouldn't have moved the needle much.
But the question isn't "are there better components right now"; it's "are they so much better that Apple wants to bother moving to them". And so far, it doesn't look like it.
The second that Intel releases a CPU that blows past AMD, they’ll go running back to Intel and talking about how AMD blows chunks. I’ve seen it before. They’re spec chasers, putting their finger up to see which way the wind blows.
Ah, the age-old “I’m more PRO than you gambit”...predictable.
I’m pretty sure the guys using those old SGI Indy’s and Octanes back in the day wanted the fastest render times they could get too, but didn’t mind the fact that their boxes had a little style on top of it. But they weren’t as PRO as you are, right?
A box is a box is a box...sure, I get it. Computers aren’t your passion, they’re a tool. But like anything else in life, some people want more than a beige box.
I guarantee there is something you like that price is trumped by nostalgia and lifestyle, but I digress. Again, you’re a PRO, and I’m not, as if you know what I do.
If Apple wasn’t able to make their own ARM chips, I would say AMD would have the better roadmap right now.
But the benefits of being able to control your own processor out weighs the benefits from switching to AMD.
Benefits like being able to control when a new processor is ready. Like being able to create a specific processor for a specific product that your making. Apple’s definitely been limited by Intel, and they definitely have struggled with heating issues. I have no idea why but they don’t really like having the normal cooling methods. But that isn’t necessarily an issue with Intel.
But Apples problems will be fixed when they switch to ARM.
AMD vs. Intel and ARM vs. Intel are really two separate issues. They don't address the same problem.
AMD chips are binary compatible with Intel - there would be nigh-on zero issues for developers and Apple could vacillate between Intel and AMD at their leisure depending on who was best that year, or who cut then the best deal.
What switching to AMD wouldn't do is give Apple complete freedom to design their own systems-on-a-chip with the exact features and specs to match particular products. That's the long-term motivation for the far more risky/complex switch to ARM.
The existing A-series chips already incorporate T2-style security features, custom GPUs, dedicated "neural engines" for face ID and other AI acceleration - which would be perfect for low-end MacBooks. Apple could make desktop-class chips with premium integrated graphics (Intel don't) for the 21" iMac and Mac Mini. They could make "pro" chips with insane numbers of cores and/or extra vector units, maybe even "Afterburner" tech on-chip, for the Pro range... and they won't have to compete with Dell trumpeting "next generation Intel processors" while they are still waiting for Intel to release the Iris Pro versions of the last generation...
First fundamental point is that ARM don't make their own chips and instead license their technology at multiple levels (from the raw instruction set design, though individual core designs to complete system-on-chips) - wheres the only reason that AMD can make x86 chips is that they inherited one of the few licenses that IBM forced Intel to issue back in the early days to ensure a 'second source'.
Second fundamental point is that the ARM cores are physically smaller and simpler than x86 cores which is why they use less power and more can be crammed onto a chip - along with more space for specialist acceleration hardware (which is why ARM is being picked up for supercomputing applications). Look at the highest-end Mac Pros: if anything they're using slower cores than the entry-level configs and get their performance from lots of cores and offloading processors to Afterburners and multiple GPUs...
I'm not predicting it - but it would be perfectly feasible for Apple to produce an AMD laptop this year and still switch to ARM next year.
If you need horsepower in 2020, then yes, AMD is the solution. Intel has no response in 2020 or 2021. Golden Cove will hit around the time Zen 5 launches. It isn't just core count, btw - AMD has a higher instructions per clock than Intel. And yes - cost does matter. If it didn't, we would all have much more powerful computers.
AFA "do no wrong" - project much? If you want to see AMD "wrong" - look at the Radeon division.
"the rest of the world" doesn't use Apple computers. There is a reason that Apple no longer announces units sold.
Speculation is fun, but it should be somewhat tethered to reality.
If an ARM based macbook is released on 1 June 2020, it will be running iOS apps for at least the 1st year or so. This is simply based on how software development works. It will be a fine media consumption device, that will most likely cannibalize iPad Pro sales. It isn't going to grow the Apple user base.
You simply aren't going to get software quickly - companies will need to decide if making an ARM version is worth it. Companies that make Mac Only software will move quickly, but that isn't much in the way of software. Companies that make hardware will also have to decide whether or not an ARM based Mac is worth supporting.
Customers will also be deciding whether to stay or leave. ARM macs mean replacing every piece of software, and that won't be cheap, especially since that 1st version of ARM native software will have few, if any new features.
It isn't a "I'm more pro" than you - it is "My hobbies are more computer intensive than your hobbiies". It is why I own my own render farm. It is why I went on an insane computer upgrade path for nearly a decade.
Poser 5 brought a fully maxed out Power Mac G3 to it's knees. Replaced that with a G4. Poser 6 brought my G4 to it's knees, Replaced that with a G5 Power Mac. Poser 7 brought it to it's knees. Intel Switch - 4 years for my workflow to finish moving from PPC to Intel. Which is why I am saying that the software switch won't be as fast as folks around here think it will happen. When the 4,1 was released, the software could fully take advantage of the hardware. I "circled the airport" when the trash can flopped out the door. When the 7,1 was shown, I started to transition off Apple - a Mac Pro is a failure from a price performance ratio, and Apple doesn't make anything else that can handle pegging the CPU and the GPU at the same time.
Computers have been my passon since the late 80's. 3D art is a computer intensive hobby. What I can do with computers are my passion. Enclosures aren't my passion. Stylish enclosures are like RGB lighting - it don't render my art out faster - and that is what is important. If I have a box with an ugly enclosure, but can cut my render time by 20% - the style goes out the window.
The problem is that Apple used to get both of them right. My G3 Power Mac, G4 Power Mac, G5 Power Mac, 1,1 Mac Pro and 4,1 were stylish, powerful, and reasonably priced. I loved them, but that isn't Apple anymore. Apple is form over function.
No, I am not a "pro". My hobby is a creative one that requires a lot of horsepower - that used to be Apple's wheelhouse. It isn't anymore.
Although I have considered gutting one of my old Mac Pro enclosures and putting a modern computer inside it.
True, but why would/should they? They have already proven multiple times that they‘re perfectly capable of designing potent ARM chips themselves.