Intel CEO Responds to Rumors of ARM-Based Macs, Says Relationship With Apple Is 'Strong'

[bluevaping]

Not likely in the broad sense

I agree with most here not likely switch to ARM for many reasons. I don't see Apple using Broadwell Core M for Macbook Air either. I have yet so see PC Company come out with product for Core M that close to weight with keyboard dock than 2014 Macbook Air with a Core I processor family. A little too little too late. It's not Apples fault that Intel wants to buy into the tablet space, instead of competing with other SOC processors. Intel and Apple make each other money, they compete a little. Intel should send some software and hardware engineers to Microsoft quickly! Or better yet, make a reference design laptop for Ubuntu for the US. I bet Intel sent some folks to Dell for Venue 8 7000!

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

You obviously don't develop software for a living. It is essentially a recompile. Any modern codebase that isn't written by amateurs is the same.

Not for a living but I compile enough code on the side to know that it's not as easy as a simple recompile for all software. Sure software that can stay well above the underlying hardware layer may be easy to switch but try that with a good game or software that does hook into the hardware or that uses libraries that depend on the underlying hardware. All those libraries would need to be updated (probably not a simple recompile). If they don't update and your software doesn't have an alternative, your software waits (can't be "simply recompiled" because some of the libraries it needs to be compiled aren't updated yet).

Games tend to be the ultimate test though. If all software can be "simply recompiled" why isn't every game available on Windows available on Macs? Why isn't the superior non-game programs available on Windows available on Macs? If it's just "simple recompile", all those companies are potentially losing out on lots of Mac revenue because they can't be bothered to do a "simple recompile"? Do you think they DON'T want OUR money?

Why don't all the developers who have built iOS software do a "simple recompile" so they can also make those "millions" of apps available on OS X too? iOS and OS X share much of the same underpinnings so it should be even easier to do this. Where's those millions of apps available in the OS X store after a "simple recompile"? Do you think they DON'T want OUR money?

That kind of suggestion just fools the people that don't know about compiling, coding, libraries, hardware layers, etc. It sounds great and I wish it was that way. But it wasn't that way even when Apple software transitioned from PowerPC to Intel. Rosetta just makes us remember the transition as smoother than it was. Best I know, there is no longer a Transitive-like entity, so there is probably no Rosetta for Apple to buy to make this hypothetical switch seem as smooth.

 

[firewood]

To abandon x86 would be a huge problem for Apple, a company recently bolstering its Enterprise push with IBM.

Apple doesn't have to abandon Intel to make new low-end consumer and educational market MacBooks. Enterprise doesn't buy the lowest-end consumer stuff even from Dell. So no problem with them.

The more expensive Macs can still use more expensive Intel chips. You will have to pay more for them to cover the Intel tax.

The target for the low-end product might be schools that are switching from iPads to ARM based chromebooks, but would actually prefer OS X.

 

[bennibeef]

Why everyone thinks if apple makes their own ARM chips macs would get cheaper? Because the designs are in house? Stop kidding yourself. You tell me it would be cheaper for Apple to put their CPUs in their if they have to R&D them, design them just for the small range of Macs and hold up to intel? The company with much more R&D ressources which can put those cost on all the chips they are selling in the PC & small Mac market? And Apple can somehow do that better & cheaper for those little Macs against the fleet of PCs?

An Apple ARM chip designed for the mac will cost them more than buying an intel chip.

 

[filmantopia]

Denial and rejection is just the first stage of several most people have to go through with changes like this before they reach acceptance and buy one.

Here are some forum comments in 2005 when the rumors started kicking around of Macs switching to Intel processors from PPC (Look familiar?):

"so much for Apple being better due to its architecture. Now it will be pure eyecandy and a version of Linux."

"Damnit i will never buy apple again.. ever... if this is true i am very sad... and how will i get new software for my computer. who will make outdated stuff... i hate apple... to court i say to court"

"although and i still wouldnt buy another apple.. maybe they will have intel make an all new processor.. but i hate intel and damn.. this really sucks"

"why would apple do this after intel is stealing their design ideas??? mac mini intel mini ahhhh"

"this is BS if this proves to be a legit story i will eat **** and film it with print out of this post strapped to my head. apple has no reason to switch to X86, x86 has been just as stangnent as IBM has been if not more, the only real jump is dual core, and IBM cant be far behind, and with the low clock speed of the pentium D i dont see apple switching to intel."

"Wow like people haven't started THIS a bajillion times Apple-Intel rumors have been around as long as Apple. Come on, you guys. THINK!!!!!!! Alright, so suppose that Apple decides to switch to Intel. Of course, all that software (Photoshop, Illustrator, GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE, any software really) would have to be rewritten for x86. OS X would run on Intel. Now, in the year or so it would take to rewrite all this software, and change production of the computers and alter them, how many people would buy a PowerPC based computer that will have no software or support in the future? None. Come on people, we know you like to entertain these ideas, but its just not going to happen. I'll eat my hat if it does."

"If Apple switched it would be suicide for the company. No matter how fast an x86 processor is just imagine how slow, slow, slow PPC emulation would be! Have you run VPC lately?"

"Hmmm....is this fact or FUD??? I seriously doubt Apple is going to make a
switch this late in the game. IBM has done a real good job with
PowerPC and it would be crazy to switch to the x86 architecture
now."

"Last weeks news. This story was all over last week, it's crap. Jobs will never allow the Mac interface to be ported to Intel, period. They are talking with Intel about using their next gen WIFI chipset. MacNN has much better coverage."

"h0ax!
This isn't the first time and the last time Apple is using C|Net for a hoax. Official well known sources who are always right know that Apple is in talk with Intel, but then about new iPod processors and chips for it's Xserve Raid. So this message may go to the trash. Apple would NEVER switch to Intel, because it's very very expensive and they will loose a lot of market share. Also IBM processors are still faster than Intel/AMD dual core chips, but Apple only wants more, because IBM doesn't do what they promise, but plans for the future show that IBM will reach 6 GHz in 2007 and Intel won't be there then. And that's the date Apple's PowerMac should switch to Intel, I don't think so."

And many, many, many more.

http://news.cnet.com/Apple-to-ditch-IBM,-switch-to-Intel-chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html

 

[AlecZ]

Can the millions of us that use Macs as Macs chip in a little money to buy a PC for that minority of people that want us to hold up progress... all so that they can use their Mac to game

No, I just want my Mac to NOT run on a slow ARM processor. What "progress"?! If anything, Apple will put them only on netbooks. Edit: And I also want Wine and my FreeBSD and Debian virtual machines to work.

 

[Col4bin]

I'm sure given the chance, Apple would be able to manufacture and market a very successful ARM-based Mac. In fact, I don't think there's any other company out there who could do better. If it means a reduction in total cost, without compromising the machine's performance integrity, bring it on.

 

[Zendokan]

ARM Macs better come soon because we need cheaper MacBook Airs that are around $500-$700. Broadwell-U CPUs from Intel are around $250-$400, and that's not going to cut it for a $500 Macbook Air price point. The CPUs need to be around $50-$100 to hit that price. We could also use a $300 Mac Mini as a small office server, in which an ARM cpu would work well.

intel should be scared. Apple is already at speed parity for the low-end CPUs, and by the time the A10x rolls around, they'll be as fast as Intel's top CPUs.

Apple's ARM A8x cpus are as in the same ballpark speeds as any 10-watt Broadwell CPU. And, given a higher power budget, they could easily go 2-3x faster, putting them in ludicrous speeds. A fully configured 10-core version for a Mac Mini server could even be 10x faster, and wouldn't cost any more than the A8x if they took out the GPU.

Just ship ARM, and have all the vendors just recompile their OS X apps for ARM. No one needs Windows compatibility (I don't know any Mac owner that uses Windows) and the .25% of Mac users that do can go buy an Intel Mac.

ARM doesn't have x86-64 instruction set supporting CPUs.
Only Intel and AMD have those.

1) So if Apple brings out a MBA with an ARM CPU, it will be just an overpriced competitor to Google's Chromebook.
Not a good idea.

2) Count in that AMD went from a real Intel contenderwith their Athlon series CPUs to a "niche" player after Intel introduced their i-series CPUs, so ²even if Apple switches to AMD, they will be running behind in the CPU market. Not a good idea.

3) Apple is itself a niche-player with their Intel/OSX Macs compared to the vast majority of Intel/Windows computers in the world. Corporate world and the majority of home systems are Wintels, that's something you can't deny.

4) Yet, just because Apple went Intel a few years ago, a lot more of the Wintel based software gets overported to Intel/OSX than in the past when Apple was still running on Motorola's PPC CPUs.


5) And not only the Wintel software, but also a lot of the Lintel sofware (Intel/Linux) becomes easier to overport, due to the the x86-64 instruction set and the FreeBSD origin of OSX.

6) For some software there isn't even today a Mac-version or Mac-software that can do the same that is an industry standard, so being Windows compliant is a benefit.

7) Other software is an industry standard (MS Office comes to mind), but would Microsoft create an ARM-based specially for Apple if Apple minimizes its market-share by switching to ARM? Now they do that because it's profitable, iOS is big and Intel/OSX is profitable, but an ARM switch would decimate their Mac customer market, which would reduce also their iOS market (they are connected) and that could have the affect that it won't be really profitable for MS to create an ARM version for OSX and iOS, which would further push Apple into the niche market.
The industry isn't going to make iWork the standard at all.


If Apple wants to keep it's Mac line (iMac, MBA and MBP) and with "keep", I mean "having a computer line at all" instead of becoming again just as small at the time of their PPC days, they will not switch to ARM or even to AMD.

 

[Col4bin]

No, I just want my Mac to NOT run on a slow ARM processor. What "progress"?!

It's all in the ARM/system optimization, right? At least that what everyone tells us regarding our current iPhone and iPad 1GB of RAM limitation!

 

[teslo]

Denial and rejection is just the first stage of several most people have to go through with changes like this before they reach acceptance and buy one.

Here are some forum comments when the rumors started kicking around of Macs switching to Intel processors from PPC (Look familiar?):

+1 - i loooove looking at old comments about apple. just shows you that mostly everyone in apple threads is dead wrong - most of the time.

 

[AlecZ]

Denial and rejection is just the first stage of several most people have to go through with changes like this before they reach acceptance and buy one.

Here are some forum comments when the rumors started kicking around of Macs switching to Intel processors from PPC (Look familiar?):

Yes, justify any change by "Apple did something kinda like this a while ago, and people also complained." Throw in "People are just afraid of change."

 

[MacHiavelli]

So many people these days just use iPads and iPhones. They don't need Windows, don't care about x86, etc.

The iPod generation has grown up using Safari, Pages, Numbers, iPhoto, etc. So many people are porting over to iCloud and using online apps.

Lots of people never use Office, have never used it, and will never use it. If they have to share documents with Office users, then iWork (or Google docs) has got their backs covered.

90% of people don't need Intel, Windows, or Office. 10 years ago, they did. But not now.

I don't see why Apple needs to run OS X on an ARM MBA. An ARM MBA running iOS would be ideal for a huge slice of the population: a perfect device. Count me in. I have no need at all for Windows or Office today.

 

[AlecZ]

It's all in the ARM/system optimization, right? At least that what everyone tells us regarding our current iPhone and iPad 1GB of RAM limitation!

They always say it's simply enough RAM... which in my experience, it is, but I don't play games on my iPhone.

 

[rdlink]

I do, as do many of my coworkers. It is a vital feature that makes a huge difference for me. Your post is ignorant, irrelevent, and incorrect, so it is fortunate that your opinion has no influence on Apple's decision making.

Agreed. The Intel chip is the main reason I bought my first Mac. If they go away from it to ARM it will be the reason I've bought my last...

 

[nutjob]

Not for a living but I compile enough code on the side to know that it's not as easy as a simple recompile for all software. Sure software that can stay well above the underlying hardware layer may be easy to switch but try that with a good game or software that does hook into the hardware or that uses libraries that depend on the underlying hardware. All those libraries would need to be updated (probably not a simple recompile). If they don't update and your software doesn't have an alternative, your software waits (can't be "simply recompiled" because some of the libraries it needs to be compiled aren't updated yet).

Games tend to be the ultimate test though. If all software can be "simply recompiled" why isn't every game available on Windows available on Macs? Why isn't the superior non-game programs available on Windows available on Macs? If it's just "simple recompile", all those companies are potentially losing out on lots of Mac revenue because they can't be bothered to do a "simple recompile"? Do you think they DON'T want OUR money?

Why don't all the developers who have built iOS software do a "simple recompile" so they can also make those "millions" of apps available on OS X too? iOS and OS X share much of the same underpinnings so it should be even easier to do this. Where's those millions of apps available in the OS X store after a "simple recompile"? Do you think they DON'T want OUR money?

That kind of suggestion just fools the people that don't know about compiling, coding, libraries, hardware layers, etc. It sounds great and I wish it was that way. But it wasn't that way even when Apple software transitioned from PowerPC to Intel. Rosetta just makes us remember the transition as smoother than it was. Best I know, there is no longer a Transitive-like entity, so there is probably no Rosetta for Apple to buy to make this hypothetical switch seem as smooth.

As I said: Any modern codebase that isn't written by amateurs is the same.

At least you admitted you don't know what you're talking about with respect to this. Thank you for your honesty.

 

[JoEw]

I could even see them expiramenting with duel processors - ARM for low powered tasks and Intel for high powered tasks, possibly in a Powerbook Duo type of product.

In the end, Apple's going to go with what makes them the most money and is right for the largest portion of their audience. And there will be happy people and angry people.

Dual cpu would eliminate al cost effectiveness of switching to arm.

Intel leads the cpu industry it's the only thing they can do.

But anything can happen.

 

[AlecZ]

I could even see them expiramenting with duel processors - ARM for low powered tasks and Intel for high powered tasks, possibly in a Powerbook Duo type of product.

Is it actually possible to have two different CPU types? I remember wanting a dual Intel/PPC Mac after the switch because tons of software was still PPC-only. Probably would cost a lot to have a motherboard to support that if it were possible.

 

[gavroche]

No, I just want my Mac to NOT run on a slow ARM processor. What "progress"?! If anything, Apple will put them only on netbooks.

Oh, great... you have info on the performance of whatever ARM chip they would put in there..... can i please have the link?? :roll eyes:
You do realize that you have absolutely no idea what the ARM processor would look like, or what its performance would be, right? You do realize that ARM based processors are being used server applications, right? So you really feel like putting yourself on record as saying there can't possibly be anything in design/in the works that could perform any better than a... netbook?

As for "progress".. thats in the eye of the beholder. But since you think this word can only apply in terms of the raw processor score... no point in trying to point out to you many of the other benefits that can come with custom chip design. No point in asking you why Apple's version of ARM chips perform much better than other companies' versions of ARM chips.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

At least you admitted you don't know what you're talking about with respect to this. Thank you for your honesty.

Where did I admit that? Not making a living at something doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about it. I simply make my living doing something else.

As I said: Any modern codebase that isn't written by amateurs is the same.

So latest & greatest Windows games are not "modern codebases"? They are "written by amateurs"?

Where's all of the Windows games "simply recompiled" for OS X?
Where's all of the Windows non-games "simply recompiled" for OS X?
Where's all of the iOS apps "simply recompiled" for OS X?

Or are all of those developers "amateurs" using "non-modern codebases"?

You want an ARM-based Mac? Good for you. I'm not arguing against you getting what you want- just the illusion that all software can be converted almost overnight with a "simple recompile".

 

[teslo]

Yes, justify any change by "Apple did something kinda like this a while ago, and people also complained." Throw in "People are just afraid of change."

didn't sound like justification to me. more like "hey - don't be so sure of what you're sure of."

when the documented error rate among cocksure commenters is etched permanently into cyber space, it's not ridiculous to look back and take note of said error rate.

 

[Toltepeceno]

It better be strong or my love for Macs won't be.

I would like to echo that sentiment.

 

[filmantopia]

Yes, justify any change by "Apple did something kinda like this a while ago, and people also complained." Throw in "People are just afraid of change."

Just watch what you say when you have doubts about whether Apple would dare to make a bold, paradigm-shifting change that would make a lot of techies cry and scream.

 

[nutjob]

Is it actually possible to have two different CPU types? I remember wanting a dual Intel/PPC Mac after the switch because tons of software was still PPC-only. Probably would cost a lot to have a motherboard to support that.

Yes, it is. In that transition the PPC software was executed in an emulator (of sorts) because it could be done reasonably in that case, a separate PPC processor would have cost too much.

The ARM transition is a bit different since it's mostly about power usage. The idea is similar to ARM's big.little design but the big is Intel and the little is ARM.

 

[LordVic]

ARM Macs better come soon because we need cheaper MacBook Airs that are around $500-$700. Broadwell-U CPUs from Intel are around $250-$400, and that's not going to cut it for a $500 Macbook Air price point. The CPUs need to be around $50-$100 to hit that price. We could also use a $300 Mac Mini as a small office server, in which an ARM cpu would work well.

this is not the reason for it.

Intel already has chips (and more in pipeline) that are dirt cheap and offer similar price to performance that Arm in a desktop would. Apple has chosen to not go after this market and therefore doesn't bother with those chips.

if it were for a cheaper retail product, there's no reason why Apple doesn't move towards the Atom CPU's that are already out in the wild. They offer similar price, performance and power usage than the rival Arm chips, but remain within the x86 architecture.

the only reason for a shift to Arm for Apple would be pipeline control and removal of intel as a vendor. They would retain control of their chips like they do now for the ipads and iPhones. That is it.

And what was the state of Apple PC's last time they were their own architecture, incompatible with Windows and the rest of the PC world? thats right, < 2% worldwide marketshare of Personal computers and near bankruptcy in the 90's.

Exlusivity isn't the way to go here. Move to Arm would be a disaster. Intel knows that. Apple knows that. For some reason the pundits and forumers dont

 

[nutjob]

It better be strong or my love for Macs won't be.

That's what 17" MBP users said. I wonder how that's turning out for them?