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Kuo: Apple to Launch Several Macs With Arm-Based Processors in 2021, USB4 Support Coming to Macs in 2022
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Apparently USB4 is an attempt to merge USB and Thunderbolt into a single standard:
USB4 is coming soon and will (mostly) unify USB and Thunderbolt
Could be interesting, if the software vendors are on board. Apple had a devil of a time getting vendors like Adobe to support PPC, I suspect because their code bases have portability bugs they don't want to fix.
VMware and Parallels were both created specifically when Apple moved from PPC to x86, no reason they shouldn't be ported to another architecture, especially if they want to keep their users. ARM versions of these products are probably already in development.
Lol, no. VMware was started in 1998, 8 years before Apple went intel. Can't remember what the first use cases was, but as far as I remember virtualization usecase was web hosting.
Seems like a good time to buy one of the last Intel Macs. ARM chips might benefit the bottom line of Apple profits but not their customers. ARM chips are still very basic compared to x86 chips.
However, a somecof the Windows cloud based versiosn are merel;y subsets of the desktop version; such as PowerBI. It's basically a lite version that lacks features needed to develop reports.
Given MS' Windows 10 on ARM with the Surface it'll be interesting too see how that gets developed. As I understand it, many x86 Win32 apps already run on it. The whole "I can't run Windows" may become moot if WoA builds a big enough installed based to get Windows apps ported to it.
It's not a matter of looking ahead or to the past, I use my MBP with Parallels every day, so from my point of view this is bad. Inevitable I guess, but still bad.
stop lying, emulating x86 on arm will add on incredible performance penalty
I think this time around Apple is betting on iOS software. There is already a version of most important software running on iOS, so I am guessing they are hoping to make the transition easier by just porting that version. Where I believe Apple didn't make the calculations is that, people are moving away from the Mac platform and reluctant to pay for PC software, so basically software vendors won't have buyers to their new ARM software causing the death of 3rd party software for the mac which will lead to the demise of MacOS. '96-'97 were not the best years for Apple. Let us not forget the price of Apple hardware in comparison, Apple is suffocating the consumer out of reason to buy Mac hardware.
And USB 4? we still have not made the transition to 3 yet, USB-A is still the default standard.
And USB 4? we still have not made the transition to 3 yet, USB-A is still the default standard.
zero interest in an ARM Mac and zero interest in losing functionality of any my current software. I would be more than willing to buy a new iMac if they improved the chassis and perhaps a bump in screen size. if that requires buying into an ARM processor based system then I will pass.
Please don't compare performance numbers for iPad tests, the iOS is primitive compared to MacOs.
Please don't compare performance numbers for iPad tests, the iOS is primitive compared to MacOs.
It’s not Apple’s fault if the developer abandons the product, now is it? It’s legacy for a reason. Stay on the old hardware and the product continues to work. Just don’t expect old software to run on new hardware.
Change and progress is the nature of this industry and if a software developer doesn’t understand that, they shouldn’t have been in the business in the first place. These transitions always take several years to complete, that’s enough for every single developer to update their app.
Adapt or get left behind. No one can stop progress.
Gaming for one. Emulation does not cut it.
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There was no need to upgrade to Catalina if 32 bit apps were a priority.
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Developers can already port their iPad apps to macOS. Being arm or x86 is irrelevant to make that port.
having an arm cpu inside doesn’t magically make macOS windowing, multitasking, and the system libraries and frameworks compatible with an app written for iPad.
How many ****ing times does this need to be repeated?
That's true. For example when the Mac switched from PPC to x86 processors, the emulation layer called Rosetta would reduce performance by about 50%.
The fact is... the new ARM processors will probably be twice as fast as current intel offerings. Let's see why.
Let's compare the performance of the current iPads to the performance of the current MacBook Pros.
Can you see it? Roughly same performance. BUT there is a big difference: the Intel processor in the 13-inch MacBook Pro consumes 28W of power, while the A12X in the iPad Pro consumes about 7W of power (estimated figure based on iPad Pro battery life).
Also another interesting fact: the iPad Pro has a 36 Wh battery, while the MacBook Pro has a 58 Wh battery (almost double the size), but the battery life is still better on the iPad Pro!
Can you see the trend here? The A12X offers 2-4x the performance-per-watt compared to the Intel processors found in the current MacBook Pro.
What does this mean? It means that a future Apple built ARM processor, let's call it "A14 Max", will be built to take advantage of the thermal and battery specs of the MacBook Pros. It will be a 28W ARM processor with DOUBLE the performance of the current Intel offering.
So the old apps (and x86 virtual machines) will run as the same speed as before through emulation, while the OS and the new apps that are compiled for ARM will simply FLY.
And this is just the beginning. At the current rate of development and with Apple being able to optimize the CPU design and features for their specific OS, in a matter of 2-3 years, ARM MacBooks will be faster than x86 PCs even when running old x86 apps or virtualized x86 environments!
It's really a win-win scenario. I can't be more excited.
And how many datacentres and companies are buying or going to be buying that ruddy chip? Very specialised ones, that's who. Quantum Computing exists today, but we're not going to be using it on the desktop or server any time soon!
Because as we all know cpu performance scales linearly.
A lot won't be. None of my mission critical software is going to ARM. The userbase just isn't there.
It's unlikely that anything could bring me back to macOS over iOS, but I am interested to see where they go with this transition. I feel like macOS has been lost for a few years and extremely unstable. Hopefully they can improve on macOS to coincide with this release.
Numbers mean nothing to me unless we're comparing the same operating systems, same amount of RAM, storage, etc. etc. and even then it's not representative of actual working conditions. I gave up on synth benchmarks ages ago.
I was planning on getting the new MBP with scissor keyboard in Q2 of this year. But if new MBPs with ARM processors and, presumably, scissor keyboards come out in Q4, maybe I should wait for them? I just had the keyboard on my current butterfly MBP replaced, and so far it's holding up okay. What advantages will the ARM processor bring over the Intel ones from a user perspective?