Mac With Apple-Designed Arm Processor Coming in First Half of 2021

[poi ran]

Anyway, if Apple in a couple of years release a slick $500 iMacBook A16 (or whatever) that will run all iOS software and most MacOS software (emulated), have a battery life of several days, who'd need Chromebooks or Windows laptops? Mac has a small market share now, in many countries, but if Apple produce a low cost Mac it could certainly bring in more users to the eco system (and App store = $)

I probably won't buy it. I'll keep running Mojave, Boot camp, Linux Mint and Win 10 in a VM, for at least 3-4 more years. I have an ancient 4 core i7, i'm pretty sure a $500 ARM-macbook will hammer it soon. It will be good enough for most people, even for most games.

Mail? Photos? Movies? Chat? Music? A Mac handles all this out of the box, MacOS has never had a bigger lead on Windows than now, Windows ships with less than ever.

 

[smulji]

Anyway, if Apple in a couple of years release a slick $500 iMacBook A16 (or whatever) that will run all iOS software and most MacOS software (emulated), have a battery life of several days, who'd need Chromebooks or Windows laptops? Mac has a small market share now, in many countries, but if Apple produce a low cost Mac it could certainly bring in more users to the eco system (and App store = $)

I probably won't buy it. I'll keep running Mojave, Boot camp, Linux Mint and Win 10 in a VM, for at least 3-4 more years. I have an ancient 4 core i7, i'm pretty sure a $500 ARM-macbook will hammer it soon. It will be good enough for most people, even for most games.

Mail? Photos? Movies? Chat? Music? A Mac handles all this out of the box, MacOS has never had a bigger lead on Windows than now, Windows ships with less than ever.

You can bet your bottom dollar that ARM Mac won't be selling for $500.

 

[rp2011]

I think the best way to do this is a fresh sheet of paper approach. Forget legacy and emulation and all that nonsense and let that run it’s coarse to it’s end. Dragging all of these things and appeasing the legacy consume along is the road that Blackberry and Kodak and every dead company took.
let’s remember that Apple is alive and healthy today when it let go of the past and plotted a new course. The X86 path is a dead end. Why keep going.

 

[theluggage]

Anyway, if Apple in a couple of years release a slick $500 iMacBook A16 (or whatever) that will run all iOS software and most MacOS software (emulated),

It will run a lot of MacOS software native if Apple play their cards right and get a development system out to key developers some time in advance. The big "pro" apps and their plug-ins will be the toughest nut, but since Apple will probably start with a 12" MacBook/Air replacement it might not be a big deal if ProTools doesn't run on day one. The tricky one is liable to be MS Office - which took a while at the time of the PPC to Intel switch - but hopefully the codebase is more "modern" now and since there is more competition (esp. at the low end) MS might move a bit more smartly.

What it probably won't do is cost as little as $500...

 

[cmaier]

It will run a lot of MacOS software native if Apple play their cards right and get a development system out to key developers some time in advance. The big "pro" apps and their plug-ins will be the toughest nut, but since Apple will probably start with a 12" MacBook/Air replacement it might not be a big deal if ProTools doesn't run on day one. The tricky one is liable to be MS Office - which took a while at the time of the PPC to Intel switch - but hopefully the codebase is more "modern" now and since there is more competition (esp. at the low end) MS might move a bit more smartly.

What it probably won't do is cost as little as $500...

Code base for office is definitely ready to go for this transition - remember, MS has to support office on Windows ARM, and lots of other platforms now.

 

[timme]

The Apple Book

 

[Zdigital2015]

It will run a lot of MacOS software native if Apple play their cards right and get a development system out to key developers some time in advance. The big "pro" apps and their plug-ins will be the toughest nut, but since Apple will probably start with a 12" MacBook/Air replacement it might not be a big deal if ProTools doesn't run on day one. The tricky one is liable to be MS Office - which took a while at the time of the PPC to Intel switch - but hopefully the codebase is more "modern" now and since there is more competition (esp. at the low end) MS might move a bit more smartly.

What it probably won't do is cost as little as $500...

The code base was updated with the release of Office 2016. Excel was the hardest one and took the longest. Microsoft is ready to go...they’ll take their sweet time, or maybe not...it’s always what is in their best interest, regardless.

 

[firewood]

If it were SJ, he probably would have doubled down on the pace of innovation on the iPad to the point where there wouldn't be anymore Mac laptops.

Note that Next was primarily a software developers platform. So any double down would likely be two pronged, devices for everybody (iOS), but something useful for hard core developers (some sort of developer Mac).

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Just like it was the death of the Apple ][, the death of OS 9, the death of PowerPC, things come to an end.

There was no software for those "Macs" (Apple II had a lot, but ironically the more basic but GUI Mac killed that too). I couldn't stomach a Mac until OS X came about. I had an Amiga before that and briefly a Windows 98 machine. You apparently want it to be that way again.

We were making real progress with everything including games until Apple decided to ditch standards and go to Metal without ever even fully updating the remaining OpenGL libraries. Moving to INTEL will cut the software avaialble for the Mac drastically. Fanatics don't care because they probably just do Facebook to profess their unding love for Tim Cook anyway. WTF do they need with "real" software. Apple already killed off most of its Pro video production with the Final Cut fiasco and "trash can" Mac Pro. For being a rich company, Apple doesn't seem to know how to do COMPUTERS anymore that aren't also a phone.

 

[smulji]

There was no software for those "Macs" (Apple II had a lot, but ironically the more basic but GUI Mac killed that too). I couldn't stomach a Mac until OS X came about. I had an Amiga before that and briefly a Windows 98 machine. You apparently want it to be that way again.

We were making real progress with everything including games until Apple decided to ditch standards and go to Metal without ever even fully updating the remaining OpenGL libraries. Moving to INTEL will cut the software avaialble for the Mac drastically. Fanatics don't care because they probably just do Facebook to profess their unding love for Tim Cook anyway. WTF do they need with "real" software. Apple already killed off most of its Pro video production with the Final Cut fiasco and "trash can" Mac Pro. For being a rich company, Apple doesn't seem to know how to do COMPUTERS anymore that aren't also a phone.

"Apple already killed off most of its Pro video production with the Final Cut fiasco and "trash can" Mac Pro."

As of today, the Final Cut user base is larger and stronger than ever and that will become more so with the arrival of the Mac Pro.

 

[GFLPraxis]

I admit that I'm not a programmer, but I don't believe for a second that it's like switching a button in a compiler. It's taking companies years to just switch their software from 32 to 64 Bit.

Even so, It's still a far cry from a Mac on ARM version. Do we have reason to believe that porting Photoshop for Windows on x86 to MacOS on x86 was an easy task?

As someone who can code:

It can be that simple. You don't write your code to be specific to a CPU; you write your code to use underlying frameworks (like MacOS's frameworks or Windows', along with others you import). Only low-level frameworks need to be rewritten. That's typically Apple's job.

As long as all of the frameworks you depend on are now compatible with ARM, you just take your Mac/x86 project and recompile it as Mac/ARM with little to no effort.


The problem comes with dependencies. If I want to port my Mac/x86 project to Mac/ARM, but I'm using some old framework/add-on from a developer who isn't updating it anymore, I have to either replace that dependency or get him to recompile it on his end and give me the new version.


When Apple went from PPC to Intel, they also depreciated the old Carbon framework. So apps written using Carbon or even partially in Carbon OR using components from other developers that had used Carbon had to be re-written in Cocoa. Apps written in Cocoa? They just needed to check a box and recompile.



It will be MUCH easier to take a Mac/x86 app and port it to Mac/PPC than to take a Mac/x86 app and port it to Windows/x86.

And remember, Adobe updated Photoshop after the PPC/Intel switch, and the Mac is a much bigger market today than it was when the Intel switch happened.

 

[dspdoc]

As someone who can code:

It can be that simple. You don't write your code to be specific to a CPU; you write your code to use underlying frameworks (like MacOS's frameworks or Windows', along with others you import). Only low-level frameworks need to be rewritten. That's typically Apple's job.

As long as all of the frameworks you depend on are now compatible with ARM, you just take your Mac/x86 project and recompile it as Mac/ARM with little to no effort.


The problem comes with dependencies. If I want to port my Mac/x86 project to Mac/ARM, but I'm using some old framework/add-on from a developer who isn't updating it anymore, I have to either replace that dependency or get him to recompile it on his end and give me the new version.


When Apple went from PPC to Intel, they also depreciated the old Carbon framework. So apps written using Carbon or even partially in Carbon OR using components from other developers that had used Carbon had to be re-written in Cocoa. Apps written in Cocoa? They just needed to check a box and recompile.



It will be MUCH easier to take a Mac/x86 app and port it to Mac/PPC than to take a Mac/x86 app and port it to Windows/x86.

And remember, Adobe updated Photoshop after the PPC/Intel switch, and the Mac is a much bigger market today than it was when the Intel switch happened.

Can I dumb this down a bit and ask a simple question since you seem to know what you are talking about? So what you are saying is that I shouldn't be freaking out as an audio professional that when this ARM transition occurs that suddenly none of my DAW software works, like Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One, Reason, Ableton Live etc.? I also shouldn't freak that the thousands of third party VST, AU and AAX plug-ins that I own that run inside these DAWs will be dead either? Sorry, just looking for a straightforward answer so I can decide right now if I want to drop Apple for good and switch to PC. Thanks!

 

[MikeZTM]

Code base for office is definitely ready to go for this transition - remember, MS has to support office on Windows ARM, and lots of other platforms now.

They already did this for Windows RT.
They have a bundled ARMv7 version of Win32 Office in it.
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Can I dumb this down a bit and ask a simple question since you seem to know what you are talking about? So what you are saying is that I shouldn't be freaking out as an audio professional that when this ARM transition occurs that suddenly none of my DAW software works, like Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One, Reason, Ableton Live etc.? I also shouldn't freak that the thousands of third party VST, AU and AAX plug-ins that I own that run inside these DAWs will be dead either? Sorry, just looking for a straightforward answer so I can decide right now if I want to drop Apple for good and switch to PC. Thanks!

Technically it will only take a few weeks for developer to re compile your plugins into ARM.
Practically it will take about 2 years as that's how large software company's development cycle works.

You can keep using your old computer or rely on next Rosetta if it exist during this time.
And obviously if you rely on some died plugin with nobody maintain them then they will never be updated. Just like how everything was ported to Intel back in PowerPC time.

 

[Mago]

Ryzen 4000 APU are mobile CPU's. Says nothing about the transition to AMD on desktop

Say s lot, to be precise, macOS AMD Ryzen exposed Apple at least tested the following Zen based APUs

Picasso, Ryzen 3000 series APU, in production 4c8t Vega 11 mobile upto 45w

Raven2, aka Dali 2c 4t Vega 3 Mobile < 15w

Renoir Zen2 8c16t Navi 11 65w desktop apu **

Van Gogh. Zen 3 Apu with 8c(16c?l Zen2 + Navi 21/23 GPU details unknown but given Navi 21 or 23 GPU on board likely s high end Mobile desktop or a semi custom product. ***

Renoir APU fits perfectly in iMac 21 and Mac mini, and it's mobile version fits in mbp line but there don't offer an big edge over Intel, so unlikely for the next MBP.

Meanwhile if Van gogh as suspected included 16c Zen 2 and a 21/23 cores Navi GPU it would be a monster performers with close to 85w TDP.

The best part is that this it's just the visible part, Ryzen 3000 and Threadripper 3000 maybe being tested in macOS w/o leaving a driver trace as evidence.

The fact: Apple testing unreleased AMD processors.

Then there is the thunderbolt thing, AMD is supporting tb3 usb4 with it's x570 and x599 chipsets , meanwhile nobody is even testing tb3 on ARM, what you say?

Another little thing is pcie4, to date no single arm product supports nothing beyond pcie3. Not a trivial upgrade.

Few basic questions about software:

Does x86 binaries run as fast in arm with an x86 emulator?

MS toolchain to build office is the same in w10/wRT as in macOS, given office is coded mostly in .net with c# f# and some MFC C++, targeting it to arm is not a challenge, neither something they may capitalize or inherit in the macOS toolchain for office (almost 100% objC).
Of course few Excel binaries as most cryptographic functions suffering the endian issue as the simd 0ptimizations, not always matter of a compiler switch. In fact macOS office belongs to an different branch than it's windows counterpart.

 

[MikeZTM]

Say s lot, to be precise, macOS AMD Ryzen exposed Apple at least tested the following Zen based APUs

Picasso, Ryzen 3000 series APU, in production 4c8t Vega 11 mobile upto 45w

Raven2, aka Dali 2c 4t Vega 3 Mobile < 15w

Renoir Zen2 8c16t Navi 11 65w desktop apu **

Van Gogh. Zen 3 Apu with 8c(16c?l Zen2 + Navi 21/23 GPU details unknown but given Navi 21 or 23 GPU on board likely s high end Mobile desktop or a semi custom product. ***

Renoir APU fits perfectly in iMac 21 and Mac mini, and it's mobile version fits in mbp line but there don't offer an big edge over Intel, so unlikely for the next MBP.

Meanwhile if Van gogh as suspected included 16c Zen 2 and a 21/23 cores Navi GPU it would be a monster performers with close to 85w TDP.

The best part is that this it's just the visible part, Ryzen 3000 and Threadripper 3000 maybe being tested in macOS w/o leaving a driver trace as evidence.

The fact: Apple testing unreleased AMD processors.

Then there is the thunderbolt thing, AMD is supporting tb3 usb4 with it's x570 and x599 chipsets , meanwhile nobody is even testing tb3 on ARM, what you say?

Another little thing is pcie4, to date no single arm product supports nothing beyond pcie3. Not a trivial upgrade.

Few basic questions about software:

Does x86 binaries run as fast in arm with an x86 emulator?

MS toolchain to build office is the same in w10/wRT as in macOS, given office is coded mostly in .net with c# f# and some MFC C++, targeting it to arm is not a challenge, neither something they may capitalize or inherit in the macOS toolchain for office (almost 100% objC).
Of course few Excel binaries as most cryptographic functions suffering the endian issue as the simd 0ptimizations, not always matter of a compiler switch. In fact macOS office belongs to an different branch than it's windows counterpart.

iPhone 6s surpport PCIe NVMe storage.
Technically if you put a thunderbolt chip to that bus you will get thunderbolt support.

And Ampere ARM CPUs already support PCIe slot and are shiped with NVIDIA/AMD graphic cards.

Since Thunderbolt becomes open standard USB4, anyone can implement chipset + driver for that. ARM is not a problem.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

but something useful for hard core developers (some sort of developer Mac).

It was Steve Jobs that said he’s milk the Mac for all it’s worth and get working on the next great thing, so I doubt he would have kept going with the Mac. I agree with the other poster that Steve Jobs being alive would have likely hastened the death of the Mac.

You apparently want it to be that way again.

I want you to own an Amiga and a Windows 98 machine? Only if you WANT to.
The DTP revolution started on those Macs that had “no software”. What did they use to layout documents and print to LaserWriters? If it wasn’t software, then I‘m assuming the only other option must have been...

Insanely Great Magic

the Final Cut user base is larger and stronger than ever

AND, all those users are working in a way that was simply impossible on the old FCP AND on even on any other CURRENT video editing software. And, it’s not JUST the fanatics that don’t care, the vast majority of all the users that are buying Macs won’t care, either. They’re not fanatics, they just want things that work and... if it works... they’ll buy it.

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

That is happening RIGHT NOW. New Catalina loaded laptops won’t run their old Intel apps. Does Apple provide a translation layer? NO. They’ll just have to return that new system to the store and look for a gently used model that has an older OS installed. AND they’ll get a better price!

No, that is completely incorrect. Except for a few random 32-bit apps which almost nobody runs, Intel apps generally have been updated for the latest operating system. Before that, Apple was providing a sort of compatibility layer, which simply consisted of the 32-bit Intel binaries needed to run the older software. They provided that for a long time, but removed support once it was no longer relevant (which was actually quite recent).

If their current laptop is 10 years old, then that means their needs stopped growing 10 years ago. The ONLY reason for them to upgrade is because their old system breaks and, if so, I’m sure that there will be systems available on the used market that will suit them.

I can't believe you believe what you just said. Apple will and always has provided translation layers for the old binaries to work on new architectures. I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue with you, but I suppose I'm just baffled. What you're suggesting makes no sense and would be unprecedented. Apple isn't going to require people to buy used laptops, who could even think such a thing?

Please just stop defending this argument and move on to something else which makes more sense, like juggling bananas on your nose on alternate Thursdays. At the very least look up what a fat binary (or the modern Universal Binary) is, so we can end this thing, whatever this is. macOS still has all the infrastructure in place to do what Apple did last time, and provide support for multiple binary types simultaneously, and they will do so, because not doing so makes absolutely no sense.

Apple will not require people to buy used laptops. As shocking as that may seem at first glance. =|

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Except for a few random 32-bit apps which almost nobody runs

Almost nobody, like the gamers in this thread have been posting? (One that indicated half of their Steam library doesn’t work anymore?)

I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue with you...
stop defending this argument...

I don’t know either. I know I’m not being argumentative. I’m not very good at arguing anyway because of a lack of a desire to personally attack folks. Soo if you want to argue, you’ll likely want to pick someone else?

Apple will not require people to buy used laptops.

Right now, going back to your 10 year old laptop use case, anyone that has a 10 year old laptop, which is very likely running an OS and apps that still depend on 32-libraries, can’t buy a new Catalina laptop. They’d have to buy a used one.

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

Almost nobody, like the gamers in this thread have been posting? (One that indicated half of their Steam library doesn’t work anymore?)

I don’t know either. I know I’m not being argumentative. I’m not very good at arguing anyway because of a lack of a desire to personally attack folks. Soo if you want to argue, you’ll likely want to pick someone else?

Right now, going back to your 10 year old laptop use case, anyone that has a 10 year old laptop, which is very likely running an OS and apps that still depend on 32-libraries, can’t buy a new Catalina laptop. They’d have to buy a used one.

Not the case, at all. A 10 year old laptop would have come with a 64-bit operating system, which means that by now they likely would have upgraded to all 64-bit apps anyway. Plus, they can install the 64-bit version of any apps they need easily.

The Mac is not a gaming platform.

I'm going to get you back on track. Your argument was that Apple will not provide a translation layer. Your argument is baseless, and ignores history and what Apple has actually done. The end. Please move on.

 

[dogslobber]

With ARM you won't be able to run Microsoft.

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

With ARM you won't be able to run Microsoft.

Actually, Windows can run on ARM. It isn't easy to get a copy of that to actually run it (unless you buy hardware which comes with it), but Apple might be able to work some kind of deal with Microsoft to make it happen. Naturally, Windows on ARM isn't the same experience, but at least it would be something.

Regardless, I've been in IT awhile, and I almost never see anyone running Windows on their Mac. There is a market for such a thing, but it seems to be a vanishingly small one.
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You can bet your bottom dollar that ARM Mac won't be selling for $500.

At most we might see a discount due to the lack of the Intel tax, but that'd probably be somewhere around $1000.

 

[azntaiji]

No better time for a hackintosh!

 

[DeepIn2U]

The softwares are likely broken as of Catalina anyway.

I don’t think so as anyone NEEDING to use an old Intel app can just keep their current system. No translation required.

December 2006. I was counting from the day they started switching over all their systems to the day they were done, which is an impressive 12 months. We could see the first ARM systems released in Jan 2021 with all being updated by the end of 2021.

thank you I did a typo the announcement was January 2005. Trust me I fully cried hearing the announcement of the Mac Pro because prior to then OSX Panther had my heart I loved that OS! The bliss was the G5 had the same shell carried forward for the MacPro

 

[DeepIn2U]

They were available that day, so shipping time after order...pre-configured was just shipping time and BTO took slightly longer.

prove this.
Apple has only ever on a very limited case ever announced and shipped a product on the same day!
The fact you mention pre-order tells me that sorry no shipping occurred. You’ve not separated pre-order from custom order ... they’re normally not one and the same.

 

[bsolar]

The Mac is not a gaming platform.

The Mac is definitely a gaming platform too: even Apple itself offers Apple Arcade, not to mention Steam and other third parties, meaning they recognize there are users interested in gaming on Mac.

While I understand the wish to obsolete 32 bit applications, the impact it had on games on the platform was significant. I know users who are refraining to upgrade to Catalina exactly for that reason, since it would mean losing lots of older games which would stop working on the new system.

And no, they have zero interest in Boot Camp or such solutions... they want it to just work (rings a bell?).