Highly unlikely that would ever happen. Really the main value proposition of MacOS over iOS is that it is not locked down, so as long as MacOS exists you will likely be able to install your own software on it, one way or another.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac With Apple-Designed Arm Processor Coming in First Half of 2021
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Highly unlikely that would ever happen. Really the main value proposition of MacOS over iOS is that it is not locked down, so as long as MacOS exists you will likely be able to install your own software on it, one way or another.
ever tried to port a complex application across cpus? Especially from a cisc to risc platform? Its rarely cost effective to do port from windows to Mac even on intel. Across cpu families, it's likely no cost effective At all. It'd also be the end of virtualization of windows, so you can count parallels and fusion out too.
if It's a dual path, fine. A complete replacement would, yet again, reflect how little Apple understands the real world. And unless they come out with a very clear, explicit dual path statement, even the release will create a lot of doubts. The corporate bean counters wouldn't take the risk on buying assets and building infrastructure that may go away in 2-3 years.
If they learned anything from the last transition, this one should be a lot easier.
This isn't replacing x86-64 but rather complement the lineup with MacOS compatibility for lighter loads but with the mobile advantages of always on, longer battery life, built in 4G/5G connectivity, etc. Much like Surface Pro X to the rest of Surface line.
This is welcomed news since iPadOS/iOS is too dumbed down.
This is welcomed news since iPadOS/iOS is too dumbed down.
Intel's on-chip HEVC accelerator is a rather specific case, but for sure there will be some hiccups around the periphery of the APIs.
I've ported complicated software from Sparc to x86 and from x86 to powerpc. It's not that hard if you aren't accessing hardware directly, and if you don't make dumb design decisions (like counting on Big Endian vs. Small Endian)
N
Theres a very large and growing corporate footprint of Macs, and it's a significant chunk of apples business. This would put a quick end to it.
apple may be thinking that everything will be in the cloud And we will all have ubiquitous high speed connectivity..which, while completely wrong, is how they've been building software for a while now. that May be true in Cupertino. Not so much in the rest of the world. And no, 5g isnt going to solve it either. For the vast majority of the population, it'll be no better than LTE because of the frequency restrictions.
Theres a very large and growing corporate footprint of Macs, and it's a significant chunk of apples business. This would put a quick end to it.
apple may be thinking that everything will be in the cloud And we will all have ubiquitous high speed connectivity..which, while completely wrong, is how they've been building software for a while now. that May be true in Cupertino. Not so much in the rest of the world. And no, 5g isnt going to solve it either. For the vast majority of the population, it'll be no better than LTE because of the frequency restrictions.
Never been a better time to be an Apple developer
[automerge]1582567354[/automerge]
On the road to Swift 6
The Swift project has achieved a critical milestone of maturity of the core fundamentals, providing stability for users to invest in using Swift in earnest. On Apple's platforms such as macOS and iOS, the arrival of ABI and module stability has enabled the creation of stable binary frameworks...forums.swift.org
I don't know what argument you're making by linking to the Swift 6 roadmap. I work on a reasonably large Mac project that's been around for a while. Every new macOS release brings new problems for us. Many frameworks have incomplete documentation, and framework bugs persist for years. Even Xcode has bugs and performance issues. As for Swift, that's a whole different topic, but I'll say the language hasn't yet fulfilled the original goal of a scalable, approachable language. As of now, Apple seems more focused on turning it into a complex language for writing their system frameworks.
Speaking as a user, the drop of 32-bit support in Catalina killed off a chunk of legacy software that will never get updated. Dropping x86 will be like a one-two punch. Large developers may stop paying attention to the Mac entirely, continuing an ongoing trend that started a few years ago. Once-reliable Mac developer Blizzard never bothered porting Overwatch, one of its most popular games, and with the cuts Activision has been making, I expect that trend to continue for future titles.
It is an unnecessary transition if the Apple ARM CPU for 16”MBP runs as hot as Intel CPU.
Last edited:
No, it's not a significant part of apple's business. In fact, the *entire* mac business is not a significant part of apple's business. Certainly it's a lot smaller than the increase in sales they will get from people who want something compatible with the i-devices they already use and love.
[automerge]1582569965[/automerge]
True, but why would it? Each core would, for example, need at least 20% fewer transistors, and it's switching transistors that generates the heat.
I think there will be a major rewrite to a new Mac OS based system. Darwin, regardless of how robust and stable it is and what it gave us ... we may see something more aligned to a particular build or part of Linux.
That said the real gains we'll see is to customization of the instruction ... such as what RISC-V promises. who knows.
I do as well in specific circumstances. The question I have is how many of the same applications running on Intel run in ARM Windows.
There is a clear roadmap, 5nm, 3nm, 2nm, 1.4nm and 1nm. And they are working on sub 1nm ( in TSMC terms ). So we still have at least another 10 years to go.
I have been waiting until the announcement of MacBook Pro 13" ( I actually hope it will be 14" but seems that wont be the case ) before I post this. But I thought it would be relevant here.
2015 Early MacBook Pro 13"
2.7 GHz (i5-5257U) dual-core Intel Core i5 14nm
8GB DRAM
128GB SSD
$1299
The Rumoured 2020 MacBook Pro 13"
Updated Quad Core Intel 10nm
8GB DRAM
128 SSD.
$1299 ( Same as current line up )
For 5 years, you get 1 node improvement and 2 more cores. I mean sometimes I cant blame Apple for wanting to switch to ARM.
Although I still think this report is purely based on Ming getting info that Apple will be using more 5nm capacity. Not necessary means that it will be for the Mac.
First of all, modern virtualization software offers negligible performance loss: even gaming on Windows inside Parallels can be done within a couple FPS compared to native Windows. This is about Windows x86 guest on macOS x86 host.
For x86 guest on ARM host, virtualization is likely going to require more overhead... but Windows has an ARM version already and I don't consider so unthinkable that they eventually expand it to be much more of a first-class citizen instead of a strange exception.
If the future for CPUs is ARM, Windows will follow suit.
Not being able to run Windows will be a deal breaker for me as well. I'm sure Apple has thought about this though.
All of which are cisc processors. There's a lot of software that does directly interact with hardware, and relies on those robust instruction sets. sure, for some apps it's a port. But for a lot of others, it's a rewrite. And in either case, it's not likely to be cost effective to maintain two fundamentally different code paths. This isn't Rosetta....it's a different world now...a lot of people rely on intel.
[automerge]1582570259[/automerge]
There's a massive difference between virtualizing a cpu and emulating one.
Thinking outside the box, an ARM Mac should theoretically be able to dual boot arm windows.
Another option is a hybrid of some sort where there's a cheaper x64 chip and a massive arm on the same board.
Another option is a hybrid of some sort where there's a cheaper x64 chip and a massive arm on the same board.
I believe this is what this is really for. Macbook will be ARM with LTE/5G Cellular and great battery. While the rest of lineup will be X86. Every manufacturer offers a ARM variant, but I don't believe this will be a major shift over to ARM only. Plus i remember reading not to long ago Apple was playing with some of AMD's new chips as well.
Yes, it sounds very scary - if it happens. A zombie invasion would also be really scary - if it were to happen. It's a question of how likely either is. I don't consider either very likely.
(By the way, "literally no file system" is never a thing - it's all a matter of how exposed the filesystem is to the end user - iOS has a traditional Unix filesystem, it just didn't use to expose any of it to user - now users can see limited portions with the Files app.)
The day that I can't open a couple dozen terminal windows running bash shells, with half of them ssh'd to other servers, is the day I start running Linux (or some other Unix variant) on my personal and work machines. Because what macOS is to me (and a lot of other developer & scientific types) is the best available combination of Unix workstation that can run a wide variety of commercial software. Take away the Unix workstation part of that and it's no longer of use to me.
But, again, I don't expect that to happen. I can imagine the possibility of Apple selling a few models (but not the whole line) that are locked down, more appliance-like, for people who want such a thing, but I rather suspect that Apple would cheerfully direct most of those people to iPads.
(Personally, I'd love to see them do a few higher-end hybrid machines that had both a fire-breathing laptop-targeted [rather than iPhone-targeted] ARM CPU/SoC, and an x86_64 CPU, with the x86 shut off most of the time, macOS compiled for and running entirely in the ARM chip, and all of the built-in apps and newly compiled apps running as ARM code, with the OS only spinning up the x86_64 chip when it's necessary to run x86_64 code - so BootCamp works, VMware/Parallels work, and legacy x86_64 Mac apps work - keep in mind that they already made the jump to 64-bit, leaving 32-bit behind, so the really legacy apps all broke already.)
Last edited:
Sparc and PowerPC are no less RISC ISAs than RISC-V or ARMv6 and v7
(although the register windows in Sparc were a bit wonky, but Arm had its own issues with load/store multiple,etc.)
This is more due to the ChromeBook device being designed as very cheap and running a glorified Chrome Browser with a lot of limitations compared to a "normal" laptop. If that's also Apple's vision for an ARM MacBook I'm definitely not on-board either.
If Apple's vision is a powerful general-use laptop instead, for many users all applications they want will eventually become available either through the App Store, or through third party projects like Homebrew, which already patches and packages a lot of third-party software for macOS.
E.g. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of packages on Homebrew would require very little to be compiled and packaged for an ARM based macOS, especially since many are from open source projects which have been ported to ARM already in the Linux world.
That may very well be the case. But we can't be certain. It could be that for notebooks they use ARM and for desktops, they use x86. For example, assuming Intel can get back on track and ramp to 7nm, 5nm, and so forth, and also assuming AMD ramps itsr Milan and Genoa platforms, x86 raw compute performance will most likely exceed ARM-based compute performance. Do you really think Apple ARM will exceed Threadripper, for example? So we can't say for certain that Apple will completely ditch x86 altogether. It could just be that for a given performance/watt, ARM just makes more sense in notebooks.