I'm skeptical. I think the Mac market will only diminish further due to this transition, but I hope I'm wrong and that things turn out better than I expect.
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Mac With Apple-Designed Arm Processor Coming in First Half of 2021
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I'm skeptical. I think the Mac market will only diminish further due to this transition, but I hope I'm wrong and that things turn out better than I expect.
The problem with web based versions is they are often a subset of the desktop versions so if you use anything beyond the basic features you are out of luck.
Yes! The zillions of macrumors fanboys who screamed for a G5 PowerBook are finally going to get their wish. (except with a RISC ISA and implementation that’s more than 10 times faster, and no water cooling needed!). With probably even more apps available for it.
Or do all of you really want that water cooling?
Or do all of you really want that water cooling?
Slightly off topic, but assuming this ARM Mac is real, why choose an iPad Pro over this? Sounds like this could potentially cannibalize the iPad Pro line.
Web developers have access to the most popular browsers in MacOS itself (Safari, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera). Only the poor souls who somehow are still supporting the old Edge or IE would need Windows. You'll still want to test in Windows at some points but a VM could be more than enough (if you need good performance you could run Windows Arms otherwise I'm sure there will be a slow VM that supports x86).
For the casual gamers I'm sure Apple would rather them running their games in MacOS. A move to ARM might also usher a more aggressive push from Apple for developers to port their iOS apps and games to MacOS.
What world are you living in? There is a yuge market for "I don't care about performance, just compatibility" type. Just as MicroSoft. If performance was the be all, end all, AmigaOS would have cornered the market 30 years ago. BeOS would have beaten out OSX in the 90's.
I certainly hope you are right. But I have to be honest when I say that with each Apple hiccup I strongly flirt with jumping ship to PC.
The iPad Pro line is in an odd position to begin with though. Very pricey for a tablet and can't replace a computer. Apple could fix that but who knows, there's plenty of holes in their lineups that they don't seem to care about filling.
Read the OP quote:
"If you are willing to provide a desktop-style cooling solution (i.e. heatsink and fan) there's absolutely no reason ARM can't own x86-64."
Sure, switching to ARM will grow the market, but ARM won't *own* the market like the OP claims. I can't re-call claiming the ARM market would shrink...
For ARM to own the x86-86 market, they'll have to dominate Windows, and that will be a hugely difficult task to do. The chicken and egg situation, like I've referred to.
There is a huge difference between porting an application to a different OS, vs. porting an application on the same OS but on a different architecture.
Porting the application to a different OS means having to rewrite the application to work against a completely different OS API, which can be a huge hassle. But this is not the case we are discussing here: in the case we are discussing here, the OS is the same (macOS), only the architecture changes (e.g. Arm64 instead of amd64).
In the ideal case, all is needed is to recompile the application. Granted, sometimes things need to be fixed here and there, but usually it's minor stuff, unless the application does stuff at low level, like using ASM modules which are of course architecture specific. The vast majority of applications have nothing like that though.
Again, this is nothing new: there are plenty of projects in the Linux world which had ported or are porting software to different architectures including Arm64. Unless the software does something very architecture-specific, it's nowhere near as a big deal as porting the software to a different OS.
Wouldn’t it be the height of irony for Apple to make an ARM-based PCIe 4.0 slot box and then sell a PCIe x86 compatibility card for those that “really” need it...ROFLMAO!!! Only Apple! You read it here first!
Your problem isn't likely that it won't run windows, since windows 10 already runs on ARM, it most certainly will. The problem will be whether or not the software you currently run on an x64 (or x86) only version of windows can be ported to run on ARM. Some of it will, some of it won't.
For me, (and those of us using virtualization solutions to run windows on a mac) I'm more curious if they plan on having an x64 virtualization solution and how it would stack up to today's VMWare / Parallels running on Intel. Of course, if it were "sharing chips" with macOS, it seems unlikely to be good enough, but if they were to add additional ARM processors just for that purpose, things might get more interesting.
Microsoft reportedly working on x64 app emulation for ARM PCs
If true, this would break down one of the biggest barriers to using an ARM-based PC.
www.windowscentral.com
If people expected BootCamp to be around forever then they don't know Apple!
This would be a dream come true!
Nothing has matched the size and specs of the 12" Powerbook to date IMHO.
But ... alas ... we've been talking about ARM chips in 12" Macbook Pros for as long as we've been talking about the PowerPC G5 Powerbook. Or the headless iMac. Or the sub $1999 Mac Pro.
I think John Gruber's comments on Daring Fireball (in response to the "Apple is said to be moving to ARM-based chips in an effort to make Macs, iPhones, and iPads work together and run the same apps" bit in this very article) are pretty spot on this time:
The reason for Apple to move Macs to its own in-house ARM chips is much simpler than that. (1) Apple’s laptop chips are better than Intel’s — they’re faster and more power efficient. (2) Using their own chips puts Apple in control of its own timeline for product updates. Why did it take so long for Apple to get the retina MacBook Air out the door? The one-word answer I was told by a high-perched little birdie: Intel.
At this point it's just speculation. I think it will have file system access and terminal.
Since it's reading tea leaves, I see it like this: over the past few years MacOS has become more iOS-like and iOS has become more MacOS-like. So where we will end up is probably some average of the two. An aggressive gatekeeper and sandboxing, but with some openness as well.
Apple has already done the Rosetta approach and that left a lot to be desired. AMD willing (that's a big if), Apple could produce an IC package with a blend of multi-architecture chiplets. We already see ARM big.LITTLE packaging so why not license AMD Zen3 cores and mix. Let's use an iMac case:
- 4 cores of AMD Zen3 (today Zen2 8-core package is retail $300-$400)
- 8 cores of A14X or whatever (all high perf because not mobile)
- all cores share same L3 cache
- cores/RAM/IO interconnect with Infiniti Fabric
- macOS is augmented with universal binaries supporting ARM and x86_64
- macOS kernel ported to ARM
CONS:
- significant R&D cost
- add $100 to product cost (4 cores, not 8)
- 3rd-party device drivers need rebuild for macOS ARM kernel
PROS:
- several years of true backwards compatibility
- save $100 on product cost because no more Intel pricing and only 4 cores
Is it worth it? Customers would like it!
This will only work if ARM Macs demolish Intel CPUs in terms of performance, which, given how great their current ARM chips are, is entirely possible.
That means MacBook Pros are going to be the first to see these ARM CPUs.
And virtualization isn't important since very few people use it.
Also I hope these new Macs finally have touch-screens, to enable iPadOS apps to run on them as well. WWDC2020 will be about integrating iPadOS with MacOS X
That means MacBook Pros are going to be the first to see these ARM CPUs.
And virtualization isn't important since very few people use it.
Also I hope these new Macs finally have touch-screens, to enable iPadOS apps to run on them as well. WWDC2020 will be about integrating iPadOS with MacOS X
Intel are still the dominant force for the U and H series type mobile CPUs but honestly the Y series are pretty poor at filling the role they're meant to. Can they run without a fan? Yes. Can they run well without a fan? Not really (as the new fan cooled MBA and disappearance of the 12" MacBook shows) and this is one of the areas I think a custom Apple chip would really shine. The A#X chips in the iPads are pretty good at sustained performance without fans or throttling...
Judging of how bad first generation products are compared to later iterations in the Apple lineup, then 2024 is the year to buy my first ARM Mac
Many times. EDA for chip design, computational magnetics solvers, and etc. From HPPA to Sparc to MIPS to PowerPC to DEC Alpha to x86-64 and arm64. Not an issue for a well written computational kernel.
Now re-doing the GUIs for different OSes can be a huge issue. But that won't be any problem at all for an Arm MacBook supporting apps developed using C (etc.), Swift, and AppKit/Cocoa (and even UIKit via Catalyst).
Depends on whose SDKs the apps use. On iOS, generally developers have no choice but to use Apple's APIs for everything. On MacOS, developers have been free to use any other compatible API if they wanted, or even bring in additional libraries if needed. It really depends on the app.
I agree that most common apps will be fairly easy to port, especially if they were written for maximum OS X compatibility from the start. But some of those apps written for Linux and X11 that were brought over to OS X later are probably going to be a giant pain to port.