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MBA 2016 will be quad core ARM

dogslobber said:
Note that you CAN run Windows 10 on ARM so boot camp support is still there.
Click to expand...

This was my main concern with the whole thing. We're not talking a watery Windows RT, right? Is there a build of Win 10 on ARM that still runs Win applications? Or would they need to be recompiled?
 
keysofanxiety said:
This was my main concern with the whole thing. We're not talking a watery Windows RT, right? Is there a build of Win 10 on ARM that still runs Win applications? Or would they need to be recompiled?
Click to expand...

I would interpret Win10 desktop support to be a derivative of Windows 10 Continuum which runs desktop apps. Microsoft heavy hitters are already supported via Continuum.
 
It's only a matter of when, not if.
We can see this when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel. The term was performance per watt. Intel won that bet, and it was great. Haswell was amazing for its battery life, and intel made huge improvement on their integrated GPU.
But then it seems like things have been stalling on the intel camp, especially in the GPU side (and Apple is big on GPU). The core M is decent, but I expected better battery life from them.
And then we have Apple Ax chip with its logarithmic growth of GPU performance.

I remembered when Apple announced the first iPhone, how iPhone OS was based on OS X. It's a no brainer then to see Apple keeping another "secret" R&D that has been running OS X on ARM all this time (just like having OS X on intel).
With the matching of Apple apps between iOS and MacOS (iLife, iWork apps), it's a big hint that Apple have those Mac apps running on ARM already. The only thing left is 3rd party apps. Apple managed to bridge that with Rosetta and universal binary during the transition from PowerPC to intel, but can they do the same from intel to ARM? They will have to because consumers will expect a Mac to run Mac apps.

I don't think it will be next year though, although it begs the question why Apple has not updated the Macbook Air lineup just yet.
Apple has to learn from the failure of WinRT. Windows people had been asking Microsoft to make Windows as fast and free from bloat (due to legacy support), but when MS launched WinRT, the same people expected it to run their old Windows apps. Apple needs to tiptoe around this (by doing emulation or rebranding the package to be a new OS/lineup, maybe) so they don't fall into the same trap. Last thing you want is the whiny tech "journalists" complaining that they cannot run their random app.
 
dogslobber said:
Rumors starting to circulate that the MBA will be ARM based.
Click to expand...

...full MacOS on a future iPad Pro, to compete with the MS Surface Pro, and where few people will complain about not being able to run Adobe CS or Windows/Linux VMs, would be more likely.

Note that you CAN run Windows 10 on ARM so boot camp support is still there.
Click to expand...

I think the only Windows 10 for ARM you can actually get is the embedded version for Raspberry PI which isn't the Boot Camp support you've been looking for. Everything else is rumour and, as far as I know, even when Windows RT was available, you couldn't buy it. In any case, Windows legacy apps built for x86 are unlikely to ever run on ARM, which would defeat one common reason for using boot camp.
 
theluggage said:
...full MacOS on a future iPad Pro, to compete with the MS Surface Pro, and where few people will complain about not being able to run Adobe CS or Windows/Linux VMs, would be more likely.
Click to expand...

I would love to see that personally. There are some items that the ipad cannot replace the traditional MAC for but this would bridge that.
 
theluggage said:
...full MacOS on a future iPad Pro, to compete with the MS Surface Pro, and where few people will complain about not being able to run Adobe CS or Windows/Linux VMs, would be more likely.
Click to expand...

I certainly hope it's not a direct port. I'd hate it to be like the Surface Pro with tiny little icons that is impossible to select with your finger. The macOS UI should be modified to work for touch.
 
satchmo said:
I certainly hope it's not a direct port. I'd hate it to be like the Surface Pro with tiny little icons that is impossible to select with your finger. The macOS UI should be modified to work for touch.
Click to expand...

Well, of course Steve Jobs was right in theory: there are mouse/keyboard UIs and touch UIs and you don't design them the same way, and using touch on a device in "laptop mode" is a recipe for "gorilla arms". I can't find a crack in that logic, but... that doesn't seem to be preventing Microsoft and others from selling a shedload of "convertibles" & calling out Apple for not having those features. Since that is, apparently, the only sector of the PC market currently showing much sign of life - so there's probably more money in it than a new Mac Pro - I guess that, at some stage, you have to give the customer what they want, rather than what they need.

However, first off, I guess the obvious candidate is going to be the 12" iPad Pro, so it will have a reasonable sized screen.

Secondly, Apple could potentially create a device that seamlessly mixed iOS and MacOS apps - so there were some apps you'd use with a keyboard and trackpad, others that you'd use in touch-only mode, and some that offered both interfaces. Not ideal, but Apple are better placed than Microsoft to make it work because they have decent software catalogs on both mobile & conventional, including lots of apps with versions on both platforms. Microsoft's problem was that they had nothing to offer on mobile.
 
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theluggage said:
Well, of course Steve Jobs was right in theory: there are mouse/keyboard UIs and touch UIs and you don't design them the same way, and using touch on a device in "laptop mode" is a recipe for "gorilla arms". I can't find a crack in that logic, but... that doesn't seem to be preventing Microsoft and others from selling a shedload of "convertibles" & calling out Apple for not having those features. Since that is, apparently, the only sector of the PC market currently showing much sign of life - so there's probably more money in it than a new Mac Pro - I guess that, at some stage, you have to give the customer what they want, rather than what they need.

However, first off, I guess the obvious candidate is going to be the 12" iPad Pro, so it will have a reasonable sized screen.

Secondly, Apple could potentially create a device that seamlessly mixed iOS and MacOS apps - so there were some apps you'd use with a keyboard and trackpad, others that you'd use in touch-only mode, and some that offered both interfaces. Not ideal, but Apple are better placed than Microsoft to make it work because they have decent software catalogs on both mobile & conventional, including lots of apps with versions on both platforms. Microsoft's problem was that they had nothing to offer on mobile.
Click to expand...

"A device that seamlessly mixed iOS and MacOS apps"

Google apparently executing on this strategy: Android apps on Chrome (fall 2016); Andromeda (further mixing in 2017).
 
Intel’s 7th generation Core processor, known as Kaby Lake, has already been included in multiple laptops, and now Asus is putting the CPU in its new ZenBook UX410. The laptop’s only 18.95mm thick and weighs 3.5 pounds. I wish I could help you visualize that width. A Macbook Air is approximately 17mm thick. Does that help? The UX410 also has a slim 6mm bezel and comes with a 14-inch Full HD display.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/6/13191028/asus-kaby-lake-intel-zenbook-ux410

Could the updated Macbook Air laptops come with Kaby Lake and skip Sky Lake?
 
dogslobber said:
http://www.iclarified.com/57138/apple-adds-arm-support-to-macos-sierra-kernel

Rumors starting to circulate that the MBA will be ARM based.

Note that you CAN run Windows 10 on ARM so boot camp support is still there.
Click to expand...

Windows 10 doesn't run on ARM apart from the version aimed at the Raspberry PI which is massively cut down version of windows (IoT Core)

Even if Microsoft do release a "full" version of Windows 10, the chances are it would only run store apps and there would be no way to run legacy x86 apps

I remember the days of virtual PC on a G5 and it was painful to say the least - definitely not something I'd want to go back to!
 
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