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New Macbook in 2018?

Falhófnir said:
Watch the keynote where the intel switch is announced - they'd basically been making MacOS for intel in parallel for 5-6 iterations before the switch. Considering iOS uses many of the same underlying technologies, but on ARM, I find it inconceivable they haven't been tinkering with MacOS on ARM for at least as long as iOS has existed. All things considered they are probably an order of magnitude better placed to switch to ARM today than they were to switch to intel 15 years ago.
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Good and interesting point, thanks. I guess I am just pointing out the difference between an announcement (which is cool, and exciting) and offering actual hardware for sale. IMO Apple is not going to offer an A-series MacOS machine for sale any time soon. If they did, would it run apps in emulation? I'm just trying to figure out how all that would work.
 
Falhófnir said:
Watch the keynote where the intel switch is announced - they'd basically been making MacOS for intel in parallel for 5-6 iterations before the switch. Considering iOS uses many of the same underlying technologies, but on ARM, I find it inconceivable they haven't been tinkering with MacOS on ARM for at least as long as iOS has existed. All things considered they are probably an order of magnitude better placed to switch to ARM today than they were to switch to intel 15 years ago.
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Yup. IIRC, in addition to the OS being developed in parallel on intel, Steve Jobs had this rule that required all major Apple native software to be submitted to a mysterious secretive group within Apple that made sure it was following all the design rules for Mac OS X. What other people there didn't realize though was that they were recompiling the software on Intel to ensure that it the software wasn't being designed into a corner. This had been going on for years.
HappyIntro said:
That's funny, I guess my memory is fuzzy. I remember a big announcement that Apple was switching from PowerPC to Intel, along with a timeline for the first machines to start showing up and lots of reassurances of significant continued support for legacy PPC machines. E.g., Apple didn't just switch by showing up at an event with intel machines - if Apple is indeed porting MacOS to an A-series architecture, they would probably announce it way before any machines are available, give all developers a timeline and a bunch of tools to help them get their apps up and running and we'd get to wait 12 to 18 months for real hardware.

There seems to be speculation that Apple can just show up at the next event with MacOS laptop running on an A12. That doesn't seem possible to me. But I love surprises...

EDIT: Not possible for Apple to show up at an event with A-series laptops ready for sale - of course they could show us a prototype as part of an official announcement of their efforts.
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They could show up at an event with A-series laptops ready for sale. They wouldn't necessarily do that, but they could. The key here is they could happily continue selling Intel laptops too. For Apple apps, they would already be running on ARM. The problem is third party apps.

That's one reason why a possible switch didn't bother me when I bought a new MacBook last year. The most compatible in the near term will be Intel laptops, so if I were buying today, I'd still buy an Intel laptop. The main things I need are macOS, Apple software, MS Office, and some third party software. I suspect they might work with MS ahead of time, but there would still be need for time for Office on mac ARM to mature, so waiting for a few years to upgrade wouldn't bother me.

During the transition period, Apple could go with fat binaries again, that would be compatible with both ARM and Intel platforms.

As for a translation layer like Rosetta? I don't know if I'd want that, but FWIW, it could work for some applications like Office during the transition period, now that we have A chips that can do more than 11000 in Geekbench 4 multi-core. Even with the performance hit, the performance would be acceptable for some students and some business users who are used to MacBook-level performance.
 
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EugW said:
They could show up at an event with A-series laptops ready for sale. They wouldn't necessarily do that, but they could. The key here is they could happily continue selling Intel laptops too.
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An A series powered Mac laptop could be called an iBook - reviving the old laptop name which is a distance away from modern Macs. Remember that iBook name has been replaced with Apple Books on Mojave.

EugW said:
That's one reason why the switch doesn't bother me. The most compatible in the near term will be Intel laptops, so if I were buying today, I'd still buy an Intel laptop. The main things I need are macOS, Apple software, and MS Office. I suspect they might work with MS ahead of time, but there would still be need for time for Office on mac ARM to mature, so waiting for a few years to upgrade wouldn't bother me.
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I think there's still going to be a case for an Intel MacBook Pro for years to come. It's the lower end of the market where the performance could be roughly equal but the price would be better and allow the usual thinner, longer battery life etc.

EugW said:
As for a translation layer like Rosetta? I don't know if I'd want that, but FWIW, it could work for some applications like Office during the transition period, now that we have A chips that can do more than 11000 in Geekbench 4 multi-core. Even with the performance hit, the performance would be acceptable for some students and some business users who are used to MacBook-level performance.
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I'm not sure Apple would find the performance of an emulated Intel CPU acceptable, it worked for the Rosetta period because the Intel CPUs were just superior in performance and could do speeds of approximately a fast G4 under emulation if I recall. I'm not sure the performance would be up there going the other way.
 
HappyIntro said:
I'm not sure Apple would find the performance of an emulated Intel CPU acceptable, it worked for the Rosetta period because the Intel CPUs were just superior in performance and could do speeds of approximately a fast G4 under emulation if I recall. I'm not sure the performance would be up there going the other way.
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Well, that's why I think they'd start with a MacBook (or as you say, iBook). A faster A-series ARM chip (not necessarily the one in the iPhone) would not only be able to beat an Amber Lake Y chip in native mode, it would also be able to compete reasonably well enough with an older generation Core m3 in emulation.
 
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EugW said:
Well, that's why I think they'd start with a MacBook (or as you say, iBook). A faster A-series ARM chip (not necessarily the one in the iPhone) would not only be able to beat an Amber Lake Y chip in native mode, it would also be able to compete reasonably well enough with an older generation Core m3 in emulation.
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FYI, the quote in your post above shows as coming from me, but it was sublunar. At any rate, a MacBook would be perfect for the A12 (or A12X or upcoming A13). While I am sticking with my 2017 MacBook for the long haul, it would be awesome to see what an A-series MacBook could do.
 
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EugW said:
Well, that's why I think they'd start with a MacBook (or as you say, iBook). A faster A-series ARM chip (not necessarily the one in the iPhone) would not only be able to beat an Amber Lake Y chip in native mode, it would also be able to compete reasonably well enough with an older generation Core m3 in emulation.
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That makes the most logical sense and if Apple don't find a compelling reason for people to stick with the 12" MacBook they might find more buyers with a higher specification iBook attacking the low end of the market. If they were being fair also, they might also decide that the gap left behind by a higher specification Mac Mini could be filled by a headless iServer.

I've said previously that software for these could be locked down to an App Store at least initially. Sounds like the perfect thing for introduction at WWDC 2019 as part of a migration for non-Pro Macs to A series CPU.
 
HappyIntro said:
if Apple is indeed porting MacOS to an A-series architecture, they would probably announce it way before any machines are available, give all developers a timeline and a bunch of tools to help them get their apps up and running and we'd get to wait 12 to 18 months for real hardware.
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ARM (the way Apple uses it) and Intel x86 are both little endian processors. Both are going to be exclusively a 64 bit environment. Apple controls the development tools, so they can make sure that structs get laid out in memory exactly the same. Thus, compiled user mode software wouldn't need to know which architecture it is running upon. This would not be like the PPC to Intel transition which was an endianess change.

In terms of tools, remember that developers can submit their applications to Apple in "bitcode", an intermediate representation used by the compiler. I could see Apple announcing a new machine, going over the feature set and benchmarks, showing some third party apps running on the new machine, and then revealing that is running on an A-series - but don't worry, there are already thousands of apps in the Mac app store that run on this new machine. (Those'll be the apps which were submitted in bitcode format.)
 
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Suttree said:
Fingers crossed for a Touch Bar, second USB-C port at the least. Love to see rounded corners too.
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There won’t be a Touch Bar on the new MacBook, the idea is for a general consumer and student Mac at a lower cost. According to Ming Chi Kuo it will have Touch ID tho but no Touch Bar.
 
EightyTwenty said:
The touch bar is a silly gimmick. It's only purpose is to drastically inflate the price of whatever machine it's needlessly added to.
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Touch bar MBPs have been around for quite some time now, so I think it is just fair to make an evaluation of how successful it is at this point.

Do I do things with mine that I could not do with the function keys ?
No. It actually only makes things harder (no physical feedback + some weird behaviors for some shortcuts + it crashed once or twice, and required to reboot the laptop ---not something a physical keyboard ever required me to do)

Do my colleagues who also have one rave about it ?
No. If anything they will complain about the keyboard, but never say anything good about the touch bar.

Do I often see applications developer websites advertising special features for touch bar MBPs ?
Not that I remember.

Sounds like a failure at this point. And still, I fear Apple will not recognize it and will even keep removing nTB models (will the nTB MBP survive ? I hope so but I fear not...). So at least it would be good that Apple does not force it together with the compromises that come with it, on the users of lower end or lighter laptops.
 
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Why is Apple working to port ios apps into macos if they are thinking for arm macos and by default the ios apps will work then?!?
 
So, there's an Apple event on Oct. 30.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/18/apple-event-new-york-city/

appleinvitesoctober-800x592.jpg
 
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EightyTwenty said:
Why? Just donate the extra $200 you'd be charged to a local charity.

The touch bar is a silly gimmick. It's only purpose is to drastically inflate the price of whatever machine it's needlessly added to.
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For my workflow in television production (before that, publishing and advertising), the Touch Bar is a boon for my productivity.
 
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Suttree said:
For my workflow in television production (before that, publishing and advertising), the Touch Bar is a boon for my productivity.
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Pretty much everyone I know that likes the Touch Bar does video production. Everyone else one I know dislikes it or is just indifferent.

Sure, that's a small sample size but it seems to a large extent that is reflected here as well, with your post being a case in point.

And most people I know who buy their Macs for video production don't get the MacBook. They get the MacBook Pro (unless they already have an iMac).
 
EugW said:
Pretty much everyone I know that likes the Touch Bar does video production. Everyone else one I know dislikes it or is just indifferent.

Sure, that's a small sample size but it seems to a large extent that is reflected here as well, with your post being a case in point.

And most people I know who buy their Macs for video production don't get the MacBook. They get the MacBook Pro (unless they already have an iMac).
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Which just says to me that it's really an issue with software implementation and not an issue with the Touch Bar being useless.
 
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It will be interesting to see what Mac's get updated at the keynote, it's about time Mac's got an update!!
 
probably mac mini, macbook, and imac
Next year will be the year for mac pro , macbook pro and imac pro
 
Hope this event has news on the MacBook. I’m considering buying one of the new budget models even though I’ll be running Windows most of the time. Absurd, I know, but I don’t trust the build quality of many PC manufacturers.
 
When they announce the new computers, how long do they typically make it actually available for purchase?
 
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