I have the duty to debunk every argument from sublunar
Except you didn't. You missed out major points of order without comment, especially the discounted price that I surmised that Apple was getting from Intel, marketing arguments, and the technical arguments where Intel have a long track record of power efficiency with their mobile CPUs while AMD's solution is still largely vapourware.
These are incredibly strong reasons for Apple to stick with Intel. And should really end the argument without much more discussion over the relative merits of any of the platforms.
Rather than expecting me to 'Google everything' it's perfectly fine for people to comb my back catalogue here to see what I thought at the time and guess how much cross referencing and research I do when I have the time. People might find my 2017 prediction of a 14" and 16" MacBook Pro - in which the keyboard gets fixed while distracting users with bigger screen and larger battery to excuse away the inevitable size increase for the keyboard. And an acceptance that Apple wouldn't do it quickly because it would be a marketing fail to get rid of the Butterfly keyboard after just 2 generations. Apple tried 3 revisions before quietly going with back to the Scissor switch and haven't done an on-stage with MacBook Pro for quite some time. Very telling...
Apple never cares to prevent Hackintosh-ers crowd from running macOS, FYI since macOS Sierra by first time magically Hackintosh-ers can run macOS on AMD, even now there's an online community specific for AMD Hackintoshs www amdmac com, Even assuming Apple actually want to kickoff Hackintoshs, why they do the opposite testing (and releasing) beta driver's for AMD APUs ? This solely debunk your thesis, it's just a personal bias.
It's also ok to suggest there's a bias involved. I find it very amusing that you think I'm shilling for Intel here when I have been offering BUSINESS motivations for Apple to stay with Intel. If I were building a PC now I'd choose AMD with no problem at most budgets. But I'm building just one PC to suit me at my own budget. I'm not running a multi-billion dollar business.
Apple have to deal with a number of product lines and generations going years in advance - they may well be very disappointed with Intel's struggles recently but you can bet that Intel REALLY want to keep their business because the news headlines of Apple switching to AMD would be catastrophic for their share price. Ergo, there's going to be some major discounting going on behind the scenes.
Let's not forget that Apple are not interested in winning the benchmark drag race for all their products. Power efficiency is important, design more so.
I don't like to repeat myself too often, and I'm not going to fully cross reference everything I've ever written in this forum (because my walls of text will become even larger!), but my original reaction to AMD stuff appearing in the Catalina Betas was that of a standard negotiating tactic by Apple.
It would be remiss of Apple not to continually test AMD gear just in case. They probably have an ARM setup going somewhere in the deepest recesses of the UFO labs too. Why else is the Catalyst programme going?
It's more interesting that they made these AMD drivers public - and continue to do so. I'm not saying that Apple won't make a switch in the future, I'm saying they'd have to change every non Xeon product when they do because the benchmarks will look skewed on a mix of Intel and AMD products. And in my opinion there just isn't a proven track record of achievement for AMD in the H CPU range to prove anything for Apple right now - that's partly why we have a 16" MacBook Pro using Coffee Lake CPUs. At the time AMD had no product.
Being serious now, Apple probably don't want to actively kill Hackintosh by not supporting AMD for that reason alone, but rather they would make a spec plateau by requiring a T1 CPU (to take in the 2016 MacBook Pros) in a future macOS in 5-6 years time and they do that by adding the T2 across the range to include iMac.
ASRock is using Intel Titan ridge tb3, no mess TB3(usb4) it's an open STD and an independent business unit at intel, as x550/i210 nic are the most popular nic in AMD motherboard, even if Apple opts for an AMD grown USB4 it do not need drivers change as USB 4(tb3) it's also a driver specification, before someone's release it's own USB4 header it has to be driver compatible with tb3 STD.
Apple do cheap out on motherboard chipsets - they used to use entry level Intel ones as far as I recall from early iMac days - but probably not as cheap as Asrock. And I like Asrock. It's on my list of suppliers if I was to build a PC to a certain budget.
But I would be careful not to do a quick search on retailer websites looking for the cheapest components - it's only a short step away from complaining that you can get 1Tb of SSD far cheaper than Apple charge. And we all know that Apple's SSD is the best you can get - even if you complain that it's on a proprietary connector. There's a reason why cheap brands are cheap sometimes. Conversely, the more expensive brands generally do something to deserve it - it's not always marketing.
Using Intel CPU means Apple has to buy and integrate pcie muxers, besides cost muxers add latency to the hardware attached to it, applications like 8K vídeo capture are very sensitive to this latency.
Better and cheaper and cleaner not using CPUs that need muxers.
Stuff like this is now minutia which is dealt with by the Pro Mac models though (not solved, necessarily). At the lower end, a lot of people won't care about that. 8k capture is in the realms of professionals at the moment to use your example. 4-6k is hard enough.
The cheese grater new Mac pro (aka MP late 19) and the Pro Display HDR with it's peculiar design with holes for increased airflow, are a clear evidence Apple is departing from the idea about shape over performance priority, to reliability and performance with style.
Thus the days for Mac having thermal throttling are numbered.
Let me sigh again while I read yet another comment from forumites who demand Apple go after outright benchmarks for every product - Apple have done it with the Mac Pro and iMac Pro which is nice. I don't think they will need to do that with the iMac and Mini. Most of these users are also valuing the other things that Apple put a lot of effort into. And they will want Apple to produce stuff at a decent price.
Let's not deny that any Apple product is also designed to look good - they certainly don't make faceless aluminium boxes. For balance, some PC manufacturers make quiet, well damped, and good looking cases that aren't $100.
But Apple should also pay attention to silence/quiet workflows because that's a major selling point for them as far as I am concerned - something that rightly costs a lot to get right in custom build PC aimed at people who want a civilised (read, quiet) work environment.
People asking Apple to win the performance crown at all costs forget that Apple are also doing it with a sense of style AND relative silence. And this gets more important with the lower end machines which consumers are more likely to buy. I for one prefer my computers to be quiet.
It's users matter to find compatible RAM, retailers as OWC will be happy to find it and sell the right kits.
Historically people also bought from Crucial.
I think you've definitely overlooked the average Mac user here. Apple don't want people coming into an Apple store complaining that the cheap 3rd party RAM they bought doesn't play nice with the RAM that was already there. I suspect it was easy enough for them to eliminate the SSD issue too (I'm quite bored of the 'I can buy more SSD cheaper' crowd.)
This it's very supine, engineering AMD CPU in Mac ecosystem need no change in macOS neither enforce developers to recompile (and sometimes rewrite) it's apps for an all different CPU. Same way, engineering motherboard for AMD CPU it's not different than doing for each new Intel iteration.
This is the same Apple that didn't bother to spend the money re-engineering a Mac mini refresh for 4 years after the 2014 model. Or a Mac Pro (2013) for 6 years. Let's not forget that Intel have the AVX extensions that appear to help out with video export (another thing that you didn't address) that AMD don't have. I'm not saying it's a factor because AMD would happily throw more cores at it and beat most Intel competition that way - but I had to address my own point - you didn't.
Let me throw in another (current) truism about the AMD vs Intel debate.
AMD's single thread performance lags Intel - many basic users' workflows don't need more than 4 threads and benefit more from the single fast thread. In a laptop it's more important how well quickly it powers down and conserves juice after doing what it needs to do. AMD can throw cores at the issue, unlock every CPU (Apple don't allow overclocking although 'Pro Mode' might be the open door for the future), throw more cache RAM at the issue, offer better iGPU (or no GPU at all to give more space on the die for CPU), and undercut Intel for consumers. AMD's process size reduction is ahead of Intel and will give them performance and potentially cooling advantages but Apple could be waiting for Intel's own 10NM/7NM products, after being asked to stay loyal with some really nice deals.
Intel will probably meet what Apple are looking for in the mobile space - decent performance, good enough graphics, far better power consumption, and huge discounts to stay exclusive to Intel. The AMD 4000 U and H series look interesting and if I were an AMD dealmaker I'd be dying to get a deal with Apple for laptops to try and get people away from the impression that AMD in the mobile space is junk. This is because in general AMD's mobile products were used in low end laptops as far as I could see and have a bad reputation. Imagine how much that would be worth to AMD to win notebook business from Apple? And the subsequent halo effect in the future?
Mac Pro is not that ego machine people use to buy as pride trophy, are machines that pays itself over the time doing heavy dark work, launching an iMac Pro 5K mini-led with 64 core Threadripper and Navi 23 GPU, won't care those studios that needs 4 Navi 23, they care about AMD and apple release for that GPU (actual reason to buy a Mac Pro), may eat market for programmers most likely, but unlikely to hold studios buying Mac Pro s , even an iMac Pro won't run run workloads that requires week at full throttle 24/7 rendering or doing deep learning or whatever.
Mac Pro appears to be a machine aimed squarely at certain workloads in certain professional market segments for Mac users. I really hope it does well but I'm sure that hobbyists are sad about being steadily priced out of that market ever since the 2006-2012 Mac Pro and then the 2013 Mac Pro.
I'm sure a lot of old time Mac users just want an affordable tower they can add to. Something between the Mini and a Mac Pro which seems to move ever further away from the affordability of a large number of desktop users.
The Mini appears to be aimed at Colo style users who don't need GPU - requiring an eGPU for extra Metal computing performance is pricey at that level and many users bang on continually to have a upgradable box that can have built in graphics, removable RAM and storage.
This is actually the reason for leaving Intel as supplier, intel csbt even deliver now the products already on backlog without delay.
Switching to AMD, not just means scalability, as and for the next 3 years at least will keep the performance efficiency cost crown, there's also another reason, supply chain, AMD manufactures it's chiplets using the same TSMC 7nm process as Apple, Apple buy TSMC production in excess (that ussulay resell if not needed) for iPhone's iPad and t2 SOC, these unused waffers could be reassigned to AMD in order to keep stable the supply chain in case of high demand, instead having to wait for availability or resell exedent waffers.
While AMD could produce desktop chips happily, they have no recent track record in delivering decent mobile solutions at the volume that Apple would want. And that's 80% of the pie.
Apple need CPUs for the 14" MacBook Pro and 16" MacBook Pro in volume for an October 2020 launch latest. Apple CANNOT get this wrong. And that's the biggest reason that Apple would skip AMD this year - why chase a vapourware product that's not even out yet? They may even already have ruled it out if engineering samples show unacceptable high power consumption or heat by Apple's own metrics.
There's no problem with getting desktop stuff for iMac and Mac mini but Apple may have to wait until after July this year for Zen 3 (AMD 4000 series) desktops.
[I moved some bits around - everything is still being addressed though]
You even didn't read about the AMD APUs Apple is testing, FYI (take time on Google reading about, to avoid being ashamed by ignorance), Jusy to name a single APU: Renoir, it comes in mobile and desktop SKU, from 4 to 8 core in mobile and from 8 to 16 in desktop, both having Navi GPU, higher end desktop SKU having Navi 23, as powerful as a rtx2070 or 2080 maybe. Both fits inside a laptop, and likely inside a Mac mini.
I have read about them. And I don't see Apple using them in a Mini while the Colo people have their say. A lot of Minis will be running headless or with users who don't need a few extra FPS in low end gaming so 'better graphics' could be wasted on a Mini.
And fitting an AMD H series CPU into the Mini because it's got a GPU would mean probable benchmark reverses over the existing 65w Intel CPUs in the 2018 Mini. NOT something that Phil Schiller will want to show off.
And I've already pointed out that the GPU-less 65w Ryzens can't work in the Mini while the Ryzen 5 3400g (or, let's be fair, a Ryzen 5 4400g) probably wouldn't be a material improvement over a i5-8400 or an i5-10400.
So where exactly does the Mini go in the existing shape?
Navi 23 being as powerful as a top of the line Nvidia 2080 GPU (itself having 200w power draw and seen as much more power efficient than anything AMD produces?) AND fitting into a Mac mini case? Did I misread that?
Sounds like an unnecessary AMD bias from Mago at the moment. From my brief dip into AMD GPUs they are suffering from poor drivers which are hitting Macs too. That's a temporary setback but the fact remains at the moment that Nvidia's GPUs appear to have lower TDP, lower price, and higher performance. AMD are catching up fast and since Apple have all their compute eggs in the AMD basket every Mac user needs to hope that Navi is good. But I have my doubts having read into the medium range with AMD's
RDNA improvements to come.
AMD Renoir is still using a relatively inefficient and hot running Vega CU core is it not? And in effect we're looking at an Iris Pro style performance when applied to 45w heat profile. Again, Apple won't be looking to top benchmarks, they want to see how small they can get the package and still do 10-12 hours of wireless browsing. Iris Graphics might just be fine for them.
In the mobile sector, they'll be looking at AMD support for LPDDR4X (up to 32Gb) which is a vast improvement on Intel's Comet Lake S 15w offerings which still only support LPDDR3. In the mobile space there's no problem with soldering RAM. There may be a problem in the Mac mini.
In a desktop package Renoir might get used as an entry level iMac SKU. You can expect Apple to be loading up with proper AMD GPUs for anything higher end.
Now on the mobile side, Apple could revert back to the arrangement back in the Iris Pro 2015 15" MacBook Pro days where the onboard discrete GPU is deactivated when on the go and not using anything too strenuous.
It's no good to a music producer who is just sequencing some tracks and needs shedloads of RAM and performance storage.
In a 16" MacBook Pro I doubt Renoir APU would perform well enough up against AMDs own 5500 Pro.
Again, Apple would want the benchmarks to go UP year on year rather than down.
For a 14" SKU Apple would be looking for a 28w SKU with the equivalent of Iris Pro graphics. There's precious little of that around right now.
From Picasso to Renoir and van Gogh.3400g it's an low-end Apu, AMD even has flexibility to develop semi-custom product as the new APU driving the new Xbox and PS5, Yes the future iMac and Mac mini could accommodate the same compute-graphic power, while leaving behind the poor under powered not up for gaming shadow it has since the Ive era.
Microsoft and Sony expect to sell millions of units of their games console per year so can clearly buy at volume from AMD.
Combined sales figures would probably dwarf what Apple get for their desktop Macs in the best of years. And Apple refresh every year which means extra engineering expense every year.
And here's where I spin off your point with a little brainstorm. It's no worth its own thread in my opinion as it's a complete flight of theoretical fancy.
What if Apple wanted AMD to custom design a setup to drive 4k and 5k iMacs at whatever screen size suits them?
Who knows how much the
APU going into the Xbox and PS5 will cost to Microsoft and Sony? I hear that they won't be selling them at a loss - rather they'll be selling them at (very) small profit. Such a platform could be developed for Apple by AMD on the QT with ease if they thought they could shift devices in enough volume.
Importantly, could this be the source of the recent Apple gaming rumour? In effect any Mini driven by this would instantly have to be a mini tower like the Xbox Series X which Apple desktop users have been hankering after for some time if the Mini was going to get involved in this. I'm thinking a single SKU with different storage amounts.
Let's look at the games consoles you mention.
On the basis of the sales figures from 2019,
Apple sold under 18 millions Macs. If 20% of them were desktops we're looking at 4 million for the year - a smaller fraction of which would be Minis.
Sony sold 2.8 million ageing PS4s in a quarter in 2019. The bigger number is between 90-100 million units since the PS4's launch in November 2013 - over 6 years ago.
And with that generation of consoles going to AMD for what is effectively a customised PC, would Apple be able to get AMD to make them a variant of the next generation Gonzalo APU to their specification to fit inside an iMac? By doing this Apple would no longer have to engineer towards an annual Intel/AMD refresh because that chipset would only get efficiency changes over time.
It's a pity that true 4k gaming at the moment is not really feasible with current hardware but could Apple have their own plans for taking the iMac forward for the next generation?
Look at the direction of travel for future games machines with x86 cores. Microsoft's next gen design for the Series X console
even apes PCs.
Console thinking sees a single product launched and then staying the same for the entire lifetime of the unit. Yes, storage amounts may change and the price of the product almost certainly comes down over time as the unit becomes cheaper to manufacture.
By comparison, Apple did this with the Mac Pro 2013 until 2019 - about as long as the PS4 has been around! (I'm here all week, tip your waitress!
) but didn't reduce prices as that's not their style. Same with the Mac mini 2014 to be fair.
Would computer consumers accept a high end macOS 'gaming' device in October 2020 or 2021 that was a fixed spec for years - the entire lifespan of the product? Could Apple make more of the Metal API? Could it actually be used in an iMac? And perhaps in a Mini Pro?
Apple would 'refresh' by doubling the SSD over time or offer USB 3.2 initially and then USB4 in due course having initially not used Thunderbolt 3 to keep the price down on the 'non-pro' product?
And this would be something capable of running macOS.
Still a silly idea?
I'm still more of the advocate of a tvOS ARM based device that Apple would have complete control of - and already has a potential library of games for - rather than a monolithic macOS device that would probably only get ports of years old PC games to start with. There's still a rumour over a forthcoming AppleTV so a powerful streaming box looks certain but larger storage SKUs to deal with games would be logical.
Where the current Mac mini GPU gets it's ram? And FYI AMD semi-custom Apu gloriously can be ordered having discrete GPU ram, ddr5 or hbm.
Before being ashamed again, take your time to support your argument on both reliable and informed sources, not biased ones.
I'll concede the point there on the onboard memory for the Mini but the AMD GPUs sell themselves on GPU performance. And there's a difficult juggling act to decide whether a few percent extra FPS is worth the extra cost in faster RAM to achieve it.
At least Intel never made any big bones about the efficacy of the HD630 and Apple expect anyone who wants more to plug in a hugely expensive dedicated eGPU.
An 6k iMac Pro yes unaffordable, undermining Mac Pro? Unlikely, not toys, with few exceptions people buy those right to make money on it, instead to show as pride trophy.
The 5k iMac Pro looks decent value if you need those parts - specifically the 5k screen. I'm not sure Apple would make a 6k 32" iMac Pro work. The heat going onto the back screen would be huge. This is why the Mac Pro exists.
