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There is no single chance to compete intel processors. Intel i9 and xenon processors are beast.
AMD’s GPU also required a very fast processors.
I see you have the ability to predict the future of processors that has not even been developed yet.
Apple is not going to simply pull a CPU of of an iPad and slap it into a Mac.
The machines what they do ship next year are going to have a very different CPU that what an iPad or an iPhone has.
The testing Mac Mini is simply going to put so developer can TEST software - They are certainly not being built to speed machines
Common sense people please!
 
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The period between the release of the 286 and the i9 was very long, so of course performance changed a lot. But the period from the release of this development system and the first retail Mac with Arm is projected to be less than a year. One year is not enough time to expect huge changes in performance. Not even a single generational change.
Demonstrably false. The chip in this dev kit was released publicly in mass quantities in 2018 in the iPad Pro, and was designed to function well in that environment - 1/4” think, cramped quarters, limited battery power and no cooling to speak of. They used it in this dev kit, rather than some newer iteration, because it’s powerful enough for the task at hand - developer transition. There was no need to put faster hardware in the box they’re leasing to thousands of developers. The machines that will start rolling out in the fall will be using entirely different chips, which have likely been in development for years, that are targeted towards the needs, and resources, of a laptop - more power and lots more cooling capacity, You seem unable to understand this point.

In the end, Arm will work well for many users who do typical things like email, web browsing, Youtube, and office work.
It’s clear that you’ve got your narrative etched in stone already, and are just bending any new tidbits as necessary to fit with your existing ”truth”. Why continue discussing it?
 
The machines that will start rolling out in the fall will be using entirely different chips, which have likely been in development for years,
I think the “X” variants of the ARM chips seen in iPads for many years now, have been developed with the later use as Mac CPU already in mind. Perhaps they have even been explicitly developed to eventually lead up to an ARM Mac and put in iPads for testing purposes and (partially) re-financing R&D costs.
 
can apple just make an appletv with this chip running Mac OS and normal appletv software. It would be a perfect entertainment center computer/streaming device.
 
It takes me 6 hours to statically compile Qt on my 2015 mbp.
I'd look at things like precompiled headers. With one project I got a four time speedup just doing that, with no code change. And I'd look at the number of compile threads. Some open source apps spend three times more time to check their environment than the actual compile.
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"running any benchmark tests on it" This statement is very telling.....
Of course. "There will never be a Mac shipped to customers with this chip, so benchmarks will at best be misleading".
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I wonder if in the future there will be a jailbreak for an iPad Pro to run macOS ARM, especially now that they have mouse and keyboard support, or vice versa iPadOS running on a macOS ARM mini?
Why would anyone want that?
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For sure. For the purposes of dev validation though, I'm surprised the DTK isn't the size of an Apple TV. Maybe needs room for the port contingent?
Squeezing it into less space costs time and money, which would be completely wasted.
 
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It takes me 6 hours to statically compile Qt on my 2015 mbp.

No, it takes you 6 hours to compile a massive laundry list of packages (including several semi-independent components of Qt) on which Qt depends.

If only there were tools to manage dependencies between packages so that you didn't have to keep doing that... maybe someone could even make a tool so you didn't even need to re-compile a whole package every time you changed a few lines...
 
I see you have the ability to predict the future of processors that has not even been developed yet.
Apple is not going to simply pull a CPU of of an iPad and slap it into a Mac.
The machines what they do ship next year are going to have a very different CPU that what an iPad or an iPhone has.
The testing Mac Mini is simply going to put so developer can TEST software - They are certainly not being built to speed machines
Common sense people please!

Apple likely also used the A12z to avoid tipping off the competition as to what their custom silicon would be capable of.

If an iPad chip is already capable of better performance than many an intel chip, I can’t wait to see what a chip designed with a laptop or PC form factor will be truly capable of.

Just imagine - longer battery life and superior performance in a thin and light form factor without fear of thermal throttling.
 
I use it mainly for Logic Pro and I haven't gotten the last few OS X upgrades because the machine is not supported, plus I can't get the new update for Logic Pro along with the other stuff I use on it. My issue is that if I spend $2,000 on an i7 Mini now, in 2 years they will be converting to ARM and I'll have to sell it for a big loss and get an ARM machine if I want updates.

No they won't - they'll **hopefully** have an ARM version of the Mac mini out by then. Just because it's out doesn't mean Intel development has stopped. a Mac mini is a budget machine - think about the people who have a £15,000 Mac Pro Intel rig - they'll be supported for a solid 7-8 years to come. It'll be a longer transition than PPC to Intel because Intel had ready to go chips and Apple don't. Intel had solid platforms available for all desktop systems, Apple don't.

There are planned Intel systems which haven't even released yet! There's no doubt in my mind you'd get a solid 7 years of use and updates and support for apps out of all Intel systems released a which point a 7 year old system isn't worth much anyway.
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Now the question remains - how much will Apple lock down? I THOUGHT Apple got slapped bad for soldering down the RAM on the Mac Mini, and many of their iMacs, as the latest revisions allow you to upgrade the RAM. I hope this trend continues. Although I am not a fan of locked down internal storage, I can understand why the T2 or U2 security enclave may make this a requirement.

But, please do not hamstring your devices by soldering the RAM down. To me, this is a deal breaker; I really want to love this line up. I really want to buy a new Mac. But solder in the RAM - and I am going to stick with my old, unsupported Mac.

Of course RAM will be soldered - they've never gone back at all, the latest revisions don't let you upgrade the RAM. The Mac mini and the iMac Pro have non user friendly ways to get into them where you can physically remove the chips - but the 27-inch iMac is really the only system left with user upgradeable ram and once that goes thin and SSD only no doubt it'll go.

Can't say I really care, the only reason people want to upgrade their own ram is to save money.
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So we can assume within a day it will be benchmarked, disassembled and all the results put on to social media.

We know what an A12Z can do though. It's of no interest - it's not going into a consumer product.
 
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But it is the end of the line for media editing, Engineeeing and certainly for those who need virtual machines and Bootcamp. Those users will have to decide between Linux and Windows.

Just to let you know, Linux exists in ARM (that's how it runs in a Raspberry but also in more powerful boards, and it just does the same as x86_64 counterparts).
 
to aapl:
new a12z mac mini spec should have
way better performance than quad i7
easy user replacable ram
user upgradable discreet graphics gpu
easy user replaceable ssd
another small on led next to rear power button
i still like the shape and color
 
1) Who's going to get this hot new piece of Hardware and not run any Benchmark tests or see what's cooking inside?
2) Will I get my $500.00 back at the end if they don't let me keep it?
3) Maybe it makes more sense to wait until the
Apple says you can't use the system for benchmark testing.
IMO, Apple iOS just trying to avoid having benchmarks for a prototype become public before the official release, as these could affect public perception and their stock value. Besides, it makes no sense.
I'm sure you'll get this Mac mini under a NDA.
As long as you don't make any Benchmark results public and don't share it even with your friends, you should be OK.
Of course, read the fine print of the NDA, just in case.
 
to aapl:
new a12z mac mini spec should have
way better performance than quad i7
easy user replacable ram
user upgradable discreet graphics gpu
easy user replaceable ssd
another small on led next to rear power button
i still like the shape and color

They are not selling an a12z Mac mini, so what’s the point ?
 
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To all the people talking about benchmarks and ifixit tear downs this is not a system that’s not going to be sold ever. Apple took an iPad processor and shoved it into a Mac mini just to develop software. An ARM based Mac will have a different processor designed for this purpose
 
As a hardware nerd, I’m just curious to see what the insides of these Apple silicon based machines look like. I love iFixit’s tear downs, and looking at Apple’s prototypes with the red logic board always is interesting. Someone posted internals of the DTK G5 (with Intel motherboard)
It's just an iPhone in a box. I found out when my device started ringing.
 
Yeah that article on the Apple TV Dev kit really blew up the Internet.

iFixit basically thrives off of hot takes/scoops and the associated traffic they bring along with people buying their overpriced tools that they subsequently use to **** up their devices because rIgHt To RePaiR!!!11!
 
iFixit basically thrives off of hot takes/scoops and the associated traffic they bring along with people buying their overpriced tools that they subsequently use to **** up their devices because rIgHt To RePaiR!!!11!
Of course they do. But who the hell cares about an Apple TV Dev kit? For $5 in ad revenue they nuked their relationship with Apple.
 
Sorry - the days of "I'm compiling code so I need the top end model" came to an end years ago - especially with the advent of SSDs (but I won't tell your boss if you don't - Folding@Home needs your over-specced machine to solve coronavirus ... :) ). (OK, I'm being snarky - there are some seriously large code bases out there and loadsa cores do help - but when I were a lad you had to swap floppies 16 times just to compile a 'Hello World' program in Pascal and we was grateful!).

...but if you did manage to blag a 28-core Mac Pro "for compiling" then don't worry - you can still compile for ARM targets on an Intel Mac (if not, the iPhone would be in big trouble...)
Only had 64K to write a BASIC Program.
 
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