Apple to move Mac to Arm CPUs: What you need to know
Apple's move to Arm processors has been telegraphed for months, but developers are going to have to get ready.
www.zdnet.com
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That Mac Shift To ARM...
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www.zdnet.com
I'm looking forward to seeing macOS for ARM shoehorned into QEMU and onto a Raspberry Pi then.
My understanding is that while it is ARM, these are Apple produced chips. I believe then that we will eventually see the final construction of the Apple walled garden.
Apple has been tracking this way lately with SIP and their focus on preventing changes to MacOS. I foresee a day when the Mac you purchase is just like your iPhone. To use it in the way you wish you will need to jailbreak it - if that's even still a thing by then. I don't like where this is going.
That said, I'm about ten years or so behind Apple's leading products. It's a shame, but that new (old) MP I just bought may be my last Mac purchase. I'm willing to jailbreak my iDevices, but not so much my computers (I shouldn't have to).
Be interesting to see where all this goes. It'd be nice if I was wrong.
Apple has been tracking this way lately with SIP and their focus on preventing changes to MacOS. I foresee a day when the Mac you purchase is just like your iPhone. To use it in the way you wish you will need to jailbreak it - if that's even still a thing by then. I don't like where this is going.
That said, I'm about ten years or so behind Apple's leading products. It's a shame, but that new (old) MP I just bought may be my last Mac purchase. I'm willing to jailbreak my iDevices, but not so much my computers (I shouldn't have to).
Be interesting to see where all this goes. It'd be nice if I was wrong.
I am with @eyoungren on this one - macOS on ARM interests me as something new to play around with but I'm (most likely) never going to buy their new hardware.
I think this time it'll be different from the PowerPC-to-Intel transition. Intel industry support isn't going away unless Microsoft also decides to transition their operating system entirely to ARM and stop supporting Intel, which I don't see happening. Worst-case scenario, Apple stops supporting their Intel Macs after two OS cycles (which would be in line with what they did last time around), but the Macs will still be supported by Windows, Linux, etc. well into the future.
The main article on MacRumors states that the first ARM Mac processor is expected to be a 12-core CPU (without the thermal constraints of the iPhone and iPad), which would make the first ARM Macs beasts compared to the Intel Macs as Apple's current CPUs in the iPad Pros already match some of Intel's higher-end processors and outperform the lower-to-midrange lineup, so I'm interested to see where this goes.
The main article on MacRumors states that the first ARM Mac processor is expected to be a 12-core CPU (without the thermal constraints of the iPhone and iPad), which would make the first ARM Macs beasts compared to the Intel Macs as Apple's current CPUs in the iPad Pros already match some of Intel's higher-end processors and outperform the lower-to-midrange lineup, so I'm interested to see where this goes.
An article I read said that the chip is of the same type that Apple already uses for iDevices. That tells me that some enterprising person will eventually figure out how to boot and run a Mac off iOS. An interesting experiment which would allow the ability to run iOS apps on a Mac. Perhaps it's something Apple might even leverage itself, something akin to bootcamp maybe. Unlikely, I think though, as if taken forward that could threaten to merge MacOS and iOS into one OS, something Apple has stated they do not intend.
Perhaps though, the potential of a coming lockdown of hardware by Apple and Microsoft (they've already removed your control over updates) might spur the Linux community into a development frenzy that makes it more user friendly. As an open system it's looking more like a last refuge now.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
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Apple's response may well be to further enhance their own apps. TextEdit will open Word docs, for instance, then there is the Pages app and so on. These have not caught on outside of the Apple community but I know that diehard Mac users use them rather than the MS products they emulate.
I agree. I also don't think the transition necessarily has to be a bad thing. If Apple had used an Intel Atom CPU on their iPads and iPhones (something they explored in the beginning), we wouldn't have the products we have now and Apple wouldn't have been able to invest as much as they have in their development. It's likely they wouldn't have been as successful either. Apple is currently one of the leading mobile chip developers, and they haven't even tried their hand at desktop chips. I just think if their mobile chips are this powerful, the upside to them developing desktop and laptop chips without the thermal and power limitations they currently face in mobile devices is enormous.
Oh, I quite agree. They have the potential to dominate the market with powerful chips that few others can approach. It's just that it may be in order to own one of those super powerful desktops, you have to stay within their walls and anyone developing apps for their platform will be bound to the rules Apple creates.
You're free to leave of course, but you also lose the benefits.
You would imagine Apple have something in the pipeline to support 'intel' compatible software.
They won't want to lose massive user base of third party software.
Octane render is already running 'blazing fast' on iPad pro by the developer, so there is hope.
They won't want to lose massive user base of third party software.
Octane render is already running 'blazing fast' on iPad pro by the developer, so there is hope.
Of course. Just like later versions of OSX 10.4 and OSX 10.5 ran on Intel Macs and PowerPC. And then 10.6 with Rosetta. That's what @crammedberry meant about two cycles of continued OS support for Intel - then cutting it off. Gives devs time to convert their Intel apps to ARM, just like they had time to convert from PowerPC to Intel.
It'll be 'Universal' for a third time.
I concur 100% with this statement
One could argue that disabling Gatekeeper, SIP and whatnot already constitutes a mild form of jailbreaking.
With the replacement of Intel with ARM in Macs, I believe that MacOS is going away.
Developing and supporting two separate OS (MacOS and iOS) is time consuming and costly.
Look to a hybrid OS to be released that runs on both iOS devices and computers with ARM.
True…and at least right now we have that option. There may be a point where we don't.
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I do see that as Apple's ultimate goal, despite their statements of how the Mac is important to them and that they do not intend to do this. But doing so will enable them to have total control on all devices while being able to merge development into a single unit.
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I decided that the day Apple moves to ARM is the day I stop buying Apple computers. It's finally happening. Android will never be a phone option, though.
iOS devices have been Apple's cash cow of late and it will continue, so it's of no surprise to me that eventually the Mac line will be replaced with ARM. I think there will be something like a Rosetta like intel virtualization software built into the new Mac ARM OS leveraging the 8 high performance cores for Intel stuff and then the 4 low power cores for iOS apps while managing good thermal performance. My last Mac is the Mac Pro and combined with my Air and Mini and my various PowerPC macs will continue to serve as a pretty powerful platform for what I needed to do into the future, so I will not be looking into getting a new Mac. But what I would be looking at in the near term is to update my older iPhone SE to a SE 2 and then eventually to a newer iPad when my Windows 8.1 travel laptop either die or stopped receiving updates. No more new macs for me, eventhough I luv macs. 
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How is one going to interact with touchscreen-dependent apps... without a touchscreen? Same problem that the PC versions of Android have. Cool academic experiment though.
With that being said, I have booted x86 versions of Windows Phone (used for their device emulator) on a PC and it was fun... for about a minute.
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Wait - you want it to be even more user-friendly than it already is? That's just crazy
I see three problems coming up to the horizon with this.
1) Lack of Adobe support (huge problem as I am a photographer who uses Photoshop and Illustrator for classes)
2) No Bootcamp support (lack of gaming on ARM based chips)
and
3) Issues with running x86 applications on ARM. Surface Pro X didn't go well...
1) Lack of Adobe support (huge problem as I am a photographer who uses Photoshop and Illustrator for classes)
2) No Bootcamp support (lack of gaming on ARM based chips)
and
3) Issues with running x86 applications on ARM. Surface Pro X didn't go well...
And in a couple of years from now, we'll be hard at work getting the officially-ARM-only macOS 10.20 to run on our Intel Macs. Now where have I heard that before?
I think there's zero chance of Adobe giving up their monopoly. They already have some apps in iOS (mostly geared towards the iPad Pros), and they will almost certainly support ARM Macs. The lack of bootcamp doesn't necessarily mean a lack of gaming. In fact, iOS is one of the most supported gaming platforms, so I can see even more games being available if Apple creates a hybrid OS. I think your third point is a given. Rosetta was a nice bridge, but it wasn't particularly good at emulating PPC at full speed. This will likely be the case again, where we'll have universal apps during the transition but also some emulation layer in the new ARM Macs that allows users to run their old programs until Apple drops support completely.
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I'm somewhat confident there'll be versions of Adobe's apps on ARM macOS eventually.
This is exactly what I think will happen, and I'm cynical enough to believe it is quite deliberate. They want your laptop to be a sealed, opaque device you throw away and upgrade every year or two like people do with their phones (as absurd as that practice already is). It started with the gradual reduction of replaceable parts. The next step will be the removal of replaceable software.
And I doubt we'll be able to run BSD or Linux on them; I'm sure they will make it as difficult as they can so that the device's life can't be extended.
To me, it seems that there is a difficulty in installing Linux to a PowerPC Mac and that once you have it installed there are some things that do not work. I may be wrong but there does not seem (to me again) to be a consistently recommended version of Linux for PowerPC.Wait - you want it to be even more user-friendly than it already is? That's just crazy
Beyond that, I'm often confused about certain things like compiling apps that seem to be a common process. From pictures I've seen, there does not seem to be a commonly accepted standard for GUI graphics or layouts, etc. Perhaps that may be simply because I really know nothing about Linux, IDK.
I guess what I'm meaning by 'user-friendly' is a more cohesive and organized look between all the different releases. Which is another thing. Unless you're in that world, it's easy to get lost concerning versions of Linux. It seems to me a bit like Android and ROMs.
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It's too early. It's kind of like PowerPC/Intel. Apple announced Intel in 2005, but what got delivered in the first half of 2006 for Mac desktops? The G5 Quad. Anyway, the Mac Pros tend to lag behind the laptops. Apple will release a few ARM-based laptops first, gain the experience they get from that and then apply it to later releases of the Mac Pro.
Unlike laptops, a lot of pro Mac users depend on Mac Pros. Apple isn't going to jerk them along as beta-testers - the trashcan MP nothwithstanding.
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No, they just won't release anything new for another decade.