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What Intel software will you miss after the Arm transition?
- Thread starter Jyby
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Erehy Dobon
Suspended
Johny Srouji clearly pointed this out in the first minute of his appearance in today's WWDC keynote.
In traditional computing performance comes with a price: power consumption. A Keynote slide showed this.
Engineering design decisions are ALWAYS compromises of some sort. Size, cost, power, heat, compatibility, etc.
Today, Apple unveiled that decision. They are prioritizing factors other than compatibility for their next-generation computing architecture.
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chrfr
macrumors G5
Apple has never prioritized compatibility when switching CPU architectures. This transition might be the closest to doing so yet since all of Apple’s platforms now run on the same architecture.
I still use loads of 32bit applications and games. Let alone a whole new architecture. One of the reasons I used a mac was because it was for a time a swiss Army knife of computing. I could run windows, mac, Linux, 32bit, 64 bit, most of which natively. But now Apple is becoming increasingly isolated. They are also not the kings of innovation anymore that they were 10-15 years ago.
That wouldn't be as bad but Apples price gouging in the last several years and lack of hardware "Oomph!", especially with concern to graphics cards (if you are lucky to have a machine that has one) is increasingly driving me away. I see little reason to continue using Macs. They are overpriced, underpowered, and increasingly a walled garden.
I honest to god wish they supported macOS for normal hardware without having to go to a Hackintosh. Thats what I really want.
That wouldn't be as bad but Apples price gouging in the last several years and lack of hardware "Oomph!", especially with concern to graphics cards (if you are lucky to have a machine that has one) is increasingly driving me away. I see little reason to continue using Macs. They are overpriced, underpowered, and increasingly a walled garden.
I honest to god wish they supported macOS for normal hardware without having to go to a Hackintosh. Thats what I really want.
Juicy Box
macrumors 604
For now it isn't, but this could very easily change, especially if Apple starts restricting MacOS apps to only ones in the App Store.
Yeah, it is hard to say specifics without knowing which ones won't be supported. I also had SheepShaver in mind. I also wonder about Handbrake and MakeMKV. There are a few others that I have that are no longer supported by the developers (or hasn't been updated in years), too.
I also wonder about games like World of Warcraft.
Blizzard used to be a big supported of the Mac, releasing games the same time as Windows, but in recent years, this seemed to have changed.
They are a huge company, and definitely have the resources to make it happen, but at the same time, they are no longer the same company that they used to be, and I wonder if they will just drop Mac support.
This is also my thinking.
Some big companies might not have any problem with updating to an Apple Arm version, although, it would also give them a great opportunity to release paid-for version instead of simply updating the existing app.
The smaller devs that have little to no budget might have not have the time and/or money to compile their software.
The WWDC porting session today confirms that Rosetta 2 cannot be used for Virtualization.
With yesterday’s Parallels demo confirmed to be running ARM Linux instead of x86 Linux during the state of the union video, it looks like any software for running Windows on ARM Macs will need their own emulation. Rosetta has an advantage with macOS apps because they can be translated ahead of time if they're not JIT and have very little performance impact as a result, but such an advantage won't exist for running an entire operating system in a VM. It will be interesting to see what kind of performance parallels ends up with for Intel emulation, which I assume they're going to do considering running Windows is the main selling point of their product.
With yesterday’s Parallels demo confirmed to be running ARM Linux instead of x86 Linux during the state of the union video, it looks like any software for running Windows on ARM Macs will need their own emulation. Rosetta has an advantage with macOS apps because they can be translated ahead of time if they're not JIT and have very little performance impact as a result, but such an advantage won't exist for running an entire operating system in a VM. It will be interesting to see what kind of performance parallels ends up with for Intel emulation, which I assume they're going to do considering running Windows is the main selling point of their product.
Rob.G
macrumors 6502a
Like somebody else said... I think MacOS is what I will miss most. My Late 2013 MBP is overdue for replacement, and I plan to get a new (current) MBA very soon. That may very well be my last Mac. Give it a few years and I'll decide if I'll be forced back to Windows or something else. But losing Intel compatabiity is going to suck goats.
Stephen.R
Suspended
Because as we all know intel chips are not proprietary, they’re open to all who which to implement their own version...
I work in cyber security and have about 5-7 VMs for random apps/software that I’ve collected from my daily usage.
I run Fusion to handle all of them seamlessly, so I fear Fusion maybe the tool I leave behind. I think everything I run natively is x86-64 already
I run Fusion to handle all of them seamlessly, so I fear Fusion maybe the tool I leave behind. I think everything I run natively is x86-64 already
boss.king
Suspended
They transition to a different platform when the potential benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Using their own chips will save them money, gives them greater control and interoperability across their product lines, and looks likely to offer equal or better performance to what they have now.
D.T.
macrumors G4
I'm still on Mojave, but all my regularly used apps, including all my dev tools/services are all 64-bit, and while I realize several of those won't be ARM in the short term, I suspect eventually __and__ they're pretty lightweight apps (for example, Postman), so that they;ll be good for running under Rosetta.
I have time to figure out my few Winders™ needs, some things I've moved to Docker, some to cloud services, I'm definitely in a wait-and-see mode on a few things, but I can say, I'm mostly excited 🙂
I'm hoping this means an A13X/Z or A14X/Z powered Mini with a kickass GPU in the next 8-12 months 😀
I have time to figure out my few Winders™ needs, some things I've moved to Docker, some to cloud services, I'm definitely in a wait-and-see mode on a few things, but I can say, I'm mostly excited 🙂
I'm hoping this means an A13X/Z or A14X/Z powered Mini with a kickass GPU in the next 8-12 months 😀
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UltimateSyn
macrumors 603
Well I'm sure many people here will not be young enough for this to resonate, but when I was about ten years old I started playing a game called MapleStory on what was then my mom's PC. Eventually I transitioned to my own PCs and then Macs and would always install Windows via Boot Camp... mostly to be able to play MapleStory. There was the occasional engineering program in college that required Windows, but who cares about those? 😛
Anyway, I only log into the game ~once per year nowadays to check in on everything and see what's changed, worlds and features have been added in, etc. Once my Mac can no longer run Windows via Boot Camp I'll never be able to log in again! Sad day. That's about it for me.
Anyway, I only log into the game ~once per year nowadays to check in on everything and see what's changed, worlds and features have been added in, etc. Once my Mac can no longer run Windows via Boot Camp I'll never be able to log in again! Sad day. That's about it for me.
In one of the videos, the presenter was talking about how Intel apps will be translated for Arm upon installation, when installed from the App Store or from a .pkg. He continued to say that if you install some other way then it'll be translated upon first launch.
That indicates that at least under OS 11.0, you'll still be able to run non-App Store apps.
Mac4Brains
macrumors regular
EugW
macrumors P6
I imagine that a lot of open source projects will be looking for porting talent - good opportunity to develop your porting chops.
Quicken gave up on Mac parity a long time ago. I moved to Banktivity and find that works better than any Mac Quicken version I ever tried
tfuentes3
macrumors member
Boot Camp, Windows is very useful for some tasks macOS isn't or doesn't have the software for.
In part, is a shame.
In part, is a shame.
Motorola chips weren't proprietary. The 680x0 was used by a great many machines-- Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, pre Sparc suns, Sharp X68000. The PowerPCs were used by IBM and Be (plus a whole load of MacOS clones...). The ARM chips are probably the most proprietary of these CPUs.
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adib
macrumors 6502a
Postman is mostly JavaScript in a special build of Chrome. Once Chromium has an Apple Silicon build, it shouldn't take long for Postman to adopt it.
D.T.
macrumors G4
Ahh, that makes sense - I used to use it was just a chrome plugin. It‘s pretty terrific, I’ve used a number of REST type testing apps, by far my favorite.
For those worried about loosing Windows support, there is still another shoe to drop. Microsoft has developed an Arm version of Windows 10. It's not completely done yet but the roadmap to completion is not that long. Let's see what they do. In the meantime, It looks like Parallels is working with Apple. Let's see what that brings. VM Ware is not a stupid company, they might have something up their sleeve yet to come.
MrGunnyPT
macrumors 65816
On topic answer : Definitely iStats or gSwitch (which saved me so many times during work...)
Any idea on how people will virtualise Windows? Only with Windows 10 ARM version I suppose?
Yeah this was also in my head when I heard the news about the Linux ARM version which was the one running.
Any idea on how people will virtualise Windows? Only with Windows 10 ARM version I suppose?
Yeah this was also in my head when I heard the news about the Linux ARM version which was the one running.
That's the only option. It's not virtualization if the code is not native. You're just creating a virtual space inside your existing environment for the original code to run, nothing needs to be translated.
For existing x86 Virtual Machines, the hardware will have to be emulated instead which has a performance impact due to translation required. ARM Windows can run x86 apps with Microsoft's own translation technology that works like Rosetta, so that would provide the best performance because the entire OS won't need to be emulated. But that doesn't support 64-bit x86 apps yet, just 32-bit. 64-bit x86 translation is rumored to be coming to ARM Windows in the first half of 2021. Yet Microsoft does not sell ARM Windows licenses directly, nor do they offer the installers to developers over the service formerly known as MSDN. The only way to get ARM Windows as of this post is to buy a device like the Surface Pro X where it is pre-installed.
Microsoft did release a scaled down version of ARM Windows for the Raspberry Pi back in 2015. That only runs ARM apps ported to it (no x86) and was made specifically for that hardware. I'm only mentioning this because I think it's the only release of ARM Windows that was easily to get ahold of. There would be no real benefit to virtualizing that version.