What Today's 27" Intel iMac Refresh Tells Us About the Apple Silicon Mac Release Order

[Falhófnir]

I just got a 12" MacBook off of eBay. Crap butterfly keyboard totally aside, the thing is not comfortable to use when not at a desk. The keyboard goes to the edge of the laptop and it makes it a bit awkward to type on when not used on a flat surface. I'm not sure what the obsession is. 13" is much better size.

And yeah, it does seem like the 13" Pro (or at least some other 13" Mac notebook is sticking around, given the rumor mill).

Not my personal preference for a computer, I'm really only in the market for 15-17" laptops, I do think its valued by those who travel by train/ plane a lot, for e.g. though. It's the natural successor to the 11" Air and I thought the 2011-2015 lineup was quite neat with 2x Air and 2x Pro models.

 

[Boil]

Well the newer W2200 series Xeons, an RDNA 2 GPU from AMD when they’re ready later this year and miniLED display with the nanotexture screen would be on my wish list for a 1Q2021 iPad Pro. I still believe lol.

If they added an access door to the RAM as well as the above, that would be sweet; 18c/32t Xeon & Big Navi, perfect for Cinema4D & Octane X...!

My ideal setup would be a 6K iMac Pro connected to two 6K Pro Displays on either side, a 14” MacBook Pro with reduced bezels, a smaller 12” iPad Pro with reduced bezels, an iPhone Pro without notch that unfolds into an iPad Mini, and a 48mm Apple Watch.

Bruh... ;^p

Conspiracy theory: Apple didn’t put a heat pipe in the MacBook air 2020 to contrast the thermal performance to the new  silicon macs, possibly in the same chassis. it will be a huge selling point.

Going to fetch my industrial roll of aluminium foil from the kitchen now, gotta make a trilby...!

 

[e-coli]

I’m curious what Apple are going to do about graphics processing for the Pro machines. Apple’s current Pro lineup is already hobbled by the lack of NVidia cards. Advanced 3D shaders and render engines Like Redshift need an eGPU for Mac. 3D tools are no longer niche. It’s just part of the pipeline, much like Photoshop. Until they have a solution for this, Apple silicon is going to be a novelty for creatives.

 

[funkahdafi]

There was that article that made the rounds on here about a month before the Apple Silicon transition that talked of one particular ARM processor that could give the Xeons in the Mac Pro and iMac Pro a run for their money. I don't recall the name of it, but certainly, as a proof of concept, it's definitely reasonable to assume that we'll get there before too long, especially at the rate that Apple's own processors have advanced over recent history (hell, the gains they've made between A8X and A12Z are pretty staggering). I'm not saying a Mac Pro-ready Apple Silicon chip will be ready in the next year. But the next two years really seems doable at the rate things are going.

I remember that article. It was based in synthetic benchmarks and was highly biased. ARM performance would literally need to make at least a 10-20x performance jump to get anywhere near the levels of Xeon/Epyc performance. Something that takes 10 years under normal conditions. Even if Apple managed to get there faster, we are most definitely not talking 2 years. Unless you are happy with the performance levels of some low end Xeons or 8th gen Intel consumer CPUs. We're talkin Mac Pro here, not iMac or Macbook Pro (which both use mobile CPUs, to top it all off).

Again, think about what Apple said: Intel Macs are here to stay for *many* years to come.

 

[theluggage]

I'm more or less with you on this. The ability to virtualize x86 natively is huge for me. Not just for running popular x86 Linux distros that don't yet have an ARM port (looking at you, Ubuntu!), but also Windows, Windows Server, and even Intel versions of macOS. Being able to run VMs of Mojave and even as far back as Snow Leopard will be quite useful.

(NB: Ubuntu Server for ARM has been available for a while. I don't know if that allows you to install the desktop packages - as you can with Intel server - but if you can't it is probably because there is a shortage of desktop ARM systems to run it on... which ARM-based Macs will provide. Most of the desktop packages are already up and running on Debian/Raspbian and Apple actually showed Debian being virtualized on Apple Silicon so no rocket science is involved...)

I think Apple's gamble is that, by 2023, anybody in the "must have Parallels/Bootcamp" boat will be some sort of IT professional/developer who won't balk at having two computers in the house... There will probably be that one Intel Mac that hangs around in Apple's range for a few years (...like the "classic" 13" MacBook with spinning rust). Or, if you are a "serious" gamer, you should know by now that Apple hates you.

In terms of "consumer" need for running Windows - I think that's what has changed since the Intel transition in 2006: then, being able to run Windows was a real selling point for all those work apps, websites that only worked in Internet Explorer, banking, personal finance apps etc. Today, outside of the corporate world, "requires MS Windows" is already being supplanted by "Available for iOS and Android" so losing x86 support for Windows is more than outweighed by gaining support for iOS apps (and, potentially, native virtualization of Android... although that's partly CPU agnostic anyway) - and give it another couple of years that will be even more marked.

Even with "I need Windows for work" - give it a couple of years and - even if you have an x86 PC - your only option (because "data protection") will be to use virtual desktop to connect to your machine at work (or, most likely, your virtual PC in the cloud which your employer has outsourced to MS Azure). Yea, verily, even if the current policy is "instant dismissal if your data touches the cloud" that will have been turned inside out as soon as the PTB realise how much cheaper it is to have Microsoft or Amazon tick all of your compliance boxes for you (not that 'no cloud but you can walk around with the data on your PC' is rational to start with).

Anyway, on to new Apple range prediction and - if it hasn't been said already:

(NB: - "AppleBook, iApple" etc. are just names I'm using to distinguish AS from Intel - I doubt they'll drop the "Mac" but they might change the "i" and "Book" bits)

Apple range by mid 2021:

13" AppleBook (AS - ultra thin)
14" AppleBook (AS +touchbar)
16" MacBook Pro (Intel - but only with the higher-end CPU/GPU options)
21" (or thereabouts) iApple (AS)
27" iMac (Intel - as announced)
Apple Mini (AS)
iMac Pro (Intel - no updates)
Mac Pro (Intel - maybe with minor bumps)
Mac Mini (buried in a link off the main Apple Mini page for developers needing to support x86)

...with each of the AS machines available in good/better/best configurations but all running basically the same SoC with the lower-end options being underclocked and maybe having some CPU/GPU cores disabled (maybe justified by lower yields of fully functional chips, maybe not).

Apple range mid 2022 -:

Standard range - all with the same AS SoC:
13" AppleBook
14" AppleBook (+touchbar)
21" (or thereabouts) iApple
Apple Mini (AS)

Pro range - with new "workstation class" AS SoC:
16" AppleBook Pro (Apple Silicon Pro)
27" (or 30") iApple Pro (Apple Silicon Pro)
Apple Mini Pro (Apple Silicon Pro)

Legacy Range:
Mac Pro (Intel - entry level now 12 core but otherwise unchanged - Apple Mini Pro is faster)
Mac Mini (while sticks last - buried in a link off the main Apple Mini page for developers needing to support x86)

Note: no 12" MacBook because you don't want that, you want an iPad. Yes, you do. Look into my eyes (not around my eyes, into my eyes) Tim says you want an iPad... but maybe the 2022 iPad Pro will support modern MacOS apps...

 

[pappkristof]

There is no way in hell that ARM based CPUs will match the performance of high end x86 processors like Xeon within just two years. That would "break" Moore's law by such a wide margin that it is next to inconceivable. Even Apple's marketing is limited by physics, not to mention their engineers. And don't forget, high end x86 CPUs will make substantial progress in these two years as well. Not just Intel's Xeon, but also (and probably more importantly) AMD's Epyc.

There are already ARM CPUs outperforming Xeon:https://www.google.hu/amp/s/www.net...ounces-128-core-arm-server-processor.amp.html

Why couldn’t Apple build one?

 

[pappkristof]

And maybe, just maybe the performance for the top tier 24" iMac would be on par or just slightly below the performance of the newly updated 27" iMac. That would be sick.

The question is if their price will stay in the 21” range or more like the current 27” price range.

 

[funkahdafi]

There are already ARM CPUs outperforming Xeon:https://www.google.hu/amp/s/www.net...ounces-128-core-arm-server-processor.amp.html

Why couldn’t Apple build one?

They could build one, sure, but there are numerous problems with that 128 core CPU that is described in the article you linked to. To name just two of them:

1.) Cost. That CPU is more than just high-end. If you look at the prices of 48 core Xeons, you will know what I mean. This is not built for consumer nor prosumer devices. Pricing of the final product would be even more ridiculous than the current Mac Pro. By a big margin.

2.) Amdahl's Law. Google it. It describes the concept of CPU core scaling. Once you reach a certain amount of cores, it becomes exponentially more difficult to scale software. In other words, a 128 core CPU isn't necessarily faster than a 64 core CPU. Most certainly not in the kind of software you and I use.

This stuff is incredibly complicated and it takes more than just slapping 100 cores onto a die.

I am not saying Apple won't get there, eventually. But 2 years seem overly optimistic. If not to say unrealistic.

 

[Scarboose]

My predictions:

• 
  
• Autumn 2020: 24” iMac, 13” MacBook (replaces Air)
• Spring 2021: 14” MacBook Pro, Mac Mini
• Summer 2021: 16” MacBook Pro and 32” 6K Pro Display (non-XDR) at WWDC
• Autumn 2021: 32” iMac Pro (replaces both 27” 5K iMac and 27” iMac Pro, uses same display panel as 6K Pro Display above)
• Summer 2022: Mac Pro at WWDC

I agree that Apple is going to simplify their lineup to what this person said. I think Apple drops the MacBook Air for the MacBook and keeps the 13” MacBook Pro (Intel) and the latest 27” iMac (Intel) as options for legacy users.

I really hope that 24” iMac drops this fall. I am extremely tempted to grab the new 27” from this week, but I think I’m going to hold off and impatiently wait (let’s face it, who patiently waits for anything)!

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Do you have anything to back up your statement or are you just making assumptions? Not trying to boast here, but I know a thing or two about CPU architectures and I don't see how ARM CPUs will be able to match 2022 Xeon/Epyc in such a short timeframe. It would be a miracle, and miracles usually belong to the domain of fairy tales.

Let's stay realistic here. What did Apple say when they announced the transition? "Intel Macs are here to stay for many years to come". 2 years is not what I would consider "many".

Apple has been working on this transition for ten years. They are probably testing Xeon replacement ARM chips in their R & D labs right now.

 

[leman]

Where do you get this ? Although I agree Apple will probably make the better integrated GPU's compared to integrated Intel/AMD, they're a very long way off the dGPU's from nVidia/AMD. I don't see this happening anytime soon!

Well, a A12Z (2 year old iPad chip) has comparable performance to a desktop 1050 GTX. While consuming less than 10 watts. If they scale up the number of cores, more powerful GPUs are not that far off.

 

[Macintosh1984]

I can't wait to see the Apple Silicon iMac, I have an iMac 27 "Late 2012 and I could also decide to give up a few inches of monitor from 27" to 24".

I wanted to focus on the GPU.

At WWDC 2020 we saw "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" on Rosetta 2, quite fluid and indeed even emulated.

These are the requirements posted on Steam:

MINIMUM:
OS: macOS 10.15
Processor: 2GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: 2GB AMD Radeon R9 M290 or better, 1.5GB Intel Iris 540 or better
Storage: 40 GB available space
Additional Notes: The game is supported on the following Macs. To check your Mac model and when it was released, select About This Mac from the Apple menu on your menu bar.
* All 15” MacBook Pros released since Late 2016
* All 13” MacBook Pros released since 2016
* All Mac minis since 2018
* All 21.5” iMacs released since 2017
* All 27” iMacs released since Late 2014
* All 27" iMac Pros released since Late 2017
* All Mac Pros released since Late 2013
Please note for your computer to meet the minimum requirements it must match or better all elements of the listed system requirements. For more detailed specifications check the Feral website. ———
The following Macs are capable of running the game but do not consistently meet the standards required for official support.
* All Mac minis since Late 2012
* All MacBooks released since Early 2016
* All 21.5" iMacs released since Late 2015 with an Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 graphics card

The demonstration tells us that in emulation we have seen something as powerful as at least a 2015 Q3 GPU, I repeat at least. In your opinion, were they performances from AMD Radeon R9 M290 or from Intel Iris 540 (Q4 integrated GPU)?

 

[semka]

I would buy that one on the fly!

Me too. Apple knows that this is the most popular laptop for dual platform development, Java, music production, etc., and there will not be a comparable AS machine for at least a year.

 

[funkahdafi]

Apple has been working on this transition for ten years. They are probably testing Xeon replacement ARM chips in their R & D labs right now.

You are making assumptions. Based on Apple's marketing.

How do you define "Xeon replacement ARM chips"? Are you comparing to low end, low energy, low-core Xeons? Are you comparing to HEDT Xeons like they are being used in the current Mac Pro? Are you comparing to AMD's Zen 4 Epycs that are going to hit the market next year (which you should)?

I am sure they are working on this in their R&D labs, but I am also 100% certain that Apple won't have an ARM chip that will outperform 2022 HEDT CPUs like Zen 4 - which is what they are going to have to compete against. Let's not forget that there are incredibly fast x86 CPUs out there, and they will only get better in the next two years, with major developments like AMD's Zen 4 architecture just around the corner.

I can only repeat myself here - Listen closely to what Apple has to say about the transition: "Intel Macs are here to stay for *many* years to come". With that in mind, I think people should start to separate wishful thinking from actual reality.

 

[Mescagnus]

About the Apple Silicon line-up:

This year:
- MacBook Pro 13" (or 14")
- iMac 24"

They want to launch Apple Silicon with both Pro and "consumer" product lines to show that AS has what it takes to serve both the pro and consumer segments.

MacBook Air with a new design will come in 2021. Air already got a significant update this year.

 

[Mr. Awesome]

I would assume that Apple will design processors focusing on efficency for the MacBook Air / 14” MacBook Pro, with performance slightly better, but not unbelievable better, than it is now. That way battery life can be a key selling point. For higher end machines such as the 16” MacBook Pro and iMac, they’ll probably focus on maximizing performance with a similar power draw to current Intel processors.

 

[paleghost]

Any thought or worry that with the move to ARM and new form factor that memory will not be user upgradeable across the board - including the 27" iMac replacement?

 

[Azrael9]

The '32 inch?' AS iMac will be a thing of beauty and power and efficiency. But it's about 10 months or so (adding shipping...) away.

Perhaps wwdc21 will be a fitting take a bow.

I have no doubt that Apple are looking at 50-100% depending on workflow task...beat down of Intel with far superior thermal efficiency. And GPUs that make the current consumer gpus and 'last year's' 5700XT look like the happless contenders they are.

But that day is not this day.

And I didn't fancy being Macless for another (at least...) ten months.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

...and this 'iMac' I've ordered? It will still be a 10 core, 5700xt, 5k display 'PC' as well as a 2nd working Mac even if I bought an AS 32 inch iMac next year.

*Looks at the cake.

Maybe I'll have some cake...and eat it.

Azrael.

 

[leman]

I remember that article. It was based in synthetic benchmarks and was highly biased. ARM performance would literally need to make at least a 10-20x performance jump to get anywhere near the levels of Xeon/Epyc performance. Something that takes 10 years under normal conditions.

I think your information might be a bit outdated. Fact is: current Apple mobile CPUs already offer better per-core performance than Xeon/EPYC. An Apple A13 running at 2.5Ghz is more or less equivalent to a Intel Skylake running at 3-3.3 Ghz. At that frequency the Apple core will consume around 2 watts of power, possibly less. Provided Apple has ability to scale their designs (something they have hinted at strongly), a 24-core Apple CPU running at base 2.5ghz will offer very competitive performance to comparable Intel or AMD designs (should be comparable to a 32-core EPYC 7502 or so).

Now, there are obvious a lot to "buts" and "ifs" here. So far, I was talking about the general purpose case. If we are talking about HPC usage, the situation is a bit more tricky. Latest Intel Xeon CPUs have two AVX-512 compute units per core, so they can process 1024 bits of data per cycle. Assuming that the software is AVX-512 optimised, and taking into account that the CPU has to run lower clock when using these instructions. I don't know how many vector units an EPYC core has (I would guess 4x128bit?). Since Apple can only do 3 128-bit instructions per clock, it won't be able to compete with the "big boys" in this area. They will need another SIMD unit (or two) to level the field. Another big question mark is whether Apple has the interconnect technology to efficiently wire a bunch of cores.

And of course, this is all based on A13, which is one year old by now. We don't know what Apple has in store this year. In regards to consumer computing, they are a step ahead of AMD and two steps ahead Intel right now. In regards to HPC computing, they are so far a big unknown. Based on their progress so far and the properties of their architecture, I do see reason for cautious optimism.

 

[leman]

Any thought or worry that with the move to ARM and new form factor that memory will not be user upgradeable across the board - including the 27" iMac replacement?

If they go "all custom" route with unified memory, then they will have to use soldered-on RAM, otherwise they won't be able to deliver good performance.

 

[Realityck]

Do you have anything to back up your statement or are you just making assumptions? Not trying to boast here, but I know a thing or two about CPU architectures and I don't see how ARM CPUs will be able to match 2022 Xeon/Epyc in such a short timeframe. It would be a miracle, and miracles usually belong to the domain of fairy tales.

Let's stay realistic here. What did Apple say when they announced the transition? "Intel Macs are here to stay for many years to come". 2 years is not what I would consider "many".

I remember that article. It was based in synthetic benchmarks and was highly biased. ARM performance would literally need to make at least a 10-20x performance jump to get anywhere near the levels of Xeon/Epyc performance. Something that takes 10 years under normal conditions. Even if Apple managed to get there faster, we are most definitely not talking 2 years. Unless you are happy with the performance levels of some low end Xeons or 8th gen Intel consumer CPUs. We're talkin Mac Pro here, not iMac or Macbook Pro (which both use mobile CPUs, to top it all off).

I been suspicious of the interpretation of Tim Cooks WWDC comments, I know a lot of you think every product is being transitioned, but just suppose that interpretation is erroneous? Apple wants to see products sell and not alienate future sales. But a lot of you are doing the famous Osborn computer debacle by pre-announcing faster more powerful computers powered by Apple Silicon that are considerably more energy efficient and cost less because Apple cuts out Intel are in the near future.

From the get go I have thought what a terrific concept to make low power, capable mobile computers using some version of Apple Silicon to run Big Sur Mac OS because as one poster commented the education sector doesn't use much other then Apple applications.

But then we got this it going to be a full and compete transition, burn the bridges, full speed ahead. Perhaps everyone gone daffy. You are effecting current Mac sales with all this talk. You think this cheerleading is helpful, but again you are impacting sales of the current new iMac by saying it's the last one. No more intel, well what have you created by saying that. Just a "world of hurt" as Steve Jobs used to say. The following was what was said exactly:

Tim Cook: (01:26:03)
And now it’s time for a huge leap forward for the Mac. Because today is the day we’re announcing that the Mac is transitioning to our own Apple Silicon. When we make bold changes, it’s for one simple yet powerful reason, so we can make much better products. When we look ahead, we envision some amazing new products, and transitioning to our own custom Silicon is what will enable us to bring them to life.

Tim Cook: (01:45:28)
And for the customers, we expect to ship our first Mac with Apple Silicon by the end of this year, and we expect the transition to take about two years. We plan to continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel based Macs, for years to come. In fact, we have some new Intel based Macs in the pipeline that we’re really excited about. What a huge leap forward for the Mac and for Apple. Apple Silicon will bring amazing technologies, industry leading performance, and a common architecture across all of our products.

Everything above points to a initial examination of the Mac product line where could Apple Silicon be effective without getting involved with designs that are not very expensive or high performance. The example of just increasing the number of cores dramaticaly for higher performance makes even Apple Silicon expensive to implement. I think everything that isn't that powerful could be adapted. Low performance laptops like the MacBook, MacBook Air, Macs that are not so performance driven like a Mac mini. small iMac. The Apple Silicon designs should focus on users that rely on Apple software mostly not using expanded 3rd party software and drivers. As Apple is able to match the capabilities of more powerful computers with Apple Silicon at similar or less costs it should be marketed, but everything will be transitioned in 2 years not a chance. Give Apple some time for this to grow and prosper.

 

[Northgrove]

Yes, I absolutely think Apple will first hand out Macs closest to their mobile devices in terms of TDP for a safe and uncontroversial launch as possible. So that's perhaps not even Macbook Pros but more like Macbook / Macbook Air form factors. And desktop-wise, maybe even just a single hardware configuration of a 21.5" iMac, barring BTO variants for hard drive and RAM sizes. And then they'll go from there. I also expect we'll be pleasantly surprised by the performance and notable lower temperatures and/or longer battery lives. They need a notable bump here and not just a "switch" for business reasons.

 

[jdb8167]

I been suspicious of the interpretation of Tim Cooks WWDC comments, I know a lot of you think every product is being transitioned, but just suppose that interpretation is erroneous? Apple wants to see products sell and not alienate future sales. But a lot of you are doing the famous Osborn computer debacle by pre-announcing faster more powerful computers powered by Apple Silicon that are considerably more energy efficient and cost less because Apple cuts out Intel are in the near future.

From the get go I have thought what a terrific concept to make low power, capable mobile computers using some version of Apple Silicon to run Big Sur Mac OS because as one poster commented the education sector doesn't use much other then Apple applications.

But then we got this it going to be a full and compete transition, burn the bridges, full speed ahead. Perhaps everyone gone daffy. You are effecting current Mac sales with all this talk. You think this cheerleading is helpful, but again you are impacting sales of the current new iMac by saying it's the last one. No more intel, well what have you created by saying that. Just a "world of hurt" as Steve Jobs you to say. The following was what was said exactly:



Everything above points to a initial examination of the Mac product line where could Apple Silicon be effective without getting involved with designs that are not very expensive or high performance The example of just increasing the number of cores dramaticaly for higher performance makes even Apple Silicon expensive to implement. I think everything that isn't that powerful could be adapted. Low performance laptops like the MacBook, MacBook Air, Macs that are not so performance driven like a Mac mini. small iMac. The Apple Silicon designs should focus on users that rely on Apple software mostly not using expanded 3rd party software and drivers. As Apple is able to match the capabilities of more powerful computers with Apple Silicon at similar or less costs it should be marketed, but everything will be transitioned in 2 years not a chance. Give Apple some time for this to grow and prosper.

The Tim Cook quote says very clearly that within 2 years, “Apple Silicon will bring amazing technologies, industry leading performance, and a common architecture across all of our products.”

A common architecture across all of our products isn’t ambiguous.

 

[awesomedeluxe]

- Apple separating releases within the same product line (i.e. 16" MacBook Pro and 2020 13" MacBook Pro, 2020 27" iMac and 2019 21.5" iMac) is probably the most telling. They clearly need to do this because, during this transition, not every MacBook Pro will make the jump at the same time. Same goes for the iMac. This was true of Apple's laptops during the PowerPC to Intel transition too (15" was first, 17" followed two months later, followed by the merger of the 12" PowerBook with the iBook to make the first MacBooks), however, it wasn't true of Apple's iMacs. I do believe that it will be different this time around. I feel this way because, unlike in the late PowerPC and early Intel eras, the later Intel era has huge performance disparities between lower-end models (21.5" iMac and 13" MacBook Pros, for example) and higher-end models (27" iMacs and 16" MacBook Pros, for example). The 17" and 20" iMacs of 2005 and 2006 were not as far apart in performance. Nor were the 12" and 15" PowerBook G4s of that era.

Very thoughtful read. Looking closely at the lowend iMac, I agree with you that Apple has set a low bar for themselves to clear with Apple Silicon. The Vega 20 is old. But I would also be surprised to see Apple launching two Mac APUs this year, so I'm mulling over whether or not the Bloomberg APU can accommodate both the MBP13(14) and the iMac.

I think it can.

The CPU is no problem. The MBP13 would reserve around 10W for its 8 core CPU, scaling back the amount of power it gives to cores in three stages (5W / 2; 2.5W / 4; 1.25W / 8) and hitting clocks of roughly 2 @ 3GHz, 4 @ 2.87GHz, and 8 @ 2.7GHz. The iMac would reserve around 40W and scale in two stages (10W / 4; 5W / 8) hitting clocks around 4 @ 3.1GHz and 8 @ 3GHz.

The GPU side is trickier. I do think the MBP13 can accommodate twice as many GPU cores as the iPad Pro, especially since it will be a full node ahead of that device. 16 GPU cores is a good start, and the iMac can encourage them to run at higher clocks than the MBP13. But the clencher would be to slap down a 4-8GB stack of HBM2 as cache right beside the iMac's APU.

So there you go - one APU die, two devices, configurable to outperform the high end iMac 21.