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What will be your first ARM MAC?

GiantKiwi said:
Given that Oracle are adopting fully ARM hardware for their enterprise cloud services from next year courtesy of Ampere ARM based CPU's, so it's not just a theory any more - HPC via ARM is no longer just a pipe dream. Also, because of that, Apple will struggle with trying to say the architecture prevents expanding to that scale. So, with a little bit of extrapolation it should be fairly safe to say that ARM could quite easily replace a current Xeon W or Xeon Platinum, because that is exactly what is happening for Oracle.
Click to expand...

It's not quite true to say that Oracle are "fully adopting ARM hardware". Oracle invested $40m in Ampere, and will be using ARM for some workloads from 2021:

www.theregister.com

Oracle adds Arm-powered servers with up to 160 cores to its cloud – must be why it sunk millions into Ampere

Plans HPC play with AMD, Intel silicon, too
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com
www.datacenterknowledge.com

Ampere’s Arm Data Center Chips Come to Oracle Cloud

Oracle said it will launch bare-metal and VM instances on its cloud early next year.
www.datacenterknowledge.com www.datacenterknowledge.com

They also use Intel, AMD and Nvidia in their cloud service offerings, and will be launching new services on the latest products from these vendors, so are not replacing them completely.
 
Ideally the rumoured 14" MBP with mini LED screen in base configuration.

Even more so if it can provide true all day battery life, even under moderate load (Lightroom / Photoshop / Capture One / video streaming), its trackpad is compatible with an Apple Pencil in hover mode like a Wacom Tablet, and the manufacturing tolerances in terms of screen uniformity don't suck like on most consumer products (I'm not too hopeful about that).

I'm not sure that my current MBP will make it through until these mini LED screens arrive and I may prefer to let others experience Apple's usual 1st gen issues (particularly for screen issues), so I may grab a regular 13" MBP late 2020 / early 2021 if it's updated to ARM.
 
I have not read this entire thread but I see the opening comments expressed wishes of having mac mini as their first Arm based mac computer - what if Apple go that route first, considering the DTK is mac mini and that it has probably been in development since 2016, what if the mac mini pro redesign was a stepping stone in the direction of making way for Arm based Mac Mini Pro's first, so there is serious ARM muscle behind early machines, that paves the way to lighter ARM based laptops... I know the thinking and reports are light laptop on ARM first, but aren't the dev's going to want and need muscle machines to make the shift. I think so.

Maybe a very beefy but reasonable Arm based Mac Mini will arrive first, and will be used to iron out issue for all other computer formats down line.

'Course it's typicall, that when I need to update my hardware as everything I have is going to have to be Dosdude'd or replaced... What to do... now with this possibility of ARM based macs on the very close horizon, oh no! I might pick up the cheapest base Air for now and wait it out, or maybe hedge and get a base MBP...argh, who a dilemma, arm based mac is super exciting things Ive been anticipating for years... right now I can stick with MM 2012 Servers for pushing stuff, but they're not on the Big Sure list!
 
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Omega Mac said:
I have not read this entire thread but I see the opening comments expressed wishes of having mac mini as their first Arm based mac computer - what if Apple go that route first, considering the DTK is mac mini and that it has probably been in development since 2016, what if the mac mini pro redesign was a stepping stone in the direction of making way for Arm based Mac Mini Pro's first, so there is serious ARM muscle behind early machines, that paves the way to lighter ARM based laptops... I know the thinking and reports are light laptop on ARM first, but aren't the dev's going to want and need muscle machines to make the shift. I think so.

Maybe a very beefy but reasonable Arm based Mac Mini will arrive first, and will be used to iron out issue for all other computer formats down line.

'Course it's typicall, that when I need to update my hardware as everything I have is going to have to be Dosdude'd or replaced... What to do... now with this possibility of ARM based macs on the very close horizon, oh no! I might pick up the cheapest base Air for now and wait it out, or maybe hedge and get a base MBP...argh, who a dilemma, arm based mac is super exciting things Ive been anticipating for years... right now I can stick with MM 2012 Servers for pushing stuff, but they're not on the Big Sure list!
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That's an interesting idea, but unlikely I think. The Mac Mini has a much more limited potential market than a laptop or iMac, and Apple will want to launch something that immediately sells well. The Mini is a great product for more experienced users who already have the required peripherals and want a desktop (which is a minority these days).

That said, if there were an ASi Mac Mini with a more powerful SoC than the first laptops, then I would be really interested. My 2011 quad-core Mini server is a bit long in the tooth these days and has been relegated to file/media server duties.
 
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johngwheeler said:
That's an interesting idea, but unlikely I think. The Mac Mini has a much more limited potential market than a laptop or iMac, and Apple will want to launch something that immediately sells well. The Mini is a great product for more experienced users who already have the required peripherals and want a desktop (which is a minority these days).

That said, if there were an ASi Mac Mini with a more powerful SoC than the first laptops, then I would be really interested. My 2011 quad-core Mini server is a bit long in the tooth these days and has been relegated to file/media server duties.
Click to expand...

Consider I figured out they were testing Arm chips in Mac Mini as far back as 2016 based on an interview with the head chip designer and now the DTK is a Mac Mini - which I read has been around for a year (is that right) is a Mac Mini, let's run with the logic why this make sense to continue and why Apple might want to offer this first, it' about market but getting Arm to market.

A Mac Mini form factor can handle heat issues far easier without major re-design and as I wrote they'v don that with the new Mac Mini pro redesigns demonstrates they can get a higher class of CPU in there and deal with the heat.

Next the mac mini can be loaded with more memory modules and SSD than the laptop range.

So to counter the performance hit of Rosessta you can rather cheaply throw Fans, Memory modules & SSD's at the problem in a mac mini format compared to an Apple laptop range that is heavily locked down with soldered on everything.

If Dev and Dev houses can throw a few highly powered and kitted out to the Max, Mac Mini's into the production cycles, it means they can get their stuff to market quicker, ready to work in the lesser powered Arm laptops thus makes the transition smoother.

In short, Mac Mini may be the first Arm based Mac Pro, in a logical needs must way.
 
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Adding to this after reading up a bit more. I can see there is also a lot of speculation around Arm iMac being released, what may be about to happen is a broader arm launch, big I know, but perhaps Apple have it in the bag and it's not such a big deal to roll Arm chips out across 2 or 3 of their main computer forms, or have an Arm option in each line. I think we will know soon enough.
 
Omega Mac said:
what if Apple go that route first, considering the DTK is mac mini and that it has probably been in development since 2016,
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I wouldn't read anything into the choice of the Mac Mini case for the DTK - it's just a quick kludge using iPad components that can be produced quickly in small quantities (no keyboard or display required and there's no need for an ultra-miniaturised, intricately shaped logic board in a square case designed to take a desktop Intel CPU and cooler) for the sole purpose of letting rank and file developers recompile their wares for ARM.

The low-hanging-fruit for Apple Silicon is going to be MacBook Air-sized laptops with killer performance vs. battery life specs, and I'm sure that's what Apple is going to hit first. My guess is that the first desktop to go ASi will be a replacement for the iMac 21.5" (hence it didn't get an Intel refresh this year) probably turned into something like a giant iPad.

I'd speculate that there will be a second wave of machines with "Apple Silicon Pro" replacing the 16" MBP, the 5k iMac/iMac Pro and possibly a Mac Mini but not before next summer.

Still, the Mac Mini would be the one that interested me, because I don't want another iMac permanently wedded to its display, whereas an ASi Mac Mini should address the main problem with the Intel Mac Mini - i.e. Intel (tm) Lowest Common Denominator (r) Graphics - especially if it gets some sort of "ASi Pro" with a beefier iGPU. Sadly, though, not holding my breath...


Other wild guess prediction: no new Mac Pro for a while, but "Apple Silicon Accelerator*" MPX cards to add extra compute and GPU cores to the Intel Mac Pro...


(*Maybe they could call it the SpringBoard.... :) )
 
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Boil said:
I am hoping Apple decides to make a new Cube, of the Mac Pro variant:

32 P cores / 4 E cores / 64 GPU cores / 16GB HBM2e Tile Memory

128GB DDR5 RAM / Unified Memory Architecture / Four 32GB DIMMs

4TB NVMe storage / Two 2TB NAND Blades / RAID 0

Six USB4 (TB4) ports / Two 10Gb Ethernet ports

450W Platinum-rated PSU

Expansion slot for optional Apple Silicon GPGPU card (Apple-ified MXM?) 64 GPU cores / 16GB HBM2e Tile Memory

Apple Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard

Apple Magic Mouse 3D

Apple 30" Display / Mini-LED IPS Panel / 4k Webcam / Stereo Speakers (same panel as the 30" iMac / iMac Pro)

US$4,999.00 (including GPGPU expansion card)

;^p
Click to expand...
@Macbookprodude

Why you angry, bro...?!?
 
Omega Mac said:
Consider I figured out they were testing Arm chips in Mac Mini as far back as 2016 based on an interview with the head chip designer and now the DTK is a Mac Mini - which I read has been around for a year (is that right) is a Mac Mini, let's run with the logic why this make sense to continue and why Apple might want to offer this first, it' about market but getting Arm to market.
Click to expand...

It's not hard to understand why Apple chose the Mini for engineering prototypes and the DTK. The mini enclosure is a nice little box with a tiny integrated power supply. If I was an engineer at Apple, I'd design prototype boards to fit in it too, including (where it makes sense) prototypes of random things which aren't Macs. Might as well take advantage of what are, to Apple, cheap off-the-shelf parts.

Also, minis aren't just mini-as-in-small, they're mini-as-in-minimalistic. There's not a lot of complicated stuff inside the box. That makes it simpler to throw a quick and dirty motherboard design inside, which is important because DTKs are throwaway things with extremely short useful lives. This is nowhere near a polished consumer product, even though borrowing the shell of a real product means it looks like one when people unbox it. For example, there are many reports which agree that DTKs don't regulate fan speed, they just run it at constant (and relatively loud) RPM.

So you need to stop reading way too much into the DTK being a Mini. Back in 2005, the Intel DTK was a G5 tower enclosure slightly modified to fit a nearly stock Pentium 4 motherboard, yet the replacement for the G5 tower - the Mac Pro - was the last Intel Mac to ship.
 
My first AS Mac will be MacBook, MacBook Air or cheaper MacBook Pro 13”. I already have MBP 16” but I would like some smaller MacBook and want to try Apple Silicon. I expect it to partly replace iPad Pro 10.5”
 
theluggage said:
I wouldn't read anything into the choice of the Mac Mini case for the DTK - it's just a quick kludge using iPad components that can be produced quickly in small quantities (no keyboard or display required and there's no need for an ultra-miniaturised, intricately shaped logic board in a square case designed to take a desktop Intel CPU and cooler) for the sole purpose of letting rank and file developers recompile their wares for ARM.

The low-hanging-fruit for Apple Silicon is going to be MacBook Air-sized laptops with killer performance vs. battery life specs, and I'm sure that's what Apple is going to hit first. My guess is that the first desktop to go ASi will be a replacement for the iMac 21.5" (hence it didn't get an Intel refresh this year) probably turned into something like a giant iPad.

I'd speculate that there will be a second wave of machines with "Apple Silicon Pro" replacing the 16" MBP, the 5k iMac/iMac Pro and possibly a Mac Mini but not before next summer.

Still, the Mac Mini would be the one that interested me, because I don't want another iMac permanently wedded to its display, whereas an ASi Mac Mini should address the main problem with the Intel Mac Mini - i.e. Intel (tm) Lowest Common Denominator (r) Graphics - especially if it gets some sort of "ASi Pro" with a beefier iGPU. Sadly, though, not holding my breath...


Other wild guess prediction: no new Mac Pro for a while, but "Apple Silicon Accelerator*" MPX cards to add extra compute and GPU cores to the Intel Mac Pro...


(*Maybe they could call it the SpringBoard.... :) )
Click to expand...

This all sounds spot-on in my opinion.

As you say, the Mac Mini was the obvious choice for the DTK because it has enough room to fit a cludged logic-board with the A12Z, rather than the laptops which presumably require a lot of design work to fit everything on the tiny motherboards.

Apple will sell *far* more 12-13" laptops than the Mac Mini, so this will be the logical first choice, unless they are somehow constrained in producing enough Apple Silicon SoCs, which I doubt.

The Mac Mini will probably migrate mid-next-year. I would definitely be interested if it has sufficient CPU / GPU power to replace my current Dell 6-core Xeon with GTX1060 GPU.

I like the idea of a Mac Pro "Apple Silicon Accelerator" card - this sounds credible!
 
Whichever size of MacBook Pro is released first. I strongly suspect it will be the 13” but a 16” would be fine too.

I’m not going out or traveling thanks to ‘rona and both sizes work well around the house and as docked desktop replacements. Gotta have four ports though, two is insufficient for desktop use with a monitor (I’ve tried the dongles and they are flakey).
 
I may purchase an entry level iMac with the bigger display or a MacBook + good 4K/5K external monitor.

But there are conditions to be satisfied first: (1) Sufficient product maturity: MacOS and all major applications need to run on Apple Silicon SoC correctly and natively without Rosetta 2. (2) Marketing claims verified: When comparing with current Intel Macs or Windows+Intel/AMD competition, Apple's claims of better overall performance with less power consumption and heat need to be proven correct in real world usage. (3) Windows on ARM support would yield some bonus points but is not likely to happen quite soon.

I'd imagine this to take a year or two and a second generation of Apple Silicon Macs released in the market.

I'll get by with my current gear until then.
 
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If I have the budget, my first ARM Mac would be a laptop, probably the basic Macbook/Macbook Air. Basically to be an on-the-go thin-n-light laptop but with the battery life of an iPad.
 
Since I registered the other day (after 10+ years of lurking here) to answer a question in another thread I might as well answer here too :)

iMac or a Mac mini (or other desktop alternative that isn't in Mac Pro price range).

Currently on a late 2013 iMac (with a Nvidia GTX 780M), this computer won't get Big Sur and I'm a firm believer that AS will be a good thing for personal computing in general so I would probably get a new computer even if this one got Big Sur.
 
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Depends on how well Apple will perform and how trustable this company will behave over the next months. If their chips manage to outperform both their current CPU and GPU offering while reducing weight and heat of their MacBooks I'm most likely gonna buy a combination of an iMac and a 14" MBP.

But then again, I need to feel a commitment towards professionals, as they did with their MBP 16. I don't need another toy which will put them one step closer towards iOS on all devices, I need a clear stance towards reliability and support of all kinds of professionals. Because so far their software becomes buggier every day.
 
Looks like it we will replace my wife’s MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012) and iPad Mini 4 with one new iPad Air with pencil within the next 12 months. We want to try if that serves her well enough.

As for myself, my 15” MacBook Pro 2015 is still good enough and will be so the next 3-5 years. After that it will be very likely another Apple laptop. Which one? I’ll see then. Dunno yet.
 
13” MacBook Pro. I’ll have to have to have a think about the specification, not the base model though.
 
AppliedMicro said:
Jumping on the Mac mini bandwagon. Though I have already been using a Mac mini as my only Desktop computer for the last few years. And I haven't owned a MacBook either, instead preferring an iPad on the go or for travelling.

That said, if Apple release a worthy successor to the 12" MacBook, I'd be tempted. I've kind of wanting to get one for years, for its size and portability. First, its relatively high price put me off. Also the lack of ports (I don't need much, but felt at least a second USB-C port lacking). After trying it out, the feel of the keyboard - and then the issues with stuck keys cropping up.

This would be my wishlist:
- small and lightweight (1kg / 2.2 lbs)
- solid battery run-time (10hrs)
- keyboard with reasonable tactility
- affordable price (sub-$1000)
- two USB-C ports
Click to expand...

This is what I’m hoping for, it would fit my needs perfectly. The MacBook 12 was a great form factor.
 
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... as Posted in the MagSafe, thread, if an Arm Mac arrives with MagSafe, your wallets and credit cards will have been successfully jailbroken and phished by Apple, resistance will be futile and you'll fight for gen 1 ARM macs exploding batteries and melting keyboards be damed!

I think someone posted somewhere here that Jobs would never have allowed MagSafe to be removed, I think they were close to right. MagSafe was literally mechanically magical, it's like at the last most awkward moment when you have to align the small plug in thing, the MacBook via the power of magnetism, grabbed it for you and finished it off perfectly every time, lighting port is a similar experience, as someone else posted, one of the best plug/port designs ever... of course, not forgetting the instant release of the power cord to avoid a trip yanking duster that sees your high value $$$$ mac kit to the floor to meet an untimely demise just as you are working to a crucial deadline or whatnot... it was one of those why didn't anyone ever think of this before (they probably did) things... but it's probably more about no one did it before and as good, it's the doing that makes the idea truly great.

Stick a MagSafe on an ARM based MacBook anything and that will probably seal the deal for a lot of people on the fence, and any early adoption issues will evaporate in the euphoria inducing return of MagSafe.

I might even be a seminal moment, where Jobs desire to control the silicon, is finally manifest and honoured with the return of MagSafe, a moment of great forgiveness and moving on.
 
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What will be your first ARM MAC?
Click to expand...

A MacBook Air with a CPU that has at least six cores. There's no way I want to pay Tim Cook's ridiculously high prices for a laptop with less cores than an iPhone.
 
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