10 ms·

Apple's move to ARM-based Macs creates uncertainty

79 points by msh 8y ago

hs86 8y ago
I fear a fast deprecation for x86 support like in [1]. After releasing the first Intel Macs in 2006 we already saw the last OS X release with PowerPC support only one year later in 2007. I believe a Mac has a longer lifetime than a smartphone or tablet and I hope that the Apple ecosystem will not leave the Intel devices behind so fast. The other uncertainty is the upcoming move to Marzipan apps. If its full release becomes somewhat ARM-exclusive, we might have the same risks as with Windows 8 and their Metro disaster. In the case of an unified iOS/macOS-Hybrid these ARM Macs might have no fallback anymore to the already established macOS ecosystem. (like Windows RT) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_...
- cameldrv 8y ago
  I think that's overstating what happened. What I'd look at is the first release of MacOS that didn't support the old hardware. That was Snow Leopard in 2009. At that point, PowerPC users couldn't upgrade to the newest OS. Apple released the last security update to Leopard August 13, 2009. If you had bought a Powerbook May 15, 2006, the day before they announced the MacBook, you would have gotten three years and three months out of it before you stopped getting security updates. These days people wait longer than that to replace their computers, but the computer was definitely not a brick after a year.
  - gilgoomesh 8y ago
    And to put things in perspective... Apple announced in June 2005 that they were going to phase out PowerPC, so anyone actually buying a Powerbook in May 2006 knew that they were going to get a reduced lifetime. Wikipedia's timeline lays it all out pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_... There was 4 years from the official announcement to dropping support in the latest OS and 7 years between the official announcement and the last official software release.
- lugg 8y ago
  Personally speaking I hope they go faster. The faster they rip the band-aid off the better. Apple only does this because they can. They can only do this because they control so much of the ecosystem. This is a good thing. This is a benefit of them holding control over so much of the apple ecosystem. This moves the industry forward. I don't even use apple stuff because I don't like the monopoly. But that doesn't mean I can't reap the rewards and f a faster moving industry.
  - octorian 8y ago
    Apple also doesn't think twice about giving the finger to anyone who actually depends on old hardware, peripherals, or software... or software/peripherals that only begrudgingly update to explicitly support the latest and greatest platforms. These are often the kinds of things with a far longer useful life than the computer itself, and/or things that work fine for their purpose and don't actually need upgrades. This is one area that Microsoft has generally done far better, though that may not hold true forever.
  - m000 8y ago
    I don't think that it's the control of the ecosystem that affords Apple to dump x86. It's mostly that they can afford it. Their make money from iPhones. Their computer market share is still <7%, much of which is just hipster kids browsing the web that will not be affected much by the switch. I doubt Apple is the leading vendor even in the "creatives" segment of computer market. The bottom line is that they get to screw their computer users without really jeopardising their business.
jasonjei 8y ago
I think, for me, the biggest fear is using an ARM-based Mac to build cloud-based software that runs on Linux x86. Much of my development environment emulates production in Docker x86, but an ARM-based development environment would have to emulate x86, no? Alternatively, this could make for building apps in ARM cloud more viable...
- morpheuskafka 8y ago
  Docker is fully arm compatible, so it should be very easy to run these apps on ARM cloud servers. In fact, as ARM begins to take over the cloud, this could sell a lot more MacBooks for developers.
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    AMD64 binaries inside a docker image don't spontaneously become ARM binaries if you run them on a different machine.
    - zapita 8y ago
      You’re right, but there is a very healthy ecosystem of Arm-compatible Docker images and tools already. That definitely gives developers a head start in adding Arm support. Depending on their dependencies, they might not need to do anything more than change labels in their Dockerfile and rebuild.
      - weberc2 8y ago
        I wouldn’t call it healthy. Every time I have an inkling to run k8s on my rpi cluster I find out that there aren’t arm images for many of the tools I want to use, and many of the arm images that exist are hard to find (Docker hub doesn’t/didn’t support searching via arch) or aren’t actively supported. It would be great if everyone did make arm builds for their software, but that’s not been the case in my experience.
        8y ago
aerotwelve 8y ago
Doesn't this kill Boot Camp entirely? Back when I used to encourage people to buy Macbooks (2010-2016), the ability to boot into Windows natively to run programs with no OS X equivalent usually gave them the level of comfort necessary to jump ship. Losing Boot Camp is going to be a big loss.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- protomyth 8y ago
  Well, there is a Windows 10 for ARM, so maybe that would be available.
- untog 8y ago
  I actually wonder what a big loss it would be. I was one of those who switched because of the availability of Boot Camp and have long since left Windows behind. But how many native apps do people really use these days, compared to web sites? I genuinely wonder.
  - octorian 8y ago
    Almost all serious games are Windows-only native apps, or at least are at launch. Also, there's always going to be something you need to run that's a Windows-only binary. You may not need to run it frequently, and you might only stumble upon it every few years. It might be a utility to interface with a specific piece of hardware, or some program that performs a very specific and/or niche function. But there will always be something.
- MBCook 8y ago
  Windows 10 can run on ARM. So they could keep it around. Obviously it wouldn’t run most of the software people actually care about. But they could keep it.
  - mkl 8y ago
    Windows 10 on ARM does realtime binary translation of x86-32 programs, so it can still run them, though speed may be an obstacle for some programs.
protomyth 8y ago
My only worry is if they will lock down the Macintosh to only allow signed or, worse, apps from the App Store. If its just a move to ARM then cool, but I still want to have 32GB of memory and some decent storage. That ship has sailed, I guess, but I really want a Mac Pro worthy of the name. I miss the G4 case.
- apostacy 8y ago
  Yeah, I agree. I seriously doubt they will take the inconvenient open-ish intel architecture to arm.
- chongli 8y ago
  That would mean disabling the ability to use all command line tools not included with the base system. What would Apple gain from doing that? They would certainly alienate a large number of power users in the process.
  - bangonkeyboard 8y ago
    By default, macOS Mojave does not let you so much as ls many folders in your own home directory.
    - evanslify 8y ago
      Can you elaborate more?
      - bangonkeyboard 8y ago
        For example: https://i.imgur.com/hB4pPZd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hB4pPZd.jpg
- xiphias2 8y ago
  Macs are heavily used as development machines, so it won't be locked down for programming. It will be the first machine with programming capabilities with awesome battery life. What's even more fun is that it can mean that some companies switch to ARM servers if their environment works well for development (just what Linus told that it won't happen)
gumby 8y ago
This is a super link bait title for a very short, speculative article. Who knows if Apple will switch to ARM for their laptops. Even Apple may not know yet. We can be sure they are making some, just as they had various x86 efforts under way for many years during the PPC era. This article only cites Intel sources, Of course this is something Intel should be concerned about, and causing some uproar in the press is a good way to lobby a large customer.
- TheOperator 8y ago
  As much as Apple has neglected pros moving to ARM would definitely put video editors using Final Cut in the lurch. Its only really their macbook/macbook air lineups where a move to ARM/RISC looks truly appealing. I don't really think Apple wants to completely abandon creative Pros. Yet if you aren't going to move the ENTIRE lineup off of Intel CPUs you're really limiting any potential benefit.
  - zenexer 8y ago
    How are you arriving at this conclusion? It’s possible to transition from x86 to ARM without any loss of performance in the scenario you’ve described.
  - gumby 8y ago
    First of all the ARM chips Apple ships are designed for iOS workloads (check out the dominance of graphics in area and internal bandwidth on the iPad Pro chips -- it calls to mind the Alto's explicit tradeoff of bus bandwidth and screen refresh). Apple's ARM parts have been smokers for the past few generations but they aren't designed for the sustained performance and instruction mix targeted by Intel. But that doesn't have to be true. MacOS CPUs need not be the same as the ones in iOS devices (after all they aren't today either). Apple could very well design ARM instruction set chips with special pipelined or SIMD instructions that support, say, the kind of transforms Final Cut needs. They could make sure Photoshop was a barn burner on their machines if they thought that mattered. Etc. The real question is the rest of the silicon (peripheral controllers like TB etc which they also get from their Intel deal). As for the tired trope of "As much as Apple has neglected pros" -- I'm tired of hearing that. Yes of course their mix isn't perfect for everyone but holy cow, my MacBook Pro has 4 40GPS TB ports! Hell, I get a lot of work done on their smaller devices, and the ever increasing portability is a huge plus. I'm a pro, not prosumer, and it works for me. I know my needs aren't the same as everybody else's, but I would bet that Apple knows the usage profile of everyone willing to share analytics, including how often people plug what sort of device into their machines. And I'm sure that informs their designs. Every design will fail to be a perfect match for some set of pros, and of course they should complain. Maybe it's just that they are designing machines for me? (in which case: fix the damned touch bar).
glangdale 8y ago
The pricing improvements that they get on another round of Intel processors might well be worth the entire chip design cost, especially when they are using their ARM chips in the iPad line anyhow. Although by now, the "give us good prices or we'll leave" factor might already be priced-in.
mahgnous 8y ago
Apple's move to make expensive crap that I don't want to buy anymore creates uncertainty.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
andr 8y ago
The A12X is already comparable to some Intel CPUs in terms of performance. Yet its power and thermal budget is tiny. The Macbook Pro 13" has an 83 Wh battery [1], while the iPad Pro 12.9" only has 36 Wh. What I like to imagine is an ARM Macbook with the equivalent of two A12s. That will give you an outstanding performance with better battery life. You'll also get further growth potential that Apple has demonstrated year over year, compared to Intel CPUs, which have stagnated. I'm terribly excited about this. And yes, getting your Docker images to run on ARM will be a bit of a drag, but in the long term, this sounds like the future. [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/apple-product-information-sheet.pdf https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/apple-produc...
- tyingq 8y ago
  What if they start rolling the locked down sandbox features into MacOS?
  - jmull 8y ago
    If they do, what does that have to do with ARM?
    - tyingq 8y ago
      Unified hardware makes unified software easier.
  - _ph_ 8y ago
    Then a large part of the Mac userbase, especially anyone doing any kind of development, is going to drop the Mac platform. This is also the main reason the iPad Pro doesn't make larger dents into the laptop market. Development and even file transfer between apps is very limited.
    - interpol_p 8y ago
      It's getting better. I wrote a piece on immediate file transfer between apps to simulate "live painting" from one app into another. I can see iPad getting there, but productivity app developers are slow to adopt the iOS file system introduced some time ago. https://codea.io/blog/whats-next-for-ipad-creativity/ https://codea.io/blog/whats-next-for-ipad-creativity/
jarjoura 8y ago
I've been playing with a Windows ARM64 laptop and it's weirdly sluggish mainly because I think ARM IO and GPU cannot compete with Intel's offering. You can run benchmarks and the CPU seems decent for a laptop, but it's all the other things that make a great user experience. I'm skeptical that Apple would do this to replace Intel as an option, especially in the Pro line-up. This is either a move for a co-processor to aid in better battery, or a lightweight, LTE/5G connected laptop that exists on its own. shrug
- tracker1 8y ago
  I'm not sure it will work for some tasks at all. Specifically A/V editing may suffer, adobe tools in general likely won't see the light of day, and the day to day software won't be a clean migration most likely. It could actually be a great opportunity for Adobe to pair with a Linux vendor (IBM, Canonical) to create a first class supported environment, if they have to do the architecture migrations anyway. I also think that Apple should probably create a gui toolkit as an alternative to electron for mac supported apps, or possibly a react native option. It will be interesting, but if they kill their pro lineup, I don't know they can compete, too many are already using 6-7 year old mac pros, and this will kill hackintosh which is what a lot of pros have gone to.
  - jarjoura 8y ago
    Adobe is already porting their software to ARM architecture. I imagine opening a billboard sized PSD would be painful, but I could see small little icon assets and making tweaks would be a perfectly valid lightweight activity. https://www.macworld.com/article/3313881/software/adobe-introduces-real-photoshop-on-ipad-coming-in-2019.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3313881/software/adobe-intr...
    - gardaani 8y ago
      I don't know how large is "billboard sized", but iPad Pro with full Photoshop CC can open 3GB 12000x12000 PSD files without any lag. https://petapixel.com/2018/10/30/apples-new-ipad-pro-can-edit-a-3gb-psd-file-in-photoshop-with-zero-lag/ https://petapixel.com/2018/10/30/apples-new-ipad-pro-can-edi...
RantyDave 8y ago
Despite having said for years that ARM based macs will be a thing, I no longer think this is the case. For Apple, it's simply not worth it. They've been conspicuously moving development resource from the mac to iDevices for the last ten years and the mac is increasingly becoming an (actually very good) development platform for the iDevices in question. I mean, c'mon, the big feature for the last release of macOS was a 'dark' skin ... and from the hardware side all we want is a keyboard that doesn't shit itself. On the other hand the iPhone on it's own is one of the largest businesses on earth, and is under sustained attack by Google/Samsung/Huawei - the latter two of which are prepared to openly 'cheat' by any means possible. Under such circumstances would you throw significant resource at a dying market, ~10% revenue, where Intel are quite prepared to do the majority of the heavy lifting for you?
- jarjoura 8y ago
  This is actually an argument for Apple to switch entirely to ARM. If they could consolidate engineers, it could continue to invest in Mac without needing crazy growth numbers to justify it.
  - copperx 8y ago
    True, but the initial cash outlay is immense. Sure, Apple can deal with it. But is it worth it?
mishurov 8y ago
People don't care because only monkeys use Apple hardware for development.
grandinj 8y ago
Why would they do this? They'd need a new line of ARM variant CPUs to meet the various performance points of the different macbooks and imacs. And they'd be amortizing those costs over a rather small (for them) number of units. And that would do very little to address the costs of maintaining the OSX software stack, very little of which is CPU specific. Most of those costs are in maintaining a rather different model of UI interaction, software installation, and backwards compatibility. My guess is that they have developed this capability in-house as a form of insurance, and will keep it around and alive as a way of keeping their Intel costs reasonable.
benj111 8y ago
So what's stopping Intel from going ARM? Modern Intel processors aren't X86 internally anyway, so why can't you just slap an ARM decoder on an Intel core?
ksec 8y ago
They promised Mac Pro successors in 2019, and Mac to ARM transition in 2020.? I still think all these are negotiating tactics. The Mac is now primarily a prosumer and pro devices only. Apple should milk it for as long as possible with spec update now and then. The message to Intel's new CEO if you don't give us better pricing, we will move to ARM ( along with our own 5G Modem ). My guess is that since Intel's new CEO is a Finance Guy, lowering prices isn't something he will do. And 5G Modem is also one of those business that makes little to no margin from Intel's perspective. Intel's ex CSO Aicha Evans, the person responsible for getting the Modem business moving despite internal pressure against it, has also left Intel. Or may be Apple really do have a Grand plan. Apple is one of the largest buyer of servers. May be the ARM N1 allows them to go top to bottom ARM. From Devices to Servers. ( And the return of XServe... I can only dream of it )
- sjwright 8y ago
  If Apple returned to servers, it should be in the form of a semi-headless version of macOS optimised for virtual machines.
- stupidcar 8y ago
  I don't think it's negotiating tactic, or any complex strategy. I just think Apple look at the MacBook and Air and see them as mobile devices far closer in market fit to the iPhone/iPad than the MacBook Pro. And given that they're already manufacturing their own chips with the power/perf profile as needed for mobile devices, why not use them?
  - ksec 8y ago
    It make perfect sense for MacBook and MacBook Air, but neglecting MBP, Mac mini, iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro. Creating a Platform which support ARM in the low end and x86 in the high end is far more expensive than whatever BOM cost that is saved from using their own designed SoC. That is unless Apple goes back to Universal Binary.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  > They promised Mac Pro successors in 2019 I don't think they ever did promise that. They made the original announcement in 2017 and only announced "not 2017", they never actually committed to a date.
sjwright 8y ago
Given the success of the last CPU arch transition, there's honestly no reason why the transitional state couldn't be semi-permanent with powerful desktops sporting top Intel chips and ultra-light laptops running souped-up A-series chips from Apple. All it takes is for developers to be producing multi-architecture binaries, something macOS is already good at and something developers were doing for years not that long ago. Remember the WWDC 2020 keynote when they said: "Almost all of your Mac apps will compile for the A14 chip with zero code changes!"
jpalomaki 8y ago
ARM based Macbook running iOS might be something to start with. As travel companion Macbook style device is better than tablet (IMO). Proper keyboard and design which allows it to be used on lap. I would really like to see Apple’s take on Lenovo Yoga style device.
deca6cda37d0 8y ago
For who it creates uncertainty?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Application developers and users?
- mmwelt 8y ago
  Well, at the very least, Intel! But until there is more information, most users and application developers won't really have to worry. This is all still very speculative at this stage.
georgebarnett 8y ago
This really is a non-story. The future is by definition uncertain.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
icanhackit 8y ago
Given how smooth Apple's transition from PPC to Intel was, and how much experience Apple has with ARM in their portable lines -- if/when the complete transition to ARM happens it'll probably be a brief blip on everyone's radar and likely increase competition both price and performance-wise in the desktop sector. What's stopping Apple from adding hardware-level emulation to their SOC's, even if it's only partial functions, to ensure cross-compatibility doesn't take a serious toll on performance? x86 would be patent-encumbered but I'm sure there are a few creative ways to reduce that burden.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  At the time that Apple went from PPC to x86, x86 had a significant performance advantage such that emulation wasn’t a big deal. Currently, there is no such advantage. In addition, many professional Mac programs make use of SIMD instructions such as AVX. Trying to emulate these will further increase the performance penalty. In addition, x86 has relatively strong memory ordering compared to ARM. There may be code that get away with stuff on x86, that will cause subtle bugs on ARM. Again, it is likely professional programs that do this.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > In addition, x86 has relatively strong memory ordering compared to ARM. There may be code that get away with stuff on x86, that will cause subtle bugs on ARM. Again, it is likely professional programs that do this. I asked on HN in the past how Microsoft intends to solve the problem for x86-32 emulation on ARM that x86 has a stronger memory model than ARM: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318877 and got an interesting answer: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14320799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14320799 To put it shortly: the Qualcomm ARM processors (Snapdragon) seem to be able to also to support a strong memory model which makes this emulation possible. I guess that Apple should also be capable to build such a feature into their ARM chips.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > In addition, x86 has relatively strong memory ordering compared to ARM. There may be code that get away with stuff on x86, that will cause subtle bugs on ARM. Again, it is likely professional programs that do this. This should not matter for an x86 emulator?
JudasGoat 8y ago
I'm curious, could we expect Linux support for Apple designed Arm?
- nickhalfasleep 8y ago
  As much as for running Linux on the iPhone / iPad I bet.
- imtringued 8y ago
  Maybe in 2025 if you're lucky. Apple sure as hell isn't going to release opensource drivers like intel or AMD are doing.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  With Bootcamp: Very likely. I'm not so sure if they'll include it this time, though (still I tend towards yes, but it also will depend on Windows ARM's success).
  - opencl 8y ago
    Current Macs with Bootcamp are already basically useless for running Linux. It is not technically impossible to run but might as well be. The T2 SSD controller actively prevents access by any OS that is not either MacOS or Windows, even with secure boot disabled.
- tracker1 8y ago
  I don't think Apple would be nearly as open this time as they've been in the past. It'll probably be nearly as locked down (in terms of load) as the iDevices are. Not only that, but it will put the final nail in the Hackintosh should they deprecate x86 support.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mpweiher 8y ago
"the first ARM-based Macs could come in 2020, with plans to offer developers a way to write a single app that can run across iPhones, iPads and Macs by 2021" Although this may very well be true and somewhat beneficial (see the related story about "unified Mac/iOS Apps from Ars Technica), the existence of "fat binaries" on Mach means that having multiple CPU architectures does not prevent shipping single combined binaries (for some definition of "single") today. NeXTstep shipped single binaries for 4 architectures (68K, Intel, HP PA and SPARC), and due to the app-wrapper architecture, you could actually add the binaries for different OPENSTEP platforms as well, for example Yellow Box for Windows and OPENSTEP for Solaris. Not sure anyone actually did this, but you could easily have had an actual single program supporting 3 operating system and 4-6 CPU architectures (if you include the 88K and PPC systems they had in the lab).
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  Just imagine the ire once HN finds out that the Slack client contains the binaries for the Chrome engine not just one, but 3-4 times over!
  - OldHand2018 8y ago
    That would be humorous for sure. Unfortunately (fortunately?), the App Store already deals with multiple architectures seamlessly. Apple mobile devices are a mix of arm7, arm8 and arm64. The Swift Playground app on the iPad has for years allowed you to save, compile and run files containing any arbitrary Swift code you've felt like writing (though no access to Frameworks of course): the arm-based compiler must be very solid by now. Really, it seems that success or failure hinges on how open the platform is (and if they have hardware virtualization).
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > though no access to Frameworks of course Swift Playgrounds gives you full access to frameworks.
    - imtringued 8y ago
ianai 8y ago
“For Intel, of course, it would mean the loss of a significant customer, albeit probably not a huge hit to its bottom line” ARM could well become a huge breakthrough for tech. For the first time, it’s possible to license and customize silicon to purpose with much less overhead. We’re used to the usual combination of specialized processors (cpu/gpu), but this will open up further specialization - crypto (proc-bound), file systems (possibly some parallelism, need for gobs of flash), AI, UI (proc-bound, benefits from high frequency and no interrupts), who knows what else.
- GuiA 8y ago
  It has already started - most flagship phones these days have a litany of specialized coprocessors (for biometrics, neural networks, imaging, etc).
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    Don't they have special chips just for decompressing specific video formats? Ie. Why I noticed some time ago that suddenly phones stopped chugging power just to watch YouTube.
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      Yes. Those "coprocessors" are special circuits on the SoC, typically somewhere on the CPU sillicon.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Not sure about special chips, but yes, most processors have hardware encoding/decoding for common video formats.
- teknopaul 8y ago
  "ARM could well become a huge breakthrough for tech." ??? Arm has been around since 1987 Runs billions of devices. Its always been possible to license arm, at a cost. Now there are free open source architectures which are suerly more interesting for custom silicon than paying huge license fees to Arm Holdings.

79 points by msh 8y ago

hs86 8y ago

I fear a fast deprecation for x86 support like in [1]. After releasing the first Intel Macs in 2006 we already saw the last OS X release with PowerPC support only one year later in 2007. I believe a Mac has a longer lifetime than a smartphone or tablet and I hope that the Apple ecosystem will not leave the Intel devices behind so fast. The other uncertainty is the upcoming move to Marzipan apps. If its full release becomes somewhat ARM-exclusive, we might have the same risks as with Windows 8 and their Metro disaster. In the case of an unified iOS/macOS-Hybrid these ARM Macs might have no fallback anymore to the already established macOS ecosystem. (like Windows RT) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_...

cameldrv 8y ago
I think that's overstating what happened. What I'd look at is the first release of MacOS that didn't support the old hardware. That was Snow Leopard in 2009. At that point, PowerPC users couldn't upgrade to the newest OS. Apple released the last security update to Leopard August 13, 2009. If you had bought a Powerbook May 15, 2006, the day before they announced the MacBook, you would have gotten three years and three months out of it before you stopped getting security updates. These days people wait longer than that to replace their computers, but the computer was definitely not a brick after a year.
- gilgoomesh 8y ago
  And to put things in perspective... Apple announced in June 2005 that they were going to phase out PowerPC, so anyone actually buying a Powerbook in May 2006 knew that they were going to get a reduced lifetime. Wikipedia's timeline lays it all out pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_... There was 4 years from the official announcement to dropping support in the latest OS and 7 years between the official announcement and the last official software release.
lugg 8y ago
Personally speaking I hope they go faster. The faster they rip the band-aid off the better. Apple only does this because they can. They can only do this because they control so much of the ecosystem. This is a good thing. This is a benefit of them holding control over so much of the apple ecosystem. This moves the industry forward. I don't even use apple stuff because I don't like the monopoly. But that doesn't mean I can't reap the rewards and f a faster moving industry.
- octorian 8y ago
  Apple also doesn't think twice about giving the finger to anyone who actually depends on old hardware, peripherals, or software... or software/peripherals that only begrudgingly update to explicitly support the latest and greatest platforms. These are often the kinds of things with a far longer useful life than the computer itself, and/or things that work fine for their purpose and don't actually need upgrades. This is one area that Microsoft has generally done far better, though that may not hold true forever.
- m000 8y ago
  I don't think that it's the control of the ecosystem that affords Apple to dump x86. It's mostly that they can afford it. Their make money from iPhones. Their computer market share is still <7%, much of which is just hipster kids browsing the web that will not be affected much by the switch. I doubt Apple is the leading vendor even in the "creatives" segment of computer market. The bottom line is that they get to screw their computer users without really jeopardising their business.

jasonjei 8y ago

I think, for me, the biggest fear is using an ARM-based Mac to build cloud-based software that runs on Linux x86. Much of my development environment emulates production in Docker x86, but an ARM-based development environment would have to emulate x86, no? Alternatively, this could make for building apps in ARM cloud more viable...

morpheuskafka 8y ago
Docker is fully arm compatible, so it should be very easy to run these apps on ARM cloud servers. In fact, as ARM begins to take over the cloud, this could sell a lot more MacBooks for developers.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  AMD64 binaries inside a docker image don't spontaneously become ARM binaries if you run them on a different machine.
  - zapita 8y ago
    You’re right, but there is a very healthy ecosystem of Arm-compatible Docker images and tools already. That definitely gives developers a head start in adding Arm support. Depending on their dependencies, they might not need to do anything more than change labels in their Dockerfile and rebuild.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      I wouldn’t call it healthy. Every time I have an inkling to run k8s on my rpi cluster I find out that there aren’t arm images for many of the tools I want to use, and many of the arm images that exist are hard to find (Docker hub doesn’t/didn’t support searching via arch) or aren’t actively supported. It would be great if everyone did make arm builds for their software, but that’s not been the case in my experience.
      - 8y ago

aerotwelve 8y ago

Doesn't this kill Boot Camp entirely? Back when I used to encourage people to buy Macbooks (2010-2016), the ability to boot into Windows natively to run programs with no OS X equivalent usually gave them the level of comfort necessary to jump ship. Losing Boot Camp is going to be a big loss.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 8y ago
Well, there is a Windows 10 for ARM, so maybe that would be available.
untog 8y ago
I actually wonder what a big loss it would be. I was one of those who switched because of the availability of Boot Camp and have long since left Windows behind. But how many native apps do people really use these days, compared to web sites? I genuinely wonder.
- octorian 8y ago
  Almost all serious games are Windows-only native apps, or at least are at launch. Also, there's always going to be something you need to run that's a Windows-only binary. You may not need to run it frequently, and you might only stumble upon it every few years. It might be a utility to interface with a specific piece of hardware, or some program that performs a very specific and/or niche function. But there will always be something.
MBCook 8y ago
Windows 10 can run on ARM. So they could keep it around. Obviously it wouldn’t run most of the software people actually care about. But they could keep it.
- mkl 8y ago
  Windows 10 on ARM does realtime binary translation of x86-32 programs, so it can still run them, though speed may be an obstacle for some programs.

protomyth 8y ago

My only worry is if they will lock down the Macintosh to only allow signed or, worse, apps from the App Store. If its just a move to ARM then cool, but I still want to have 32GB of memory and some decent storage. That ship has sailed, I guess, but I really want a Mac Pro worthy of the name. I miss the G4 case.

apostacy 8y ago
Yeah, I agree. I seriously doubt they will take the inconvenient open-ish intel architecture to arm.
chongli 8y ago
That would mean disabling the ability to use all command line tools not included with the base system. What would Apple gain from doing that? They would certainly alienate a large number of power users in the process.
- bangonkeyboard 8y ago
  By default, macOS Mojave does not let you so much as ls many folders in your own home directory.
  - evanslify 8y ago
    Can you elaborate more?
    - bangonkeyboard 8y ago
      For example: https://i.imgur.com/hB4pPZd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hB4pPZd.jpg
xiphias2 8y ago
Macs are heavily used as development machines, so it won't be locked down for programming. It will be the first machine with programming capabilities with awesome battery life. What's even more fun is that it can mean that some companies switch to ARM servers if their environment works well for development (just what Linus told that it won't happen)

gumby 8y ago

This is a super link bait title for a very short, speculative article. Who knows if Apple will switch to ARM for their laptops. Even Apple may not know yet. We can be sure they are making some, just as they had various x86 efforts under way for many years during the PPC era. This article only cites Intel sources, Of course this is something Intel should be concerned about, and causing some uproar in the press is a good way to lobby a large customer.

TheOperator 8y ago
As much as Apple has neglected pros moving to ARM would definitely put video editors using Final Cut in the lurch. Its only really their macbook/macbook air lineups where a move to ARM/RISC looks truly appealing. I don't really think Apple wants to completely abandon creative Pros. Yet if you aren't going to move the ENTIRE lineup off of Intel CPUs you're really limiting any potential benefit.
- zenexer 8y ago
  How are you arriving at this conclusion? It’s possible to transition from x86 to ARM without any loss of performance in the scenario you’ve described.
- gumby 8y ago
  First of all the ARM chips Apple ships are designed for iOS workloads (check out the dominance of graphics in area and internal bandwidth on the iPad Pro chips -- it calls to mind the Alto's explicit tradeoff of bus bandwidth and screen refresh). Apple's ARM parts have been smokers for the past few generations but they aren't designed for the sustained performance and instruction mix targeted by Intel. But that doesn't have to be true. MacOS CPUs need not be the same as the ones in iOS devices (after all they aren't today either). Apple could very well design ARM instruction set chips with special pipelined or SIMD instructions that support, say, the kind of transforms Final Cut needs. They could make sure Photoshop was a barn burner on their machines if they thought that mattered. Etc. The real question is the rest of the silicon (peripheral controllers like TB etc which they also get from their Intel deal). As for the tired trope of "As much as Apple has neglected pros" -- I'm tired of hearing that. Yes of course their mix isn't perfect for everyone but holy cow, my MacBook Pro has 4 40GPS TB ports! Hell, I get a lot of work done on their smaller devices, and the ever increasing portability is a huge plus. I'm a pro, not prosumer, and it works for me. I know my needs aren't the same as everybody else's, but I would bet that Apple knows the usage profile of everyone willing to share analytics, including how often people plug what sort of device into their machines. And I'm sure that informs their designs. Every design will fail to be a perfect match for some set of pros, and of course they should complain. Maybe it's just that they are designing machines for me? (in which case: fix the damned touch bar).

glangdale 8y ago

The pricing improvements that they get on another round of Intel processors might well be worth the entire chip design cost, especially when they are using their ARM chips in the iPad line anyhow. Although by now, the "give us good prices or we'll leave" factor might already be priced-in.

mahgnous 8y ago

Apple's move to make expensive crap that I don't want to buy anymore creates uncertainty.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

andr 8y ago

The A12X is already comparable to some Intel CPUs in terms of performance. Yet its power and thermal budget is tiny. The Macbook Pro 13" has an 83 Wh battery [1], while the iPad Pro 12.9" only has 36 Wh. What I like to imagine is an ARM Macbook with the equivalent of two A12s. That will give you an outstanding performance with better battery life. You'll also get further growth potential that Apple has demonstrated year over year, compared to Intel CPUs, which have stagnated. I'm terribly excited about this. And yes, getting your Docker images to run on ARM will be a bit of a drag, but in the long term, this sounds like the future. [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/apple-product-information-sheet.pdf https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/apple-produc...

tyingq 8y ago
What if they start rolling the locked down sandbox features into MacOS?
- jmull 8y ago
  If they do, what does that have to do with ARM?
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Unified hardware makes unified software easier.
- _ph_ 8y ago
  Then a large part of the Mac userbase, especially anyone doing any kind of development, is going to drop the Mac platform. This is also the main reason the iPad Pro doesn't make larger dents into the laptop market. Development and even file transfer between apps is very limited.
  - interpol_p 8y ago
    It's getting better. I wrote a piece on immediate file transfer between apps to simulate "live painting" from one app into another. I can see iPad getting there, but productivity app developers are slow to adopt the iOS file system introduced some time ago. https://codea.io/blog/whats-next-for-ipad-creativity/ https://codea.io/blog/whats-next-for-ipad-creativity/

jarjoura 8y ago

I've been playing with a Windows ARM64 laptop and it's weirdly sluggish mainly because I think ARM IO and GPU cannot compete with Intel's offering. You can run benchmarks and the CPU seems decent for a laptop, but it's all the other things that make a great user experience. I'm skeptical that Apple would do this to replace Intel as an option, especially in the Pro line-up. This is either a move for a co-processor to aid in better battery, or a lightweight, LTE/5G connected laptop that exists on its own. shrug

tracker1 8y ago
I'm not sure it will work for some tasks at all. Specifically A/V editing may suffer, adobe tools in general likely won't see the light of day, and the day to day software won't be a clean migration most likely. It could actually be a great opportunity for Adobe to pair with a Linux vendor (IBM, Canonical) to create a first class supported environment, if they have to do the architecture migrations anyway. I also think that Apple should probably create a gui toolkit as an alternative to electron for mac supported apps, or possibly a react native option. It will be interesting, but if they kill their pro lineup, I don't know they can compete, too many are already using 6-7 year old mac pros, and this will kill hackintosh which is what a lot of pros have gone to.
- jarjoura 8y ago
  Adobe is already porting their software to ARM architecture. I imagine opening a billboard sized PSD would be painful, but I could see small little icon assets and making tweaks would be a perfectly valid lightweight activity. https://www.macworld.com/article/3313881/software/adobe-introduces-real-photoshop-on-ipad-coming-in-2019.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3313881/software/adobe-intr...
  - gardaani 8y ago
    I don't know how large is "billboard sized", but iPad Pro with full Photoshop CC can open 3GB 12000x12000 PSD files without any lag. https://petapixel.com/2018/10/30/apples-new-ipad-pro-can-edit-a-3gb-psd-file-in-photoshop-with-zero-lag/ https://petapixel.com/2018/10/30/apples-new-ipad-pro-can-edi...

RantyDave 8y ago

Despite having said for years that ARM based macs will be a thing, I no longer think this is the case. For Apple, it's simply not worth it. They've been conspicuously moving development resource from the mac to iDevices for the last ten years and the mac is increasingly becoming an (actually very good) development platform for the iDevices in question. I mean, c'mon, the big feature for the last release of macOS was a 'dark' skin ... and from the hardware side all we want is a keyboard that doesn't shit itself. On the other hand the iPhone on it's own is one of the largest businesses on earth, and is under sustained attack by Google/Samsung/Huawei - the latter two of which are prepared to openly 'cheat' by any means possible. Under such circumstances would you throw significant resource at a dying market, ~10% revenue, where Intel are quite prepared to do the majority of the heavy lifting for you?

jarjoura 8y ago
This is actually an argument for Apple to switch entirely to ARM. If they could consolidate engineers, it could continue to invest in Mac without needing crazy growth numbers to justify it.
- copperx 8y ago
  True, but the initial cash outlay is immense. Sure, Apple can deal with it. But is it worth it?

mishurov 8y ago

People don't care because only monkeys use Apple hardware for development.

grandinj 8y ago

Why would they do this? They'd need a new line of ARM variant CPUs to meet the various performance points of the different macbooks and imacs. And they'd be amortizing those costs over a rather small (for them) number of units. And that would do very little to address the costs of maintaining the OSX software stack, very little of which is CPU specific. Most of those costs are in maintaining a rather different model of UI interaction, software installation, and backwards compatibility. My guess is that they have developed this capability in-house as a form of insurance, and will keep it around and alive as a way of keeping their Intel costs reasonable.

benj111 8y ago

So what's stopping Intel from going ARM? Modern Intel processors aren't X86 internally anyway, so why can't you just slap an ARM decoder on an Intel core?

ksec 8y ago

They promised Mac Pro successors in 2019, and Mac to ARM transition in 2020.? I still think all these are negotiating tactics. The Mac is now primarily a prosumer and pro devices only. Apple should milk it for as long as possible with spec update now and then. The message to Intel's new CEO if you don't give us better pricing, we will move to ARM ( along with our own 5G Modem ). My guess is that since Intel's new CEO is a Finance Guy, lowering prices isn't something he will do. And 5G Modem is also one of those business that makes little to no margin from Intel's perspective. Intel's ex CSO Aicha Evans, the person responsible for getting the Modem business moving despite internal pressure against it, has also left Intel. Or may be Apple really do have a Grand plan. Apple is one of the largest buyer of servers. May be the ARM N1 allows them to go top to bottom ARM. From Devices to Servers. ( And the return of XServe... I can only dream of it )

sjwright 8y ago
If Apple returned to servers, it should be in the form of a semi-headless version of macOS optimised for virtual machines.
stupidcar 8y ago
I don't think it's negotiating tactic, or any complex strategy. I just think Apple look at the MacBook and Air and see them as mobile devices far closer in market fit to the iPhone/iPad than the MacBook Pro. And given that they're already manufacturing their own chips with the power/perf profile as needed for mobile devices, why not use them?
- ksec 8y ago
  It make perfect sense for MacBook and MacBook Air, but neglecting MBP, Mac mini, iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro. Creating a Platform which support ARM in the low end and x86 in the high end is far more expensive than whatever BOM cost that is saved from using their own designed SoC. That is unless Apple goes back to Universal Binary.
Marsymars 8y ago
> They promised Mac Pro successors in 2019 I don't think they ever did promise that. They made the original announcement in 2017 and only announced "not 2017", they never actually committed to a date.

sjwright 8y ago

Given the success of the last CPU arch transition, there's honestly no reason why the transitional state couldn't be semi-permanent with powerful desktops sporting top Intel chips and ultra-light laptops running souped-up A-series chips from Apple. All it takes is for developers to be producing multi-architecture binaries, something macOS is already good at and something developers were doing for years not that long ago. Remember the WWDC 2020 keynote when they said: "Almost all of your Mac apps will compile for the A14 chip with zero code changes!"

jpalomaki 8y ago

ARM based Macbook running iOS might be something to start with. As travel companion Macbook style device is better than tablet (IMO). Proper keyboard and design which allows it to be used on lap. I would really like to see Apple’s take on Lenovo Yoga style device.

deca6cda37d0 8y ago

For who it creates uncertainty?

saagarjha 8y ago
Application developers and users?
mmwelt 8y ago
Well, at the very least, Intel! But until there is more information, most users and application developers won't really have to worry. This is all still very speculative at this stage.

georgebarnett 8y ago

This really is a non-story. The future is by definition uncertain.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

icanhackit 8y ago

Given how smooth Apple's transition from PPC to Intel was, and how much experience Apple has with ARM in their portable lines -- if/when the complete transition to ARM happens it'll probably be a brief blip on everyone's radar and likely increase competition both price and performance-wise in the desktop sector. What's stopping Apple from adding hardware-level emulation to their SOC's, even if it's only partial functions, to ensure cross-compatibility doesn't take a serious toll on performance? x86 would be patent-encumbered but I'm sure there are a few creative ways to reduce that burden.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
At the time that Apple went from PPC to x86, x86 had a significant performance advantage such that emulation wasn’t a big deal. Currently, there is no such advantage. In addition, many professional Mac programs make use of SIMD instructions such as AVX. Trying to emulate these will further increase the performance penalty. In addition, x86 has relatively strong memory ordering compared to ARM. There may be code that get away with stuff on x86, that will cause subtle bugs on ARM. Again, it is likely professional programs that do this.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > In addition, x86 has relatively strong memory ordering compared to ARM. There may be code that get away with stuff on x86, that will cause subtle bugs on ARM. Again, it is likely professional programs that do this. I asked on HN in the past how Microsoft intends to solve the problem for x86-32 emulation on ARM that x86 has a stronger memory model than ARM: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318877 and got an interesting answer: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14320799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14320799 To put it shortly: the Qualcomm ARM processors (Snapdragon) seem to be able to also to support a strong memory model which makes this emulation possible. I guess that Apple should also be capable to build such a feature into their ARM chips.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > In addition, x86 has relatively strong memory ordering compared to ARM. There may be code that get away with stuff on x86, that will cause subtle bugs on ARM. Again, it is likely professional programs that do this. This should not matter for an x86 emulator?

JudasGoat 8y ago

I'm curious, could we expect Linux support for Apple designed Arm?

nickhalfasleep 8y ago
As much as for running Linux on the iPhone / iPad I bet.
imtringued 8y ago
Maybe in 2025 if you're lucky. Apple sure as hell isn't going to release opensource drivers like intel or AMD are doing.
solarkraft 8y ago
With Bootcamp: Very likely. I'm not so sure if they'll include it this time, though (still I tend towards yes, but it also will depend on Windows ARM's success).
- opencl 8y ago
  Current Macs with Bootcamp are already basically useless for running Linux. It is not technically impossible to run but might as well be. The T2 SSD controller actively prevents access by any OS that is not either MacOS or Windows, even with secure boot disabled.
tracker1 8y ago
I don't think Apple would be nearly as open this time as they've been in the past. It'll probably be nearly as locked down (in terms of load) as the iDevices are. Not only that, but it will put the final nail in the Hackintosh should they deprecate x86 support.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

mpweiher 8y ago

"the first ARM-based Macs could come in 2020, with plans to offer developers a way to write a single app that can run across iPhones, iPads and Macs by 2021" Although this may very well be true and somewhat beneficial (see the related story about "unified Mac/iOS Apps from Ars Technica), the existence of "fat binaries" on Mach means that having multiple CPU architectures does not prevent shipping single combined binaries (for some definition of "single") today. NeXTstep shipped single binaries for 4 architectures (68K, Intel, HP PA and SPARC), and due to the app-wrapper architecture, you could actually add the binaries for different OPENSTEP platforms as well, for example Yellow Box for Windows and OPENSTEP for Solaris. Not sure anyone actually did this, but you could easily have had an actual single program supporting 3 operating system and 4-6 CPU architectures (if you include the 88K and PPC systems they had in the lab).

wodenokoto 8y ago
Just imagine the ire once HN finds out that the Slack client contains the binaries for the Chrome engine not just one, but 3-4 times over!
- OldHand2018 8y ago
  That would be humorous for sure. Unfortunately (fortunately?), the App Store already deals with multiple architectures seamlessly. Apple mobile devices are a mix of arm7, arm8 and arm64. The Swift Playground app on the iPad has for years allowed you to save, compile and run files containing any arbitrary Swift code you've felt like writing (though no access to Frameworks of course): the arm-based compiler must be very solid by now. Really, it seems that success or failure hinges on how open the platform is (and if they have hardware virtualization).
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > though no access to Frameworks of course Swift Playgrounds gives you full access to frameworks.
  - imtringued 8y ago

ianai 8y ago

“For Intel, of course, it would mean the loss of a significant customer, albeit probably not a huge hit to its bottom line” ARM could well become a huge breakthrough for tech. For the first time, it’s possible to license and customize silicon to purpose with much less overhead. We’re used to the usual combination of specialized processors (cpu/gpu), but this will open up further specialization - crypto (proc-bound), file systems (possibly some parallelism, need for gobs of flash), AI, UI (proc-bound, benefits from high frequency and no interrupts), who knows what else.

GuiA 8y ago
It has already started - most flagship phones these days have a litany of specialized coprocessors (for biometrics, neural networks, imaging, etc).
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Don't they have special chips just for decompressing specific video formats? Ie. Why I noticed some time ago that suddenly phones stopped chugging power just to watch YouTube.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Yes. Those "coprocessors" are special circuits on the SoC, typically somewhere on the CPU sillicon.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Not sure about special chips, but yes, most processors have hardware encoding/decoding for common video formats.
teknopaul 8y ago
"ARM could well become a huge breakthrough for tech." ??? Arm has been around since 1987 Runs billions of devices. Its always been possible to license arm, at a cost. Now there are free open source architectures which are suerly more interesting for custom silicon than paying huge license fees to Arm Holdings.