5 ms·

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple will make Mac OS 11 run on ARM only.

roc 16y ago
I would -- that would be a terrible idea. "Merging" the desktop and mobile-touch universes is a fool's errand. They shouldn't be unified for the very same, very good reasons that the iPhone was served by a fork in the first place. Frankly: you're looking for a fundamentally different experience at the desk top than you are on a mobile. And ARM is a bad choice for the types of tasks that people are still buying traditional PCs and Macs to do.
- runjake 16y ago
  It may be a fool's errand but that's the way Apple is going. And I do not see them having any lack of market success with their approach. I don't think it's really a matter of desktops becoming like mobile devices. I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)". My wife's Macbook has seen better days. When it finally dies, we're going to replace it with an iPad, a bluetooth or docked keyboard and a camera connection kit. It does everything she needs. I imagine this will be the same when my kids get old enough. And why is ARM a bad choice? Have you heard about performance complaints from iPad users? Have you seen Rage HD on iOS yet?
  - roc 16y ago
    > "I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)"." I tend to agree with that. But that's a wholly-different argument than suggesting Apple would make their desktop OS ARM-only. OS X is Apple's solution for those use cases where desktops do and will persist for the next decade, at least. As such, making it ARM-only would require the use of currently-inferior chips, chipsets and tools. It would murder Apple's steadily-growing share of the very market OS X exists to serve. iOS is already serving their mobile devices, and doing it very well. It stands to gain very little from a hypothetical OS-merge and stands to lose quite a lot by becoming more PC-like. (simplicity, stability, performance, etc)
    - runjake 16y ago
      "Mac OS 11" (sic) is a marketing term. It doesn't necessarily have to imply anything relating to the existing product. I'm not trying to be pedantic, just trying to illustrate that I see Apple going strongly towards the iOS route as their main computing platform and I think the facts illustrate the genesis of that. It may be true that the current ARM offerings are inferior in terms of benchmarks, but as far as general computing use they're probably overpowered. I don't really need an i7, a Core 2 Duo is fine. Nearly everything seems generally overpowered these days.
    - te_chris 16y ago
      @ runjake To you maybe. Some of us also do stuff like Video and Audio editing, processing and mixing on our machines, not to mention photoshop and stuff. Remember, the industries that made Mac cool in the first place? yeah, we're still here, just getting addressed less and less. i everything is nice, but there's still millions of people who use this shit professionally. Apples attitude - i.e. killing the xserve when there's hundreds of the things in usage in render farms and video asset serving etc. - is, while typical, somewhat frustrating.
      - runjake 16y ago
        Yeah, you didn't get my point. I said general use, which video and audio editing isn't. Apple's "attitude" is called meeting market demands and eliminating the cruft from their product lines. They're here to make money not do you (or me) favors.
  - Dbug 16y ago
    iPads certainly perform well. With hardware acceleration for h.264, the ARM chip may not be seeing the toughest loads it would otherwise. I believe there's an ARM build of VLC. I've been meaning to check it out to see how video playback is with other codecs. (It's easy to use a USB tuner to record HDTV on a laptop or desktop, but the MPEG2 used in the U.S. is a bit of a chore to transcode to 720P h.264 which is the Apple default for iPad/iPhone/iPod-touch/ and the current Apple-TV (all on ARM now). I'm not sure how far towards the high end ARM will go, but it sure makes sense to have things like Apple TV on ARM. It uses less than 6 watts.
lyime 16y ago
Try running Photoshop CS5, Starcraft 2, AutoCad on ARM. I am not saying it's not going to happen. ARM is focusing on the embedded market. They are not going to be able to compete with the likes of a Quad Core Nehalem or Sandy Bridge.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  ARM processors have, so far, been targeted to mobile, low-power applications for a very long time. When it was launched, powering a desktop computer (the Acorn Archimedes), its speed was comparable to then current 386s with FPUs. There is nothing that prevents building an ARM processor that performs as well as a current x86. In fact, due to its simpler implementation logic, an ARM implemented with the same technology as a x86 would probably run faster or leave more silicon for caches, inter-core communication, more cores and specialized logic.
mooism2 16y ago
Not while anyone wants to run Windows in a VM, they won't.
- jawee 16y ago
  If that were the sole issue, I can't imagine getting a hardware virtualization solution like QEMU up to par would require too much work.
- nextparadigms 16y ago
  You can bet Microsoft will make Windows 8 ARM compatible. They don't want to lose the tablet market and since Intel is having such a hard time getting into that market, they can't simply rely on them. And if you're going to suggest WP7 for tablets, don't. Microsoft will only do that in worst case scenario if Windows 8 will prove to not be good enough for tablets. They don't want to get $10 per license when they could get $50, and that's especially true if touch/mobile computing will replace desktop computing.
  - wtallis 16y ago
    The way Microsoft has handled the mobile market for the past 15 years, it seems likely that they'll go through at least two or three more mobile operating systems before the market can decide whether x86 belongs in handheld devices.
cosmicray 16y ago
When you talk about Apple, and you talk about ARM, remember that Apple bought two companies: PA Semi and Intrinsity (to get chip design talent). The PA Semi acquisition came with IP for a POWER chip, the PA6T. Thus far Apple has announced nothing using that chip (and possibly never will). Apple certainly has the ability to make OS X run on POWER, but doing that might people fall over from dizziness.
- gonzo 16y ago
  Daniel W. Dobberpuhl (the founder of PA Semi) was also the architect for StrongARM (when he was at Digital). Intel only got involved because DEC sued Intel for patent infringement (over the Pentium processor), and lost. Intel grabbed a lot of DEC's technology in the settlement, including StrongARM (which became XScale).

roc 16y ago

I would -- that would be a terrible idea. "Merging" the desktop and mobile-touch universes is a fool's errand. They shouldn't be unified for the very same, very good reasons that the iPhone was served by a fork in the first place. Frankly: you're looking for a fundamentally different experience at the desk top than you are on a mobile. And ARM is a bad choice for the types of tasks that people are still buying traditional PCs and Macs to do.

runjake 16y ago
It may be a fool's errand but that's the way Apple is going. And I do not see them having any lack of market success with their approach. I don't think it's really a matter of desktops becoming like mobile devices. I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)". My wife's Macbook has seen better days. When it finally dies, we're going to replace it with an iPad, a bluetooth or docked keyboard and a camera connection kit. It does everything she needs. I imagine this will be the same when my kids get old enough. And why is ARM a bad choice? Have you heard about performance complaints from iPad users? Have you seen Rage HD on iOS yet?
- roc 16y ago
  > "I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)"." I tend to agree with that. But that's a wholly-different argument than suggesting Apple would make their desktop OS ARM-only. OS X is Apple's solution for those use cases where desktops do and will persist for the next decade, at least. As such, making it ARM-only would require the use of currently-inferior chips, chipsets and tools. It would murder Apple's steadily-growing share of the very market OS X exists to serve. iOS is already serving their mobile devices, and doing it very well. It stands to gain very little from a hypothetical OS-merge and stands to lose quite a lot by becoming more PC-like. (simplicity, stability, performance, etc)
  - runjake 16y ago
    "Mac OS 11" (sic) is a marketing term. It doesn't necessarily have to imply anything relating to the existing product. I'm not trying to be pedantic, just trying to illustrate that I see Apple going strongly towards the iOS route as their main computing platform and I think the facts illustrate the genesis of that. It may be true that the current ARM offerings are inferior in terms of benchmarks, but as far as general computing use they're probably overpowered. I don't really need an i7, a Core 2 Duo is fine. Nearly everything seems generally overpowered these days.
  - te_chris 16y ago
    @ runjake To you maybe. Some of us also do stuff like Video and Audio editing, processing and mixing on our machines, not to mention photoshop and stuff. Remember, the industries that made Mac cool in the first place? yeah, we're still here, just getting addressed less and less. i everything is nice, but there's still millions of people who use this shit professionally. Apples attitude - i.e. killing the xserve when there's hundreds of the things in usage in render farms and video asset serving etc. - is, while typical, somewhat frustrating.
    - runjake 16y ago
      Yeah, you didn't get my point. I said general use, which video and audio editing isn't. Apple's "attitude" is called meeting market demands and eliminating the cruft from their product lines. They're here to make money not do you (or me) favors.
- Dbug 16y ago
  iPads certainly perform well. With hardware acceleration for h.264, the ARM chip may not be seeing the toughest loads it would otherwise. I believe there's an ARM build of VLC. I've been meaning to check it out to see how video playback is with other codecs. (It's easy to use a USB tuner to record HDTV on a laptop or desktop, but the MPEG2 used in the U.S. is a bit of a chore to transcode to 720P h.264 which is the Apple default for iPad/iPhone/iPod-touch/ and the current Apple-TV (all on ARM now). I'm not sure how far towards the high end ARM will go, but it sure makes sense to have things like Apple TV on ARM. It uses less than 6 watts.

lyime 16y ago

Try running Photoshop CS5, Starcraft 2, AutoCad on ARM. I am not saying it's not going to happen. ARM is focusing on the embedded market. They are not going to be able to compete with the likes of a Quad Core Nehalem or Sandy Bridge.

rbanffy 16y ago
ARM processors have, so far, been targeted to mobile, low-power applications for a very long time. When it was launched, powering a desktop computer (the Acorn Archimedes), its speed was comparable to then current 386s with FPUs. There is nothing that prevents building an ARM processor that performs as well as a current x86. In fact, due to its simpler implementation logic, an ARM implemented with the same technology as a x86 would probably run faster or leave more silicon for caches, inter-core communication, more cores and specialized logic.

mooism2 16y ago

Not while anyone wants to run Windows in a VM, they won't.

jawee 16y ago
If that were the sole issue, I can't imagine getting a hardware virtualization solution like QEMU up to par would require too much work.
nextparadigms 16y ago
You can bet Microsoft will make Windows 8 ARM compatible. They don't want to lose the tablet market and since Intel is having such a hard time getting into that market, they can't simply rely on them. And if you're going to suggest WP7 for tablets, don't. Microsoft will only do that in worst case scenario if Windows 8 will prove to not be good enough for tablets. They don't want to get $10 per license when they could get $50, and that's especially true if touch/mobile computing will replace desktop computing.
- wtallis 16y ago
  The way Microsoft has handled the mobile market for the past 15 years, it seems likely that they'll go through at least two or three more mobile operating systems before the market can decide whether x86 belongs in handheld devices.

cosmicray 16y ago

When you talk about Apple, and you talk about ARM, remember that Apple bought two companies: PA Semi and Intrinsity (to get chip design talent). The PA Semi acquisition came with IP for a POWER chip, the PA6T. Thus far Apple has announced nothing using that chip (and possibly never will). Apple certainly has the ability to make OS X run on POWER, but doing that might people fall over from dizziness.

gonzo 16y ago
Daniel W. Dobberpuhl (the founder of PA Semi) was also the architect for StrongARM (when he was at Digital). Intel only got involved because DEC sued Intel for patent infringement (over the Pentium processor), and lost. Intel grabbed a lot of DEC's technology in the settlement, including StrongARM (which became XScale).