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Apple aims to sell Macs with its own chips starting in 2021

482 points by blopeur 7y ago

uyuioi 7y ago
I reckon Apple actually will release iPadOS for fixed keyboard layouts. Or something similar.
izacus 7y ago
The big question here is - are users of these Macs still going to be allowed to decide what software they can run or will that decision be made by Apple like on iOS?
- yoz-y 7y ago
  My hope is yes, especially as iPad can now pretty much be its own thing. I imagine developers within Apple still like to have their own stuff too?
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    Apparently Apple's developers already have ways around the current lockdowns in macOS.
    - yoz-y 7y ago
      Possibly, but at some point they will need to provide a reasonable way for their developer base to get by. They do depend on the community quite a lot for the popularity and if at some point you won't be able to develop for their platforms you won't. At the moment there is not much to go around (granted I don't do kernel development).
    - tomduncalf 7y ago
      Doesn't everyone have ways around? Cmd-click + open for programs, "Run Anyway" or whatever it is called in the Security Preference pane for extensions etc?
      - Hamuko 7y ago
        https://twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/1219292758910828544 https://twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/121929275891082854...
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Yes, but those are for single-use exemptions. Outside developers can still disable those entirely.
    - grishka 7y ago
      Well, you can disable SIP and AMFI.
- pampa 7y ago
  Is there any software not built by Apple that is worth getting a Mac for? Logic Pro, Final Cut. And you cant even buy a decent Mac to run them without paying arm and leg. Everyting else seems to be cross platform and runs ok on Windows, or even linux.
  - randall 7y ago
    There's a lot of indie software that is surprisingly great. Omnifocus comes to mind.
    - pampa 7y ago
      Yea, but you wont buy a Mac just to run Omnifocus. You can probably find alternatives on other platforms or in the cloud that are just as good or better. I'm talking about killer applications, where the overall experience on mac is magnitudes better than anywhere else.
      - throwaway55554 7y ago
        > Yea, but you wont buy a Mac just to run Omnifocus. No, but when it is time to buy another Mac, you'd like it to run Omnifocus.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        > Yea, but you wont buy a Mac just to run Omnifocus. I did.
        randall 7y ago
        I'm in this situation. I actually wish I could switch to Linux, but I have too many systems / routines built around the best mac software.
      - danieldk 7y ago
        OmniGraffle then ;) But there are many more: Things, DeckSet, Affinity Designer/Photo/Illustrator (available on Windows, but nothing of the same quality on Linux), Little Snitch, LaunchBar/Alfred. The Mac has traditionally had a very good shareware ecosystem. But even basic things like Preview are many times better than Evince, Okular, or whatever Windows uses. Who needs a killer app when the OS is already a killer app?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _ph_ 7y ago
  Yes, as it is the one defining difference of the Mac: it is still a real computer where you have file access and can install anything you want - which is basically the prerequisite for doing any serious developer work on a machine. Actually, it is the prerequisite for doing a lot of work on any machine.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  An engineer at WWDC19 announced as such, yes. You may have to disable some security features to do so, however.
kalvisk 7y ago
PowerPC back in the game? :D
- jaboutboul 7y ago
  Most likely ARM as that is what the iOS devices use now.
fbn79 7y ago
So no more Hackintosh and virtualized MacOs?
- morganvachon 7y ago
  According to the article it is going to be a staggered release, starting with the lower end of the Mac lineup, so I have a feeling there will be several more years of Hackintosh fun to be had.
  - xattt 7y ago
    The Mac lineup is likely going to be segmented by their Pro monikers. The ARM-based laptop will be the iBook (following iPad, iPhone patterns). My best guess ...
    - tosers4 7y ago
      they abandoned the iPattern a while ago, if there are name changes then it would be "Apple Book"
- nutjob2 7y ago
  Apple will still be selling and supporting x86 machines for many years, possibly forever.
  - fluffything 7y ago
    x86-32bit, PowerPC... nvm.
    - nutjob2 7y ago
      I think if they wanted to get to parity with Intel or AMD with the higher end desktop processors they may have quite a bit of work ahead of them, and for a relatively small market, so it's questionable if they would want to sink precious engineering resources into that. On the portable side though its a no-brainer. I don't see Apple having x86 in new laptops at all after the transition. But Apple may stop making high end desktop systems all together so it is possible. It's a very small part of their revenue.
hiby007 7y ago
Can someone expert in this field explain what does this means for developers and what this means in the long run?
- nutjob2 7y ago
  Mostly just having to compile for an additional architecture, and a few new bugs to chase down due having to develop cross-arch. If your code is all in a high level language and your libraries are ported (a big if) then it won't be a huge burden but if you're relying n dynamic code generation or self-modifying code or some arch-specific hacks or the like you may have a lot more trouble.
- m12k 7y ago
  Mostly, it means apps will need to be re-compiled for the new CPU architecture. For a while now, apps uploaded to the Mac App store are uploaded in an intermediate representation, so the final compilation to the specific architecture happens on Apple's servers. This puts Apple in a place where they can launch a new computer with an ARM CPU, and (ideally) all apps on the Mac App Store will "just work"TM out of the box. And they can know whether that will be the case before the launch, maybe even reach out to developers to solve issues ahead of time. So the biggest potential problem will be for of apps outside the app store. Developers will need to re-compile their apps themselves - I hope this will be possible with cross-compilation, so it's not necessary to get a new mac in order to do so (that would severely limit how many devs would do so). Maybe the norm will be 'fat binaries' like in the PowerPC->Intel transition period, where apps ship with binaries compiled for both architectures. Also, apps that haven't been updated for a long time might not receive updates and would get left behind (although switching off 32-bit support in Catalina could be seen as a test run for the same disruption). Also, any apps that are using specific x86-instructions for optimization might take a while longer to port - e.g game engines (luckily most game engines are cross-platform these days, so Unity, Unreal and the others already have ARM-targets from iOS/Android/Switch to base this on)
  - eterps 7y ago
    Which intermediate representation is being used?
tl 7y ago
Many suspect that ARM Macs are coming, but I would not trust reporting from “The Big Hack” Bloomberg [1]. From the article, Bloomberg reported [2] that Apple would also do it in 2020, so they’re planning on being eventually right. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2018/10/bloomberg_the_big_hack https://daringfireball.net/2018/10/bloomberg_the_big_hack [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-said-to-plan-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-...
- lowdose 7y ago
  Just because other media outlets haven't reported on the big hack, nor the lack of evidence and denial by involved companies is enough to dismiss it. You think Apple can pull their supply chain tomorrow out of China? I don't believe Amazon would give Alibaba et al a better excuse to strong arm Chinese entrepreneurs on their platform because it is losing the battle in every single market Amazon has a real storefront.
- Traster 7y ago
  I would really love it if we could try not dismissing entire news sources out of how hand based on 1 bad piece of reporting years ago. It's not like this article is even by the same journalists. We should be ignoring Marc Gurman because because John Robertson got something wrong in 2018? Also, if you'd actually read the article instead of dismissing it out of hand, you'd realise your big gotcha in your second citation is actually directly referenced in the article with details about exactly why they made that prediction. Frankly, there's no way even Apple knew whether they'd be shipping ARM macs in 2020 or 2021 back in April of 2018. In fact, this reporting actually backs up that reporting - given where we are now, it seems highly likely that Apple were planning to ship ARM macs in 2020 when that report was done in April 2018.
  - klohto 7y ago
    We should do exactly what the OP says because that's the whole point of news outlets. Bloomberg stood by that piece and never commented on it, they just ignored. I don't see a reason why I should trust the same outlet. I'm happy reading their opinion pieces (by matt levine) but I see no reason to not dismiss their usual lets-see-if-we-are-right stuff.
yingw787 7y ago
I remember watching this video on the Intel 8086 by Harvard Business School, and they mentioned how revolutionary it is from a business perspective because it took a vertically integrated market and made it a horizontally integrated market. (I can't find the video after a cursory search...) Is this is the reversal of this revolution? Are we going back to a vertically integrated market due to consolidation in market players or because of performance / power concerns? Everyone seems to be making their own chips and boards these days. Google / TPU, AWS / Graviton, Microsoft / SQ1... Will we ever see a fragmentation in ISAs a la EEE? IMHO that would be a catastrophic regression in the software space, easily a black swan event, if you say needed to compile software differently between major cloud vendors just to deploy.
- HugoDaniel 7y ago
  It certainly feels that way. I think that the fragmentation problem might be diluted this time because the software is way more abstracted from hardware (mainstream languages are all very high level, and there is widespread adoption of open compilers - with llvm/clang being pushed by apple)
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Of the Intel 8086 or of the IBM PC platform? I don't remember anything specific to the 8086 that made it a "horizontally integrated market" w.r.t. its competitors (I might be wrong, of course)
- frozenport 7y ago
  While Apple products may be popular with tech bros and aspiring creative like Martin Luther King, John Lennon or Mahatma Gandhi they only represent a small fraction of computing outside California.
- wukerplank 7y ago
  Apple has a history of doing everything in their own way if feasible. Not sure if one should extrapolate from them to the entire market.
  - 7y ago
HugoDaniel 7y ago
this makes me sad because I've just recently got a MacBook Pro, and it was not cheap; still had hopes that it could last >10yrs as my last one did
- jojoo 7y ago
  the switch from ppc to intel definetly contributed to the fact that my powerbook only held up ~8 years
  - MobileVet 7y ago
    Can you imagine a Windows based PC lasting half of that time? Outside of the silky OS and tight Linux coupling, it has been a joy to buy computers (albeit at a premium) that last more than 2 years. I still have a 2009 iMac that is perfectly fine for everything except iOS development (due to an Xcode OS minimum) and a 2015 MBP for that. While my new work 16 MBP is a performance beast compared to the 2015 MBP, I can certainly be productive and expect to be for years to come with my personal kit.
    - shantara 7y ago
      Easily, if you plan your hardware purchases. My 2012 desktop PC is still doing great. Intel i7-3770, 16 GB RAM, SSD. I'm glad I haven't let myself be convinced by the popular opinions at the time that i5, 8GB RAM and HDD are totally fine and there's no reason to pay more. The only component I've upgraded was a graphics card, but that's only because I play games on this PC. Otherwise, my old GTX680 would have still been fine.
    - foepys 7y ago
      > Can you imagine a Windows based PC lasting half of that time? Yes, my Thinkpad T420 still does. Don't compare consumer-grade $300 laptops/PCs to Apple hardware that costs $2,500+, please. A modern Windows 10 is also still able to run applications written in 1999 and even earlier. Apple only supports the last 3 releases of macOS which puts the burden on the developers that often don't even support the applications anymore. There are many reasons to dislike Windows(-based PCs) but your argument is very, very weak.
morganvachon 7y ago
I know it won't be exactly the same thing as the 68k and PPC eras, but I'm excited nonetheless. I'm a sucker for stories of going against the mainstream and pulling it off. I remember being wholly underwhelmed when Apple switched to Intel in the mid 2000s; my PPC Mac mini was more performant than the first Intel mini by far, especially the GPU. Given how powerful the A series mobile processors are (the new iPhone SE makes my Galaxy Note 10+ look like a slouch in benchmarks), I have a feeling the new Macs will be worth a look for anyone without hard requirements for Windows 10.
- nvarsj 7y ago
  > I have a feeling the new Macs will be worth a look for anyone without hard requirements for Windows 10 Not just that - but the many, many legacy apps professionals rely on. The 64-bit move already decimated the professional audio space. The cynic in me can't help but see this as a move towards pure consumer device. As a development machine it will be all but useless as you find things that won't compile or work correctly on the new CPU arch.
  - morganvachon 7y ago
    > As a development machine it will be all but useless as you find things that won't compile or work correctly on the new CPU arch. I'm not a developer so forgive my ignorance, but isn't this what cross-compiling is for? I get that compiling natively can increase performance and find obscure hardware issues, but it's my understanding that, for example, ARM builds of GNU/Linux binaries are just cross-compiled by server farms that are also natively compiling the AMD64 builds. Also, fat binaries and JIT emulation have been a thing forever, especially for Apple who has dealt with these changes twice now (68k -> PPC -> x86-64). I just don't see this being any different than current multi-platform efforts like Debian, NetBSD, etc., except it's a for-profit company with billions of dollars and thousands of expert employees behind it.
    - bluedino 7y ago
      There are bugs that will show up on certain x86 that won't show up on ARM. Plus you've got things like code that is already built that you'll have to emulate in some way or another.
jamesu 7y ago
Considering the XCode on iOS rumors, I'm still waiting for a 27inch iPad to be released myself.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  What on earth would be the point of a 27-inch iPad?
  - macintux 7y ago
    I’ve long dreamt of an iPad scaled up to the size of an artist drafting table top.
    - Hamuko 7y ago
      We already have the Wacom Cintiq Pro 32, which is an incredibly niche product.
      - macintux 7y ago
        I don’t want it as a drafting table, although I might use it that way; I want it as a computing experience.
  - detaro 7y ago
    feels like a home-media thing. Can be a small TV, multiple people can play a game together on the same tablet, ... The normal iPad is quite popular with musicians, a bigger one could be neat for that too.
  - cordite 7y ago
    imagine how many pixels that is at retina density
frou_dh 7y ago
At this point, it's not interesting unless it's officially announced. We've seen endless wishful thinking and stories on this subject come and go over the years.
altmind 7y ago
So does it mean Apple users will need to migrate to ARM builds for their software? It took smth around 3 years with powerpc->x86 migration.
- fluffything 7y ago
  If you are shipping Apps through the AppStore, they are already compatible with any hardware architecture Apple might decide to use in the future. (You do not ship binaries to the AppStore, but LLVM-bitcode, that Apple compiles for you for whatever hardware they decide to ship next). If you are not shipping Apps through the AppStore, you are on your own.
  - altmind 7y ago
    So shipping bytecode is not mandatory? Interesting, what % of developers are actually sending the bytecode in, then.
    - fluffything 6y ago
      Shipping LLVM bitcode is mandatory for the AppStore, Apple can then compile that bitcode to binaries for different hardware. That's why if you are shipping code to the AppStore, you probably don't really care whether Apple uses x86, ARM, RiscV, powerpc, or all of them in different devices. Producing working binaries becomes Apple's job.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  Should be a lot easier this time. Most libraries that people use are already used on iOS (so already work on ARM) and there's a lot less assembly in normal software than there used to be.
bluedino 7y ago
I don't know if buy that Apple would do this for battery life. In certain use cases, we already get 8-10 hours out of their laptops. Of course, running certain apps or heavy loads will shorten that to 2-3 hours, but I can do the same thing on my iPhone, certain apps will chew the battery up in no time. Won't the same thing happen with an ARM MacBook Pro?
- k3liutZu 7y ago
  Improved battery life is a nice bonus. But yeah, they are going to do this to have control as Intel has not been a reliable partner in the last 5-10 years.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Part of me wishes it is for battery life, yet sadly in many area's like this when we gain battery life we find that offset with a smaller battery and the marketing of how it is now lighter prevails. Which is fine if can do a whole day, which seems to be the target most aim for. I'd love a few days, heck I recall the days of mobile phones that ran for a week of usage. Alas over the decades we have seen faster and faster CPU's and equally we have in many area's seen sloppier and sloppier code. After all if it runs fine on the latest kit, no apparent need to optimise something that could run much better and by that, use less of the available CPU and less battery. Hence many applications that could run upon less resources - just don't and that's the real shame as whatever gains we make in one area's are eaten up in another when they don't need to be.
  - jp555 7y ago
    "I recall the days of mobile phones that ran for a week of usage" do you mean talk time or standby? Because I do not remember this. Seems much more likely we just used our "single-app" mobiles WAY less. Maybe you were on cellphone calls 4-6 hours a day? But I do not remember any cell phone in the 90s and early 2000s that had a 30+ hours talk-time (plus 150 hours of standby).
    - iamben 7y ago
dbbbbbbbb 7y ago
The big question is will they run macOS or will they essentially be iPad-pro books, my guess is the latter, it's not what I'd want but Apple could gain a lot more in terms of control and revenue that way.
- pilsetnieks 7y ago
  If you believe the premise of the article, then you'd also know that it was macOS because that was mentioned in the same article.
- Shivetya 7y ago
  well one can hope than any work put into migrating macOS to ARM will benefit iOS, between UI and OS limitations iOS is not support Apple's claim that iPads are replacements.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  That was my first thought. Apple clearly see the iPad pushing into the professional market with the Pro. The latest version of iPadOS has pointer and stronger keyboard support. To me a clamshell iPad makes a huge amount of sense.
- Unklejoe 7y ago
  I posted a similar comment and was met with a similar negative reaction - not sure why. I think it's perfectly valid to be skeptical of the long term plans of any company. In this case, it seems pretty obvious that they would eventually try to converge the iPad and Macbook, especially if they're running pretty much the same hardware. I do think it would be a very long transition though.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  They will run macOS. The iPad is a great piece of hardware and has been so for years. The biggest reason they did not replace/kill the Macbooks was and is the OS. All the artificial limitations set by Apple prevent it being used as a computer - and despite people went to crazy amounts of effort to work around this. It seems, that Apple has at least partially recognized it, and takes some small steps in the direction of the iPad being a computer. The new magic keyboard and mouse/trackpad support are a great start. But unless you have the freedom to develop and run your software on an iPad, it will never be a "computer". It still is a great device which is useful to many, but not to a large group of people. This doesn't mean that the Mac and the iPad cannot share more technology and both benefit both from that. But with the new magic keyboard available, the one big reason for owning a macbook are the differences between iPadOS and macOS.
tecleandor 7y ago
I'm not a Mac user anymore, but this might be interesting to move the ARM market on laptops. I'd like to have good options for high performance ARM linux supported laptops.
- Someone 7y ago
  Given what we know now, getting high performance will requiring using Apple ARM CPUs that you likely, can only buy mounted in Apple hardware. If so, the “Linux supported” is not likely to happen without lots of community effort (for a loose definition of “supported”)
- paulcarroty 7y ago
  ARM Chromebooks exists, but putting real Linux on them will be not easy in 99% cases. Thanks, Google.
mxcrossb 7y ago
What interests me is how many custom chips they’ll pack in to their processor nice they have total control. Phones continue to have more and more specialized accelerators, and I could see computers following that path.
villgax 7y ago
RIP hackintosh, it was a fun ride to show apple what was possible for the buck
- krstffr 7y ago
  I have been wondering about this as well, about what would happen to AMD/Intel Hackintoshes if Apple was to switch to their own processors. However, wouldn't the assumption that they would stop working also assume that all current Macs (which run Intel processors) would also stop working? Would there not have to be at least like 5 years of continued support of at least Intel processors which would also mean that Hackintoshes could keep working? Disclaimer: I do not know very much about Hackinthoses, but I have been wanting one more and more the for the last couple of months when more and more successful AMD builds have been created!
  - paulcarroty 7y ago
    > at least like 5 years of continued support only for old CPUs. Also non-T2 chipset support probably will be discontinued too. Anyway, Hackintosh shutdown it's matter of time, 'cause Apple naturally cares about his closed ecosystem.
    - mastercheif 7y ago
      They're still shipping non-T2 Macs in 2020 (iMac)... They will be supported for a long time.
      - abrowne 7y ago
        The 2017 model MacBook Air is still available to education institutional (and probably corporate) purchasers as well.
- nutjob2 7y ago
  Not quite. If it come to it I'll just stay on the last supported x86 version of the OS. Personally I find OS updates just annoying these days. The new features are mostly bloat to me, stuff I have to spend time disabling when I update and reinstall every few years.
osdiab 7y ago
I wonder if this will have an impact on other parts of the computer besides CPU/GPU - for instance, connecting an iPhone/iPad to Airpods is buttery smooth, but my experience connecting to them on a last year Macbook Air is as crappy as any other Bluetooth device. Maybe whatever they're doing in the mobile line will come to Macs too?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nicoburns 7y ago
ARM-based Macs are going to be a pain if they're as locked down as I suspect they might be. But damn are they likely to be fast if the rumours in that article are true. 8 high-performance cores on a next-get chip when Apple's A-series chips are already beating intel chips in single-core performance. I suspect ARM compatibility will be a problem for ~6 until major software houses get themselves sorted out. Most open source software already has ARM support anyway. And of course it's possible that Apple will actually include some level of hardware support for x86 emulation.
- ngcc_hk 7y ago
  The windows ARM has intel simulation. In fact Apple has done simulation/emulation/recompilation/FAT-obj for the last few transition. It would be the same. The problem is even if it stay the same many do not change (like Adobe etc.) which drag it. Hence, might as well move on.
dis-sys 7y ago
This is going to be very interesting if true. I'd buy two such ARM mbp on its release, one for the regular macos setup and one for ubuntu linux.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  I expect it won't be much use for Ubuntu on its release.. or for quite a while afterwards
DCKing 7y ago
It's worth pointing out how extremely far ahead Apple seems to be in terms of CPU power and efficiency. It tends to go under the radar a bit because it's not easy to run your own software on an iPhone, and most apps on these things are not serious workhorse loads (a few specific use cases are, most are not). The Apple A13 - even its implementation in the iPhone SE, in microbenchmarks achieves on par single core performance [1] with the Core i7 8086k [2] and Ryzen 9 3950X [3]. That's the highest single core performance you can buy in PCs in principle. I don't have to explain how insane it is a 5-ish watts smartphone CPU delivers that kind of performance, even if it is in bursts. By sticking to Intel or even x86 in general, there is ample evidence Apple is leaving a lot of performance on the table. Not just in MacBooks - but for the Mac Pro too. [1]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=iphone+11 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... - the iPhone 11 with the A13 has to do as a surrogate while the SE is just out, they benchmark the same. [2]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=8086k https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... [3]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=3950X https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... It's worth noting that Geekbench is a pure microbenchmark. The iPhone will not sustain performance as long as the others. The point is that Apple could solve this when moving to bigger devices.
- fsflover 7y ago
  > because it's not easy to run your own software on an iPhone Then why do I need all this performance? Perhaps to run js on shitty websites. Well, maybe for gaming.
  - godzillabrennus 7y ago
    Not that these Apple chips will run x86 or x64 code. Unless they bother with a Rosetta 2.0 then gaming is out of the question if Apple makes this jump.
    - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
      Aren't apps already submitted as bitcode? They don't have to emulate, just recompile.
diryawish 7y ago
A MacBook Air with a touchscreen would be a nice introduction to these chips.
- ngcc_hk 7y ago
  So far more iPad with a mouse ... some might say sadly
- api 7y ago
  I don't like touchscreens on laptops. I call them smudge screens because your screen ends up looking like the bottom third of your windows when you have a dog or a toddler. Touch screens belong on small form factor devices.
exabrial 7y ago
http://archive.is/lXlMO http://archive.is/lXlMO
- czottmann 7y ago
  Thanks!
Geee 7y ago
What kind of memory modules would it use? Are the standard PC memory modules x86-specific?
jjuel 7y ago
I for one cannot wait for an ARM Macbook! Might be some pain early, but in the long run it will be great for laptops and computers in general.
msoad 7y ago
I always wondered how much of my development environment will keep working on ARM? Electron apps such as VSCode will work fine. Node.js, Python and Ruby will also work okay. Docker can work too. What else?
- aembleton 7y ago
  I think you'll need ARM compatible docker images though.
major505 7y ago
This would close the gap beetween Ipads and macs even more... after this transiction is done, do you guys think that apple is going to unify both products line?
mistrial9 7y ago
If MacOS "hides" certain files, prevents mounting `ext4`, requires signing of apps with Apple-ssl-keys to run any binary, tracks every user's app installs and useage, limits installs of applications from only the Apple Store, or any number of other dark-pattern consumer behavior, this loyal Mac user says NO
- rswail 7y ago
  What has that got to do with what processor is in the Mac? This is not about i(Pad)OS vs MacOS.
einpoklum 7y ago
There's a paywall on that site. Grrr.
- mportela 7y ago
  https://outline.com/ubJCBg https://outline.com/ubJCBg
dstaley 7y ago
I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope Apple works with Microsoft to ensure that Boot Camp still continues to work. Windows on ARM on a MacBook with a powerful A14 sounds like a delight.
bobongo 7y ago
I wonder what the impact of this will be on AMD.
mportela 7y ago
Without paywall: https://outline.com/ubJCBg https://outline.com/ubJCBg
ben7799 7y ago
This might be OK for consumers and it might be OK for the small business home/lone-wolf developers targeting B2C and small business but it seems like it will be the death knell of Macs/Macbooks being used for a lot of big commerical & enterprise software. A lot of the Mac popularity got a boost by developers loving Macs in the early/mid-2000s because you could target unix so easily compared to a Windows machine and you didn't have to deal with the pain of playing systems integrator to run linux. Today it's a lot worse cause most of us are targeting container technologies on linux. So even if we can compile on the Mac fine we're running a VM (Hyperkit) and taking a performance & memory hit from that compared to a native linux system. If they make the whole lineup ARM and we're now going to be stuck doing an X86 VM on Arm + containers it's going to be even more painful. Given the premium pricing this would probably force a lot of companies to get serious about native linux machines. Painful at first but it'd save a lot of money in the long run. Where I work we already have tried this a little cause the performance on the Mac was starting to suck, you can get stuff like the System76 laptops and get more hardware for less money, there was still just quite a bit of integration pain to use those laptops last time we tried. Yah you can deploy everything from Mac -> cloud when you actually want to run your software but that does make the develop -> build -> deploy -> test cycle take even longer. That aspect is no different whether the mac is x86 or ARM. I'd argue if Apple had stayed PPC all this time and was just transitioning to ARM practically no enterprise shops or startups targeting linux in the cloud would ever be using MBPs, everyone would have found a different solution over the last 20 years. Macs were always just cool curiosities for a lot of software dev until they got to x86.
- jarjoura 7y ago
  Your fear assumes they're going to transition their whole lineup. I suspect ARM based Macs will be sluggish just like the new Windows ARM based machines. So they'll only switch over at the low-end with LTE built in. Who knows though, maybe everyone will buy them up and developers will port their software and Docker will figure out how to make it work.
  - valine 7y ago
    If the arm based Macs are anything like the iPad Pro they will be the opposite of sluggish. Apple will likely keep Intel based machines around for software compatibility reasons, but that has nothing to do with performance.
tosh 7y ago
A related question I was recently asking myself: would it make sense to put two (or more) A13 SoC in a Macbook (context: Apple must see enormous economies of scale now that the A13 is also in the iPhone SE)? Ask HN: Would it make sense to put two A13 into a MacBook or iPad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955301
DeathArrow 7y ago
Apple: Motorola 68k > IBM PowerPC > Intel x86 > ARM Microsoft: x86 > x86 > x86 > x86
- rsync 7y ago
  Forgive my pedantry but Windows NT ran on both PowerPC and DEC Alpha and I believe there were Windows server variants that ran on Itanium as well ...
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    You are right. I only mentioned the architectures with most user base for both Apple and Microsoft.
- mmphosis 7y ago
  Apple: MOS Technology, Rockwell, Synertek 6502 > Motorola 68k / WDC 65816 > Motorola-Apple-IBM PowerPC / ARM 610 RISC processor > ARM / Intel x86 > Apple-SoftBank ARM Microsoft: 8bit cpus > 16bit cpus Intel > 32bit cpus Intel / AMD / Alpha > ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, Intel / Freescale PowerPC > 64bit cpus Intel / ARM I am sure there are more I am forgetting.
mkchoi212 7y ago
I’m wondering how Apple got to this position in first place. How does a company that doesn’t specialize in CPU design, beat a company who specializes in CPU design; Intel??
- devxpy 7y ago
  By hiring the Silicon Ronin, ofcourse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  You acquihire the PA-RISC design team.
- samfisher83 7y ago
  Apple generates way more revenue than Intel so they have a lot of money to go hire people. They also don't need to invent the manufacturing process. Basically they need to come up with a good architecture and then use Eda tools to build out the chip.
- pavlov 7y ago
  Apple acquired a well-funded CPU development startup called P.A. Semi in 2008.
prirun 7y ago
"Apple is exploring tools that will ensure apps developed for older Intel-based Macs still work on the new machines." Part of their release timing might be to ensure that emulating Intel on Arm has acceptable performance for most users.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  If they really can do this at decent performance, the arm chips must be even faster than we'd expect. The reason that worked OK going PPC->Intel was the intel one was mostly a lot faster.
ertemplin 7y ago
My theory is that this will un-block Apple from making an OS that runs the same apps on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. If they start to sell Macs with custom ARM processors, they could eliminate the feature gap between MacBooks and iPads, invest more into software quality and testing, and less into the "legacy" macOS 10. The iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard is already basically a laptop, just with a crippled OS. It's not difficult to imagine incremental software updates that bring the OS closer to what you get on macOS.
meerita 7y ago
How that would affect all the packages? My entire workflow depends of ruby, npm packages oriented to intel CPUs
starpilot 7y ago
Considering how they came up with Swift, I'm not surprised. They just "get it" with coming up with efficient, yet practical approaches to technical problems.
jrobn 7y ago
Hopefully Apple will go back to being a integrated hardware and software company. It makes absolute sense to me for a future MacBook Pro to have a great AMD/Intel CPU and one of their high performance A13X chips with neural accelerators to accelerating specifics tasks to improve performance and battery life. I'm thinking audio/video encoding in FCPX, neural AI assisted tracking, color matching, face detection, ProRes acceleration, H264/H265 acceleration. Would make the price tag of a new MacBook pro much more palatable for FCPX/Logic X users anyway.
zanethomas 7y ago
And then will Mac owners be forced to install only software available, at a price, on the app store?
- SahAssar 7y ago
  Apple has been moving towards this direction for years so while I find it sad I don't think anyone will be surprised.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Why do you think so? There has been no indication of this.
gigatexal 7y ago
A big A-series chip with a lot of thermal headroom and active cooling? I can't wait. Take my money now!
fastball 7y ago
Would that mean no more Bootcamp? Windows won't run under ARM, will it?
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  There is Windows for ARM, however it lacks apps.
vinniejames 7y ago
Didn't Apple try this already with the Power PC chip, then switch to Intel? Why the 180 reversal of course?
- detaro 7y ago
  PowerPC wasn't really "Apples own", even if they had some input in the design. And ARM overall is a bigger ecosystem than PowerPC ever was, and they're not bound in fabrication now. I think it makes more sense to see it in the same line, not as a 180 reversal: They got PowerPC because it was a good solution at the time and the 68k they used beforehand couldn't keep up. Then 10 years later (during a time where that meant a massive increase in speeds etc: 10 years of PowerPC went from 60 Mhz to 2.3 Ghz) they saw that IBM couldn't keep up with Intel (and small unit numbers meant that it was expensive) and switched platforms to then-strongest choice. Now it's 15 years later, they already have expertise and designs for ARM from the mobile market, Intel is less clearly the leader in x86, ... and they are reconsidering again. To me, the connecting line is more that they are willing to break the ecosystem to follow wherever the best option is. You could see it as an reversal in that they go from niche (PowerPC) to mainstream (Intel) to niche (nobody makes ARM desktop systems), but I think that ignores that they already have leading expertise with ARM, ARM is not a niche overall (tooling support and ecosystem), they're not bound to fab tech of a specific company anymore (because they now can have whoever is the best in fabrication right now make their designs, that wasn't really a thing in PowerPC times), ...
  - vinniejames 7y ago
    It seems to make more sense around the rumors iOS and OSX will merge into a single platform. One of the issues back in the PPC days was lack of applications on Macs. Partially due to the chip, as more apps supported Intel architecture. As soon as the switch to Intel happened it made porting existing software much easier. Assuming they move to ARM. I would bet my morning coffee that the plan is to merge iOS and OSX then start porting over mobile apps into the desktop system as opposed to requiring existing software packages to rewrite desktop software for the new platform.
thadk 7y ago
I'm curious when Apple had anticipated this switch. Why deprecate 32-bit in Catalina? Do their 64-bit APIs help them emulate x86 apps more easily?
DeathArrow 7y ago
It seems many people wonder why Apple's CPUs does so good compared with x86 and other ARM makers in Geekbench. Here are my guesses: 1. Intel is still leading all the rest for single core performance, but it does that at very high frequencies and using a very high power envelope due to process node. If Intel could use 7nm, they could have had a much higher performance if they desired. I can speculate here that they wouldn't have gone for the absolute best performance, because they don't have to. Their goal is to make money, not to make the fastest CPUs they can. When Intel had a clear lead, they improved the CPUs little by little, each generation. 2. AMD has the best performance per dollar and watt and also the best multicore performance. That does bring them a lot of sales and they are happy with that. Their goal is to stay a bit ahead of Intel, so they can sell more CPUs. So their strategy is to be have a better value for dollar. Also, even if they are technically ahead in some areas, there's due to Intel being behind TSMC. 3 ARM Arm makes CPU designs and it seems it doesn't care too much about having a clear lead in performance. Maybe with their investment in Ampere and the push towards ARM on servers from the likes of Amazon, they will start to care more. But right now, ARM makes a ton of money by licensing slow and power efficient cores to hundreds of licensees. 4 Qualcomm It's not clear if Qualcomm has the know how to push performance. Or that they are willing to allocate the resources for that. I can speculate that they would have done that with 8CX and SQ1 they built for Microsoft if they had the know how and made business sense. Qualcomm doesn't see Apple, Intel, AMD as threats. They compete mostly with Mediatek, Samsung, Huawei. From here, they are very safe. Mediatek optimizes for the absolutely cheapest CPUs they can make, Samsung doesn't care much about CPUs and most of their phones use Qualcomm while Huawei doesn't threaten Qualcomm much yet as their best CPUs are on par with Qualcomm's and they don't sell CPUs to other phone makers. So Qualcomm thinks they can do the same things for the foreseeable future: get some cores from ARM, optimize them a bit, pack with their modem and make a nice sell to the Android makers. The disruption of this model where most CPU makers are happy with slower CPUs can come from ARM server space. If the companies pushing ARM for servers are smart, capable and hungry enough, they might start to eat Intel's and AMD's pies. That would push Intel and AMD to make better optimization and the tech might slip in mobile CPUs, too.
DeathArrow 7y ago
It's funny how Microsoft didn't succeed with the push for ARM. Their latest try with 8cx and SQ1 wasn't a big hit. The CPUs aren't the best, MS doesn't want to pour as much money as Apple into CPU research. They also try a gradual move, targeting both x86 and ARM as they don't want to/don't afford to upset consumers. If Microsoft would make next version of Windows ARM only, most software makers would probably target last version of Windows, most users would sit at the last version of Windows and Intel and AMD would happily sell their x86 CPUs.
edeion 7y ago
If you'll pardon a naive question: would that be the end of hackintoshes?
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  Pretty much yes, as there aren't many ARM PCs. And even if it were, Apple would probably make the Macs incompatible. Hackintosh works now because MACs are PCs with custom firmware. But that will change. I guess when Apple switched to x86, they didn't have money for custom hardware and they relied on implementing PC specifications. Otherwise they would have done it incompatible from start.
runeks 7y ago
> Apple Inc. is planning to start selling Mac computers with its own main processors by next year [...] according to people familiar with the matter. Sounds like it’s just tech experts speculating about this. Which they’ve done for a decade or so.

482 points by blopeur 7y ago

I reckon Apple actually will release iPadOS for fixed keyboard layouts. Or something similar.

The big question here is - are users of these Macs still going to be allowed to decide what software they can run or will that decision be made by Apple like on iOS?

yoz-y 7y ago
My hope is yes, especially as iPad can now pretty much be its own thing. I imagine developers within Apple still like to have their own stuff too?
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Apparently Apple's developers already have ways around the current lockdowns in macOS.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    Possibly, but at some point they will need to provide a reasonable way for their developer base to get by. They do depend on the community quite a lot for the popularity and if at some point you won't be able to develop for their platforms you won't. At the moment there is not much to go around (granted I don't do kernel development).
  - tomduncalf 7y ago
    Doesn't everyone have ways around? Cmd-click + open for programs, "Run Anyway" or whatever it is called in the Security Preference pane for extensions etc?
    - Hamuko 7y ago
      https://twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/1219292758910828544 https://twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/121929275891082854...
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Yes, but those are for single-use exemptions. Outside developers can still disable those entirely.
  - grishka 7y ago
    Well, you can disable SIP and AMFI.
pampa 7y ago
Is there any software not built by Apple that is worth getting a Mac for? Logic Pro, Final Cut. And you cant even buy a decent Mac to run them without paying arm and leg. Everyting else seems to be cross platform and runs ok on Windows, or even linux.
- randall 7y ago
  There's a lot of indie software that is surprisingly great. Omnifocus comes to mind.
  - pampa 7y ago
    Yea, but you wont buy a Mac just to run Omnifocus. You can probably find alternatives on other platforms or in the cloud that are just as good or better. I'm talking about killer applications, where the overall experience on mac is magnitudes better than anywhere else.
    - throwaway55554 7y ago
      > Yea, but you wont buy a Mac just to run Omnifocus. No, but when it is time to buy another Mac, you'd like it to run Omnifocus.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      > Yea, but you wont buy a Mac just to run Omnifocus. I did.
      - randall 7y ago
        I'm in this situation. I actually wish I could switch to Linux, but I have too many systems / routines built around the best mac software.
    - danieldk 7y ago
      OmniGraffle then ;) But there are many more: Things, DeckSet, Affinity Designer/Photo/Illustrator (available on Windows, but nothing of the same quality on Linux), Little Snitch, LaunchBar/Alfred. The Mac has traditionally had a very good shareware ecosystem. But even basic things like Preview are many times better than Evince, Okular, or whatever Windows uses. Who needs a killer app when the OS is already a killer app?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_ph_ 7y ago
Yes, as it is the one defining difference of the Mac: it is still a real computer where you have file access and can install anything you want - which is basically the prerequisite for doing any serious developer work on a machine. Actually, it is the prerequisite for doing a lot of work on any machine.
saagarjha 7y ago
An engineer at WWDC19 announced as such, yes. You may have to disable some security features to do so, however.

kalvisk 7y ago

PowerPC back in the game? :D

jaboutboul 7y ago
Most likely ARM as that is what the iOS devices use now.

fbn79 7y ago

So no more Hackintosh and virtualized MacOs?

morganvachon 7y ago
According to the article it is going to be a staggered release, starting with the lower end of the Mac lineup, so I have a feeling there will be several more years of Hackintosh fun to be had.
- xattt 7y ago
  The Mac lineup is likely going to be segmented by their Pro monikers. The ARM-based laptop will be the iBook (following iPad, iPhone patterns). My best guess ...
  - tosers4 7y ago
    they abandoned the iPattern a while ago, if there are name changes then it would be "Apple Book"
nutjob2 7y ago
Apple will still be selling and supporting x86 machines for many years, possibly forever.
- fluffything 7y ago
  x86-32bit, PowerPC... nvm.
  - nutjob2 7y ago
    I think if they wanted to get to parity with Intel or AMD with the higher end desktop processors they may have quite a bit of work ahead of them, and for a relatively small market, so it's questionable if they would want to sink precious engineering resources into that. On the portable side though its a no-brainer. I don't see Apple having x86 in new laptops at all after the transition. But Apple may stop making high end desktop systems all together so it is possible. It's a very small part of their revenue.

hiby007 7y ago

Can someone expert in this field explain what does this means for developers and what this means in the long run?

nutjob2 7y ago
Mostly just having to compile for an additional architecture, and a few new bugs to chase down due having to develop cross-arch. If your code is all in a high level language and your libraries are ported (a big if) then it won't be a huge burden but if you're relying n dynamic code generation or self-modifying code or some arch-specific hacks or the like you may have a lot more trouble.
m12k 7y ago
Mostly, it means apps will need to be re-compiled for the new CPU architecture. For a while now, apps uploaded to the Mac App store are uploaded in an intermediate representation, so the final compilation to the specific architecture happens on Apple's servers. This puts Apple in a place where they can launch a new computer with an ARM CPU, and (ideally) all apps on the Mac App Store will "just work"TM out of the box. And they can know whether that will be the case before the launch, maybe even reach out to developers to solve issues ahead of time. So the biggest potential problem will be for of apps outside the app store. Developers will need to re-compile their apps themselves - I hope this will be possible with cross-compilation, so it's not necessary to get a new mac in order to do so (that would severely limit how many devs would do so). Maybe the norm will be 'fat binaries' like in the PowerPC->Intel transition period, where apps ship with binaries compiled for both architectures. Also, apps that haven't been updated for a long time might not receive updates and would get left behind (although switching off 32-bit support in Catalina could be seen as a test run for the same disruption). Also, any apps that are using specific x86-instructions for optimization might take a while longer to port - e.g game engines (luckily most game engines are cross-platform these days, so Unity, Unreal and the others already have ARM-targets from iOS/Android/Switch to base this on)
- eterps 7y ago
  Which intermediate representation is being used?

tl 7y ago

Many suspect that ARM Macs are coming, but I would not trust reporting from “The Big Hack” Bloomberg [1]. From the article, Bloomberg reported [2] that Apple would also do it in 2020, so they’re planning on being eventually right. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2018/10/bloomberg_the_big_hack https://daringfireball.net/2018/10/bloomberg_the_big_hack [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-said-to-plan-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-...

lowdose 7y ago
Just because other media outlets haven't reported on the big hack, nor the lack of evidence and denial by involved companies is enough to dismiss it. You think Apple can pull their supply chain tomorrow out of China? I don't believe Amazon would give Alibaba et al a better excuse to strong arm Chinese entrepreneurs on their platform because it is losing the battle in every single market Amazon has a real storefront.
Traster 7y ago
I would really love it if we could try not dismissing entire news sources out of how hand based on 1 bad piece of reporting years ago. It's not like this article is even by the same journalists. We should be ignoring Marc Gurman because because John Robertson got something wrong in 2018? Also, if you'd actually read the article instead of dismissing it out of hand, you'd realise your big gotcha in your second citation is actually directly referenced in the article with details about exactly why they made that prediction. Frankly, there's no way even Apple knew whether they'd be shipping ARM macs in 2020 or 2021 back in April of 2018. In fact, this reporting actually backs up that reporting - given where we are now, it seems highly likely that Apple were planning to ship ARM macs in 2020 when that report was done in April 2018.
- klohto 7y ago
  We should do exactly what the OP says because that's the whole point of news outlets. Bloomberg stood by that piece and never commented on it, they just ignored. I don't see a reason why I should trust the same outlet. I'm happy reading their opinion pieces (by matt levine) but I see no reason to not dismiss their usual lets-see-if-we-are-right stuff.

yingw787 7y ago

I remember watching this video on the Intel 8086 by Harvard Business School, and they mentioned how revolutionary it is from a business perspective because it took a vertically integrated market and made it a horizontally integrated market. (I can't find the video after a cursory search...) Is this is the reversal of this revolution? Are we going back to a vertically integrated market due to consolidation in market players or because of performance / power concerns? Everyone seems to be making their own chips and boards these days. Google / TPU, AWS / Graviton, Microsoft / SQ1... Will we ever see a fragmentation in ISAs a la EEE? IMHO that would be a catastrophic regression in the software space, easily a black swan event, if you say needed to compile software differently between major cloud vendors just to deploy.

HugoDaniel 7y ago
It certainly feels that way. I think that the fragmentation problem might be diluted this time because the software is way more abstracted from hardware (mainstream languages are all very high level, and there is widespread adoption of open compilers - with llvm/clang being pushed by apple)
raverbashing 7y ago
Of the Intel 8086 or of the IBM PC platform? I don't remember anything specific to the 8086 that made it a "horizontally integrated market" w.r.t. its competitors (I might be wrong, of course)
frozenport 7y ago
While Apple products may be popular with tech bros and aspiring creative like Martin Luther King, John Lennon or Mahatma Gandhi they only represent a small fraction of computing outside California.
wukerplank 7y ago
Apple has a history of doing everything in their own way if feasible. Not sure if one should extrapolate from them to the entire market.
- 7y ago

HugoDaniel 7y ago

this makes me sad because I've just recently got a MacBook Pro, and it was not cheap; still had hopes that it could last >10yrs as my last one did

jojoo 7y ago
the switch from ppc to intel definetly contributed to the fact that my powerbook only held up ~8 years
- MobileVet 7y ago
  Can you imagine a Windows based PC lasting half of that time? Outside of the silky OS and tight Linux coupling, it has been a joy to buy computers (albeit at a premium) that last more than 2 years. I still have a 2009 iMac that is perfectly fine for everything except iOS development (due to an Xcode OS minimum) and a 2015 MBP for that. While my new work 16 MBP is a performance beast compared to the 2015 MBP, I can certainly be productive and expect to be for years to come with my personal kit.
  - shantara 7y ago
    Easily, if you plan your hardware purchases. My 2012 desktop PC is still doing great. Intel i7-3770, 16 GB RAM, SSD. I'm glad I haven't let myself be convinced by the popular opinions at the time that i5, 8GB RAM and HDD are totally fine and there's no reason to pay more. The only component I've upgraded was a graphics card, but that's only because I play games on this PC. Otherwise, my old GTX680 would have still been fine.
  - foepys 7y ago
    > Can you imagine a Windows based PC lasting half of that time? Yes, my Thinkpad T420 still does. Don't compare consumer-grade $300 laptops/PCs to Apple hardware that costs $2,500+, please. A modern Windows 10 is also still able to run applications written in 1999 and even earlier. Apple only supports the last 3 releases of macOS which puts the burden on the developers that often don't even support the applications anymore. There are many reasons to dislike Windows(-based PCs) but your argument is very, very weak.

morganvachon 7y ago

I know it won't be exactly the same thing as the 68k and PPC eras, but I'm excited nonetheless. I'm a sucker for stories of going against the mainstream and pulling it off. I remember being wholly underwhelmed when Apple switched to Intel in the mid 2000s; my PPC Mac mini was more performant than the first Intel mini by far, especially the GPU. Given how powerful the A series mobile processors are (the new iPhone SE makes my Galaxy Note 10+ look like a slouch in benchmarks), I have a feeling the new Macs will be worth a look for anyone without hard requirements for Windows 10.

nvarsj 7y ago
> I have a feeling the new Macs will be worth a look for anyone without hard requirements for Windows 10 Not just that - but the many, many legacy apps professionals rely on. The 64-bit move already decimated the professional audio space. The cynic in me can't help but see this as a move towards pure consumer device. As a development machine it will be all but useless as you find things that won't compile or work correctly on the new CPU arch.
- morganvachon 7y ago
  > As a development machine it will be all but useless as you find things that won't compile or work correctly on the new CPU arch. I'm not a developer so forgive my ignorance, but isn't this what cross-compiling is for? I get that compiling natively can increase performance and find obscure hardware issues, but it's my understanding that, for example, ARM builds of GNU/Linux binaries are just cross-compiled by server farms that are also natively compiling the AMD64 builds. Also, fat binaries and JIT emulation have been a thing forever, especially for Apple who has dealt with these changes twice now (68k -> PPC -> x86-64). I just don't see this being any different than current multi-platform efforts like Debian, NetBSD, etc., except it's a for-profit company with billions of dollars and thousands of expert employees behind it.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    There are bugs that will show up on certain x86 that won't show up on ARM. Plus you've got things like code that is already built that you'll have to emulate in some way or another.

jamesu 7y ago

Considering the XCode on iOS rumors, I'm still waiting for a 27inch iPad to be released myself.

Hamuko 7y ago
What on earth would be the point of a 27-inch iPad?
- macintux 7y ago
  I’ve long dreamt of an iPad scaled up to the size of an artist drafting table top.
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    We already have the Wacom Cintiq Pro 32, which is an incredibly niche product.
    - macintux 7y ago
      I don’t want it as a drafting table, although I might use it that way; I want it as a computing experience.
- detaro 7y ago
  feels like a home-media thing. Can be a small TV, multiple people can play a game together on the same tablet, ... The normal iPad is quite popular with musicians, a bigger one could be neat for that too.
- cordite 7y ago
  imagine how many pixels that is at retina density

frou_dh 7y ago

At this point, it's not interesting unless it's officially announced. We've seen endless wishful thinking and stories on this subject come and go over the years.

altmind 7y ago

So does it mean Apple users will need to migrate to ARM builds for their software? It took smth around 3 years with powerpc->x86 migration.

fluffything 7y ago
If you are shipping Apps through the AppStore, they are already compatible with any hardware architecture Apple might decide to use in the future. (You do not ship binaries to the AppStore, but LLVM-bitcode, that Apple compiles for you for whatever hardware they decide to ship next). If you are not shipping Apps through the AppStore, you are on your own.
- altmind 7y ago
  So shipping bytecode is not mandatory? Interesting, what % of developers are actually sending the bytecode in, then.
  - fluffything 6y ago
    Shipping LLVM bitcode is mandatory for the AppStore, Apple can then compile that bitcode to binaries for different hardware. That's why if you are shipping code to the AppStore, you probably don't really care whether Apple uses x86, ARM, RiscV, powerpc, or all of them in different devices. Producing working binaries becomes Apple's job.
rsynnott 7y ago
Should be a lot easier this time. Most libraries that people use are already used on iOS (so already work on ARM) and there's a lot less assembly in normal software than there used to be.

bluedino 7y ago

I don't know if buy that Apple would do this for battery life. In certain use cases, we already get 8-10 hours out of their laptops. Of course, running certain apps or heavy loads will shorten that to 2-3 hours, but I can do the same thing on my iPhone, certain apps will chew the battery up in no time. Won't the same thing happen with an ARM MacBook Pro?

k3liutZu 7y ago
Improved battery life is a nice bonus. But yeah, they are going to do this to have control as Intel has not been a reliable partner in the last 5-10 years.
Zenst 7y ago
Part of me wishes it is for battery life, yet sadly in many area's like this when we gain battery life we find that offset with a smaller battery and the marketing of how it is now lighter prevails. Which is fine if can do a whole day, which seems to be the target most aim for. I'd love a few days, heck I recall the days of mobile phones that ran for a week of usage. Alas over the decades we have seen faster and faster CPU's and equally we have in many area's seen sloppier and sloppier code. After all if it runs fine on the latest kit, no apparent need to optimise something that could run much better and by that, use less of the available CPU and less battery. Hence many applications that could run upon less resources - just don't and that's the real shame as whatever gains we make in one area's are eaten up in another when they don't need to be.
- jp555 7y ago
  "I recall the days of mobile phones that ran for a week of usage" do you mean talk time or standby? Because I do not remember this. Seems much more likely we just used our "single-app" mobiles WAY less. Maybe you were on cellphone calls 4-6 hours a day? But I do not remember any cell phone in the 90s and early 2000s that had a 30+ hours talk-time (plus 150 hours of standby).
  - iamben 7y ago

dbbbbbbbb 7y ago

The big question is will they run macOS or will they essentially be iPad-pro books, my guess is the latter, it's not what I'd want but Apple could gain a lot more in terms of control and revenue that way.

pilsetnieks 7y ago
If you believe the premise of the article, then you'd also know that it was macOS because that was mentioned in the same article.
Shivetya 7y ago
well one can hope than any work put into migrating macOS to ARM will benefit iOS, between UI and OS limitations iOS is not support Apple's claim that iPads are replacements.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
That was my first thought. Apple clearly see the iPad pushing into the professional market with the Pro. The latest version of iPadOS has pointer and stronger keyboard support. To me a clamshell iPad makes a huge amount of sense.
Unklejoe 7y ago
I posted a similar comment and was met with a similar negative reaction - not sure why. I think it's perfectly valid to be skeptical of the long term plans of any company. In this case, it seems pretty obvious that they would eventually try to converge the iPad and Macbook, especially if they're running pretty much the same hardware. I do think it would be a very long transition though.
_ph_ 7y ago
They will run macOS. The iPad is a great piece of hardware and has been so for years. The biggest reason they did not replace/kill the Macbooks was and is the OS. All the artificial limitations set by Apple prevent it being used as a computer - and despite people went to crazy amounts of effort to work around this. It seems, that Apple has at least partially recognized it, and takes some small steps in the direction of the iPad being a computer. The new magic keyboard and mouse/trackpad support are a great start. But unless you have the freedom to develop and run your software on an iPad, it will never be a "computer". It still is a great device which is useful to many, but not to a large group of people. This doesn't mean that the Mac and the iPad cannot share more technology and both benefit both from that. But with the new magic keyboard available, the one big reason for owning a macbook are the differences between iPadOS and macOS.

tecleandor 7y ago

I'm not a Mac user anymore, but this might be interesting to move the ARM market on laptops. I'd like to have good options for high performance ARM linux supported laptops.

Someone 7y ago
Given what we know now, getting high performance will requiring using Apple ARM CPUs that you likely, can only buy mounted in Apple hardware. If so, the “Linux supported” is not likely to happen without lots of community effort (for a loose definition of “supported”)
paulcarroty 7y ago
ARM Chromebooks exists, but putting real Linux on them will be not easy in 99% cases. Thanks, Google.

mxcrossb 7y ago

What interests me is how many custom chips they’ll pack in to their processor nice they have total control. Phones continue to have more and more specialized accelerators, and I could see computers following that path.

villgax 7y ago

RIP hackintosh, it was a fun ride to show apple what was possible for the buck

krstffr 7y ago
I have been wondering about this as well, about what would happen to AMD/Intel Hackintoshes if Apple was to switch to their own processors. However, wouldn't the assumption that they would stop working also assume that all current Macs (which run Intel processors) would also stop working? Would there not have to be at least like 5 years of continued support of at least Intel processors which would also mean that Hackintoshes could keep working? Disclaimer: I do not know very much about Hackinthoses, but I have been wanting one more and more the for the last couple of months when more and more successful AMD builds have been created!
- paulcarroty 7y ago
  > at least like 5 years of continued support only for old CPUs. Also non-T2 chipset support probably will be discontinued too. Anyway, Hackintosh shutdown it's matter of time, 'cause Apple naturally cares about his closed ecosystem.
  - mastercheif 7y ago
    They're still shipping non-T2 Macs in 2020 (iMac)... They will be supported for a long time.
    - abrowne 7y ago
      The 2017 model MacBook Air is still available to education institutional (and probably corporate) purchasers as well.
nutjob2 7y ago
Not quite. If it come to it I'll just stay on the last supported x86 version of the OS. Personally I find OS updates just annoying these days. The new features are mostly bloat to me, stuff I have to spend time disabling when I update and reinstall every few years.

osdiab 7y ago

I wonder if this will have an impact on other parts of the computer besides CPU/GPU - for instance, connecting an iPhone/iPad to Airpods is buttery smooth, but my experience connecting to them on a last year Macbook Air is as crappy as any other Bluetooth device. Maybe whatever they're doing in the mobile line will come to Macs too?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nicoburns 7y ago

ARM-based Macs are going to be a pain if they're as locked down as I suspect they might be. But damn are they likely to be fast if the rumours in that article are true. 8 high-performance cores on a next-get chip when Apple's A-series chips are already beating intel chips in single-core performance. I suspect ARM compatibility will be a problem for ~6 until major software houses get themselves sorted out. Most open source software already has ARM support anyway. And of course it's possible that Apple will actually include some level of hardware support for x86 emulation.

ngcc_hk 7y ago
The windows ARM has intel simulation. In fact Apple has done simulation/emulation/recompilation/FAT-obj for the last few transition. It would be the same. The problem is even if it stay the same many do not change (like Adobe etc.) which drag it. Hence, might as well move on.

dis-sys 7y ago

This is going to be very interesting if true. I'd buy two such ARM mbp on its release, one for the regular macos setup and one for ubuntu linux.

ubercow13 7y ago
I expect it won't be much use for Ubuntu on its release.. or for quite a while afterwards

DCKing 7y ago

It's worth pointing out how extremely far ahead Apple seems to be in terms of CPU power and efficiency. It tends to go under the radar a bit because it's not easy to run your own software on an iPhone, and most apps on these things are not serious workhorse loads (a few specific use cases are, most are not). The Apple A13 - even its implementation in the iPhone SE, in microbenchmarks achieves on par single core performance [1] with the Core i7 8086k [2] and Ryzen 9 3950X [3]. That's the highest single core performance you can buy in PCs in principle. I don't have to explain how insane it is a 5-ish watts smartphone CPU delivers that kind of performance, even if it is in bursts. By sticking to Intel or even x86 in general, there is ample evidence Apple is leaving a lot of performance on the table. Not just in MacBooks - but for the Mac Pro too. [1]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=iphone+11 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... - the iPhone 11 with the A13 has to do as a surrogate while the SE is just out, they benchmark the same. [2]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=8086k https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... [3]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=3950X https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... It's worth noting that Geekbench is a pure microbenchmark. The iPhone will not sustain performance as long as the others. The point is that Apple could solve this when moving to bigger devices.

fsflover 7y ago
> because it's not easy to run your own software on an iPhone Then why do I need all this performance? Perhaps to run js on shitty websites. Well, maybe for gaming.
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  Not that these Apple chips will run x86 or x64 code. Unless they bother with a Rosetta 2.0 then gaming is out of the question if Apple makes this jump.
  - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
    Aren't apps already submitted as bitcode? They don't have to emulate, just recompile.

diryawish 7y ago

A MacBook Air with a touchscreen would be a nice introduction to these chips.

ngcc_hk 7y ago
So far more iPad with a mouse ... some might say sadly
api 7y ago
I don't like touchscreens on laptops. I call them smudge screens because your screen ends up looking like the bottom third of your windows when you have a dog or a toddler. Touch screens belong on small form factor devices.

exabrial 7y ago

http://archive.is/lXlMO http://archive.is/lXlMO

czottmann 7y ago
Thanks!

Geee 7y ago

What kind of memory modules would it use? Are the standard PC memory modules x86-specific?

jjuel 7y ago

I for one cannot wait for an ARM Macbook! Might be some pain early, but in the long run it will be great for laptops and computers in general.

msoad 7y ago

I always wondered how much of my development environment will keep working on ARM? Electron apps such as VSCode will work fine. Node.js, Python and Ruby will also work okay. Docker can work too. What else?

aembleton 7y ago
I think you'll need ARM compatible docker images though.

major505 7y ago

This would close the gap beetween Ipads and macs even more... after this transiction is done, do you guys think that apple is going to unify both products line?

mistrial9 7y ago

If MacOS "hides" certain files, prevents mounting `ext4`, requires signing of apps with Apple-ssl-keys to run any binary, tracks every user's app installs and useage, limits installs of applications from only the Apple Store, or any number of other dark-pattern consumer behavior, this loyal Mac user says NO

rswail 7y ago
What has that got to do with what processor is in the Mac? This is not about i(Pad)OS vs MacOS.

einpoklum 7y ago

There's a paywall on that site. Grrr.

mportela 7y ago
https://outline.com/ubJCBg https://outline.com/ubJCBg

dstaley 7y ago

I'm not holding my breath, but I really hope Apple works with Microsoft to ensure that Boot Camp still continues to work. Windows on ARM on a MacBook with a powerful A14 sounds like a delight.

bobongo 7y ago

I wonder what the impact of this will be on AMD.

mportela 7y ago

Without paywall: https://outline.com/ubJCBg https://outline.com/ubJCBg

ben7799 7y ago

This might be OK for consumers and it might be OK for the small business home/lone-wolf developers targeting B2C and small business but it seems like it will be the death knell of Macs/Macbooks being used for a lot of big commerical & enterprise software. A lot of the Mac popularity got a boost by developers loving Macs in the early/mid-2000s because you could target unix so easily compared to a Windows machine and you didn't have to deal with the pain of playing systems integrator to run linux. Today it's a lot worse cause most of us are targeting container technologies on linux. So even if we can compile on the Mac fine we're running a VM (Hyperkit) and taking a performance & memory hit from that compared to a native linux system. If they make the whole lineup ARM and we're now going to be stuck doing an X86 VM on Arm + containers it's going to be even more painful. Given the premium pricing this would probably force a lot of companies to get serious about native linux machines. Painful at first but it'd save a lot of money in the long run. Where I work we already have tried this a little cause the performance on the Mac was starting to suck, you can get stuff like the System76 laptops and get more hardware for less money, there was still just quite a bit of integration pain to use those laptops last time we tried. Yah you can deploy everything from Mac -> cloud when you actually want to run your software but that does make the develop -> build -> deploy -> test cycle take even longer. That aspect is no different whether the mac is x86 or ARM. I'd argue if Apple had stayed PPC all this time and was just transitioning to ARM practically no enterprise shops or startups targeting linux in the cloud would ever be using MBPs, everyone would have found a different solution over the last 20 years. Macs were always just cool curiosities for a lot of software dev until they got to x86.

jarjoura 7y ago
Your fear assumes they're going to transition their whole lineup. I suspect ARM based Macs will be sluggish just like the new Windows ARM based machines. So they'll only switch over at the low-end with LTE built in. Who knows though, maybe everyone will buy them up and developers will port their software and Docker will figure out how to make it work.
- valine 7y ago
  If the arm based Macs are anything like the iPad Pro they will be the opposite of sluggish. Apple will likely keep Intel based machines around for software compatibility reasons, but that has nothing to do with performance.

tosh 7y ago

A related question I was recently asking myself: would it make sense to put two (or more) A13 SoC in a Macbook (context: Apple must see enormous economies of scale now that the A13 is also in the iPhone SE)? Ask HN: Would it make sense to put two A13 into a MacBook or iPad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955301

DeathArrow 7y ago

Apple: Motorola 68k > IBM PowerPC > Intel x86 > ARM Microsoft: x86 > x86 > x86 > x86

rsync 7y ago
Forgive my pedantry but Windows NT ran on both PowerPC and DEC Alpha and I believe there were Windows server variants that ran on Itanium as well ...
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  You are right. I only mentioned the architectures with most user base for both Apple and Microsoft.
mmphosis 7y ago
Apple: MOS Technology, Rockwell, Synertek 6502 > Motorola 68k / WDC 65816 > Motorola-Apple-IBM PowerPC / ARM 610 RISC processor > ARM / Intel x86 > Apple-SoftBank ARM Microsoft: 8bit cpus > 16bit cpus Intel > 32bit cpus Intel / AMD / Alpha > ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, Intel / Freescale PowerPC > 64bit cpus Intel / ARM I am sure there are more I am forgetting.

mkchoi212 7y ago

I’m wondering how Apple got to this position in first place. How does a company that doesn’t specialize in CPU design, beat a company who specializes in CPU design; Intel??

devxpy 7y ago
By hiring the Silicon Ronin, ofcourse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
You acquihire the PA-RISC design team.
samfisher83 7y ago
Apple generates way more revenue than Intel so they have a lot of money to go hire people. They also don't need to invent the manufacturing process. Basically they need to come up with a good architecture and then use Eda tools to build out the chip.
pavlov 7y ago
Apple acquired a well-funded CPU development startup called P.A. Semi in 2008.

prirun 7y ago

"Apple is exploring tools that will ensure apps developed for older Intel-based Macs still work on the new machines." Part of their release timing might be to ensure that emulating Intel on Arm has acceptable performance for most users.

jonplackett 7y ago
If they really can do this at decent performance, the arm chips must be even faster than we'd expect. The reason that worked OK going PPC->Intel was the intel one was mostly a lot faster.

ertemplin 7y ago

My theory is that this will un-block Apple from making an OS that runs the same apps on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. If they start to sell Macs with custom ARM processors, they could eliminate the feature gap between MacBooks and iPads, invest more into software quality and testing, and less into the "legacy" macOS 10. The iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard is already basically a laptop, just with a crippled OS. It's not difficult to imagine incremental software updates that bring the OS closer to what you get on macOS.

meerita 7y ago

How that would affect all the packages? My entire workflow depends of ruby, npm packages oriented to intel CPUs

starpilot 7y ago

Considering how they came up with Swift, I'm not surprised. They just "get it" with coming up with efficient, yet practical approaches to technical problems.

jrobn 7y ago

Hopefully Apple will go back to being a integrated hardware and software company. It makes absolute sense to me for a future MacBook Pro to have a great AMD/Intel CPU and one of their high performance A13X chips with neural accelerators to accelerating specifics tasks to improve performance and battery life. I'm thinking audio/video encoding in FCPX, neural AI assisted tracking, color matching, face detection, ProRes acceleration, H264/H265 acceleration. Would make the price tag of a new MacBook pro much more palatable for FCPX/Logic X users anyway.

zanethomas 7y ago

And then will Mac owners be forced to install only software available, at a price, on the app store?

SahAssar 7y ago
Apple has been moving towards this direction for years so while I find it sad I don't think anyone will be surprised.
saagarjha 7y ago
Why do you think so? There has been no indication of this.

gigatexal 7y ago

A big A-series chip with a lot of thermal headroom and active cooling? I can't wait. Take my money now!

fastball 7y ago

Would that mean no more Bootcamp? Windows won't run under ARM, will it?

DeathArrow 7y ago
There is Windows for ARM, however it lacks apps.

vinniejames 7y ago

Didn't Apple try this already with the Power PC chip, then switch to Intel? Why the 180 reversal of course?

detaro 7y ago
PowerPC wasn't really "Apples own", even if they had some input in the design. And ARM overall is a bigger ecosystem than PowerPC ever was, and they're not bound in fabrication now. I think it makes more sense to see it in the same line, not as a 180 reversal: They got PowerPC because it was a good solution at the time and the 68k they used beforehand couldn't keep up. Then 10 years later (during a time where that meant a massive increase in speeds etc: 10 years of PowerPC went from 60 Mhz to 2.3 Ghz) they saw that IBM couldn't keep up with Intel (and small unit numbers meant that it was expensive) and switched platforms to then-strongest choice. Now it's 15 years later, they already have expertise and designs for ARM from the mobile market, Intel is less clearly the leader in x86, ... and they are reconsidering again. To me, the connecting line is more that they are willing to break the ecosystem to follow wherever the best option is. You could see it as an reversal in that they go from niche (PowerPC) to mainstream (Intel) to niche (nobody makes ARM desktop systems), but I think that ignores that they already have leading expertise with ARM, ARM is not a niche overall (tooling support and ecosystem), they're not bound to fab tech of a specific company anymore (because they now can have whoever is the best in fabrication right now make their designs, that wasn't really a thing in PowerPC times), ...
- vinniejames 7y ago
  It seems to make more sense around the rumors iOS and OSX will merge into a single platform. One of the issues back in the PPC days was lack of applications on Macs. Partially due to the chip, as more apps supported Intel architecture. As soon as the switch to Intel happened it made porting existing software much easier. Assuming they move to ARM. I would bet my morning coffee that the plan is to merge iOS and OSX then start porting over mobile apps into the desktop system as opposed to requiring existing software packages to rewrite desktop software for the new platform.

thadk 7y ago

I'm curious when Apple had anticipated this switch. Why deprecate 32-bit in Catalina? Do their 64-bit APIs help them emulate x86 apps more easily?

DeathArrow 7y ago

It seems many people wonder why Apple's CPUs does so good compared with x86 and other ARM makers in Geekbench. Here are my guesses: 1. Intel is still leading all the rest for single core performance, but it does that at very high frequencies and using a very high power envelope due to process node. If Intel could use 7nm, they could have had a much higher performance if they desired. I can speculate here that they wouldn't have gone for the absolute best performance, because they don't have to. Their goal is to make money, not to make the fastest CPUs they can. When Intel had a clear lead, they improved the CPUs little by little, each generation. 2. AMD has the best performance per dollar and watt and also the best multicore performance. That does bring them a lot of sales and they are happy with that. Their goal is to stay a bit ahead of Intel, so they can sell more CPUs. So their strategy is to be have a better value for dollar. Also, even if they are technically ahead in some areas, there's due to Intel being behind TSMC. 3 ARM Arm makes CPU designs and it seems it doesn't care too much about having a clear lead in performance. Maybe with their investment in Ampere and the push towards ARM on servers from the likes of Amazon, they will start to care more. But right now, ARM makes a ton of money by licensing slow and power efficient cores to hundreds of licensees. 4 Qualcomm It's not clear if Qualcomm has the know how to push performance. Or that they are willing to allocate the resources for that. I can speculate that they would have done that with 8CX and SQ1 they built for Microsoft if they had the know how and made business sense. Qualcomm doesn't see Apple, Intel, AMD as threats. They compete mostly with Mediatek, Samsung, Huawei. From here, they are very safe. Mediatek optimizes for the absolutely cheapest CPUs they can make, Samsung doesn't care much about CPUs and most of their phones use Qualcomm while Huawei doesn't threaten Qualcomm much yet as their best CPUs are on par with Qualcomm's and they don't sell CPUs to other phone makers. So Qualcomm thinks they can do the same things for the foreseeable future: get some cores from ARM, optimize them a bit, pack with their modem and make a nice sell to the Android makers. The disruption of this model where most CPU makers are happy with slower CPUs can come from ARM server space. If the companies pushing ARM for servers are smart, capable and hungry enough, they might start to eat Intel's and AMD's pies. That would push Intel and AMD to make better optimization and the tech might slip in mobile CPUs, too.

DeathArrow 7y ago

It's funny how Microsoft didn't succeed with the push for ARM. Their latest try with 8cx and SQ1 wasn't a big hit. The CPUs aren't the best, MS doesn't want to pour as much money as Apple into CPU research. They also try a gradual move, targeting both x86 and ARM as they don't want to/don't afford to upset consumers. If Microsoft would make next version of Windows ARM only, most software makers would probably target last version of Windows, most users would sit at the last version of Windows and Intel and AMD would happily sell their x86 CPUs.

edeion 7y ago

If you'll pardon a naive question: would that be the end of hackintoshes?

DeathArrow 7y ago
Pretty much yes, as there aren't many ARM PCs. And even if it were, Apple would probably make the Macs incompatible. Hackintosh works now because MACs are PCs with custom firmware. But that will change. I guess when Apple switched to x86, they didn't have money for custom hardware and they relied on implementing PC specifications. Otherwise they would have done it incompatible from start.

runeks 7y ago

> Apple Inc. is planning to start selling Mac computers with its own main processors by next year [...] according to people familiar with the matter. Sounds like it’s just tech experts speculating about this. Which they’ve done for a decade or so.