5 ms·

Apple's chips are really impressive. I would love to see them in a general purpose computer so that developers can really take advantage of the power. Whateve

Apple's chips are really impressive. I would love to see them in a general purpose computer so that developers can really take advantage of the power. Whatever is in my iPad Pro would make a great development workstation if I could connect two monitors to it and ... run Linux. It is power-efficient, very lightweight, and has built-in 4G. In those categories, it beats the pants off of any Intel-based laptop I've ever had. But I still have to SSH to a real computer to work, which is an artifact of Apple's OS policies, not what sort of workload the chips they put in there are capable of. The unfortunate reality with all of these stripped-down computers, though, is that nobody is writing software for them. While the CPUs are powerful enough to run pretty much anything, nobody is porting their AAA games or CAD software or video editors. Maybe Apple's ability to dynamically recompile Mac Store apps to ARM will help, but I still think MacOS is seriously lacking compared to Windows. So the best Apple can hope for is a "budget Mac" which power users won't buy (and power users write all the software), and they'll just be an expensive Chromebook. (ChromeOS doesn't have a lot of native software either, but at least you can run a normal Linux environment in a container and write software on the device. And, I don't think any person goes out to buy a Chromebook... they just get them for "free" from their school or company. It is an interesting segment of the market that can be profitable, but I really want to see these chips in something I can sink my teeth into. Set up a development environment, write software, and run the same software in production on those chips too.) My takeaway is that it's a shame that this amazing CPU-design division exists inside a company that is all about dumbed-down user experiences. They could probably kill Intel overnight if you could just buy the chips on their own, but instead they insist on putting these chips in devices that are hamstrung by arbitrary policy. Obviously they are playing a long game, but as someone who just wants the best possible equipment... I can't afford to wait. (And I don't think the end result of the game -- Apple makes the CPU, laptop, OS, and software -- is very good for anyone.)

arkanciscan 7y ago
Do you really suspect that Linux would run as well as iOS? Isn't iOS optimized for the A17 and vice versa? It's out of my wheelhouse, but I suspect that this synergy is the only reason they seem so fast.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I am going by compute benchmarks, which should be relatively unaffected by the OS. (The OS could slow them down if it really wanted to, I guess.) Random example: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/01/2018-ipad-pro-benchmarks-geekbench/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/01/2018-ipad-pro-benchmark...
  - iNate2000 7y ago
    Those benchmarks don't seem to account for batteries. I hook my 2018 MacBook Pro up to a 4K TV to present to a meeting and the battery goes down to about 35% after two hours.
    - fooker 7y ago
      2 hours is a reasonable amount of time for something like this.
- captn3m0 7y ago
  We could optimize things for iOS if it were easy to run. Has happened for dozens of platforms.
- danpeddle 7y ago
  From recent experience using the Pinebook Pro and manjaro, the answer is a resounding yes. From the start, it was clear that a decent arm chip in a laptop is very usable. Paired with an SSD, and more ram, it would be killer. MacOS would need some care to make it less heavy in terms of background consumption, but I don’t see that as being beyond Apple’s reach. Windows is a different matter, not sure what MS can bring to the table there.. The work being done right now in porting iOS applications to work on macOS clearly points to a strategy being developed. Think it’s going to be an interesting couple of years.
Joeri 7y ago
Nobody is porting their big pro software to the ipad because it is ram-starved. Some things just need ram, lots and lots of ram.
- ethbro 7y ago
  Why don't we see more OS-level integrated remote computing in the Chromebook category? I get Google started it to run their webapps. But it doesn't seem technically infeasible to package and sell a set monthly subscription price, that gets you a lazy-allocated machine on GCP. Spin up beefy software, your computer recognizes "this is more than I can do", checks current networking availability, and starts running the app remotely. I know there are offerings like this, but it seems like a killer feature if it had full OS integration. Just plop an overlay icon somewhere in the window to clearly note it's running remote. (Thereby letting users reason through why it occasionally behaves weirdly)
  - bluescrn 7y ago
    People don't have room for any more subscription fees in their lives. Especially to pay for something like this (or game streaming) that offers an inferior/laggy user experience, when owning a reasonably powerful laptop or games console isn't all that expensive.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Subscription fee exhaustion seems an odd concept to me. Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"? It seems an ironic perspective given that "Time is the only real currency we have" is on the HN front page! I specifically mentioned it because Apple (1) has cloud resources, whether they see it as an offering or not, (2) has full stack integration with their products, & (3) has historically prized ease of use and packaging new technology in a slick way. "Underpowered Mac / iPad / etc, now with iPower transparent cloud compute" seems a unique way to leverage their strengths and abilities in ways that Google, MS, and Amazon lack the capabilities to match.
tpush 7y ago
The whole point of these rumors is that Apple's putting these chips in MacBooks, running macOS. So I don't get this kvetching about "stripped-down computers" and "dumbed-down user experiences".
- bluescrn 7y ago
  We've had a divide for over a decade now, where serious computing is done mostly on x86, and mobile mostly on ARM. ARM devices have become associated with App Stores, touchscreens, locked-down and dumbed-down systems. And there's a very real risk that Apple will take this as the opportunity to completely lock out any software that's not been censored and taxed by their App Store.
  - api 7y ago
    If they are going to lock down macOS totally they might as well kill it and exit the pro market entirely. If I can't run whatever I want on it, it is not a real computer. I personally doubt they will do that. If anything I could see them making iPadOS more capable, moving more of the consumer market there, and making the Mac line even more suited to pro users with more compute power and more OS capability. BTW the ARM move could fit into this. I wonder how a 32 or 64 core A series ARM64 chip in a laptop form factor would perform? Our company runs some infrastructure stuff on Cavium ThunderX chips with 96 ARM cores and the performance is comparable to high end Xeons for very parallelizable load. The Apple A series core is far superior. I'd take 64 of those in a laptop. It would be so fast I'm sure it would have no issue running transpiled X64 code at perfectly adequate speeds. Could probably even run X64 VMs in emulation at speeds that were at least quite usable for testing and dev.
diebeforei485 7y ago
Have you looked at the iSH beta? https://ish.app/ https://ish.app/

arkanciscan 7y ago

Do you really suspect that Linux would run as well as iOS? Isn't iOS optimized for the A17 and vice versa? It's out of my wheelhouse, but I suspect that this synergy is the only reason they seem so fast.

jrockway 7y ago
I am going by compute benchmarks, which should be relatively unaffected by the OS. (The OS could slow them down if it really wanted to, I guess.) Random example: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/01/2018-ipad-pro-benchmarks-geekbench/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/01/2018-ipad-pro-benchmark...
- iNate2000 7y ago
  Those benchmarks don't seem to account for batteries. I hook my 2018 MacBook Pro up to a 4K TV to present to a meeting and the battery goes down to about 35% after two hours.
  - fooker 7y ago
    2 hours is a reasonable amount of time for something like this.
captn3m0 7y ago
We could optimize things for iOS if it were easy to run. Has happened for dozens of platforms.
danpeddle 7y ago
From recent experience using the Pinebook Pro and manjaro, the answer is a resounding yes. From the start, it was clear that a decent arm chip in a laptop is very usable. Paired with an SSD, and more ram, it would be killer. MacOS would need some care to make it less heavy in terms of background consumption, but I don’t see that as being beyond Apple’s reach. Windows is a different matter, not sure what MS can bring to the table there.. The work being done right now in porting iOS applications to work on macOS clearly points to a strategy being developed. Think it’s going to be an interesting couple of years.

Joeri 7y ago

Nobody is porting their big pro software to the ipad because it is ram-starved. Some things just need ram, lots and lots of ram.

ethbro 7y ago
Why don't we see more OS-level integrated remote computing in the Chromebook category? I get Google started it to run their webapps. But it doesn't seem technically infeasible to package and sell a set monthly subscription price, that gets you a lazy-allocated machine on GCP. Spin up beefy software, your computer recognizes "this is more than I can do", checks current networking availability, and starts running the app remotely. I know there are offerings like this, but it seems like a killer feature if it had full OS integration. Just plop an overlay icon somewhere in the window to clearly note it's running remote. (Thereby letting users reason through why it occasionally behaves weirdly)
- bluescrn 7y ago
  People don't have room for any more subscription fees in their lives. Especially to pay for something like this (or game streaming) that offers an inferior/laggy user experience, when owning a reasonably powerful laptop or games console isn't all that expensive.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Subscription fee exhaustion seems an odd concept to me. Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"? It seems an ironic perspective given that "Time is the only real currency we have" is on the HN front page! I specifically mentioned it because Apple (1) has cloud resources, whether they see it as an offering or not, (2) has full stack integration with their products, & (3) has historically prized ease of use and packaging new technology in a slick way. "Underpowered Mac / iPad / etc, now with iPower transparent cloud compute" seems a unique way to leverage their strengths and abilities in ways that Google, MS, and Amazon lack the capabilities to match.

tpush 7y ago

The whole point of these rumors is that Apple's putting these chips in MacBooks, running macOS. So I don't get this kvetching about "stripped-down computers" and "dumbed-down user experiences".

bluescrn 7y ago
We've had a divide for over a decade now, where serious computing is done mostly on x86, and mobile mostly on ARM. ARM devices have become associated with App Stores, touchscreens, locked-down and dumbed-down systems. And there's a very real risk that Apple will take this as the opportunity to completely lock out any software that's not been censored and taxed by their App Store.
- api 7y ago
  If they are going to lock down macOS totally they might as well kill it and exit the pro market entirely. If I can't run whatever I want on it, it is not a real computer. I personally doubt they will do that. If anything I could see them making iPadOS more capable, moving more of the consumer market there, and making the Mac line even more suited to pro users with more compute power and more OS capability. BTW the ARM move could fit into this. I wonder how a 32 or 64 core A series ARM64 chip in a laptop form factor would perform? Our company runs some infrastructure stuff on Cavium ThunderX chips with 96 ARM cores and the performance is comparable to high end Xeons for very parallelizable load. The Apple A series core is far superior. I'd take 64 of those in a laptop. It would be so fast I'm sure it would have no issue running transpiled X64 code at perfectly adequate speeds. Could probably even run X64 VMs in emulation at speeds that were at least quite usable for testing and dev.

diebeforei485 7y ago

Have you looked at the iSH beta? https://ish.app/ https://ish.app/