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Apple Plans to Announce Move to Its Own Mac Chips at WWDC

325 points by sleepyshift 6y ago

_ph_ 6y ago
I am quite excited about this rumor. If only to finally find out what Apples plans with respect to ARM based Macs are :). Also, just in general it would be exciting to have a real contender for intel-compatible chips on the deskop. I still can remember the times when there were several competing architectures. And obviously, Apple has the potential to create really game-changing chips, considering what they are doing with the iPhone hardware. One thing I still find peculiar is, Apple could have had nice ARM-based computers for quite a while. They are actually selling them in the form of the iPad, especially the Pro. But what keeps people to the Mac vs. the iPad is less the hardware, but mostly the software. The decisive difference in practical terms between macOS and iPadOS are the mostly artificial software limitations of iPadOS. While Apple loudly advertices the ability to copy files from an USB stick to "Files", the fun usually stops there. App support for file exchange is still very limited, you cannot even copy music to Files or your iCloud drive and add this to Apple Music or the TV app. So I find it a bit odd that they have to create ARM based MacBooks just as a solution to a basic problem of their software.
- nradov 6y ago
  I expect that Apple will gradually phase out MacOS, and add more features to iPadOS that will make it suitable for content creators. It never really made sense for Apple to maintain two overlapping but incompatible product lines. I predict in a few years they'll launch a laptop running iPadOS.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    The problem is, and that is what I tried to point out with my comment, that the only thing preventing the iPad to be useful for more people is, how artificially limited iPadOS is. It is a great device, but not a replacement for a computer.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      If you look at the direction of recent releases then you can see those features being added. The latest version has trackpad support for instance. I don’t imagine much is going to change right now but I wonder what they might be planning for the next decade.
      - api 6y ago
        It's not trackpad support. It's the ability to run your own software. If I can't run my own code (without jumping through hoops) it is not a real computer. iOS devices are consoles.
      - _ph_ 6y ago
        Yes, since they separated the OS from iOS, development of the iPad has somewhat gone into the right direction. But it took them a decade to add mouse/trackpad support, this is moving at a far to slow speed. And the fact, that you cannot add music to your iPad on your own, shows, how happy Apple is with its limited usage szenarios, there is no good reason for this behavior. They could have made the iPad a real MacBook competitor, the hardware is up to it. Apple has decided to keep the software limited and even prohibit third parties of closing many of the gaps.
  - jki275 6y ago
    They're really not incompatible -- iPadOS is really just a reskinned macOS. Under the hood they're essentially the same thing. There won't be any phasing out of macOS -- it really wouldn't make any sense at all. They'd alienate all their devs.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    Personally I'd prefer a release of macOS for iPads. That would actually get me to buy an iPad Pro. There's been some speculation on Twitter that for WWDC instead of releasing an ARM Mac for development purposes (for the Intel transition then loaned people Intel motherboards mounted in PowerMac G5 cases), they'd release a version of macOS to run on your iPad Pro.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  > I still can remember the times when there were several competing architectures. That was when having detailed manuals and being relatively open about your architecture was the norm. I'd bet whatever Apple releases will not be as forthcoming.
twoodfin 6y ago
Notably missing: Any hints about hardware for developers. My conspiracy theory is that the sketchily rumored “gaming laptop”[1] is actually a hot rod ARM MacBook focused on developers to get the transition off with a bang. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/12/30/sketchy-rumor-gaming-mac-wwdc-2020/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/12/30/sketchy-rumor-gaming-ma...
- oe 6y ago
  Could the new iPad Pro works as a development machine?
  - twoodfin 6y ago
    Yes, but that’s so awkward technically and from a marketing / product segmentation perspective that I’d be shocked if Apple went that way. They want to sell this transition as letting them build the best Macs ever. A kitbash iPad, despite its virtues, is definitely not that.
    - oe 6y ago
      I don't mean as a product to sell to the masses but something that could be used to develop / test ARM apps before the new shiny laptop arrives sometime in 2021. Not the most ergonomic way to develop apps but maybe possible?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    It already does, Pythonista, Continuous, Codea, Shaderific, Playgrounds Are enough to keep me busy.
    - messe 6y ago
      Try out code-server[1]. It let's you run VSCode in a web browser. I have a 10$ a month vultr server set up for personal git hosting and running this, and it works great on my iPadPro (as well as my PinebookPro). https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server
loltyler1 6y ago
The article is behind a paywall.
neximo64 6y ago
Hopefully the new macs are faster. Here's something you can try yourself: My 10 year old Macbook pro running lion, if I go to the Safari menu in the corner click it and move the mouse up and down really quickly over the menu items, the responsiveness is instant & there is no flickering. Doing the same with the * * max spec * * 16" Macbook Pro has flickering. Easily reproducible in this very Safari window if you're reading this on a Mac. Everything has been downhill this decade with the quality. If the focus was on ARM then hopefully if it was a resource diversion the quality is good after. Well i hope at least..
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  The annoying thing is this is what mac was famous for, for a long time. Often, the price would give you considerable lower specs than a PC, but the mac would be faster to desktop, faster to start working in an application, smoother IU, longer battery life, etc. Focus on macs used to be "faster to work with, not faster to calculate with" It was those things that warranted the higher price tag.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Surely not during classical Mac OS days. Working on those LC II was more of a need that nothing else was available at the computer lab than anything else.
    - rjsw 6y ago
      A Quadra 950 feels fast running old Mac OS applications.
      - antonyh 6y ago
        I concur. Booted up my G4 this week, on OS9. Feels so much faster than anything released this century. So much so, I'm keeping it as an air-gapped word processor. Modern computers, SSDs, super fast RAM, GPUs etc, all needed for computing. But the older machines with outdated hardware, low and slow RAM, and tiny slow PATA or SCSI HDDs feel so fast. I don't doubt that the Quadra feels just as quick. It's not just Apple, same goes for Windows of the same pre-Y2K era compared to now. The question is why. Why is the user experience so poor. Why is it all so sluggish now. Have we exchanged performance for developer convenience just to punt out more underperforming software? Is the art of creating fast UI code dying out? Is the shift from C/C++ to Swift/.net interpreted bytecode-type solutions the cause? Too many layers of abstraction, too much cross-platform code with compromises to make it run anywhere? Whatever it is, we're churning out software quicker now but on faster hardware it runs worse than the older tools. It feels backwards to me.
inapis 6y ago
This transition would be fun to watch. Mac has a huge legacy, enormous amounts of apps and sometimes it is embedded deeply in a lot of workflows that it would be very challenging to displace. Unlike the PowerPC -> Intel transition, this time round, Apple has the iOS ecosystem to tap into. We'll probably still have 4-5 years before the Intel Macs are completely abandoned but then this is Apple we are talking about. For all intents and purposes, they might cut the umbilical cord in 6 months. Adobe is probably the only company which can delay the complete transition for some time. Edit - removed the line about electron. As others have pointed out, electron already runs on ARM.
- xuki 6y ago
  > For all intents and purposes, they might cut the umbilical cord in 6 months. No, they're selling the Mac Pro today. Intel support is not going away anytime soon.
- mv9 6y ago
  > This probably might mean the death knell for Electron Electron already runs on ARM-powered Windows laptops [1]. [1] https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/windows-arm https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/windows-arm
- kryptiskt 6y ago
  Electron is basically Chromium and node.js, if those two won't run it won't be much of a Mac.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Apple threw away a lot of that legacy by not supporting 32 bit apps anymore and the world did not stop turning.
  - tgv 6y ago
    OTOH, the world continues using 10.14 Mojave. At least, I do.
    - 6y ago
hylaride 6y ago
Moving to it’s own chips may be fine and all, but I’d much prefer Apple to deal with the rotting quality of its OSes first.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  They will do it via iOS Core™️.
- ljm 6y ago
  It does say something that even with some of its flaws (i.e. ads, telemetry, patchwork leftover UI from over the years) I vastly prefer working on Windows for most things these days, especially with WSL and the new terminal in the mix.
  - JoelTheSuperior 6y ago
    Indeed - I was a pretty heavy Mac user for years but I genuinely find that Windows gives me less grief lately.
  - steeleduncan 6y ago
    WSL and the new terminal pushed the balance in windows favour for me too. The value proposition of OSX 10.2 when I switched to a Mac was a clean, elegant UI with that unix terminal for developer tasks. The Windows 10 UI is good, and these days the *nix of real interest is Linux, so the WSL handles that side, so for the same logic, I've moved back in the Windows direction.
  - eknkc 6y ago
    I've been developing on macs for 10+ years. Recently got myself a Windows desktop for testing stuff, gaming etc. It turned into my main development machine thanks to WSL2. Everything works better / more stable and this is extremely ironic given that I switched to mac a decade ago for the same reason. Also I have many more hardware options (which is overwhelming) Meanwhile, my MacBook Pro 16" has daily kernel panics when it is connected to an external display. It has been reported by many people on Macrumors forums and has been happening for months now. No fix...
dblooman 6y ago
Having tried Windows on ARM with the surface, I was surprised that many apps I use every day were not available. Perhaps Apple will be better at onboarding developers to the transition, but will also be interesting to see how long developers continue to support Intel. Can anyone speak as to the difficulty of working with ARM and Windows?
- akmarinov 6y ago
  They announced the move to Intel in 2005 and dropped PowerPC support in 2009, so I'm guessing about the same period for the ARM transition.
  - shoo_pl 6y ago
    Unless they pull a rabbit out of hat, they will not have a x86-64 emulator this time (for the same reasons why intel is struggling with speed/power efficiency ratio for years now) so it won't be that easy. It will be either ARM of Intel hardware and people will have to choose.
    - mathw 6y ago
      Oh I'm sure they'll have one. It'll just be slow.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > Unless they pull a rabbit out of hat, they will not have a x86-64 emulator this time (for the same reasons why intel is struggling with speed/power efficiency ratio for years now) I don't understand what you mean - you absolutely can emulate AArch64 in AMD64. You can emulate any instruction set in any other instruction set.
      - scintill76 6y ago
        They're saying it won't be fast or power-efficient.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
jurmous 6y ago
Could it be that Apple brings an X86 emulator on the machine like they did with Rosetta in the PowerPC to Intel transition? Most calls to native libraries like Metal and UI would be handled natively so we probably don't notice slowness in most apps. Even Chrome and nowadays Adobe Photoshop are compiled to ARM versions. If so this will be a smooth transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28software%29
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  I’d like to know more about ARM Photoshop — is this fully featured photoshop, or are you referring to the iOS app?
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    The iOS app should be a fully featured one - https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/photoshop-ipad/ https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/photoshop-ipad/
    - Mindwipe 6y ago
      Yeah, that didn't happen. The iOS app had a tiny fraction of the functionality of the full Mac app. Adobe were simply lying when they announced that. Indeed, it's a very poor imitation, just with some of the same codebase underneath (and literally nobody is "wow, Photoshop's famous codebase! That's what I want because it's totally not an infamous piece of garbage that I tolerate because of it's functionality!").
      - jurmous 6y ago
        The problem was that they needed to do the whole UI to be touch first. That won't be a problem on an ARM macOS version.
      - pandatigox 6y ago
        Link to the infamous PSD file format rant https://devrant.com/rants/1292858/found-this-gem-on-github-at-this-point-id-like-to-take-a-moment-to-speak-to-you https://devrant.com/rants/1292858/found-this-gem-on-github-a...
meesterdude 6y ago
Apple ditching intel could lead to some great improvements in hardware, but I would be much happier if they made no changes to the hardware and actually started investing in OSX again. Catalina is a disaster. I've been using macs since OS 7 and I cannot believe how bad Catalina is.
- nicbou 6y ago
  What is bad about it? I'm still on Mojave
  - kup0 6y ago
    In my personal experience, I would say it's the buggiest and least snappy version of macOS I've used in quite a long time
    - mark_l_watson 6y ago
      I think that the lack of snappiness is mostly caused by the new sandboxing and security features. I have mixed feeling about this. Things can run slower especially at startup, but extra security is a good thing.
  - danielscrubs 6y ago
    For me macOS seems rock solid as long as you don't install certain drivers (Dell being the worst) and some security software in which case it quickly turns into Windows XP level of "blue" screens. They really need to work on making that stable that but I'm not sure how that would work. Normally you would just sandbox it. For example I used certain software because I was working in the government that was basically government mandated spyware it installed global certificates, checks and uploads network traffic and more. Mandated and buggy as hell. My personal computer on the other hand uses pretty much only App Store and Homebrew cli utils and is rock solid.
    - Someone 6y ago
      “They really need to work on making that stable that but I'm not sure how that would work“ Apple has outlined how it would work: by moving drivers into userspace (https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/ https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/ , https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit) I guess that, with a move to ARM, they would enforce this for all drivers, if performance allows it (video drivers might be the exception)
ksec 6y ago
It is easy to reason for switching to their own CPU on MacBooks or MacBook Pros, roughly at 16M Unit per year. But what about Mac and Mac Pro? Combined to less than 2M Unit. Are we going to have Split in platform where developers is expected to debug on both Arch? This isn't the same as moving from PowerPC to x86, where majority of Pro Apps are already on WinTel. ARM is still relatively new on many Pro Apps. Adobe may be slightly better equipped, but not AutoDesk. If not, would Apple spend additional hundreds of millions on 100W+ CPU design that are sold in tiny quantities? It is also worth pointing out Mark Gurman has been saying this since before he joined Bloomberg when he was at 9to5Mac. And since 2016 when he joined Bloomberg the rumours were taken more seriously. And the first rumours to suggest Apple is working on ARM Mac goes back as far as 2010.
- zakjan 6y ago
  > the company plans to eventually transition the entire Mac lineup to its Arm-based processors, including the priciest desktop computers, the people said.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    It's Bloomberg, they don't have a great track record on Apple.
    - graeme 6y ago
      It’s Mark Gurman, he has one of the best track records on Apple. He and Ming Chi Kuo are the two most consistently accurate Apple leakers/predictors. It’s better to view Gurman as talent writing for Bloomberg than as Bloomberg itself. https://www.vox.com/2016/6/1/11835514/bloomberg-mark-gurman-apple-scoop https://www.vox.com/2016/6/1/11835514/bloomberg-mark-gurman-...
- nojito 6y ago
  They don’t want to be dragged along by Intel failing to meet deadlines.
hs86 6y ago
iOS apps on the desktop and the switch from x86 to ARM have uncomfortable many parallels with Windows 8 / RT. How is Apple's approach going to be different from Microsoft's? Will they keep backward compatibility? Will the CPU architecture really be a day and night difference or are our expectations too high due to the ubiquity of inflated Geekbench numbers? This will either make or break the Mac as a platform and I feel like currently, any further investment would be a gamble.
- pixelrevision 6y ago
  One thing that would be very different from a windows transition is that Apple is much more aggressive about pulling support for backwards compatibility. MS spends a lot of energy to support really old software for businesses whereas Apple typically gives a 3 year window then pulls the plug.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
chrisseaton 6y ago
I'm really worried - there's software that I rely on such as parts of the JVM ecosystem that haven't had as much much work put into them for ARM as they have for Intel. How long do we have to bring things up to speed? Just a year? Obviously everyone has known this is coming but I haven't seen much action yet. If we get the worst case scenario and Apple ships only ARM hardware from January 2021, then I feel like there's going to be some serious problems.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  If we get the worst case scenario and Apple ships only ARM hardware from January 2021, then I feel like there's going to be some serious problems. That seems extremely unlikely to me.
- paulio 6y ago
  yes, I can't imagine docker is going to be happy either.
- p0rkbelly 6y ago
  It seems that the initial plan is that only "MacBooks" aka budget macs will have the ARM cpus. The Pros will remain x86....for who knows how long though.
- rjsw 6y ago
  From the OpenJDK commit logs aarch64 seems to have been getting a fair bit of attention over the last year. I do run OpenJDK on aarch64 and it seems fine but I don't run anything particularly serious. If Apple ship an AArch64 machine with plenty of RAM then it would make a big difference to what applications people try to use.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    I think the complaint was more about libraries using JNI than the JDK, itself. There's a popular sqlite library that ships with native libraries, otherwise falling back to transpiled code. I'm not sure if they've done much work for ARM. Java's actually the easy case. ARM means a lot of docker containers won't work, your development architecture is different than your protection architecture, cython libraries, etc. This is probably the right move if you want to build a laptop with good battery life, but sort of like removing the escape key, it's problematic for a large segment of Mac buyers.
toyg 6y ago
That’s me going bye bye then. It was fun while it lasted. After the keyboard fiasco and “Vistalina”, this would be the last straw.
- clajiness 6y ago
  I, too, make major decisions based upon limited information.
  - toyg 6y ago
    I used the conditional, didn't I?
- jbsmsk 6y ago
  The keyboard "fiasco" was fake news. Overblown by the loud minority and with later iterations probably not an issue at all. But it's a stain that couldn't be washed away (they tried with the replacement program, but likely wasn't effective enough). At worst the keyboard "issue" is just a preference.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >At worst the keyboard "issue" is just a preference. Yeah, I prefer to have my B key registering 100% of the time instead of 80% of the time.
  - FlyingAvatar 6y ago
    What segment do you envision preferring keyboards with keys that randomly fail? I've had 3 Macs with these keyboards (should have been two, but one died completely and had to be replaced), all of them had this issue to varying degrees. This was not uncommon for the other Mac users at my workplace. Even if fiasco is an overstatement, the initial denial of the issue I think is the major source of it becoming a media issue.
drcongo 6y ago
Given who wrote this, and for which publication, this article definitely needs the Daring Fireball disclaimer.
- whitehouse3 6y ago
  Here's the disclaimer that appears below any post on Daring Fireball that links to Bloomberg. > Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true. [0]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/bloomberg_publishes_clickbait_in_break_from_rivals https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/bloomberg_publishes_click...
- amatecha 6y ago
  Unsurprisingly, DF commented today on the subject of Apple transitioning to ARM: https://daringfireball.net/2020/06/on_apple_announcing_the_mac_arm_transition_at_wwdc https://daringfireball.net/2020/06/on_apple_announcing_the_m...
toron123 6y ago
I read somewhere that emulation of x86 on arm is much wrose compared to emulation of arm on x86. Can someone confirm this?
- NathanWilliams 6y ago
  I don't know the answer to that, but keep in mind that Apple is control of the entire CPU design. They could for example put an x86 decoder in front of the ARM cores. After all, modern Intel processors decode x86 to a simpler instruction set used internally anyway.
  - pixelrevision 6y ago
    Doing something like this would be the smart move. If the do this they’re going to need to give developers lead time to get their software up to date.
- my123 6y ago
  x86 has total store ordering, which requires to add barriers to make the order respected on Arm while doing emulation. On newer Arm chips, barriers are much cheaper, solving the problem.
  - messe 6y ago
    Not only that, but Apple if they wanted to could strengthen the memory model of their custom chips, meaning the barriers wouldn't be necessary during emulation.
PedroBatista 6y ago
That means they have to keep up with CPU performance for the next decades. It might be easy now but let’s see if they don’t hit a pothole and have to go back..
NoPicklez 6y ago
I wonder why they're deciding to go back, after all they used to develop their own chips back in the day.
- itchynosedev 6y ago
  It says it right there in the article. > Apple’s chip-development group, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel’s annual chip performance gains slowed. Apple engineers worried that sticking to Intel’s road map would delay or derail some future Macs, according to people familiar with the effort.
  - NoPicklez 6y ago
    Interesting, funny that Apple's own design constraints have in the past not been able to fully get the most out of Intel chips anyway. Take the cooling/throttling problems as an example. Goodluck to them on building a better chip.
- mathw 6y ago
  Apple have never used their own CPUs for desktop computers, only for phones and tablets.
  - philjohn 6y ago
    Unless you count the AIM alliance - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance
mberning 6y ago
I would like to see a return of the Macbook. I loved the form factor on mine, but after a couple OS updates the anemic processor became a painful bottleneck. On the flipside my several years old iPad pro still feels blazingly fast.
- jrsj 6y ago
  Really the new MacBook Air is essentially a slightly larger continuation of that design that also has a fan, specifically because the processors in the 12" Macbook weren't that great. I could definitely see a future ARM based Air returning to a fanless design though.
wil421 6y ago
How many times have I heard about an ARM MBP, an Apple TV (a real TV with screen), an Apple Electric car, or Apple Glasses?
rado 6y ago
My 3yo iPad Pro is ridiculously faster than my 3yo iMac at some tasks like photo editing. It's night and day. Also quiet, cool and thin. Very excited about the Arm transition, warts and all.
- nojito 6y ago
  My favorite workflow comparison between desktops and iPads is rendering/exporting 4K video.
  - realityking 6y ago
    This is actually a trick comparison. A lot of desktop software doesn't make use of hardware encoding facilities, even if available, since a good software encoder will provide better quality.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > a good software encoder will provide better quality Why is hardware lower quality? Isn't the encoding algorithm deterministic and so the same wether you do it in hardware and software?
      - galad87 6y ago
        The decoder is deterministic. The encoder is free to decide where to allocate more bit of which block type is better in a specific place or other things. A software encoder can be improved without replacing the entire cpu/gpu.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Ah so I guess hardware is generally a bit behind due to longer release cycles and more conservative in design due to cost of experimentation and mistakes.
      - jeroenhd 6y ago
Nursie 6y ago
Well, there goes the Hackintosh! Well, eventually, I imagine that Apple will continue to support their x86 Macs for some time, especially as we've recently had the launch of the revamped Mac Pro which is not a cheap machine. But maybe ten years down the line they'll stop updating it and that will be that.
- abrowne 6y ago
  I imagine you're right, but G5 owners might predict differently. They only got one more major release (10.5) once Apple switched to Intel, although there was a longer release cadence than there is now.
  - joshstrange 6y ago
    Ahh yes, before we had yearly iOS compatibility updates for the mac... I'm still salty that Apple broke my reminders in Mojave just because I upgraded my phone. They will have to use a much larger carrot or stick before I consider moving to Catalina.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
theblackcat1002 6y ago
On the other side, AMD APU code name was found in latest macOS release which should hint the other side of the story. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-may-start-selling-macs-with-amd-cpus https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-may-start-selling-ma...
- rcarmo 6y ago
  That would actually make sense. I was kind of surprised to see many Hackintosh builds with Ryzen CPUs and reference motherboards working pretty much out of the box...
  - ksec 6y ago
    Yes, if you look up Geekbench, nearly all the top scores are from AMD Hackintosh. https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore
    - smcl 6y ago
      I'm not familiar with geekbench - is it expected that a phone is at the top of those rankings? That seems a bit sketchy to me.
      - Veedrac 6y ago
        The top results are nonsensical.
- ksec 6y ago
  I much prefer them to switch over to AMD if cost was a concern. Rather than outright dumping x86 codebase.
  - wadkar 6y ago
    I think it’s about time we relegate x86 only codebase to VMs.
  - 6y ago
rbanffy 6y ago
Funny... A move to AMD would be less disruptive to the macOS ecosystem and would solve the roadmap issues. It seems AMD will have the lead for a good couple years right now. Intel must be creating a lot of problems for Apple to warrant this move. Or maybe AMD is not willing to give Apple the same sweet deal Intel gave Apple to get the transition.
- dx034 6y ago
  I believe AMD has an incentive to give Apple a good deal. They got a lot of attention from some areas for their new processors but most non technical users are still Intel first. If Apple starts selling with AMD it could boost their image and help them massively in other areas (e.g. servers, workstations) as well.
- hodder 6y ago
  ...Or more likely, they don't want to ever be relying on a third party ever again for chips since whoever they go with holds great power over their progress and timelines.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    > progress and timelines There haven't been many interesting CPU changes in a long time, and they're still using TSMC for fabrication. Arguably, you're better off with two vendors. I'm not sure if Apple has genuine roadmap concerns or is falling in the not invented here trap.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      Wouldn't be a first for Apple, but this is no longer Jobs' company.
bob1029 6y ago
I read this article very carefully, and I still have not yet seen any confirmation here or prior that rules out a semi-custom solution involving the other x86 vendor. Perhaps this is just a game of semantics? "Its own mac chips" vs "x86+ARM chips co-designed by AMD & Apple, fabricated by TSMC, and slapped with an Apple logo". From AMD's semi-custom page: "We are not bound by convention and don’t subscribe to “one-size-fits-all” thinking. We develop customized SOCs leveraging AMD technology including industry-leading x86 and ARM® multi-core CPUs, world-class AMD Radeon® graphics, and multimedia accelerators. We offer the option to further customize each solution to include third-party and/or open market IP or customer designed IP. Discover how you can differentiate with AMD Semi-Custom solutions." https://www.amd.com/en/products/semi-custom-solutions https://www.amd.com/en/products/semi-custom-solutions I still cannot see a hard switch to ARM without any HW x86 capability in the mix. The impact to user experience would be very dramatic and the PR would be a nightmare to deal with. The way I see this playing out is that the next gen of Apple hardware provides both an x86 and an ARM stack, with subsequent generations potentially being ARM only (i.e. w/ x86 emulation). There is just too much software investment in the x86 ecosystem at this point. You have to give people a path to migrate peacefully or they will never return. This isn't like prior architecture switches. The impact with PPC->x86 was not even 1/100th what the impact would be today if Apple forced a hard x86->ARM switch. All of that said, I can understand why they would want to keep something like this under wraps until T-minus 0.
- thomascgalvin 6y ago
  What you said makes sense, particularly: > There is just too much software investment in the x86 ecosystem at this point. But I don't have any confidence in Apple's leadership anymore. There was a lot of software investment in 32 bit apps, too, and they merrily launched a nuke at that entire library. Do I think they're going to drop X86? No. But is it a possibility? Absolutely.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    I think there's a better-than-average chance that they'd cut compatibility just to show that they're capable of doing so. They'd probably get away with it, too.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
>Apple’s chip-development group, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel’s annual chip performance gains slowed I'm just not really buying this as the justification, Mac has almost never been about competing on raw performance and moving to ARM could even mean a large performance hit for most software where performance counts for years to come. Although I guess we also keep getting lectured on how amazingly powerful iPad Pros are yet we never really see them do anything beyond a paint program, GarageBand level music production, basic video editing and keynote.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Apple has successfully done this twice before. Each time, major developers ported within the first two years and in the meantime, Apple sold computers with the old processor and new processor.
- nojito 6y ago
  It’s more so with Intel missing deadlines. A good example is when core 2 duo was delayed and Intel forced apple to use 32 bit chips in the MacBook Pro.
ziml77 6y ago
I've seen this headline for a decade. Is there anything that makes it more believable now?
- Hamuko 6y ago
  The ARM Mac rumours have been quite hot lately if that's any indication of their accuracy.
- akmarinov 6y ago
  With WWDC approaching and with Apple doing it online, they're likely pretaping it and with that it's more likely that some of the info in it has leaked.
wyldfire 6y ago
There have been a few models of Windows-ARM snapdragon-based computers for a little while now. Somehow, mindblowingly, they didn't bother to ship the first ones with a native Chrome port (only Edge). Now that they have native Chrome, and Apple is moving macbooks, I wonder if the tide will shift towards ARM for all laptops?
dehrmann 6y ago
It's interesting how Apple takes the opposite approach of PCs. PCs have been on x86 variants forever, to the point that MS-DOS will run on a new PC without much fuss. For Apple, this makes, what, the fourth architecture for Macs?
- akmarinov 6y ago
  Imagine the cruft and patches that have accumulated in the past 42 years since x86 came up...
  - ksk 6y ago
    On the flip side, how many generations before a new CPU architecture becomes robust and mature to be relied on for critical work? We're still using crufty Wintel at work (vaccine r&d), its simply the best platform that keeps our investment in existing software.
    - akmarinov 6y ago
      Luckily ARM isn't anything new. Even Aarch64 is almost 10 years old.
api 6y ago
This recent event has converted me to a full blown supporter: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310 I lost days of time to what very much appears to be yet another hardware bug in Intel's latest core. If you don't believe me that it's a hardware bug, read the whole thing. It's probably a zero day security vulnerability too. The only catch is: if Apple also takes the opportunity to iOS-ify Mac and lock it down to the point that it is no longer useful for professional work, I will have to drop the platform entirely. I've seen some decent AMD Ryzen laptops showing up on the market and I could use Linux with a Windows VM for the occasional Zoom call or similar thing. Honestly though... I think if Apple pulls this off well without alienating their user base, it probably spells the end of the X64 architecture outside cloud and servers. Given that people prefer to deploy to the same architecture they develop on, it probably means X64 will eventually die in those areas too. AArch64 could end up being the core architecture of almost everything by the 2030s.
- mjlee 6y ago
  FWIW, Zoom runs reasonably well on Linux - as long as your webcam is supported.
  - chrismartin 6y ago
    For my use (occasionally joining someone's meeting), the Zoom web client completely eliminates the need to install the app. They don't make it easy to find, but: https://zoom.us/wc/join/enter-your-meeting-id-here https://zoom.us/wc/join/enter-your-meeting-id-here
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  >appears to be yet another hardware bug in Intel's latest core. Does this bug also appear on Linux or Windows?
  - api 6y ago
    Yes. It also hard crashes the host Mac when run inside a Linux VM in Parallels. Read the above sentence again. It escapes VM isolation. It also crashes the whole machine on a Microsoft Surface tablet with the same chip in it. So three OSes, and it escapes VM isolation. It's a hardware bug. Mitigation so far is to try to use exotic JVM options to make the JIT be less clever and not emit whatever the offending code is... but we don't know what it is, so it's shooting in the dark.
atlgator 6y ago
Haven't we been here before?
- dhosek 6y ago
  This would be the third major CPU change for the mac architecture: 68xxx to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel and now Intel to ARM.
  - jerrysievert 6y ago
    I'd say technically fourth, since x86 -> x64 was also a hard cutoff eventually with Catalina.
    - cpeterso 6y ago
      And iOS's ARM -> ARM64 cutoff was another architecture transition Apple (and developers) had to weather.
      - jerrysievert 6y ago
        ah yes. I don't tend to do iOS development, so completely forgot about that one other than having a lot of the apps I loved stop working. still grumpy about pirates and civ rev being gone forever.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  The ARM rumors, or Apple performing a major platform transition? (In both cases, yes, but these rumors have been gaining credibility for quite some time.)
- jerrysievert 6y ago
  a couple of times, yes. apple has a pretty good track record overall when dealing with these transitions. typically it's been to a platform that has been a strong improvement. if apple's making the decision to transition again, they must feel that it's for a very compelling reason once again. we don't have our hands on their current tech to agree whether it makes sense as a cpu upgrade, but likely it would make sense as a battery upgrade. whether that's a good enough reason to risk a transition, we will have to wait and see. personally, I've been burned too many times on first-gen apple hardware to jump on the bandwagon immediately, so am taking a wait and see approach. previous transitions that have been successful: m68k -> ppc ppc -> x86 x86 -> x64
bgorman 6y ago
If Apple doesn't provide some form of acceleration or support for x86 hypervisors I can see this leading to mass exodus of the Mac platform for web developers. It will be interesting to see what Apple does. Given the technological steps Apple has made, it seems like it is only a matter of if, not when Apple will switch over some computers. I personally would predict the Macbook Air (potentially a new Macbook), Mac Mini, iMac and potentially the iMac Pro will switch over to Arm first. It seems like a poor risk/return ratio to switch the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro lines to Arm at this point in time. Who knows what the manufacturing yield will be on the initial 5nm chips.
- eyesee 6y ago
  Mac sales are a drop in the bucket compared to iPhones and iPads, and I strongly suspect they will share a chip family. Yields should be the least of our concern.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    The problem is the larger the chip, the lower the yield. High end desktop/server chips are much bigger than mobile chips.
- iphone_elegance 6y ago
  it's so lame that they removed 32bit app support via a OS update (I can't use a lot of the software I enjoyed OR go backwards) and are now doing this... like if you're going to switch architectures anyway at least let me run the damn software I was able to before the update it feels like no one can make up their minds over there overall I see how moving to ARM is a good move, but it's so annoying at the same time especially since they just fixed up the mbps which drove a lot of people to buy them (including me) I feel more burned than excited wouldn't surprised if the same folks who greenlit the butterfly keyboards were behind this
  - bhj 6y ago
    I suspect they are removing 32-bit support now to ease the transition rather than doing everything at once. In a few years the pain of Catalina will have faded (somewhat) and presumably they'll only have to worry about backward compatibility with AMD64.
robert_foss 6y ago
The article mentions higher GPU, NPU performance and higher efficiency. All of this I would expect since the SOC is likely incorporating much of their mobile experience/IP. However, it doesn't mention CPU performance or IPC, both of which will be extra important due to the binary level compatibility for x86 I would expect them to ship.
pickle-wizard 6y ago
I think this would work well for me. Most of my day is spent with SSH or RDP sessions to systems that do the heavy lifting. So I'll welcome the power and heat savings. Though I don't think I'll be buying one soon. When I travel I have a 2018 MacBook Air and when I'm at home I have a 2013 Mac Pro. Both machines still work great for my needs, and I plan to keep the Mac Pro until Apple stops OS updates for it. When it comes time to replace it, I'll replace it with a Mac Mini, and I don't need a machine that powerful anymore.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  I guess I'm one of the smaller minority who prefers a hybrid with a significant amount of local compute power and remote compute power. Going all-in with thin client architecture is something I've never been a fan of, namely because it puts a fundamental resource I need to do my work in someone else's control/hands. Much of the time, this is advantageous (and I prefer someone else managing things for me when it works) but I run into far too many snags where its nice to know I can get something done with local resources that I have control over when needed.
Fiahil 6y ago
Next in line: macos on ipad.
- romanovcode 6y ago
  Would be cool
- FreakyT 6y ago
  iPadOS on Macs seems more likely given Apple's trajectory, I'd say.
Shank 6y ago
Don't get me wrong. I love the potential native performance gains from this transition, but I can't help but just be a tiny bit scared for the future of my day to day work. For better or for worse, my company uses Docker for Mac for the vast majority of the stack that I don't work on but need to actively develop. I'm already paying a huge VM cost and it's pretty terrible. I don't see Apple working on any kind of native containerization solution. Does that mean that I'm going to be eating the current VM cost + x86_64 virtualization cost in the future? I really want to keep using macOS as a platform. I know I can just stay on the hardware I have, but it's not really practical to be on an end of life architecture. It seems just a tad shortsighted to ditch x86_64 when a lot of people depend on it specifically because it's a shared architecture with other platforms.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  I've given up on the dream of working in a place where I can still run "all the things" on my laptop, at least in a place that has embraced cloud services, Kubernetes, micro services, etc.
  - m0xte 6y ago
    Yep. We're hanging ourselves with all this crap. There has to be a better way.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - benologist 6y ago
      VSCode has an SSH extension that lets you seamlessly work on a remote server, this has been invaluable with my old dual-core Macbook first offloading docker and my work to a vultr.com virtual machine and then a 6-core Intel NUC on my local network, which just feels like using the same computer. The only drawback I've found is I use "puppeteer" a lot which is an API for programmatically using Chrome and Firefox, sometimes I want to see what's going on.
derefr 6y ago
By including even the Mac Pro in the eventual transition, Apple seems to be expecting to have their own chips beating out Intel/AMD compute performance for workstation-class tasks within the next 5-10 years. You'd assume they'd keep the "halo products" running whatever chips are best-of-class, rather than whichever are most cost-effective to put in; so if they're switching for even those product lines, they're seemingly expecting their own chips to become best-of-class. That's an interesting bet, given how long the two giants have been at this.
- idiot900 6y ago
  Is it? How much faster are CPU cores going to get? Also, Apple has many billions of dollars to throw at this.
  - derefr 6y ago
    > How much faster are CPU cores going to get? Whenever we hit a Moore's Law bottleneck, we see a transition to new CPUs being increasingly optimized for power-efficiency instead. Whether or not FLOPS remain a moving target, FLOPS-per-watt will very likely continue to grow for a few more decades. > Also, Apple has many billions of dollars to throw at this. Unless they're planning on selling these chips on the open market, I don't see how "throwing billions of dollars at this" project can be justified to their shareholders, even if it's something they can technically afford to do. As it is, it's a pure cost-center optimization (i.e. removing the need to pay Intel, at the expense of now needing to make the chips themselves.) This presumably balances out slightly positive on their books, not mind-bogglingly positive like a new product line would be. "So"—the prototypal shareholder asks—"why are you putting $bns/yr worth of silicon engineers to work on this, rather than putting them to work on feature cores to create+differentiate a new product line?" In my mind, it only works out for Apple if it's actually not all that expensive for them to reach parity with Intel/AMD; i.e., if it's something they can do while still having silicon-engineering talent left over to keep doing feature engineering for new hardware. Which is what I find interesting: how did Apple reach this point, where they can leapfrog Intel/AMD without it even being a "drop everything" moonshot project for them?
skellington 6y ago
Whelp....that's the end of Apple for most/many professional developers. Apple is working really hard to give up their PC market share again like in the PowerPC days. Great OS (although worse than usual recently), doesn't run any (hyperbole but rooted in truth) software. If they would just focus on running MORE software, especially games, they could probably grab so much more market share, but they are happy at 10% it seems.
- mattl 6y ago
  Why the end for developers?
- kenward 6y ago
  I agree it's pretty frustrating from a developer standpoint. However, the majority of people aren't developers and just want a computer that works. I could see this as a way to _increase_ market share and reduce the barrier to entry to expensive Apple products.
jagger27 6y ago
I'm curious to see if they'll open up access to the T-series chips in our existing Macs to at least experiment with or use as a co-processor. The T2 is no slouch—it's based on the A10. It also makes me wonder if they'll ship a lower wattage Intel part alongside their Arm chips in a transition period. I think that would be kinda cool, and would ease a lot of backwards compatibility woes. Or they could keep things more or less the same and just beef up the T2 with more cores and interconnect bandwidth. It might not make much sense to ship a dual CPU Macbook Air, but it would certainly be cool to see Arm PCIe addon cards for the Mac Pro, where power and heat concerns are not as significant.
rukittenme 6y ago
This is great news for software engineers, IMO. More battery life (hopefully), comparable performance (hopefully), and lower cost (hopefully). Contrary to popular belief, I think Apple has embraced those three principles in recent releases more so than they were 5 years ago. Everyone who writes software on macOS is probably virtualized already. Really shouldn't be any downside to this for the vast majority of programmers.
ilikehurdles 6y ago
Truthfully, and to go against the grain a bit, whatever makes the platform faster sounds good to me. If my IDE, browser, and terminal tools continue to run just fine I'm not going to be up in arms about this change. We've been married to x86 derivates for too long, even more so to Intel's critically broken implementations of them. Shitty keyboards and useless touch bar aside, Apple has had a long history of pushing the envelope in radical and beneficial ways.
seanalltogether 6y ago
My only concern here is that the Mac line still only represents 10% of Apples revenue, and they might not give these desktop processors the attention that a supplier like intel or amd would to their own processors. I hope I'm wrong but I feel like Apple has been making serious missteps in the mac line for the past 10 years because its no longer their core product.
- bredren 6y ago
  The Mac (a PC-style computer) is a strategic investment, due to its role in software creation. The brand is also part of the core image of the company. Apple still commands only a fraction of the overall PC market, and while that is not growing as whole, their portion could by a great deal. You’re right that there have been major missteps. But there have also been major corrective steps as well, which are just as important in gauging how the company will behave in the future.
danaris 6y ago
Thus far, the only source for this is Bloomberg, which published the story "The Big Hack", which was shown to be complete bullshit. They have still not issued a retraction, an apology, or any kind of acknowledgement that their reporting was so completely wrong. Their credibility on issues of tech—particularly Apple—is very suspect. (See also: Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect)
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.vn/ogP3y https://archive.vn/ogP3y
velebak 6y ago
The great unification continues between iOS and Mac!
mromanuk 6y ago
My wild prediction: Apple will remain using x86, but based on AMD chips and integrating stuff like ML, security, etc. Both of them use TSMC as foundry.
- api 6y ago
  A Ryzen MacBook Pro is a dream machine for me. I think its unlikely though.
- adamfeldman 6y ago
  Came to say something similar. I’d love to see some kind of hybrid x86-ARM system that is able to retain the value of Apple’s x86 investments while also leveraging Apple’s deep ARM investments in the PC product lines.
  - adamfeldman 6y ago
    Hyperscaler servers (eg AWS Nitro) have dedicated hypervisor processors, and then customer workloads run on another processor. Imagine this architecture in a PC: macOS as “hypervisor” and applications as the user workload.
amanzi 6y ago
I don't use a Mac any more but from what I see and hear, most Mac users aren't clamouring for more speed or for even thinner laptops, but for a more stable, less annoying operating system.
- beamatronic 6y ago
  I want a thicker, heavier Mac with lots of ports.
Koshkin 6y ago
"Project Kalamata"
miguelmota 6y ago
I see in the comments that a lot of web developers are frustrated.. what programs do web developers use that only work on macOS? or is it also because of the retina screen? I've been developing on Linux for years without issues so trying to understand why devs choose macOS.
nsajko 6y ago
I wonder if there was consideration within Apple of switching back to PowerPC (power9/power10) now that it is open (for whatever that means, I am not sure)? They would appreciate the control that would give them. Does somebody have an idea how much approximately would it cost Apple to switch the Apple A14 from ARM to POWER? Usually it is said that the instruction decoder is a small part of a CPU core, and the ISAs are not hugely different (compared to AMD64/Intel, at least).
watersb 6y ago
A lot of discussion here about Windows/WSL2 or Linux on laptops, how it's gotten good enough for the HN crowd. The overloading of the Control key as the system menu shortcut ("accelerator"?) key when it's also the default Emacs bindngs for readline in Bash -- drives me utterly insane. If it were consistent, great, but on Windows there are many different text widgets, from PC console, Win32, and other layers. I simply can't develop the muscle memory. I have a very cheap HP laptop, the trackpad driver is nearly unusable. I installed the Synaptics Control Panel, and use it to "reset" the trackpad each time it wakes from sleep so that I have a chance at scrolling without randomly selecting the entire document's text and deleting it or dragging it to random places. It's horrible. On the Lenovo x230, the tiny trackpad is a bit better, but tiny, and the physical trackpad buttons give me the chance at dragging etc in the face of such madness. It's all very nerve-wracking. The trackpad on the MacBooks have never been a problem for me. Then there's text encoding. The Win-1252 Code Page. Turning UTF-8 into unreadable line noise in unpredictable situations. The CRLF madness that grows back no matter what. I use WSL2, Terminal, and VS Code, but it's unbelievably exhausting. Digging out of config issues with Code Signing certificate policy required a re-pave and 12 hours of re-installing etc to get back to sanity. Something needed an old VC Runtime DLL, which installed fine, but also seemed to overwrite a Microsoft root CA cert. Differential analysis with a working Windows we couldn't find the broken cert. Various msc tools and System Policy analysis and Troubleshooters and so on couldn't find it. The CERT: filesystem "provider" stopped working. It was a dead machine. Linux and macOS configs, I generally know where config files are, and can restore from backup. Want to restore from a Windows Image Backup? Or a copy of the file system from another Windows installation? Go ahead. Try it. I got heavy into PowerShell, there are some nice bits there, but it still has to fall back to text processing in pipes if some other tool doesn't output the correct data. Usually JSON, but is that schema documented? Certainly have yet to invest the time in Bash tools that might interact with PowerShell. It just doesn't stop. It just doesn't. I must accept that people are actually getting work done by adding WSL to the mix, but I guess I just break things. I don't seem to break things as badly on Solaris or Arch or even Gentoo or any of the BSDs. I have not given up on macOS. On the contrary, I will get another Mac laptop. It's a lot of work.

325 points by sleepyshift 6y ago

_ph_ 6y ago

I am quite excited about this rumor. If only to finally find out what Apples plans with respect to ARM based Macs are :). Also, just in general it would be exciting to have a real contender for intel-compatible chips on the deskop. I still can remember the times when there were several competing architectures. And obviously, Apple has the potential to create really game-changing chips, considering what they are doing with the iPhone hardware. One thing I still find peculiar is, Apple could have had nice ARM-based computers for quite a while. They are actually selling them in the form of the iPad, especially the Pro. But what keeps people to the Mac vs. the iPad is less the hardware, but mostly the software. The decisive difference in practical terms between macOS and iPadOS are the mostly artificial software limitations of iPadOS. While Apple loudly advertices the ability to copy files from an USB stick to "Files", the fun usually stops there. App support for file exchange is still very limited, you cannot even copy music to Files or your iCloud drive and add this to Apple Music or the TV app. So I find it a bit odd that they have to create ARM based MacBooks just as a solution to a basic problem of their software.

nradov 6y ago
I expect that Apple will gradually phase out MacOS, and add more features to iPadOS that will make it suitable for content creators. It never really made sense for Apple to maintain two overlapping but incompatible product lines. I predict in a few years they'll launch a laptop running iPadOS.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  The problem is, and that is what I tried to point out with my comment, that the only thing preventing the iPad to be useful for more people is, how artificially limited iPadOS is. It is a great device, but not a replacement for a computer.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    If you look at the direction of recent releases then you can see those features being added. The latest version has trackpad support for instance. I don’t imagine much is going to change right now but I wonder what they might be planning for the next decade.
    - api 6y ago
      It's not trackpad support. It's the ability to run your own software. If I can't run my own code (without jumping through hoops) it is not a real computer. iOS devices are consoles.
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      Yes, since they separated the OS from iOS, development of the iPad has somewhat gone into the right direction. But it took them a decade to add mouse/trackpad support, this is moving at a far to slow speed. And the fact, that you cannot add music to your iPad on your own, shows, how happy Apple is with its limited usage szenarios, there is no good reason for this behavior. They could have made the iPad a real MacBook competitor, the hardware is up to it. Apple has decided to keep the software limited and even prohibit third parties of closing many of the gaps.
- jki275 6y ago
  They're really not incompatible -- iPadOS is really just a reskinned macOS. Under the hood they're essentially the same thing. There won't be any phasing out of macOS -- it really wouldn't make any sense at all. They'd alienate all their devs.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  Personally I'd prefer a release of macOS for iPads. That would actually get me to buy an iPad Pro. There's been some speculation on Twitter that for WWDC instead of releasing an ARM Mac for development purposes (for the Intel transition then loaned people Intel motherboards mounted in PowerMac G5 cases), they'd release a version of macOS to run on your iPad Pro.
AsyncAwait 6y ago
> I still can remember the times when there were several competing architectures. That was when having detailed manuals and being relatively open about your architecture was the norm. I'd bet whatever Apple releases will not be as forthcoming.

twoodfin 6y ago

Notably missing: Any hints about hardware for developers. My conspiracy theory is that the sketchily rumored “gaming laptop”[1] is actually a hot rod ARM MacBook focused on developers to get the transition off with a bang. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/12/30/sketchy-rumor-gaming-mac-wwdc-2020/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/12/30/sketchy-rumor-gaming-ma...

oe 6y ago
Could the new iPad Pro works as a development machine?
- twoodfin 6y ago
  Yes, but that’s so awkward technically and from a marketing / product segmentation perspective that I’d be shocked if Apple went that way. They want to sell this transition as letting them build the best Macs ever. A kitbash iPad, despite its virtues, is definitely not that.
  - oe 6y ago
    I don't mean as a product to sell to the masses but something that could be used to develop / test ARM apps before the new shiny laptop arrives sometime in 2021. Not the most ergonomic way to develop apps but maybe possible?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It already does, Pythonista, Continuous, Codea, Shaderific, Playgrounds Are enough to keep me busy.
  - messe 6y ago
    Try out code-server[1]. It let's you run VSCode in a web browser. I have a 10$ a month vultr server set up for personal git hosting and running this, and it works great on my iPadPro (as well as my PinebookPro). https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server

loltyler1 6y ago

The article is behind a paywall.

neximo64 6y ago

Hopefully the new macs are faster. Here's something you can try yourself: My 10 year old Macbook pro running lion, if I go to the Safari menu in the corner click it and move the mouse up and down really quickly over the menu items, the responsiveness is instant & there is no flickering. Doing the same with the * * max spec * * 16" Macbook Pro has flickering. Easily reproducible in this very Safari window if you're reading this on a Mac. Everything has been downhill this decade with the quality. If the focus was on ARM then hopefully if it was a resource diversion the quality is good after. Well i hope at least..

wodenokoto 6y ago
The annoying thing is this is what mac was famous for, for a long time. Often, the price would give you considerable lower specs than a PC, but the mac would be faster to desktop, faster to start working in an application, smoother IU, longer battery life, etc. Focus on macs used to be "faster to work with, not faster to calculate with" It was those things that warranted the higher price tag.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Surely not during classical Mac OS days. Working on those LC II was more of a need that nothing else was available at the computer lab than anything else.
  - rjsw 6y ago
    A Quadra 950 feels fast running old Mac OS applications.
    - antonyh 6y ago
      I concur. Booted up my G4 this week, on OS9. Feels so much faster than anything released this century. So much so, I'm keeping it as an air-gapped word processor. Modern computers, SSDs, super fast RAM, GPUs etc, all needed for computing. But the older machines with outdated hardware, low and slow RAM, and tiny slow PATA or SCSI HDDs feel so fast. I don't doubt that the Quadra feels just as quick. It's not just Apple, same goes for Windows of the same pre-Y2K era compared to now. The question is why. Why is the user experience so poor. Why is it all so sluggish now. Have we exchanged performance for developer convenience just to punt out more underperforming software? Is the art of creating fast UI code dying out? Is the shift from C/C++ to Swift/.net interpreted bytecode-type solutions the cause? Too many layers of abstraction, too much cross-platform code with compromises to make it run anywhere? Whatever it is, we're churning out software quicker now but on faster hardware it runs worse than the older tools. It feels backwards to me.

inapis 6y ago

This transition would be fun to watch. Mac has a huge legacy, enormous amounts of apps and sometimes it is embedded deeply in a lot of workflows that it would be very challenging to displace. Unlike the PowerPC -> Intel transition, this time round, Apple has the iOS ecosystem to tap into. We'll probably still have 4-5 years before the Intel Macs are completely abandoned but then this is Apple we are talking about. For all intents and purposes, they might cut the umbilical cord in 6 months. Adobe is probably the only company which can delay the complete transition for some time. Edit - removed the line about electron. As others have pointed out, electron already runs on ARM.

xuki 6y ago
> For all intents and purposes, they might cut the umbilical cord in 6 months. No, they're selling the Mac Pro today. Intel support is not going away anytime soon.
mv9 6y ago
> This probably might mean the death knell for Electron Electron already runs on ARM-powered Windows laptops [1]. [1] https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/windows-arm https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/windows-arm
kryptiskt 6y ago
Electron is basically Chromium and node.js, if those two won't run it won't be much of a Mac.
tinus_hn 6y ago
Apple threw away a lot of that legacy by not supporting 32 bit apps anymore and the world did not stop turning.
- tgv 6y ago
  OTOH, the world continues using 10.14 Mojave. At least, I do.
  - 6y ago

hylaride 6y ago

Moving to it’s own chips may be fine and all, but I’d much prefer Apple to deal with the rotting quality of its OSes first.

pjmlp 6y ago
They will do it via iOS Core™️.
ljm 6y ago
It does say something that even with some of its flaws (i.e. ads, telemetry, patchwork leftover UI from over the years) I vastly prefer working on Windows for most things these days, especially with WSL and the new terminal in the mix.
- JoelTheSuperior 6y ago
  Indeed - I was a pretty heavy Mac user for years but I genuinely find that Windows gives me less grief lately.
- steeleduncan 6y ago
  WSL and the new terminal pushed the balance in windows favour for me too. The value proposition of OSX 10.2 when I switched to a Mac was a clean, elegant UI with that unix terminal for developer tasks. The Windows 10 UI is good, and these days the *nix of real interest is Linux, so the WSL handles that side, so for the same logic, I've moved back in the Windows direction.
- eknkc 6y ago
  I've been developing on macs for 10+ years. Recently got myself a Windows desktop for testing stuff, gaming etc. It turned into my main development machine thanks to WSL2. Everything works better / more stable and this is extremely ironic given that I switched to mac a decade ago for the same reason. Also I have many more hardware options (which is overwhelming) Meanwhile, my MacBook Pro 16" has daily kernel panics when it is connected to an external display. It has been reported by many people on Macrumors forums and has been happening for months now. No fix...

dblooman 6y ago

Having tried Windows on ARM with the surface, I was surprised that many apps I use every day were not available. Perhaps Apple will be better at onboarding developers to the transition, but will also be interesting to see how long developers continue to support Intel. Can anyone speak as to the difficulty of working with ARM and Windows?

akmarinov 6y ago
They announced the move to Intel in 2005 and dropped PowerPC support in 2009, so I'm guessing about the same period for the ARM transition.
- shoo_pl 6y ago
  Unless they pull a rabbit out of hat, they will not have a x86-64 emulator this time (for the same reasons why intel is struggling with speed/power efficiency ratio for years now) so it won't be that easy. It will be either ARM of Intel hardware and people will have to choose.
  - mathw 6y ago
    Oh I'm sure they'll have one. It'll just be slow.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Unless they pull a rabbit out of hat, they will not have a x86-64 emulator this time (for the same reasons why intel is struggling with speed/power efficiency ratio for years now) I don't understand what you mean - you absolutely can emulate AArch64 in AMD64. You can emulate any instruction set in any other instruction set.
    - scintill76 6y ago
      They're saying it won't be fast or power-efficient.
- Mindwipe 6y ago

jurmous 6y ago

Could it be that Apple brings an X86 emulator on the machine like they did with Rosetta in the PowerPC to Intel transition? Most calls to native libraries like Metal and UI would be handled natively so we probably don't notice slowness in most apps. Even Chrome and nowadays Adobe Photoshop are compiled to ARM versions. If so this will be a smooth transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28software%29

JosephRedfern 6y ago
I’d like to know more about ARM Photoshop — is this fully featured photoshop, or are you referring to the iOS app?
- akmarinov 6y ago
  The iOS app should be a fully featured one - https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/photoshop-ipad/ https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/photoshop-ipad/
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    Yeah, that didn't happen. The iOS app had a tiny fraction of the functionality of the full Mac app. Adobe were simply lying when they announced that. Indeed, it's a very poor imitation, just with some of the same codebase underneath (and literally nobody is "wow, Photoshop's famous codebase! That's what I want because it's totally not an infamous piece of garbage that I tolerate because of it's functionality!").
    - jurmous 6y ago
      The problem was that they needed to do the whole UI to be touch first. That won't be a problem on an ARM macOS version.
    - pandatigox 6y ago
      Link to the infamous PSD file format rant https://devrant.com/rants/1292858/found-this-gem-on-github-at-this-point-id-like-to-take-a-moment-to-speak-to-you https://devrant.com/rants/1292858/found-this-gem-on-github-a...

meesterdude 6y ago

Apple ditching intel could lead to some great improvements in hardware, but I would be much happier if they made no changes to the hardware and actually started investing in OSX again. Catalina is a disaster. I've been using macs since OS 7 and I cannot believe how bad Catalina is.

nicbou 6y ago
What is bad about it? I'm still on Mojave
- kup0 6y ago
  In my personal experience, I would say it's the buggiest and least snappy version of macOS I've used in quite a long time
  - mark_l_watson 6y ago
    I think that the lack of snappiness is mostly caused by the new sandboxing and security features. I have mixed feeling about this. Things can run slower especially at startup, but extra security is a good thing.
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  For me macOS seems rock solid as long as you don't install certain drivers (Dell being the worst) and some security software in which case it quickly turns into Windows XP level of "blue" screens. They really need to work on making that stable that but I'm not sure how that would work. Normally you would just sandbox it. For example I used certain software because I was working in the government that was basically government mandated spyware it installed global certificates, checks and uploads network traffic and more. Mandated and buggy as hell. My personal computer on the other hand uses pretty much only App Store and Homebrew cli utils and is rock solid.
  - Someone 6y ago
    “They really need to work on making that stable that but I'm not sure how that would work“ Apple has outlined how it would work: by moving drivers into userspace (https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/ https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/ , https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit) I guess that, with a move to ARM, they would enforce this for all drivers, if performance allows it (video drivers might be the exception)

ksec 6y ago

It is easy to reason for switching to their own CPU on MacBooks or MacBook Pros, roughly at 16M Unit per year. But what about Mac and Mac Pro? Combined to less than 2M Unit. Are we going to have Split in platform where developers is expected to debug on both Arch? This isn't the same as moving from PowerPC to x86, where majority of Pro Apps are already on WinTel. ARM is still relatively new on many Pro Apps. Adobe may be slightly better equipped, but not AutoDesk. If not, would Apple spend additional hundreds of millions on 100W+ CPU design that are sold in tiny quantities? It is also worth pointing out Mark Gurman has been saying this since before he joined Bloomberg when he was at 9to5Mac. And since 2016 when he joined Bloomberg the rumours were taken more seriously. And the first rumours to suggest Apple is working on ARM Mac goes back as far as 2010.

zakjan 6y ago
> the company plans to eventually transition the entire Mac lineup to its Arm-based processors, including the priciest desktop computers, the people said.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's Bloomberg, they don't have a great track record on Apple.
  - graeme 6y ago
    It’s Mark Gurman, he has one of the best track records on Apple. He and Ming Chi Kuo are the two most consistently accurate Apple leakers/predictors. It’s better to view Gurman as talent writing for Bloomberg than as Bloomberg itself. https://www.vox.com/2016/6/1/11835514/bloomberg-mark-gurman-apple-scoop https://www.vox.com/2016/6/1/11835514/bloomberg-mark-gurman-...
nojito 6y ago
They don’t want to be dragged along by Intel failing to meet deadlines.

hs86 6y ago

iOS apps on the desktop and the switch from x86 to ARM have uncomfortable many parallels with Windows 8 / RT. How is Apple's approach going to be different from Microsoft's? Will they keep backward compatibility? Will the CPU architecture really be a day and night difference or are our expectations too high due to the ubiquity of inflated Geekbench numbers? This will either make or break the Mac as a platform and I feel like currently, any further investment would be a gamble.

pixelrevision 6y ago
One thing that would be very different from a windows transition is that Apple is much more aggressive about pulling support for backwards compatibility. MS spends a lot of energy to support really old software for businesses whereas Apple typically gives a 3 year window then pulls the plug.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

chrisseaton 6y ago

I'm really worried - there's software that I rely on such as parts of the JVM ecosystem that haven't had as much much work put into them for ARM as they have for Intel. How long do we have to bring things up to speed? Just a year? Obviously everyone has known this is coming but I haven't seen much action yet. If we get the worst case scenario and Apple ships only ARM hardware from January 2021, then I feel like there's going to be some serious problems.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
If we get the worst case scenario and Apple ships only ARM hardware from January 2021, then I feel like there's going to be some serious problems. That seems extremely unlikely to me.
paulio 6y ago
yes, I can't imagine docker is going to be happy either.
p0rkbelly 6y ago
It seems that the initial plan is that only "MacBooks" aka budget macs will have the ARM cpus. The Pros will remain x86....for who knows how long though.
rjsw 6y ago
From the OpenJDK commit logs aarch64 seems to have been getting a fair bit of attention over the last year. I do run OpenJDK on aarch64 and it seems fine but I don't run anything particularly serious. If Apple ship an AArch64 machine with plenty of RAM then it would make a big difference to what applications people try to use.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I think the complaint was more about libraries using JNI than the JDK, itself. There's a popular sqlite library that ships with native libraries, otherwise falling back to transpiled code. I'm not sure if they've done much work for ARM. Java's actually the easy case. ARM means a lot of docker containers won't work, your development architecture is different than your protection architecture, cython libraries, etc. This is probably the right move if you want to build a laptop with good battery life, but sort of like removing the escape key, it's problematic for a large segment of Mac buyers.

toyg 6y ago

That’s me going bye bye then. It was fun while it lasted. After the keyboard fiasco and “Vistalina”, this would be the last straw.

clajiness 6y ago
I, too, make major decisions based upon limited information.
- toyg 6y ago
  I used the conditional, didn't I?
jbsmsk 6y ago
The keyboard "fiasco" was fake news. Overblown by the loud minority and with later iterations probably not an issue at all. But it's a stain that couldn't be washed away (they tried with the replacement program, but likely wasn't effective enough). At worst the keyboard "issue" is just a preference.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >At worst the keyboard "issue" is just a preference. Yeah, I prefer to have my B key registering 100% of the time instead of 80% of the time.
- FlyingAvatar 6y ago
  What segment do you envision preferring keyboards with keys that randomly fail? I've had 3 Macs with these keyboards (should have been two, but one died completely and had to be replaced), all of them had this issue to varying degrees. This was not uncommon for the other Mac users at my workplace. Even if fiasco is an overstatement, the initial denial of the issue I think is the major source of it becoming a media issue.

drcongo 6y ago

Given who wrote this, and for which publication, this article definitely needs the Daring Fireball disclaimer.

whitehouse3 6y ago
Here's the disclaimer that appears below any post on Daring Fireball that links to Bloomberg. > Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true. [0]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/bloomberg_publishes_clickbait_in_break_from_rivals https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/bloomberg_publishes_click...
amatecha 6y ago
Unsurprisingly, DF commented today on the subject of Apple transitioning to ARM: https://daringfireball.net/2020/06/on_apple_announcing_the_mac_arm_transition_at_wwdc https://daringfireball.net/2020/06/on_apple_announcing_the_m...

toron123 6y ago

I read somewhere that emulation of x86 on arm is much wrose compared to emulation of arm on x86. Can someone confirm this?

NathanWilliams 6y ago
I don't know the answer to that, but keep in mind that Apple is control of the entire CPU design. They could for example put an x86 decoder in front of the ARM cores. After all, modern Intel processors decode x86 to a simpler instruction set used internally anyway.
- pixelrevision 6y ago
  Doing something like this would be the smart move. If the do this they’re going to need to give developers lead time to get their software up to date.
my123 6y ago
x86 has total store ordering, which requires to add barriers to make the order respected on Arm while doing emulation. On newer Arm chips, barriers are much cheaper, solving the problem.
- messe 6y ago
  Not only that, but Apple if they wanted to could strengthen the memory model of their custom chips, meaning the barriers wouldn't be necessary during emulation.

PedroBatista 6y ago

That means they have to keep up with CPU performance for the next decades. It might be easy now but let’s see if they don’t hit a pothole and have to go back..

NoPicklez 6y ago

I wonder why they're deciding to go back, after all they used to develop their own chips back in the day.

itchynosedev 6y ago
It says it right there in the article. > Apple’s chip-development group, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel’s annual chip performance gains slowed. Apple engineers worried that sticking to Intel’s road map would delay or derail some future Macs, according to people familiar with the effort.
- NoPicklez 6y ago
  Interesting, funny that Apple's own design constraints have in the past not been able to fully get the most out of Intel chips anyway. Take the cooling/throttling problems as an example. Goodluck to them on building a better chip.
mathw 6y ago
Apple have never used their own CPUs for desktop computers, only for phones and tablets.
- philjohn 6y ago
  Unless you count the AIM alliance - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance

mberning 6y ago

I would like to see a return of the Macbook. I loved the form factor on mine, but after a couple OS updates the anemic processor became a painful bottleneck. On the flipside my several years old iPad pro still feels blazingly fast.

jrsj 6y ago
Really the new MacBook Air is essentially a slightly larger continuation of that design that also has a fan, specifically because the processors in the 12" Macbook weren't that great. I could definitely see a future ARM based Air returning to a fanless design though.

wil421 6y ago

How many times have I heard about an ARM MBP, an Apple TV (a real TV with screen), an Apple Electric car, or Apple Glasses?

rado 6y ago

My 3yo iPad Pro is ridiculously faster than my 3yo iMac at some tasks like photo editing. It's night and day. Also quiet, cool and thin. Very excited about the Arm transition, warts and all.

nojito 6y ago
My favorite workflow comparison between desktops and iPads is rendering/exporting 4K video.
- realityking 6y ago
  This is actually a trick comparison. A lot of desktop software doesn't make use of hardware encoding facilities, even if available, since a good software encoder will provide better quality.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > a good software encoder will provide better quality Why is hardware lower quality? Isn't the encoding algorithm deterministic and so the same wether you do it in hardware and software?
    - galad87 6y ago
      The decoder is deterministic. The encoder is free to decide where to allocate more bit of which block type is better in a specific place or other things. A software encoder can be improved without replacing the entire cpu/gpu.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Ah so I guess hardware is generally a bit behind due to longer release cycles and more conservative in design due to cost of experimentation and mistakes.
    - jeroenhd 6y ago

Nursie 6y ago

Well, there goes the Hackintosh! Well, eventually, I imagine that Apple will continue to support their x86 Macs for some time, especially as we've recently had the launch of the revamped Mac Pro which is not a cheap machine. But maybe ten years down the line they'll stop updating it and that will be that.

abrowne 6y ago
I imagine you're right, but G5 owners might predict differently. They only got one more major release (10.5) once Apple switched to Intel, although there was a longer release cadence than there is now.
- joshstrange 6y ago
  Ahh yes, before we had yearly iOS compatibility updates for the mac... I'm still salty that Apple broke my reminders in Mojave just because I upgraded my phone. They will have to use a much larger carrot or stick before I consider moving to Catalina.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

theblackcat1002 6y ago

On the other side, AMD APU code name was found in latest macOS release which should hint the other side of the story. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-may-start-selling-macs-with-amd-cpus https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-may-start-selling-ma...

rcarmo 6y ago
That would actually make sense. I was kind of surprised to see many Hackintosh builds with Ryzen CPUs and reference motherboards working pretty much out of the box...
- ksec 6y ago
  Yes, if you look up Geekbench, nearly all the top scores are from AMD Hackintosh. https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore
  - smcl 6y ago
    I'm not familiar with geekbench - is it expected that a phone is at the top of those rankings? That seems a bit sketchy to me.
    - Veedrac 6y ago
      The top results are nonsensical.
ksec 6y ago
I much prefer them to switch over to AMD if cost was a concern. Rather than outright dumping x86 codebase.
- wadkar 6y ago
  I think it’s about time we relegate x86 only codebase to VMs.
- 6y ago

rbanffy 6y ago

Funny... A move to AMD would be less disruptive to the macOS ecosystem and would solve the roadmap issues. It seems AMD will have the lead for a good couple years right now. Intel must be creating a lot of problems for Apple to warrant this move. Or maybe AMD is not willing to give Apple the same sweet deal Intel gave Apple to get the transition.

dx034 6y ago
I believe AMD has an incentive to give Apple a good deal. They got a lot of attention from some areas for their new processors but most non technical users are still Intel first. If Apple starts selling with AMD it could boost their image and help them massively in other areas (e.g. servers, workstations) as well.
hodder 6y ago
...Or more likely, they don't want to ever be relying on a third party ever again for chips since whoever they go with holds great power over their progress and timelines.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > progress and timelines There haven't been many interesting CPU changes in a long time, and they're still using TSMC for fabrication. Arguably, you're better off with two vendors. I'm not sure if Apple has genuine roadmap concerns or is falling in the not invented here trap.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Wouldn't be a first for Apple, but this is no longer Jobs' company.

bob1029 6y ago

I read this article very carefully, and I still have not yet seen any confirmation here or prior that rules out a semi-custom solution involving the other x86 vendor. Perhaps this is just a game of semantics? "Its own mac chips" vs "x86+ARM chips co-designed by AMD & Apple, fabricated by TSMC, and slapped with an Apple logo". From AMD's semi-custom page: "We are not bound by convention and don’t subscribe to “one-size-fits-all” thinking. We develop customized SOCs leveraging AMD technology including industry-leading x86 and ARM® multi-core CPUs, world-class AMD Radeon® graphics, and multimedia accelerators. We offer the option to further customize each solution to include third-party and/or open market IP or customer designed IP. Discover how you can differentiate with AMD Semi-Custom solutions." https://www.amd.com/en/products/semi-custom-solutions https://www.amd.com/en/products/semi-custom-solutions I still cannot see a hard switch to ARM without any HW x86 capability in the mix. The impact to user experience would be very dramatic and the PR would be a nightmare to deal with. The way I see this playing out is that the next gen of Apple hardware provides both an x86 and an ARM stack, with subsequent generations potentially being ARM only (i.e. w/ x86 emulation). There is just too much software investment in the x86 ecosystem at this point. You have to give people a path to migrate peacefully or they will never return. This isn't like prior architecture switches. The impact with PPC->x86 was not even 1/100th what the impact would be today if Apple forced a hard x86->ARM switch. All of that said, I can understand why they would want to keep something like this under wraps until T-minus 0.

thomascgalvin 6y ago
What you said makes sense, particularly: > There is just too much software investment in the x86 ecosystem at this point. But I don't have any confidence in Apple's leadership anymore. There was a lot of software investment in 32 bit apps, too, and they merrily launched a nuke at that entire library. Do I think they're going to drop X86? No. But is it a possibility? Absolutely.
- regularfry 6y ago
  I think there's a better-than-average chance that they'd cut compatibility just to show that they're capable of doing so. They'd probably get away with it, too.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

>Apple’s chip-development group, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel’s annual chip performance gains slowed I'm just not really buying this as the justification, Mac has almost never been about competing on raw performance and moving to ARM could even mean a large performance hit for most software where performance counts for years to come. Although I guess we also keep getting lectured on how amazingly powerful iPad Pros are yet we never really see them do anything beyond a paint program, GarageBand level music production, basic video editing and keynote.

scarface74 6y ago
Apple has successfully done this twice before. Each time, major developers ported within the first two years and in the meantime, Apple sold computers with the old processor and new processor.
nojito 6y ago
It’s more so with Intel missing deadlines. A good example is when core 2 duo was delayed and Intel forced apple to use 32 bit chips in the MacBook Pro.

ziml77 6y ago

I've seen this headline for a decade. Is there anything that makes it more believable now?

Hamuko 6y ago
The ARM Mac rumours have been quite hot lately if that's any indication of their accuracy.
akmarinov 6y ago
With WWDC approaching and with Apple doing it online, they're likely pretaping it and with that it's more likely that some of the info in it has leaked.

wyldfire 6y ago

There have been a few models of Windows-ARM snapdragon-based computers for a little while now. Somehow, mindblowingly, they didn't bother to ship the first ones with a native Chrome port (only Edge). Now that they have native Chrome, and Apple is moving macbooks, I wonder if the tide will shift towards ARM for all laptops?

dehrmann 6y ago

It's interesting how Apple takes the opposite approach of PCs. PCs have been on x86 variants forever, to the point that MS-DOS will run on a new PC without much fuss. For Apple, this makes, what, the fourth architecture for Macs?

akmarinov 6y ago
Imagine the cruft and patches that have accumulated in the past 42 years since x86 came up...
- ksk 6y ago
  On the flip side, how many generations before a new CPU architecture becomes robust and mature to be relied on for critical work? We're still using crufty Wintel at work (vaccine r&d), its simply the best platform that keeps our investment in existing software.
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    Luckily ARM isn't anything new. Even Aarch64 is almost 10 years old.

api 6y ago

This recent event has converted me to a full blown supporter: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310 I lost days of time to what very much appears to be yet another hardware bug in Intel's latest core. If you don't believe me that it's a hardware bug, read the whole thing. It's probably a zero day security vulnerability too. The only catch is: if Apple also takes the opportunity to iOS-ify Mac and lock it down to the point that it is no longer useful for professional work, I will have to drop the platform entirely. I've seen some decent AMD Ryzen laptops showing up on the market and I could use Linux with a Windows VM for the occasional Zoom call or similar thing. Honestly though... I think if Apple pulls this off well without alienating their user base, it probably spells the end of the X64 architecture outside cloud and servers. Given that people prefer to deploy to the same architecture they develop on, it probably means X64 will eventually die in those areas too. AArch64 could end up being the core architecture of almost everything by the 2030s.

mjlee 6y ago
FWIW, Zoom runs reasonably well on Linux - as long as your webcam is supported.
- chrismartin 6y ago
  For my use (occasionally joining someone's meeting), the Zoom web client completely eliminates the need to install the app. They don't make it easy to find, but: https://zoom.us/wc/join/enter-your-meeting-id-here https://zoom.us/wc/join/enter-your-meeting-id-here
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
>appears to be yet another hardware bug in Intel's latest core. Does this bug also appear on Linux or Windows?
- api 6y ago
  Yes. It also hard crashes the host Mac when run inside a Linux VM in Parallels. Read the above sentence again. It escapes VM isolation. It also crashes the whole machine on a Microsoft Surface tablet with the same chip in it. So three OSes, and it escapes VM isolation. It's a hardware bug. Mitigation so far is to try to use exotic JVM options to make the JIT be less clever and not emit whatever the offending code is... but we don't know what it is, so it's shooting in the dark.

atlgator 6y ago

Haven't we been here before?

dhosek 6y ago
This would be the third major CPU change for the mac architecture: 68xxx to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel and now Intel to ARM.
- jerrysievert 6y ago
  I'd say technically fourth, since x86 -> x64 was also a hard cutoff eventually with Catalina.
  - cpeterso 6y ago
    And iOS's ARM -> ARM64 cutoff was another architecture transition Apple (and developers) had to weather.
    - jerrysievert 6y ago
      ah yes. I don't tend to do iOS development, so completely forgot about that one other than having a lot of the apps I loved stop working. still grumpy about pirates and civ rev being gone forever.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
The ARM rumors, or Apple performing a major platform transition? (In both cases, yes, but these rumors have been gaining credibility for quite some time.)
jerrysievert 6y ago
a couple of times, yes. apple has a pretty good track record overall when dealing with these transitions. typically it's been to a platform that has been a strong improvement. if apple's making the decision to transition again, they must feel that it's for a very compelling reason once again. we don't have our hands on their current tech to agree whether it makes sense as a cpu upgrade, but likely it would make sense as a battery upgrade. whether that's a good enough reason to risk a transition, we will have to wait and see. personally, I've been burned too many times on first-gen apple hardware to jump on the bandwagon immediately, so am taking a wait and see approach. previous transitions that have been successful: m68k -> ppc ppc -> x86 x86 -> x64

bgorman 6y ago

If Apple doesn't provide some form of acceleration or support for x86 hypervisors I can see this leading to mass exodus of the Mac platform for web developers. It will be interesting to see what Apple does. Given the technological steps Apple has made, it seems like it is only a matter of if, not when Apple will switch over some computers. I personally would predict the Macbook Air (potentially a new Macbook), Mac Mini, iMac and potentially the iMac Pro will switch over to Arm first. It seems like a poor risk/return ratio to switch the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro lines to Arm at this point in time. Who knows what the manufacturing yield will be on the initial 5nm chips.

eyesee 6y ago
Mac sales are a drop in the bucket compared to iPhones and iPads, and I strongly suspect they will share a chip family. Yields should be the least of our concern.
- bgorman 6y ago
  The problem is the larger the chip, the lower the yield. High end desktop/server chips are much bigger than mobile chips.
iphone_elegance 6y ago
it's so lame that they removed 32bit app support via a OS update (I can't use a lot of the software I enjoyed OR go backwards) and are now doing this... like if you're going to switch architectures anyway at least let me run the damn software I was able to before the update it feels like no one can make up their minds over there overall I see how moving to ARM is a good move, but it's so annoying at the same time especially since they just fixed up the mbps which drove a lot of people to buy them (including me) I feel more burned than excited wouldn't surprised if the same folks who greenlit the butterfly keyboards were behind this
- bhj 6y ago
  I suspect they are removing 32-bit support now to ease the transition rather than doing everything at once. In a few years the pain of Catalina will have faded (somewhat) and presumably they'll only have to worry about backward compatibility with AMD64.

robert_foss 6y ago

The article mentions higher GPU, NPU performance and higher efficiency. All of this I would expect since the SOC is likely incorporating much of their mobile experience/IP. However, it doesn't mention CPU performance or IPC, both of which will be extra important due to the binary level compatibility for x86 I would expect them to ship.

pickle-wizard 6y ago

I think this would work well for me. Most of my day is spent with SSH or RDP sessions to systems that do the heavy lifting. So I'll welcome the power and heat savings. Though I don't think I'll be buying one soon. When I travel I have a 2018 MacBook Air and when I'm at home I have a 2013 Mac Pro. Both machines still work great for my needs, and I plan to keep the Mac Pro until Apple stops OS updates for it. When it comes time to replace it, I'll replace it with a Mac Mini, and I don't need a machine that powerful anymore.

Frost1x 6y ago
I guess I'm one of the smaller minority who prefers a hybrid with a significant amount of local compute power and remote compute power. Going all-in with thin client architecture is something I've never been a fan of, namely because it puts a fundamental resource I need to do my work in someone else's control/hands. Much of the time, this is advantageous (and I prefer someone else managing things for me when it works) but I run into far too many snags where its nice to know I can get something done with local resources that I have control over when needed.

Fiahil 6y ago

Next in line: macos on ipad.

romanovcode 6y ago
Would be cool
FreakyT 6y ago
iPadOS on Macs seems more likely given Apple's trajectory, I'd say.

Shank 6y ago

Don't get me wrong. I love the potential native performance gains from this transition, but I can't help but just be a tiny bit scared for the future of my day to day work. For better or for worse, my company uses Docker for Mac for the vast majority of the stack that I don't work on but need to actively develop. I'm already paying a huge VM cost and it's pretty terrible. I don't see Apple working on any kind of native containerization solution. Does that mean that I'm going to be eating the current VM cost + x86_64 virtualization cost in the future? I really want to keep using macOS as a platform. I know I can just stay on the hardware I have, but it's not really practical to be on an end of life architecture. It seems just a tad shortsighted to ditch x86_64 when a lot of people depend on it specifically because it's a shared architecture with other platforms.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
I've given up on the dream of working in a place where I can still run "all the things" on my laptop, at least in a place that has embraced cloud services, Kubernetes, micro services, etc.
- m0xte 6y ago
  Yep. We're hanging ourselves with all this crap. There has to be a better way.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - benologist 6y ago
    VSCode has an SSH extension that lets you seamlessly work on a remote server, this has been invaluable with my old dual-core Macbook first offloading docker and my work to a vultr.com virtual machine and then a 6-core Intel NUC on my local network, which just feels like using the same computer. The only drawback I've found is I use "puppeteer" a lot which is an API for programmatically using Chrome and Firefox, sometimes I want to see what's going on.

derefr 6y ago

By including even the Mac Pro in the eventual transition, Apple seems to be expecting to have their own chips beating out Intel/AMD compute performance for workstation-class tasks within the next 5-10 years. You'd assume they'd keep the "halo products" running whatever chips are best-of-class, rather than whichever are most cost-effective to put in; so if they're switching for even those product lines, they're seemingly expecting their own chips to become best-of-class. That's an interesting bet, given how long the two giants have been at this.

idiot900 6y ago
Is it? How much faster are CPU cores going to get? Also, Apple has many billions of dollars to throw at this.
- derefr 6y ago
  > How much faster are CPU cores going to get? Whenever we hit a Moore's Law bottleneck, we see a transition to new CPUs being increasingly optimized for power-efficiency instead. Whether or not FLOPS remain a moving target, FLOPS-per-watt will very likely continue to grow for a few more decades. > Also, Apple has many billions of dollars to throw at this. Unless they're planning on selling these chips on the open market, I don't see how "throwing billions of dollars at this" project can be justified to their shareholders, even if it's something they can technically afford to do. As it is, it's a pure cost-center optimization (i.e. removing the need to pay Intel, at the expense of now needing to make the chips themselves.) This presumably balances out slightly positive on their books, not mind-bogglingly positive like a new product line would be. "So"—the prototypal shareholder asks—"why are you putting $bns/yr worth of silicon engineers to work on this, rather than putting them to work on feature cores to create+differentiate a new product line?" In my mind, it only works out for Apple if it's actually not all that expensive for them to reach parity with Intel/AMD; i.e., if it's something they can do while still having silicon-engineering talent left over to keep doing feature engineering for new hardware. Which is what I find interesting: how did Apple reach this point, where they can leapfrog Intel/AMD without it even being a "drop everything" moonshot project for them?

skellington 6y ago

Whelp....that's the end of Apple for most/many professional developers. Apple is working really hard to give up their PC market share again like in the PowerPC days. Great OS (although worse than usual recently), doesn't run any (hyperbole but rooted in truth) software. If they would just focus on running MORE software, especially games, they could probably grab so much more market share, but they are happy at 10% it seems.

mattl 6y ago
Why the end for developers?
kenward 6y ago
I agree it's pretty frustrating from a developer standpoint. However, the majority of people aren't developers and just want a computer that works. I could see this as a way to _increase_ market share and reduce the barrier to entry to expensive Apple products.

jagger27 6y ago

I'm curious to see if they'll open up access to the T-series chips in our existing Macs to at least experiment with or use as a co-processor. The T2 is no slouch—it's based on the A10. It also makes me wonder if they'll ship a lower wattage Intel part alongside their Arm chips in a transition period. I think that would be kinda cool, and would ease a lot of backwards compatibility woes. Or they could keep things more or less the same and just beef up the T2 with more cores and interconnect bandwidth. It might not make much sense to ship a dual CPU Macbook Air, but it would certainly be cool to see Arm PCIe addon cards for the Mac Pro, where power and heat concerns are not as significant.

rukittenme 6y ago

This is great news for software engineers, IMO. More battery life (hopefully), comparable performance (hopefully), and lower cost (hopefully). Contrary to popular belief, I think Apple has embraced those three principles in recent releases more so than they were 5 years ago. Everyone who writes software on macOS is probably virtualized already. Really shouldn't be any downside to this for the vast majority of programmers.

ilikehurdles 6y ago

Truthfully, and to go against the grain a bit, whatever makes the platform faster sounds good to me. If my IDE, browser, and terminal tools continue to run just fine I'm not going to be up in arms about this change. We've been married to x86 derivates for too long, even more so to Intel's critically broken implementations of them. Shitty keyboards and useless touch bar aside, Apple has had a long history of pushing the envelope in radical and beneficial ways.

seanalltogether 6y ago

My only concern here is that the Mac line still only represents 10% of Apples revenue, and they might not give these desktop processors the attention that a supplier like intel or amd would to their own processors. I hope I'm wrong but I feel like Apple has been making serious missteps in the mac line for the past 10 years because its no longer their core product.

bredren 6y ago
The Mac (a PC-style computer) is a strategic investment, due to its role in software creation. The brand is also part of the core image of the company. Apple still commands only a fraction of the overall PC market, and while that is not growing as whole, their portion could by a great deal. You’re right that there have been major missteps. But there have also been major corrective steps as well, which are just as important in gauging how the company will behave in the future.

danaris 6y ago

Thus far, the only source for this is Bloomberg, which published the story "The Big Hack", which was shown to be complete bullshit. They have still not issued a retraction, an apology, or any kind of acknowledgement that their reporting was so completely wrong. Their credibility on issues of tech—particularly Apple—is very suspect. (See also: Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect)

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.vn/ogP3y https://archive.vn/ogP3y

velebak 6y ago

The great unification continues between iOS and Mac!

mromanuk 6y ago

My wild prediction: Apple will remain using x86, but based on AMD chips and integrating stuff like ML, security, etc. Both of them use TSMC as foundry.

api 6y ago
A Ryzen MacBook Pro is a dream machine for me. I think its unlikely though.
adamfeldman 6y ago
Came to say something similar. I’d love to see some kind of hybrid x86-ARM system that is able to retain the value of Apple’s x86 investments while also leveraging Apple’s deep ARM investments in the PC product lines.
- adamfeldman 6y ago
  Hyperscaler servers (eg AWS Nitro) have dedicated hypervisor processors, and then customer workloads run on another processor. Imagine this architecture in a PC: macOS as “hypervisor” and applications as the user workload.

amanzi 6y ago

I don't use a Mac any more but from what I see and hear, most Mac users aren't clamouring for more speed or for even thinner laptops, but for a more stable, less annoying operating system.

beamatronic 6y ago
I want a thicker, heavier Mac with lots of ports.

Koshkin 6y ago

"Project Kalamata"

miguelmota 6y ago

I see in the comments that a lot of web developers are frustrated.. what programs do web developers use that only work on macOS? or is it also because of the retina screen? I've been developing on Linux for years without issues so trying to understand why devs choose macOS.

nsajko 6y ago

I wonder if there was consideration within Apple of switching back to PowerPC (power9/power10) now that it is open (for whatever that means, I am not sure)? They would appreciate the control that would give them. Does somebody have an idea how much approximately would it cost Apple to switch the Apple A14 from ARM to POWER? Usually it is said that the instruction decoder is a small part of a CPU core, and the ISAs are not hugely different (compared to AMD64/Intel, at least).

watersb 6y ago

A lot of discussion here about Windows/WSL2 or Linux on laptops, how it's gotten good enough for the HN crowd. The overloading of the Control key as the system menu shortcut ("accelerator"?) key when it's also the default Emacs bindngs for readline in Bash -- drives me utterly insane. If it were consistent, great, but on Windows there are many different text widgets, from PC console, Win32, and other layers. I simply can't develop the muscle memory. I have a very cheap HP laptop, the trackpad driver is nearly unusable. I installed the Synaptics Control Panel, and use it to "reset" the trackpad each time it wakes from sleep so that I have a chance at scrolling without randomly selecting the entire document's text and deleting it or dragging it to random places. It's horrible. On the Lenovo x230, the tiny trackpad is a bit better, but tiny, and the physical trackpad buttons give me the chance at dragging etc in the face of such madness. It's all very nerve-wracking. The trackpad on the MacBooks have never been a problem for me. Then there's text encoding. The Win-1252 Code Page. Turning UTF-8 into unreadable line noise in unpredictable situations. The CRLF madness that grows back no matter what. I use WSL2, Terminal, and VS Code, but it's unbelievably exhausting. Digging out of config issues with Code Signing certificate policy required a re-pave and 12 hours of re-installing etc to get back to sanity. Something needed an old VC Runtime DLL, which installed fine, but also seemed to overwrite a Microsoft root CA cert. Differential analysis with a working Windows we couldn't find the broken cert. Various msc tools and System Policy analysis and Troubleshooters and so on couldn't find it. The CERT: filesystem "provider" stopped working. It was a dead machine. Linux and macOS configs, I generally know where config files are, and can restore from backup. Want to restore from a Windows Image Backup? Or a copy of the file system from another Windows installation? Go ahead. Try it. I got heavy into PowerShell, there are some nice bits there, but it still has to fall back to text processing in pipes if some other tool doesn't output the correct data. Usually JSON, but is that schema documented? Certainly have yet to invest the time in Bash tools that might interact with PowerShell. It just doesn't stop. It just doesn't. I must accept that people are actually getting work done by adding WSL to the mix, but I guess I just break things. I don't seem to break things as badly on Solaris or Arch or even Gentoo or any of the BSDs. I have not given up on macOS. On the contrary, I will get another Mac laptop. It's a lot of work.