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First Arm Macs: 13-Inch MacBook Pro, Redesigned iMac; Late 2020 or Early 2021
- aspenmayer 6y agoOriginal title was too long. It was: First Arm-Based Macs to Be 13-Inch MacBook Pro and Redesigned iMac, Launches Coming in Late 2020 or Early 2021
- kevsim 6y agoPossibly stupid question - does Apple switching to ARM mean the death of Bootcamp?
- cable2600 6y agoPossible so, unless Apple makes the ARM chip run Intel code. Windows is overrated now and only Windows 10 matters at this point in time. For $150 you can buy a cheap Intel based PC laptop with Windows 10 on it. I think Bootcamp might work for ARM based Linux and the ARM version of Windows 10. At least Raspberry PIs that are ARM based can run those.
- GradientAssent 6y agoMany games still aren't available on Mac, and things like Wine are not nearly as clean of an experience as just installing games in native Windows. I'd guess switching to ARM will set back the progress made in Mac gaming as well.
- acephal 6y agoThey sent the message they wanted everybody to hear about gaming when they turned the lever on 32bit support
- ghettoimp 6y agoWould Intel be able to use patents to prevent them from doing x86 emulation?
- dogma1138 6y agoThey did so to block NVIDIA so quite likely.
- Hamuko 6y ago>For $150 you can buy a cheap Intel based PC laptop with Windows 10 on it. Is there any point in a $150 computer, especially if it's $150 including Windows?
- nojito 6y agoOf course. You can get great deals from used/refurbished business laptops for that price.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mobilio 6y agoAlmost definitely - yes.
- Chernobog 6y agoGiven that an ARM version of Windows 10 exists, why do you say "almost definitively"?
- benologist 6y agoPeople mostly dual-boot so they can access software they need that isn't on macOS, but it isn't available on ARM Windows either so why would Apple care to foster a nascent competing platform?
- snazz 6y agoAdditionally, the importance of this use-case (from Apple's perspective) has decreased significantly since they originally developed Boot Camp. While I'm sure that many people do run Windows on Mac hardware, the percentage of Mac owners who do this is likely dropping significantly (if I remember correctly, there was a statistic about this in a comment on another thread about ARM Macs).
- Hamuko 6y agoWindows 10 ARM is so useless that there's really no reason to Boot Camp it.
- basementcat 6y agoI think the more interesting possibility is that one may have to jailbreak a Macbook Pro to run your own apps and/or OS.
- cable2600 6y agoI can't wait to see how the price and power compares to the Intel Macs.
- Hamuko 6y agoI expect the price will not budge at all.
- valuearb 6y agoApple has target margin levels, they may increase slightly but most of the savings will go to customers. Apple understands that most customers can’t justify the higher cost of Macs despite the additional value, they will for sure attempt to use ARM CPUs to grow Mac market share.
- vegetablepotpie 6y agoOften when Apple shifts the rest of the industry follows within 5 years (touch screen smart phones, ultrabooks, high DPI displays). Although Apple has done architecture shifts before with no impact to the rest of the industry (68k -> PPC -> Intel), I wonder if this will be different. I read in another thread that volume is what propelled x86s popularity. Intel’s difficulty with 10nm has created an opening for other fabs and other architectures to catch up. If ARM can be shown to work as a desktop processor, why wouldn’t HP, Dell, Asus and the rest make ARM laptops?
- ceo_tim_crook 6y agoIt's nice to see Apple following Microsoft's lead hopefully they have something as nice as the Surface Pro X to put on display
- valuearb 6y agoIf it’s not better than the Surface Pro X they are doomed.
- legulere 6y agoBecause almost nothing runs on arm64 windows. Even visual studio code was just recently ported. Also other companies don’t have access to apple’s arm chips with great single core performance.
- etaioinshrdlu 6y agoThe Windows PC industry has historically been, and still is, much more dependent on 3rd party software than the Apple ecosystem. So performance will not be good without porting 3rd party software to ARM. It's similar problem to how Chromebooks have still not really displaced Windows laptops except at the very low end of the market. Although the significance of this seems lower now than at any time I can remember as more happens in a browser than ever. Windows 10 apparently is fully ARM compatible with a built-in x86 emulation layer, so perhaps it could work.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Chernobog 6y agoI hope Windows 10 ARM will be able to to run on these. I think that might be the push W10 ARM needs to get recognized and have more native applications. It would be somewhat ironic too!
- moondev 6y agoWithout the ability to run x86 vms, using a MacBook as a developer workstation would seem very limited
- 1024core 6y agoWhat is the advantage (for Apple) of the ARM CPU over the Intels? Is it power? Instructions-per-watt? Or just the ability to control one's destiny?
- Hamuko 6y agoControlling one's destiny / not having to work with other companies since Apple loathes everyone else. Wouldn't surprise me if they also want to make the laptops even thinner once again.
- valuearb 6y agoPerformance per watt is the biggest advantage, Apple will get fast laptops with extremely long battery life. Cost per performance is a very close second, ARM CPUs are a fraction of the cost of Intel CPUs. It’s also speculated that with active cooling ARM will enable high performance Macs at a lower price point. It’s very unclear how well they will be able to match AMD and Intel at the highest performance levels.
- aspenmayer 6y agoPerhaps a combined SoC with both ARM and x86-64 cores, with independent switching like Apple already has for GPU integrated/discrete graphics switching. I think this would be a convenient middle way through this compatibility challenge. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202043 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202043
- eqtn 6y agoThat would increase the cost, to include both x86 and ARM processors.
- aspenmayer 6y agoNow we know there will be a dev kit, new macOS, and that the new Macs will natively run iOS and iPadOS apps. Rosetta 2 will handle compatibility. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23604060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23604060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23603852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23603852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23603866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23603866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23602434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23602434
- sccxy 6y agoDoes it mean that Macbooks get touchscreen?
- Hamuko 6y agoWhy would it mean that?
- someheavyocean 6y agoPresumably because they could then run iOS applications.
- Hamuko 6y agoThat basically already exists in the form of Catalyst.
- valuearb 6y agoNo Apple has so far rejected touchscreens based on human interface concerns, ARM is not changing that.
- tomp 6y agoCan anyone explain why Apple would be dropping Intel and doing ARM instead, instead of just, you know, doing their own thing? I find it hard to believe either that ARM is the (globally optimal) pinnacle of instruction set / CPU architecture possible, and that a $1tn company can afford to spin up its own CPU production line (competitor to Intel, a $250b company) but not its own CPU design department (competitor to ARM, bough by SoftBank for $30b) ?!?
- basementcat 6y agoAn ISA doesn't just exist in a vacuum. There is also the compiler toolchain, runtime libs, developer mindshare and years of very smart people thinking about the ISA. A $1e12 company doesn't have to pick the "pinnacle" of ISA/CPU possible. They just have to pick one that is good enough to meet their financial goals.
- newsclues 6y agoDidn’t Apple invest in ARM in 1990?
- jeppesen-io 6y agoI think you fail to grasp the sheer amount of time to create a new instruction set, easily a decade to get to the level ARM is now. Not just the hardware, but debuggers, tooling etc etc. Can't see that paying off Also, the kernel codebase, which is shared with iPhones, will be able to target a single architecture
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jsnell 6y agoThe instruction set matters less for performance than people think. But it does matter a lot for the ecosystem: low-level hyper-optimized libraries for certain operations (think BLAS), tooling, developers understanding how to best write for it, etc. Creating all of that will take a long time no matter how much money you throw at it. For ARM, that ecosystem is probably the second best in the world, and in particular Apple has been building it up for themselves for more than a decade since the first iPhone. Additionally, sharing the ISA means that the ARM reference cores will always be available as a backstop if Apple's custom chips start running into trouble for whatever reason. IIRC, Qualcomm was doing a lot of hopping between full custom cores and ARM reference ones depending on which one happened to work better some particular year.
- jeppesen-io 6y agoI wonder what docker looks like on iARM. I assume some level of x86 emulation provided by OSX that VirtualBox will run on top
- ac29 6y agoDocker on ARM Linux doesnt use x86 emulation, I'm not sure why Docker on ARM macOS would. edit: I am aware not all Docker containers run on aarch64. But that has been changing already, and presumably would accelerate if Apple goes all in on ARM.
- moondev 6y ago> Docker on ARM Linux doesnt use x86 emulation, I'm not sure why Docker on ARM macOS would. macOS is not linux, so it will need some form of emulation/virtualization to run "Docker on ARM macOS"
- dgdosen 6y agoJust wondering - what doesn't run? Or what popular software isn't compiled to run on aarch64?
- philjohn 6y agoI suppose now that Edge is cross platform there's less need to spin up a windows VM to test in IE/Old Edge. I do worry about software that is highly tuned with hand-rolled assembly (looking at you various video/photo/audio processing apps) and if this is going to be another transition that is mostly seamless, but with enough edge cases to leave people slightly bloodied.
- thewebcount 6y agoI would think that most video, and photo processing apps are using the GPU rather than custom assembly on the CPU since you have hundreds of cores on a GPU.
- philjohn 6y agoPerhaps - although Audio software tends to still be heavily CPU based.
- Hamuko 6y ago>Starting in 2021, Kuo says that all new Mac models will be equipped with Apple processors, and that it will take 12 to 18 months for Apple to transition to an all-Arm lineup. So there's not going to be a Xeon Mac Pro in 2023? Are they just going to drop the Mac Pro or do they actually have a rivaling ARM processor?
- tandr 6y agoDoes it really matter for the Pro line, if there will be something that gives Xeon run for its money? Say twice as fast or twice as many cores for the same price? Once Pro on ARM is out, and it probably will be the last in a lineup, there will be a lot of software with native ARM support. At that point (unless there is some INSANE advantage that Xeons would give), it is pretty much given that it will become ARM. Question is only in how quickly Apple can come up with something that is noticeable beating Xeons performance-wise.