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Does it even matter? When it starts to matter you won’t be able to run MacOS on Intel and you can’t run Windows or something else on ‘Apple Silicon’. They may

Does it even matter? When it starts to matter you won’t be able to run MacOS on Intel and you can’t run Windows or something else on ‘Apple Silicon’. They may be very nice machines but they won’t be in the race for a very large portion of the market.

blinkingled 6y ago
Also note that the only benchmark where the A13 was included was Spec2006 - so unless Spec 2006 is relevant across most workloads that most users care about it's not really telling the whole story.
tambourine_man 6y ago
Software and platform lockdown are a lot weaker than they were in the WinTel heyday. It’s a lot easier to go from macOS to Windows to Linux these days. There are many exceptions of course, but I’d wager that market is not as big as you think.
- whoisburbansky 6y ago
  I think OPs point is that this is going to get a lot harder once macbooks become Apple Silicon only
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Software has a lot more abstractions these days. Almost no one codes close to the ISA. I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as it was.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Only if ones lives in a POSIX CLI world of Web GUIs. That is not the market that Apple cares about, nor NeXT did that much, other to gain market share when things were looking dim.
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Most of the world uses web apps. Huge and performance sensitive applications like Adobe, Maya, etc mostly already have their own UI rendering engine anyway. It’s a lot different from the Win32/x86 duopoly situation. Platforms have been mostly abstracted away.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Most of the world is a bubble.
      - tambourine_man 6y ago
        Care to elaborate? I don’t understand you meant by that.
nickysielicki 6y ago
> and you can’t run Windows or something else on ‘Apple Silicon’. There's no reason to believe this is true.
- m463 6y ago
  There is plenty of precedent. apple iphones run ios, only. apple computers run macos and windows. Thing is - which precedent will win?
  - spideymans 6y ago
    Apple has already confirmed that they have no plans on restricting the ability of third party operating systems to run on Apple Silicon based notebooks.
    - protomyth 6y ago
      Is there a reference for this? Running Windows, particularly with the 64-bit x86 emulation announcement, would go a long way to making purchases more palatable.
    - rgbrenner 6y ago
      That’s not really a helpful statement. There are so many coprocessors that we need them to actively release the details for those.. not just say they won’t oppose it. The former requires their support. The later just says they won’t oppose reverse engineering. The later is far more difficult and will likely mean any OS will be buggy and flaky. Unless Apple comes out and says they will actively support 3rd parties, it’s just going to be a shit show with no good alternative OS options.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-mac-arm-windows-support-boot-camp https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma... “We’re not direct booting an alternate operating system,” says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. Apple has already confirmed they have no plans to allow third party software to run on Apple Silicon based notebooks.
reader_mode 6y ago
>Does it even matter? Yes, most tools are cross platform (not necessarily cross-arch but that's a matter of time) and performance is important - I don't care if it's Apple silicon or Intel or AMD, or what OS GUI I'm using - I just want faster builds and iteration
cwhiz 6y ago
Is there any reason to think you wouldn’t (eventually) be able to install the Arm version of Windows on Apple silicon?
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Yes. You can't install anything on iPads and iPhones. And those are the closet hardware we have to to be release ARM macs. I would actually be incredibly surprises if they could run anything but Mac OS.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    Counterargument: the closest hardware we currently have to ARM Macs is probably... Intel Macs. The "Apple is going to lock down the Mac just like the iPhone" narrative has been with us since, well, the iPhone. But despite the alarm at tighter security measures in more recent versions of macOS, that hasn't happened yet -- and if a Secret Nefarious Lockdown Plan (tm) was going to come to fruition, the year that they shifted CPU hardware and radically redesigned the operating system's UX would sure as heck seem to be The Perfect Moment. And it still hasn't happened. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns and all that, but I don't think there's any reason to think Apple is going to make it any harder to run different operating systems on Apple Silicon hardware than they do on Intel hardware. (Of course, I don't think there's any reason to think they'll make it easier, either.)
    - rgbrenner 6y ago
      On Intel macs the default was that it would run windows as long as Apple did not make substantial changes to the uefi, etc. But arm macs are really an Apple A series processor plus a number of coprocessors like the t2, nueral engine, etc.. and the default is that windows will not work on this specialized hardware. So unless there’s evidence that Apple is actively going to help 3rd parties develop operating systems for the Mac, the best we can hope for is a fairly acceptable OS with reverse engineered drivers for those chips. We’re either going to get an unstable OS or a severely crippled OS. With intel macs Apple just had to stand back and let 3rd parties do their work. But they would have to actively assist with arm macs.. and there’s no indication theyve ever done that much less intend to do so in the future.

blinkingled 6y ago

Also note that the only benchmark where the A13 was included was Spec2006 - so unless Spec 2006 is relevant across most workloads that most users care about it's not really telling the whole story.

tambourine_man 6y ago

Software and platform lockdown are a lot weaker than they were in the WinTel heyday. It’s a lot easier to go from macOS to Windows to Linux these days. There are many exceptions of course, but I’d wager that market is not as big as you think.

whoisburbansky 6y ago
I think OPs point is that this is going to get a lot harder once macbooks become Apple Silicon only
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Software has a lot more abstractions these days. Almost no one codes close to the ISA. I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as it was.
pjmlp 6y ago
Only if ones lives in a POSIX CLI world of Web GUIs. That is not the market that Apple cares about, nor NeXT did that much, other to gain market share when things were looking dim.
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Most of the world uses web apps. Huge and performance sensitive applications like Adobe, Maya, etc mostly already have their own UI rendering engine anyway. It’s a lot different from the Win32/x86 duopoly situation. Platforms have been mostly abstracted away.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Most of the world is a bubble.
    - tambourine_man 6y ago
      Care to elaborate? I don’t understand you meant by that.

nickysielicki 6y ago

> and you can’t run Windows or something else on ‘Apple Silicon’. There's no reason to believe this is true.

m463 6y ago
There is plenty of precedent. apple iphones run ios, only. apple computers run macos and windows. Thing is - which precedent will win?
- spideymans 6y ago
  Apple has already confirmed that they have no plans on restricting the ability of third party operating systems to run on Apple Silicon based notebooks.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Is there a reference for this? Running Windows, particularly with the 64-bit x86 emulation announcement, would go a long way to making purchases more palatable.
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    That’s not really a helpful statement. There are so many coprocessors that we need them to actively release the details for those.. not just say they won’t oppose it. The former requires their support. The later just says they won’t oppose reverse engineering. The later is far more difficult and will likely mean any OS will be buggy and flaky. Unless Apple comes out and says they will actively support 3rd parties, it’s just going to be a shit show with no good alternative OS options.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-mac-arm-windows-support-boot-camp https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma... “We’re not direct booting an alternate operating system,” says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. Apple has already confirmed they have no plans to allow third party software to run on Apple Silicon based notebooks.

reader_mode 6y ago

>Does it even matter? Yes, most tools are cross platform (not necessarily cross-arch but that's a matter of time) and performance is important - I don't care if it's Apple silicon or Intel or AMD, or what OS GUI I'm using - I just want faster builds and iteration

cwhiz 6y ago

Is there any reason to think you wouldn’t (eventually) be able to install the Arm version of Windows on Apple silicon?

rowanG077 6y ago
Yes. You can't install anything on iPads and iPhones. And those are the closet hardware we have to to be release ARM macs. I would actually be incredibly surprises if they could run anything but Mac OS.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  Counterargument: the closest hardware we currently have to ARM Macs is probably... Intel Macs. The "Apple is going to lock down the Mac just like the iPhone" narrative has been with us since, well, the iPhone. But despite the alarm at tighter security measures in more recent versions of macOS, that hasn't happened yet -- and if a Secret Nefarious Lockdown Plan (tm) was going to come to fruition, the year that they shifted CPU hardware and radically redesigned the operating system's UX would sure as heck seem to be The Perfect Moment. And it still hasn't happened. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns and all that, but I don't think there's any reason to think Apple is going to make it any harder to run different operating systems on Apple Silicon hardware than they do on Intel hardware. (Of course, I don't think there's any reason to think they'll make it easier, either.)
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    On Intel macs the default was that it would run windows as long as Apple did not make substantial changes to the uefi, etc. But arm macs are really an Apple A series processor plus a number of coprocessors like the t2, nueral engine, etc.. and the default is that windows will not work on this specialized hardware. So unless there’s evidence that Apple is actively going to help 3rd parties develop operating systems for the Mac, the best we can hope for is a fairly acceptable OS with reverse engineered drivers for those chips. We’re either going to get an unstable OS or a severely crippled OS. With intel macs Apple just had to stand back and let 3rd parties do their work. But they would have to actively assist with arm macs.. and there’s no indication theyve ever done that much less intend to do so in the future.