6 ms·

Yay, great. Apple go. The day Apple moves to ARM on the Macbook will be the start of the downfall of Apple. Also, when is Apple moving to Intel on the iPhone?

• hfs 14y ago
  Their downfall began when they moved away from PPC. It's been a long time coming.
• dochtman 14y ago
  Why not? They've done ppc to x86 before.
  • rbanffy 14y ago
    And what is now called OSX started on 68K processors
• rbanffy 14y ago
  ARM started as a desktop platform and, at the time, it was much faster clock for clock than what Intel offered. I believe you can find benchmarks of that time comparing the Archimedes to high end PCs. Current ARMs are designed to save power, but there is nothing preventing Apple (or anyone else) from designing one for speed.
  • majormajor 14y ago
    What makes you think Apple would have more luck competing with Intel on speed this time around than they+IBM/Moto did in the past, or than AMD has had?
    • leoc 14y ago
      Well, it depends on what you mean by 'competing with Intel on speed'. If you mean having higher-performance CPUs than the Intel equivalents then Apple probably won't achieve that. If you mean having CPUs close enough to Intel's in overall performance that few potential Apple buyers will be put off by speed issues, then that seems very possible. If Apple had to use AMD processors from now on they'd manage fine (potential supply/vendor relations problems aside).
    • rbanffy 14y ago
      It's not that IBM and Motorola couldn't make PPC faster than Intel Core. It's that Apple wasn't a client with volume enough to justify the effort. Instead, IBM focused on making Cell (which is high-volume, so-so margin) and POWER (low volume, very high margin) while Motorola focused (IIRC) on the embedded market. BTW, Apple is no longer focusing on pure performance machines. The MacPro family is getting much less attention than it once did. Once your crowd thinks your machine is good enough, there is little point in making it even faster.
  • buster 14y ago
    haha. Yeah, because a benchmark from the 80s means something today. So you honestly think Apple will forsake the x86 ecosystem, all the apps, maybe put another emulator approach to it AND lose the benefit of running windows on a macbook? For what? What's the benefit? It's just fucking over customers. Well, as always. So maybe, they'll just do it. Opportunity to take even more control of the users, yay.
    • acchow 14y ago
      Out of curiosity, how much code nowadays is tied to an architecture? Operating systems, sure (but even then not much outside the kernel). Most code I write is architecture-agnostic... Yes, in C++.
      • buster 14y ago
        You are kidding right? Actually, as a linux and open source user i am probably the next likely person to switch to ARM on the laptop. But i can cleary see that this would be next to impossible for 90% of "normal" users. Homework for you: Pick the next best non-geek person (secretary job is good, or some family member) and go through all the desktop software they have. How much of it is not available on ARM? How much of it is available on Windows, MacOSX AND Linux. Because... multiplatorm is easy, right? Everyone has it. No, no, no. Unfortunately that's faaaaaaar away. :(
        • rbanffy 14y ago
          I like to consider my mom very normal and I'm very sure everything she uses is just a compile away from running on ARM. Ubuntu, Firefox and LibreOffice are usually sufficient for 99.9% of what PC users do. Even those who are doomed to use Exchange can rely on OWA, which runs just fine on any decent browser (and at least one very crappy browser)
          • buster 14y ago
            Yourline of thought is the same that i had for the last decade with regards to Linux. It's still not the year of Linux on the Desktop ;) And a big part of why is: There is no MS Office, no Photoshop and no Games. Same will apply for ARM/MacOSX.
• rayiner 14y ago
  What'd be wrong with an ARM-based Air? I don't really do anything on my Macbook that I need all that CPU horsepower for. I'd trade it in a second for 10+ hour battery life.
  • buster 14y ago
    Sooo... you say you could actually just use an iPad? ;) Also, i guess you are really overestimating the role of CPU power usage in a modern PC. You wouldn't like double the time, just by swapping Intel with ARM, not nearly.