Apple has dropped legacy frameworks very easily in the past though. But how exactly did that happen?
CPU changes. Once when MacOS went from PPC to Intel, and then once when MacOS went from 32 bit to 64 bit. Each time that transition happened Apple was able to say “OK, this legacy stuff just isn’t going to be there on the new architecture”. And since you had to recompile apps anyway to make them run on the new architecture, developers kind of shrugged and said “Well, yea. That’s what I would have done too”. It made sense.
So are we about to see 128 bit Intel processors anytime soon, to facilitate this change? I doubt it.
OK then, what about a new architecture?
Oh. Hello 64 bit ARM.
The Macintosh platform is going to transition to Apple’s own ARM64 architecture over the coming years. The most succinct explanation as to why comes from Steven Troughton-Smith:
Opening ARM-based Macs to the iOS ecosystem to make one unified Apple platform, knowing what we know about Marzipan, makes so much sense that it becomes difficult to imagine it any other way. Apple finds itself completely unable to build the computers it wants to build with Intel.
Windows has already made the move to ARM, and macOS will be joining it over the coming years. There is a major architectural shift happening in desktop computing, and there are quite a few companies who have to worry about their long-term bottom line: Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA.
>”There is a major architectural shift happening in desktop computing, and there are quite a few companies who have to worry about their long-term bottom line: Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA.”
I don’t think NVIDIA has to worry about their bottom line for the coming years. They make GPUs that are commonly seen paired with x86 architecture, sure, but they also make ARM chips and provide mobile gaming GPUs too. Even though Apple probably won’t do business with them for awhile, I doubt Microsoft and various other device makers feel the same. It’s not like NV is dependent on x86 architecture…
Likewise, for professional video editors and other workstation users / “prosumers,” they’ll probably just use external video cards if internal isn’t an option. Doing so would accelerate their workflows on Macs that are ARM-based (with lesser GPUs), supposing external GPUs continue to have support there.
NVIDIA would still be a major player in such a scenario. So the notion that NV will have to worry seems rather… odd, to me.
This is also under the assumption that an Apple transition to ARM will have a meaningfully negative effect on x86. That is, I don’t really think Apple transitioning to ARM in their Macs over time is going to kill any bottom lines, just like Apple transitioning to Intel in their Macs didn’t kill Power chips (from my ill-informed un-researched understanding).
(I acknowledge that the situation is different too, but this all supposes x86 would be abandoned in a major way.)
Could be wrong but it feels to me like “the (x86) enthusiast market” is a bit bigger than the “Mac market” to me. I’m just speculating and haven’t really done any research into this. Just noting my impression I guess.
Anyway, all that said, I’m definitely not against Apple’s ARM chips making it to Macs. I’d like that competition. Plus since Windows supports ARM I guess Bootcamp might even still be a thing, somehow. I hope to see the same sort of PC enthusiast market that exists for home-built x86 computers on the ARM side, too. Such that I can just find whatever compatible motherboard and ARM processor, slap ’em in a case, plug a GPU and RAM in, etc, and be ready to go. All that needs to exist is a standard and support for that standard (and a market for it). If that happens, NVIDIA *really* won’t be in trouble.
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Edited 2018-06-27 00:29 UTC
Well there’s a short term blip when people from the last 2-5 years had a quad core and not much better had come out. AMD lead the way with more cores, and now Intel is as well. So finally you get get a substantial upgrade to your old quad core 3.5 Ghz widget you bought years ago. Once people get the ryzen2/threadripper/i7/i9 it might well be quite awhile before they drop another few $k on a killer gaming desktop. Not clear to me that the next GPU, even if twice is fast is going to be particularly compelling for millions of gamers.
VR seems like a potentially big deal, but not sure nvidia is going to win in that space, especially if not tethered and the headset requires running on batteries.
[q]
Have you tried the latest Iphone or Ipad pro? Tried anything 3D intensive? Imagine them a generation newer with 2-4x the power budget. How many people are going to be willing to pay more for a discrete nvidia vs the default apple performance?
[\q]
Could you point me to a youtube video which demonstrates its capabilities? So far anything I have seen shows that quality is around the x360 level for the iphone x, which is about 10 years old now…
I’d dispute that they don’t make a successful ARM, considering Tegra X1 is what powers the Nintendo Switch.
Apple may contemplate the idea of getting rid of Intel and make iPad with keyboard as the next Macintosh. No doubt.
But, I strongly disagree with most of the motivations exposed here.
– “Apple is unable to build the computers it wants with Intel”. Bullshit. If they have very special requirements, and want to piss off Intel, they could do like Microsoft and Sony and ask AMD to make a custom x86 chipset. Current Macintoshes are not really different from PCs. Same CPU, same RAM, same FLASH storage, … Apple is peculiar only when it wants to deliberately be incompatible with the rest of the industry. And some fluff like crypto coprocessors or the touch bar.
– Can Apple make CPUs as fast as Intel ? Nobody knows. They are quite good, the problem is that unless Apple wants to abandon the high end server/desktop market, they won’t be able to competitively develop both low power CPUs for MacBook Airs and for high end servers. They would also alienate all the people wanting to run x86 Windows or Linux VMs.
– Running the App store on Macintosh ? Maybe they could support several architectures and use a dynamic translator for non-ported software. Just like Android. Intel has already made the emulator, they would certainly not be against making a Mac version.
But, ARM is so much better than the rusty x86, right ?
It doesn’t matter anymore for high performance CPUs, since 10 years. Instruction decode is a small part, yadda, yadda.
The worst blow to ARM emergence as a competitor to x86 came from AMD.
Before Zen, everyone was pissed by Intel and their outrageous prices and lack of innovation, so much that there was some hope to make the transition to ARM. Now, why bother with ARM if AMD is able to put pressure on Intel?
ARM had and still has a significant power advantage. Intel has worked to close the gap, but they are running into problems with their own chip manufacturing. Thus, ARM will maintain that advantage for the foreseeable future.
What could ARM mean for Apple? Better battery life with (slightly) smaller batteries. Hence, lighter laptops with all day operation. These are laptops that will also allow the easier porting of iPhone apps to the desktop. Eventually, this could be the way to bring the Mac into the realm of the app store.
“As for Linux, it has been running on ARM chips since they came out.”
That’s very impressive, as the first ARM debuted in 1983 and the first release of Linux was in 1991.
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/docs/history.php
You can also say that Linux came in 1991 on x86 “as soon as they came out” which is pretty true since Linux was developed specifically for the 1985’s 386 to use its hardware features.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux
1987 but close!
Neither one is correct… “VLSI produced the first ARM silicon on 26 April 1985[35]—it worked first time and came to be known as ARM1.”
[deleted]
Edited 2018-06-28 03:35 UTC
It’s not that they can’t build what they want to. It’s just that they can’t compete.
If they use their own chips, they don’t need to compete like-to-like.
I was working at a reseller in g5 days and Apple heavily pushed stuff like vector computing as a benefit. Intel already had that though. But if they have their own platform, they can use buzzwords to market. The g5s were way behind Intel at the time, but they’d pick a few bad benchmarks to deceive people. They probably just intend to pull the same rubbish again.
Edited 2018-06-27 01:43 UTC
This is Tim Cook working the supply chain. This is what he does – and this time it’s all about cutting the fat, or keeping more of it for Apple. It’s all about that.
Yeah, he made a good CFO. That was his job, to maximize profit. He hasn’t quite figured out that he’s the CEO now, though, and he has to look at a bigger picture.
I used to think that OSX and X86 chips were a necessity but that’s not really the case anymore. How many Windows programs are you emulating on your mac right now? I think what will potentially die off is people running Linux on Macbooks and then running WINE/X86 PC emulation on top of Linux. OSX’s virtualisation options have always sucked compared to KVM/Qemu and the other Linux options. I don’t really see a dramatic drop in marketshare happening for Apple if they go ARM. Now if they include x86 emulation on top of ARM there’s some interesting things that could be possible, but it just doesn’t seem that important. OSX already has a lot of desktop apps and a lot of Mac apps. If you’ve bought into that ecosystem you probably won’t care about ARM vs X86. It’s the people that never bought in that Apple might lose but even those people have mostly moved away from OSX already.
If the big OS companies all switch to ARM, that is the best thing ever in my lifetime to computing.
Dropping CISC/RISK hybrid for a modern RISK architecture is amazing, and although there’s a lot of legacy software that won’t be able to run, this can only mean better battery life and an easier work for computer engineers and computer scientist.
On the downside, though, and this is the part where I am wary, this would be new ground that doesn’t have an IBM PC like openness and standardization, which is something that I would like to be continued, and in today’s world that is often given up in exchange for security or convenience, and that’s something that I can see happening.
Poseidon,
Yes, I worry that ARM platforms will only become more locked down both by blocking owners from installing alternative operating systems as well as blocking them from unapproved software sources and sideloading applications. I think there is a very significant risk of owners loosing these rights in the crossover. The mere fact that there is no pre-existing ARM software for a given platform means that manufacturers are pretty much free to impose walled gardens restrictions on new apps for that architecture.
Microsoft has tried diligently to erect a walled garden with metro apps, but it’s ability to coerce the market is limited on x86 because customers would immediately blame MS for breaking compatibility with just about all pre-existing x86 software. I suspect a large part of the appeal for switching to ARM, for PC manufacturers including ms & apple, could be to make a clean break from unrestricted platforms to restricted ones such that they can shift the blame to developers for not supporting the new architecture (which happens to be locked down, but average customers are non the wiser).
Also on server/desktop platforms nobody sane will lock you down
Edited 2018-06-27 16:35 UTC
viton,
It’s a matter of leverage, really. It’s difficult to impose restrictions in existing markets where owner access rights are largely expected since there are many of us to oppose restrictions. However restrictions have a much better chance of being successful in new product categories where the expectations aren’t well defined.
No, this is from
https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=177204&curpostid=17737…
I tried to buy Novago, but it was out-of-stock everywhere. Now I’ll wait for some other SD850/SD1000 laptop.
Edited 2018-06-27 17:41 UTC
viton,
I had the exact same concern as linus torvalds on that thread, haha. It’s still too early to say for sure whether the restrictions mentioned by Poseidon and Linus will pose a big problem for alternatives in general or not. If you do get one, let us know how it goes!
Edited 2018-06-27 20:04 UTC
Big OS companies already switched to arm. Microsoft now has a “full” windows, most of the linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE) have arm builds.
I’m all for it, but to be honest, users won’t notice. Not sure why it would be amazing. Similar performance, similar battery life. Sure maybe a bit cheaper, and a bit better battery life, but nothing too shocking.
I prefer x86-64. The solutions based on ARM cores happen to be very restricted and closed. For instance, x86-based Chromebooks can dual-boot with your favorite Linux distro or even Windows while ARM ones – not so much. Using Linux on any ARM-based device has been a constant pain due to SoC specific BLOBs which lock you to some old kernel version forever.
Many devs rely on using Macs to host other operating systems via VMWare, Parallels, etc. A majority of their coding is done within virtual machines … is cleaner and leaves to interference between projects and their dependencies.
Of course, once the switch away from x86, well that whole picture becomes more fraught even with the kind of processor emulation Apple have done in the past (Rosetta?).
Which customers are they chasing and which are they turning away from?
I don’t see anything good coming out of this. What is apple going to do? MacBook air arm edition? There comes a point where thinner is not better. My air was useful for 5 months, as a windows machine. This is a constant problem with cellphones, if you can make thin. Why not make a little thicker with more battery. Imagine a week long battery life on an armbook. Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to Apple. I can already see it ” now that we have arm, we can make use smaller batteries”!
Apple may offer arm based Macs in the future (I am still curious what this would mean for emulation, Linux and Boot Camp) but I don’t think that Marzipan is the key neither I believe that Marzipan will replace AppKit (at least any time soon). From what I heard Marzipan could be an abstraction layer (maybe descriptive, produced by interface builder) that works with UIKit and AppKit.
This could speed up cross platform development. But it is still not clear how to specify custom platform specific behaviour or override the default “translation” between UIKit and AppKit Marzipan provides using this approach.
Nearly every Mac app today uses AppKit and it allows very deep customisation, abandoning AppKit would be very difficult and in my opinion wrong, since it is a great framework.