ARM based MacBook Pro discussion [merged]

[Nugget]

I mean its pretty much a safe bet, that it will be faster and have a better battery life. And it also seems to be pretty clear, that the transition will go smoothly.

It's easy to be optimistic when none of the details are known.

 

[DanMan619]

That’s a weird thing to say given that Arm macs don’t exist and nobody has any idea what they will be like.

That's a weird thing to say given that there's an ARM Mac Mini dev kit already in the wild, the first consumer ARM Mac is 3 or 4 months away from release, and Apple has gone over in a pretty decent amount of detail what the experience is going to be like using and developing for them in the WWDC Keynote and in hours worth of developer content respectively.

 

[kreasonos]

Honestly if they use AMD/Nvidia, their ARM initiative will be at least 50% less effective

Intel is 10 times more reliable than GPU manufacturers, CPU's rarely fail, but GPU's fail all the time

With 16" Macbook, we suffer because Apple can't run AMD properly: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-monitor.2211747

So if they indeed use an external GPU, it'll all be pointless, Intel only performs bad because Apple intentionally drives them to 100Celsius, they are able to work more ecologically, they could be slightly underclocked and always work around 50C's, these are all possible

But with GPU's, it seems it's not that easy, probably to avoid issues, they drive the GPU with 20W's and it's always on in most scenarios

That's not what Apple thinks. They noted one of the reasons they moved to arm was lack of quality of the intel chips.

 

[Sam Luis Obispo]

Thought that the comments about Apple's opinion with regard to skylake quality came out in a story quoting a former Intel engineer. Did somebody currently at Apple officially confirm that statement?

 

[hungryghosty]

currently A12Z GPU is around 1.2TFlops and 5600M can do 5.3 TFlops. With the advancement of A14 + 5nm process +increase in thermal package, I think Apple Silicon will be able to ship high performance macbook with real GPU horsepower to smaller devices such as Air and 14” which current models only has mediocre 1 TFlops iGPU.

That's what I'm curious to see. I think we're all fairly confident that Apple can easily match Intel's current chips in terms of CPU performance particularly in the 13" laptops.

However I'm still not convinced they'll be able to match dedicated GPU's from AMD/Nvidia though. I know they have a new design, better 5nm manufacturing process, active cooling and will be able to push more wattage through the device.

Even given all that though a five-fold increase in performance seems like a lot to ask?

 

[ultrakyo]

That's what I'm curious to see. I think we're all fairly confident that Apple can easily match Intel's current chips in terms of CPU performance particularly in the 13" laptops.

However I'm still not convinced they'll be able to match dedicated GPU's from AMD/Nvidia though. I know they have a new design, better 5nm manufacturing process, active cooling and will be able to push more wattage through the device.

Even given all that though a five-fold increase in performance seems like a lot to ask?

Remember that A12X/Z only 8 cores (compute units) and it is already able to push 1.4Tflops while Radeon Pro 5500M in MBP 16" can perform up to 5.3Tflops with 20 cores (compute units). If apple put 20 cores based on A12X GPU performance, it will be able to push around the same performance as Radeon Pro 5500M. Now, with advancement of A14 plus 5nm, I am sure it can be as good as dGPU. Time will tell as it launches.

 

[fokmik]

I dont know if it will be post here too...but based on the last beta...i think the next arm based macs, laptop or imac...will come with T3 chip based on the A11
September/October can't come fast enough !!

 

[thedocbwarren]

Why T3 when T2 works fine and has nothing to do with the CPU? Just curious.

I dont know if it will be post here too...but based on the last beta...i think the next arm based macs, laptop or imac...will come with T3 chip based on the A11
September/October can't come fast enough !!

 

[Investor27]

I mean its pretty much a safe bet, that it will be faster and have a better battery life. And it also seems to be pretty clear, that the transition will go smoothly.

Going with an ARM base Macbook should have a better battery life. But nothing is known, and therefore, it's not clear if Apple's ARM Macbooks will have better, longer battery life. Apple wanted to keep the Macbook Pros and iPads to a 10-hour battery life. Who's to say that Apple won't reduce the battery size in the new ARM Macs to increase their profit margins, and make more profits for their shareholders. I hope the ARMs 14" and 16" laptops will have 14-16 hour batteries, so hopefully we will know more in a couple of months or by the end of 1st quarter 2021.

 

[pshufd]

Going with an ARM base Macbook should have a better battery life. But nothing is known, and therefore, it's not clear if Apple's ARM Macbooks will have better, longer battery life. Apple wanted to keep the Macbook Pros and iPads to a 10-hour battery life. Who's to say that Apple won't reduce the battery size in the new ARM Macs to increase their profit margins, and make more profits for their shareholders. I hope the ARMs 14" and 16" laptops will have 14-16 hour batteries, so hopefully we will know more in a couple of months or by the end of 1st quarter 2021.

I saw an LG Gram 17 yesterday - 17 hour battery, QHD display, Intel 10th generation, 3 pounds, 16 GB/500 GB, $1,249. It's not a Pro class machine but it's a well-built, nice system for casual use that's very light with long battery life. I feel that Apple can easily do better than this.

 

[BeatCrazy]

I dont know if it will be post here too...but based on the last beta...i think the next arm based macs, laptop or imac...will come with T3 chip based on the A11
September/October can't come fast enough !!

You don't need a T3 (or T2) if you're using an ARM processor. All that functionality is already built into the main chip.

 

[pshufd]

You don't need a T3 (or T2) if you're using an ARM processor. All that functionality is already built into the main chip.

Yeah, they can do it because it's their chip.

 

[bill-p]

I saw an LG Gram 17 yesterday - 17 hour battery, QHD display, Intel 10th generation, 3 pounds, 16 GB/500 GB, $1,249. It's not a Pro class machine but it's a well-built, nice system for casual use that's very light with long battery life. I feel that Apple can easily do better than this.

My dad has an LG Gram 17. I bought it for him. He'd be lucky to get 10 hours. It's mostly 6-7, which... in all honesty, isn't really "bad" for a Windows laptop but it's a far cry from 17 hours.

I'm guessing that 17-hour figure is obtained when you turn the screen off and just play music via earphone or something like that.

And also, you are asking for the impossible. Basically, this mythical 12" or 13" MacBook "reboot" will have twice the battery life of an equivalent iPad Pro, at least the same performance or faster, and... an even cheaper price point?

Honestly, Apple has amazing engineers but I don't think they can break physics like that.

 

[ultrakyo]

Apple tend to design their portable computer products to last +/- 10 hours. If they ever design a Silicon that is more efficient, they will use that advantage to make product thinner or pack with more hardware rather than larger batteries for the same product size as compared to previous generation.

 

[supertiffany]

so ARM macbooks:

the 2017 Macbook 12" will be the new form factor of the ARM Macbook Air

the 2020 Macbook Air will be the new form factor of the ARM Macbook Pro

with more efficient chips, Apple will definitely make their devices lighter and more compact while still retaining that battery life and of course, with the new much improved performance.

 

[pshufd]

so ARM macbooks:

the 2017 Macbook 12" will be the new form factor of the ARM Macbook Air

the 2020 Macbook Air will be the new form factor of the ARM Macbook Pro

with more efficient chips, Apple will definitely make their devices lighter and more compact while still retaining that battery life and of course, with the new much improved performance.

I'd be happy with something similar to the 2020 MBP 13 with better thermals and battery life. The 2020 MBP 13 looks like it has all of the compute power that I need. There are times when I'd like to get the 16 but it looks like overkill for my needs. Same thing with the Mini - if they can do it in the same form-factor with better graphics and thermals, that would be good enough for me.

 

[supertiffany]

I'd be happy with something similar to the 2020 MBP 13 with better thermals and battery life. The 2020 MBP 13 looks like it has all of the compute power that I need. There are times when I'd like to get the 16 but it looks like overkill for my needs. Same thing with the Mini - if they can do it in the same form-factor with better graphics and thermals, that would be good enough for me.

that can be since,

the 2020 MBP and 2020 MBA are no different in size and weight outside of paper, just the wedge factor of MBA is what makes it feel seems thinner in longer usage


but right, 2020 MBP will provide better thermals, of course they have to make the fans this time near the chip or heat source unlike before

tho the new silicons require less power, less heat so that might not be necessary.

 

[shawmanus]

They did say 1st A series Macbook by end of the year. Will they rename the line again like it moved from ibook/powerbook to Macbook? I am expecting MBA update as well without Mini Led. Mini Led will be only in extreme premium laptops short term. So far we have seen only in very expensive MSI 17.3" laptop. May be Apple will launch a 17" MBP with mini led and price it at $2500+. But that's unlikely to be the 1st A series laptop.

Highly unlikely also to see TGL based laptop. If there are any more updates to Intel laptops it has to be CMT-H based MBP 16". I doubt they will wait for TGL-H which is anyway Q1/Q2 next year. I doubt Intel will provide early access chips to Apple at this point.

 

[Nugget]

They did say 1st A series Macbook by end of the year.

Apple said they’d ship the first apple silicon machine before the end of the year. They didn’t say it would be a MacBook. The low end MacBook makes sense, but that’s not what was promised. It might be a small iMac which has also been rumored. Or they might ship both. We don’t really know.

 

[Maximara]

There's been various chatter about this in the forums here at MacRumors.

Here's some of my issues with going to ARM.
1. Lack of windows compatibility. I need and use windows for my job and I'll not have the virtualization ability, never mind Bootcamp. Plus, Apple enjoyed a large spike in people buying Macs when they transitioned over to Intel. They risk alienating a large core of customers if they leave the X86 platform.

2. Performance, will the ARM perform just as well as intel running the multithreaded applications? True the iPad Pro's performance is exceptional, but its running iOS with one, maybe two apps (with split screen). How will it perform with a desktop OS and file system, with many apps running at once?

3. Developers, Apple will be asking a lot of developers to rework their apps and will we only be able to load apps from the app store at that point? Will the OS be locked down like iOS and we'll lose the ability to load Carbon Copy Cloner, or other applications that forego the MAS and apple's 30 percent slice of sales? Will large developers get on board, i.e., Adobe, Microsoft, etc?

4. Will Apple emulate the legacy code, and how will that perform, i.e., when they transitioned from PPC to Intel we still had the ability to run PPC apps, how will the transition work, can the ARM processor handle the emulation. If there's no emulation, that will make it almost impossible for apple to sell an ARM based Mac.

Personally, I find it difficult to justify spending 2k on a 15" MBP that's running a broadwell chip in 2016. I'm definitely sure, I'll not spend 2,000 dollars on an ARM based laptop. While my single sale may not mean much to apple, I'll be one of the people who chooses to walk away from the Apple computers if they move away from the intel chipset. The competition has already leaped frogged Apple in design, performance and price. Apple needs to not only catch up but surpass them, but I think embracing the ARM platform is the opposite - just my $.02

1. Never hear of the two years old Windows on ARM have we? The main reason it hasn't gone anywhere is emulator can't handle 63-bit code...which Apple has.

2. We saw this with the Shadow of the Tomb Raider. A totally x86 game and it was kicking butt compared to what it does on an intel ship in a machine of the same design (ie prone to heat throttling)

3. "How do I download 3rd party apps on iOS? Tap Settings > General > Profiles or Profiles & Device Management. Under the "Enterprise App" heading, you see a profile for the developer. Tap the name of the developer profile under the Enterprise App heading to establish trust for this developer. Then you see a prompt to confirm your choice." Then there is Steam Mobile (not to be confused with Steam Link). So this supposed lock down is a myth.

4. WWDC 2020 Special Event Keynote 1h 40m 28s mark answers both these questions.

Why would a 15" ARM MBP (ignoring the fact there isn't a Intel 15" MBP in the first place; its either 13" or 16") cost $2,000? Sure the CPU saves apple ~$400 (which unless they are idiots like back in the mid 1990s they weill pass on to the consumer) there is also that AMD Radeon Pro 5300M and while I can't find an actual price for that chip I don't expect it is cheap so there is whatever that costs out the window bringing the cost down even further perhaps as low as $1500 for the low end version.

 

[GoneDrinkin]

I'm starting a masters next January and I was hoping to upgrade my 12" to an arm MacBook Pro. Not sure whether I'll just wait for the 14" redesign next year, or just to bite the bullet with boost to battery life and camera (coming from my current 480p!)

 

[pshufd]

I'm starting a masters next January and I was hoping to upgrade my 12" to an arm MacBook Pro. Not sure whether I'll just wait for the 14" redesign next year, or just to bite the bullet with boost to battery life and camera (coming from my current 480p!)

We'll have to wait and see but I used a 13 for a few years and the portability is nice. I overall prefer the bigger 15s myself but I could live with anything between 13 and 17.

 

[Rob.G]

I really loved my little 11" for portability. That thing was sweet.

 

[thedocbwarren]

Hoping they release a similar form factor in Apple Silicon (or 12" in same size.)

I really loved my little 11" for portability. That thing was sweet.

 

[Rob.G]

I'd prefer that but SLIGHTLY taller. The 11's pixel height was only 768 and that wasn't tall enough for some of the dialog boxes in MacOS. Hopefully it'll be the Retina equivalent of 1024 (height), though I could also foresee it being the same as the old 15's 1440x900. That'd still be a worthwhile improvement.

If this thing is only about a grand with at least 16 gig of RAM, I may have to get one just for portability reasons. iOS still using useful (to me at least) as a real computer.