Kuo: Apple to Launch Several Macs With Arm-Based Processors in 2021, USB4 Support Coming to Macs in 2022
USB 4 takes 2 years to use? Seriously?
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MP 7,1 What does Apple's switch to ARM based processors mean for the future of the Mac Pro
- Thread starter Korican100
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My big fear transitioning to an ARM future is Apple’s long-term willingness to produce something competitive for the desktop market.
I fully believe they are capable of trouncing Intel today, but when we’re all back inside Apple’s walled garden, and they’re focusing on iPhone and iPad, how long until the performance on the desktop side just isn’t there?
I remember the days of the G5, when Apple would trumpet gigaflops and some niche benchmark as indicative of parity with Intel, but everyone knew for years that was by and large BS.
Competition is hotter than ever with a resurgent AMD, which I suspect will be a long term performance and price win for consumers. I just don’t want to be stuck paying Apple prices for desktop tech years behind the x86 world again.
I fully believe they are capable of trouncing Intel today, but when we’re all back inside Apple’s walled garden, and they’re focusing on iPhone and iPad, how long until the performance on the desktop side just isn’t there?
I remember the days of the G5, when Apple would trumpet gigaflops and some niche benchmark as indicative of parity with Intel, but everyone knew for years that was by and large BS.
Competition is hotter than ever with a resurgent AMD, which I suspect will be a long term performance and price win for consumers. I just don’t want to be stuck paying Apple prices for desktop tech years behind the x86 world again.
This year probably nothing is set in stone, COVID-19 made a mess with every schedule, but USB4 is on the roadmaps for Tiger Lake and Zen 3 for sometime.Not sure if USB 4.0 comes later this year.Kuo: Apple to Launch Several Macs With Arm-Based Processors in 2021, USB4 Support Coming to Macs in 2022
USB 4 takes 2 years to use? Seriously?
ARM Macs will take some time to go from Apple labs to the market, even without COVID19 factor it will take sometime to get the real devices. Makes more sense Apple going USB4 with the desktop version of the uncore than USB3 or USB3 + TB3.
The real question is what will be the DTK of the ARM era, rumors of the iPad Pro being used for this makes real sense.
My friend has 13 guitars of varying ages and makes/models, some of which cost more than my Mac 7,1. Yet some people think it 'silly' to have more than one computer....
I strongly believe the challenge for the Mac is not in the Intel vs ARM part, but on the iOS vs MacOS part. And this is not because of OS design choices, but because Apple has decided to be mostly a services/subscriptions business, and the success of this kind of business greatly depends on not letting the user be in total control of their devices, just like all mobile-based OSs do, iOS included.
In the past, Apple was a product-based company, where the user got a product as a final purchase rather than as a subscription, and thus it made sense to have a very powerful OS in which the user had total control of everything. NeXTSTEP was a perfect choice for this.
So, answering to the OP thread question, I don't believe ARM will introduce great changes in the paradigm, but I do believe that, no matter if they use Intel or ARM, they'll decrease the degree of user control in MacOS, so that it behaves more and more closer to iOS, where Apple has the control of what the user can choose to do or not.
Therefore, in conclusion, we have tough times for the Mac in the horizon. This can spread to other non-Apple computers as well (and it already started: non-user avoidable updates in Windows 10, for example). And, in the end, this could mean that computers might go back to being expensive, just like they used to be in the past (I mean, if all the people needs are going to be done with mobile OSs, mobile devices will be cheap, while computers will be expensive if very few of them are sold).
It seems we have bad times ahead for computers.
In the past, Apple was a product-based company, where the user got a product as a final purchase rather than as a subscription, and thus it made sense to have a very powerful OS in which the user had total control of everything. NeXTSTEP was a perfect choice for this.
So, answering to the OP thread question, I don't believe ARM will introduce great changes in the paradigm, but I do believe that, no matter if they use Intel or ARM, they'll decrease the degree of user control in MacOS, so that it behaves more and more closer to iOS, where Apple has the control of what the user can choose to do or not.
Therefore, in conclusion, we have tough times for the Mac in the horizon. This can spread to other non-Apple computers as well (and it already started: non-user avoidable updates in Windows 10, for example). And, in the end, this could mean that computers might go back to being expensive, just like they used to be in the past (I mean, if all the people needs are going to be done with mobile OSs, mobile devices will be cheap, while computers will be expensive if very few of them are sold).
It seems we have bad times ahead for computers.
This depends mostly if ARM Macs will only run sandboxed software. If Apple keeps the current status quo of non-sandboxed software still working with ARM Macs, like we have right now with Intel Macs, and don't enforce only sandboxed notarised software, your bleak scenario will take some time to realise. If they remove the possibility of running non sandboxed software, then I'll agree with you.
I'm 50/50 with this. Apple can go one way or another here.
It is not like Apple to invest so much into the MP development to then drop it one year later. iMac likewise, there are substantive rumours of a redesigned iMac that would be dropped 30 second after its introduction at WWDC.
Phil:"Here is our best iMac that we have ever created. It has a Intels latest 10-core chip... ",
Phil continues: " We are proud to introducing the future of Mac computers today. It has a Apple design ARM chip..."
Who is going to buy the iMac after that or any Mac?
PPC to intel switch was possible because Intel already had all the processors that Apple needed. Hitching a ride on the wintel train was the right thing to do.
It is different now. As far as we know, Apple does not have a complete stack of chips necessary to drive all the needs of the Mac community. There are essentially only ARM for low power portable devices in their lineup. Therefore, I think it will take time for the transition. What is the hurry for Apple? None. When Apples high power ARM chips are competitive to Intels/AMD, they can switch. If that takes three years, fine.
It seem that all people think an ARM Mac will run full MacOS. In Apples world, it can just as well be a less restricted iPadOS and an "ARM Mac" is simply a device that has a beefed up A14 (TDP>15W), packaged in the classical clamshell laptop mode and later an iMac format. Intel based iMac and MP can coexist with these devices but at some point down the lines they will be replaced.
Phil:"Here is our best iMac that we have ever created. It has a Intels latest 10-core chip... ",
Phil continues: " We are proud to introducing the future of Mac computers today. It has a Apple design ARM chip..."
Who is going to buy the iMac after that or any Mac?
PPC to intel switch was possible because Intel already had all the processors that Apple needed. Hitching a ride on the wintel train was the right thing to do.
It is different now. As far as we know, Apple does not have a complete stack of chips necessary to drive all the needs of the Mac community. There are essentially only ARM for low power portable devices in their lineup. Therefore, I think it will take time for the transition. What is the hurry for Apple? None. When Apples high power ARM chips are competitive to Intels/AMD, they can switch. If that takes three years, fine.
It seem that all people think an ARM Mac will run full MacOS. In Apples world, it can just as well be a less restricted iPadOS and an "ARM Mac" is simply a device that has a beefed up A14 (TDP>15W), packaged in the classical clamshell laptop mode and later an iMac format. Intel based iMac and MP can coexist with these devices but at some point down the lines they will be replaced.
I feel like it’s closer to the want to issue rather than can. iPhones and iPads and even services are the money makers at Apple now. Yeah, when they were working on the original iPhone (the most revolutionary consumer product of all time) they took their eye of the Mac ball- but even then iPods were the primary profit driver... and then later in the lamentable Mac Pro lull of 2014 to 2019 well, iPhones were already orders of magnitude more profitable than the entire Mac line-up, and other Macs (laptops and iMacs) still saw pretty regular updates. I’d say they’re very capable of chewing gum and walking for the most part, but prioritize the money makers. Having Macs use the same kind of chips that are also in iPhones and iPads can only help the Macs remain relevant. Just like in the last transition– it was hard to convince developers to make software for the niche PowerPC architecture (and hard to convince IBM and Motorola to make a faster consumer level CPU when their focus was high end server CPUs), but everyone else was on Intel, so.... Same calculation now, but the A series chips, and software written for them, are the hot **** on the block now. Windows, and software optimized for x86 generally is not nearly so important as it was in the early aughts-- and it doesn't hurt that for the first time ever Apple would not be at the mercy of another company's timeline, they sure do love controlling the whole widget. Of course there are always edge cases, so don’t go to war here- I said “nearly,” and if a software emulation layer ala “Rosetta” isn’t up to snuff I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of x86 daughtercard... or not, Apple tends to lose the cruft despite internet outcry. We’ll see.
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I don't suppose a physical upgrade would be possible from the Intel Mac Pro to the new ARM version when it emerges? I mean, they'd surely want to keep as much the same as possible for a brand new machine?
As things stand today, this is impossible. Even if they redesigned a A series chip to work with the other intel spec chips on the logic board, intel probably patented the cpu socket. Daughter card is a possibility here but in the past these were 3rd party. I don’t see apple selling a series chips to card makers. Also you know, they want you to buy the new one.. Apple’s motto ought to be sometimes backwards compatible, never forwards.
The suggestion is that Apple does have chips necessary to replace at least a portion of their stack against Intel chips. The rumours have been around for years that in 2020 would be the time to start the transition and it would appear that they are on track to make it happen. I think they've known where they've been sailing to for a while here and appear to be on track with that.
I expect that it will run full blown MacOS and I suspect that Catalyst is a part of making that transition work. Universal purchases enable apps to be available on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS which is reducing the barrier. Apple's been working on bytecode submission of apps to the App Store which could be the basis of enabling a recompilation of apps to support ARM as well. When they announced it they hinted that they could recompile apps with improvements automatically for developers. MacOS started shipping a built in hypervisor framework a few years ago (10.10) and it would be interesting to see if they leverage this with their ARM transition. I think they're in a better position overall than PPC to Intel in terms of having an ARM capable software development experience, they've done this before and this time they've been slowly pairing down stuff like KEXT's that do low level operations that could be problematic.
WWDC will be exciting, we'll get to see what Apple's been up to!
Apple probably wouldn't even be supporting a 2021 ARM Macbook in 2030. If got superceded in two years then 2023 would be end date. 6 years after that is 2029. Most likely it would end there. Only get 5-7 years after last sale for support.
Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support
Learn about your options for getting service and parts for Apple devices that are past their warranty period.support.apple.com
Most likely something in middle to bottom of the range gets about 6 year ( middle of their 5-7 range) and done for official OS upgrades after hardware window dries up.
If Apple hits the snooze button on the 2019 Mac pro for 4 years then could end up in 2023 also with either a discontinue or replacement.
Fair enough.
I picked the ‘10 years’ figure more out of psychological reasons re. Apple not Osborning their entire Intel Mac line-up.
i.e. the following scenario is likely at WDDC:
‘We are moving to ARM devs. Also here’s a new Intel iMac. But we’ll support it for 10 years so don’t delay, go buy it.’
Also, as many people on this thread have said, desktop Macs tend to last a long time as they’re so well built.
For example, I ditched my 2009 iMac in 2017 simply because I wanted a laptop and it felt a little slow. A SSD upgrade later and it would’ve been fine for web & light productivity tasks.
This is why I expect that Apple will make a one off exception for Intel hardware (for recently released Intel hardware) regarding software support (I don’t think they’ll change their policy re hardware support).
Chances are that after 5-6 years, any new Mac software features will be tightly coupled to new hardware, anyhow.
So it won’t be too much of a stretch for Apple to have a roadmap for Intel macOS that gets it to a certain feature parity and then freezes it so that regular people can do a light productivity tasks etc.
And for pro users to have the ability to use the piece of specialised software that they use still and know that macOS is getting security patches (my assumption is that many pro users will not want too many new features added to the OS anyway).
Basically, it’s about sending a message to users that it’s ok to invest in an expensive pro rig (as 10 years will likely be way beyond what they need) and that it’s ok to buy a new iMac for your grandma, school, university library as it’ll be an investment that will last 10 years, potentially).
Whoever dropped 40k for the machine plans to have it for 4 years (tax depraciation plan) and after that upgrade to a new machine to get the tax/gov benefits for it.
Just enjoy the machine and ignore the rumors. You're just getting anxious about these things, and an anxious mind creates its own monsters. The Arm based MP could be in the pipeline 15 months, 5 years or 10 years from now, you can't know, and rumors are just destroying the pleasure you're having with the current machine.
One other thing:
I don’t know if they’ll announce this at WWDC, but you’d expect Apple to focus on ARM notebooks, as they’re the machines that will benefit more substantially from A series chips - less heat, thinner lighter (fanless) machines etc etc.
And that the first ARM machines are going to be focussed on the consumer market (Apple: so keep buying those new MBP machines people!).
And what if we get Intel iMacs with a ‘T3’ chip that includes the Face ID & camera array from the iPhone 11 built into the chassis?
That’s a compelling upgrade as it won’t take a genius to work out that this is the new form factor and functionality of the iMac for the next few years - it’s just at some point it’ll cone with an ARM CPU (and likely no fans at the low end).
That - along with the message that ARM is going to be more for notebooks & Intel Macs are going to be supported for a long while - should still mean that people are safe to buy Intel Macs.
I don’t know if they’ll announce this at WWDC, but you’d expect Apple to focus on ARM notebooks, as they’re the machines that will benefit more substantially from A series chips - less heat, thinner lighter (fanless) machines etc etc.
And that the first ARM machines are going to be focussed on the consumer market (Apple: so keep buying those new MBP machines people!).
And what if we get Intel iMacs with a ‘T3’ chip that includes the Face ID & camera array from the iPhone 11 built into the chassis?
That’s a compelling upgrade as it won’t take a genius to work out that this is the new form factor and functionality of the iMac for the next few years - it’s just at some point it’ll cone with an ARM CPU (and likely no fans at the low end).
That - along with the message that ARM is going to be more for notebooks & Intel Macs are going to be supported for a long while - should still mean that people are safe to buy Intel Macs.
There was a company a few years back that offered an ARM based server platform that had comparable performance to the Xeon processors available at the time. I can't remember the name unfortunately.
Intel dominates the single threaded performance space, even up against the latest AMD offerings. Intel I think will still own that but increasingly multithreaded applications are taking over which is where AMD sees some of it's gains over Intel. Similarly Apple could do similar items with their own ARM chips to give a mix of power conserving capabilities and reasonably high (maybe peak 3Ghz?) clock speeds for tasks. They're not going to beat Intel on raw numbers but the situations where that truly matters are falling away to multithreaded implementations.
In the server space, having more execution threads can help it perform just as well because at the smaller end of the scale a server handles excessive multitasking. Over 15 years ago now I remember running Solaris boxes with 64 core SPARC CPU's on them using zones to split apart different operating system environments (predecessor to Linux's containers in many respects). Single thread execution not so great on that machine but it could handle the entire stack top to bottom easily and with high concurrency.
In the server space, having more execution threads can help it perform just as well because at the smaller end of the scale a server handles excessive multitasking. Over 15 years ago now I remember running Solaris boxes with 64 core SPARC CPU's on them using zones to split apart different operating system environments (predecessor to Linux's containers in many respects). Single thread execution not so great on that machine but it could handle the entire stack top to bottom easily and with high concurrency.
Ampere, they already have 80-core processors on the market and these 80-core processors (128 PCIe v4 lanes) can be used on dual socket motherboards (192 PCIe v4 lanes).
I agree with you that the blind trust in ARM superiority should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism (which is quite funny, because just few years ago the popular opinion was that ARM would never go beyond washing machines controllers). But I also think that the entire story is much more complicated. First of all, the ISA does matter. ARM design is much leaner than x64, which greatly simplifies the instruction prefetch and decoding logics — this is where the precious chip area can go to something more useful. Second, I feel that ARM made some right choices when designing some of their instructions (e.g. the vector support — x64 is a total mess in that regard).
Of course, the "real" performance comes from speculative execution and all that — and that is where ARM and Intel have to play the same game. But then again, I am not sure that Intel holds a decisive advantage here. I don't know a first thing about designing chips but what I do know is that it is a long, arduous and expensive process. It takes years to build new designs. The situation we see now is the result of investment decisions that were made years ago. And this is essentially what allows the companies to catch up to each others. A design you are pursuing may or may not pay off in the future. It has happened often enough to Intel. Remember Netburst (Pentium 4)? It has failed to achieve expectations and in the end Intel abandoned it to move back to the Pentium design. In fact, Intel CPUs we are using now are still optimization of the Pentium P6 design introduced in 1995! But no matter how amazing this design was, it seems like it can't be pushed any further. Last few years Intel was stagnating. And AMD — a company with 1/10 of Intel's revenue, after years of struggling with staying afloat with their CPUs, has developed a new architecture that seems to give Intel a run for its money.
I think what I am trying to say is that one does not have to be a veteran to be successful in CPU design. Whats more important is money (for R&D) and a good portion of luck (for making the right choices). It seems that Apple has both. Their CPU designs so far were truly impressive and so far unmatched by the rest of the industry. I wouldn't be surprised if they did manage to catch up and overtake stagnating Intel.
Well, iOS and macOS share the same kernel and basic libraries, so it's not surprising
My bet is still that they will have on-the-fly transcompilation from x86 to ARM for "native" execution of x86 code. I suppose we will learn soon enough.
I know Apple needs to sell new machines... but particularly in the case of the Mac Pro - a machine that is at such an oppulant price point... and which its users will doubtless invest much more personalising to their needs... It would have been terribly nice if they'd thought to make the machine future compatible.
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Here is a good article concerning a switch to ARM
tidbits.com
The Case for ARM-Based Macs - TidBITS
Rumors of ARM-based Macs continue to appear. Lower power and longer battery life are always cited. But even more important are the business advantages Apple would reap from switching from Intel to ARM. Former Apple engineer David Shayer explains what would be behind such a processor transition.
tidbits.com
It's all good I reckon. We've been through transitions before. 68k to PPC , then to intel.
I can't wait for the day where we can ditch all the hardware. It will all run off a phone - wirelessly.
Maybe Apple sees this future as well - starting the ball rolling by releasing computer hardware with ARM processors.
I can't wait for the day where we can ditch all the hardware. It will all run off a phone - wirelessly.
Maybe Apple sees this future as well - starting the ball rolling by releasing computer hardware with ARM processors.
I only read the first couple of pages so apologies if I'm repeating anyone else.
I'm seeing some concerns I think can be answered.
Apple has been pretty good when it comes to dealing with big changes in their hardware and software. The transitions from OS9 to X and PPC to Intel were not without their challenges, but all in all they went very well and Apple provided tools for people to make things much easier. I am certain they will have had this in mind since the Intel transition and this change will be even smoother.
Adobe and Microsoft have already got versions of a lot of their key apps running on iOS so those two lumbering juggernauts will not beas slow to change this time around.
Windows runs on ARM so Virtual Machines can still be a thing. Even Boot Camp if Apple wants to.
Apple will never cater to mackintosh users, you aren't in their thinking at all. Sorry.
I'm curious to see if they decide to go for any hardware name changes like last time (PowerXXX to MacXXX). I suspect they won't but you never know.
I'm seeing some concerns I think can be answered.
Apple has been pretty good when it comes to dealing with big changes in their hardware and software. The transitions from OS9 to X and PPC to Intel were not without their challenges, but all in all they went very well and Apple provided tools for people to make things much easier. I am certain they will have had this in mind since the Intel transition and this change will be even smoother.
Adobe and Microsoft have already got versions of a lot of their key apps running on iOS so those two lumbering juggernauts will not beas slow to change this time around.
Windows runs on ARM so Virtual Machines can still be a thing. Even Boot Camp if Apple wants to.
Apple will never cater to mackintosh users, you aren't in their thinking at all. Sorry.
I'm curious to see if they decide to go for any hardware name changes like last time (PowerXXX to MacXXX). I suspect they won't but you never know.
I strongly believe most pro applications will be ported to tablets in the short term, because all software brands are pushing hard into subscription models for their business, and most users don't realize that they are losing with this change, while they consider cool and trendy to follow the fashion of working in a tablet. As soon as all major applications are on tablets, if you want to work on a big display you'll have Mac hardware running iOS rather than MacOS (or MacOS turned into iOS, which is the same). This is the future that Apple dreams of.
So I don't feel the move to ARM will change anything, nor to do this transition slower or quicker. It will happen the same no matter if ARM or Intel is used.