MP 7,1 What does Apple's switch to ARM based processors mean for the future of the Mac Pro

[malkovich87]

The ARM thread is causing a lot of hype and panic that Apple is going to suddenly obsolete machines they just released within a year or two.

You mean like they did when they moved from PowerPC to Intel? No, they would NEVER do that lol
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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.

They won't be able to provide an Intel emulator, if that's what your'e hinting at. ARM processors aren't powerful enough for that, as you can see with Microsoft's Surface X. As a matter of fact, I doubt ARM processors are even able to run a full version of MacOS properly. Apple with likely show a new version of iPad OS for larger laptops. The move to ARM will likely signal the end of MacOS
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[Reason077]

Probably closest thing have is the javascript JIT folks and the API emulation do in XCode to run iOS device debugging simulators.

There is actually no emulation going on in the XCode simulator. When you build for the simulator, XCode compiles actual x86 binaries and runs them against x86 versions of the iOS libraries/APIs.

 

[audiomatt]

I'm a big enthusiast, build my own water cooled computers and servers which I have done so for over 15 years. I know a great deal about computer hardware right down to manufacturing including chip fabrication and design.

I'm also a software engineer and I write server based software that runs on x86 and ARM based architectures, in the past I worked on FPGA hardware where we prototyped chip functions before committing to designing and fabricating ASIC's. I say all this to provide some context to what I'm about to say next.

Based on all the relevant data we have about Apples ARM chips they are core-for-core already better than Intel on generalised computing tasks. And that in itself is absoloutely insane because the chips Apple is producing are in phones with extremely small power and thermal budgets.

We're talking execution parity with processors that consume 30 to 50x more watts and release 100x more heat. This is literally unheard of in the industry and to put this in perspective for Intel to even get close (and still be 10x worse) they would have to bin their processors to within an inch of their life.

If you're not familiar with that term it's where they test the chips they produce and put them in different categories based on their performance such as how high they clock, if any parts of the chip are defective, how much power the chip consumes at the clock speeds it's capable of, how much heat it produces while under load etc

Apple has managed to reach parity not with their top 0.01% of produced chips like Intel does with some of their super high-end XEON's and ultra low-power U skus. They've been able to do it with from what we can decipher 86-92% of their entire chip yields.

They sell 100 Million iPhones with their latest SoC every year and they all perform the same which is to say absoloutely steller, top of the line performance, two years ahead of their closest mobile counterpart (Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos etc).

So with all that out of the way what does all this mean for the Mac Pro? - When you're wanting to build a large chip one with a wide memory bus, lots of cores, lots of on-board cache you need to start with a strong foundation and in todays chip fabrication that means more than anything performance-per-watt.

If you have a die that consumes 2.5 Watts per core and you scale that to 64 Cores which is the kind of chip appropriate for a next generation Mac Pro suddenly you have 160 Watts for raw core compute. And that's before you factor in the power consumption for core-to-core communication (uncore) which with that many cores could be 20-30 watts then the I/O such as memory and PCIe and any other "uncore" usage.

Things can quickly spiral into the 250-350 Watt range. But here is Apple with an architecture that is already sub 1 Watt for the cores. Suddenly they can produce a 64 Core chip where all the cores can be 60 Watts leaving ample room for uncore power.

This is what's exciting. Instead of coming at the processor design challange from the top (performance) they've come at it from the bottom (low power). This lends itself perfectly to making a large chip with lots of cores a chip that is appropriate for a Mac Pro class computer.

Now on top of this as I mentioned Apple has put these high performance chips in phones that have very small thermal envelopes and yet we've seen Apple able to reach very high clock speeds on these processors even when under sustained loads. This is noteworthy because this is without proper heatsinks. Apple at most has an IHS on their chips now (Integrated Heat Spreader) which is thinner than the thickness of a coin.

When they design a chip using the principle architecture of their mobile SoC's into laptops and desktops where they can attach heatsinks that have 45 Watts (MacBook Pro) to 300 Watts (Mac Pro) of heat dissipation they can run them a lot faster.

Based on AMD's usage of TSMC's 7nm process node we know that the high performance node offered by TSMC (which does differ slightly from the low-power 7nm node utilised by Apple) that the sweet spot for the transistor switching speed is around 4GHz.

This is the point where heat output, power consumption and clock speed come together for the best trade offs on each to deliver a high performance chip which doesn't guzzle energy essentially. So right now in a phone Apple is pushing 2.3GHz and already streamrolling Intels 3.6GHz-4.2GHz mobile chips core-for-core. Now imagine what Apple can do delivering their own archicture at these same clock speeds.

I need to remind you, we can only do projections because we can't overclock an iPhone SoC to see what might be.

Now I do want to temper expectations a little. There are things Apple has to overcome to deliver for a Mac Pro type computer.

Firstly I cannot overstate how difficult it is to keep so many cores fed. The interconnects between CPU cores in a single die can really hamper performance especially in the kinds of high end workflows professionals will be performing where core-to-core communication is highly utilised due to multithreading.

Secondly if Apple decides to make chips that are one huge die (like Intel) that will decrease yield rates due to increases in defects. It will also increase costs as more of the wafers produced for them will go to waste. So this is a two-fold problem, clock speeds and core counts may become restricted with this strategy.

They could potentially go with a multi-die setup similar to AMD's Zen1 or Zen2 where by you make smaller dies that are all identical and combine them together on a single module to create the CPU. If Apple were to do this it would allow for higher yields, higher clock speeds (especially on the high core count part appropriate for a Mac Pro) and lower their costs.

Thirdly scaling up an entire chip for a desktop takes time. There is a lot of engineering they can't just skip over, there is stuff they haven't done even for the iPhone and iPad. For example their current SoC has PCIe lanes and they use NVMe storage on the iPhone and iPad. That's great when you only need 4 lanes but the Mac Pro for example needs 72. This means Apple has to decide do we put 72 or more PCIe lanes into our SoC or do we put say 32 and use PCIe switching chips? - There's trade offs. Also do they move to PCIe 4.0 or even 5.0 (2021 5.0 will be making the rounds in shipping systems from their rivals).

Forth and perhaps the most important. While Apple is dominating in Mobile and their performance eclipses Intel currently (when normalising core count and frequency) there is another chip manufacturer on an unbelivable climb to the top and that is AMD.

What happens if AMD is faster than Apple and they made everyone do all this work switching? What if Apple can only produce a 32 Core part for their first Mac Pro refresh when AMD already today is selling a 64 Core chip? What if Apple can only deliver 72 PCIe lanes or the lanes they do produce are only PCIe 3.0 when AMD today is delivering 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes.

That is to me the biggest gambit they're taking here. In 2021 when these new ARM macs are supposedly coming out AMD will be delivering Zen4 based EPYC processors that feature 128 or more PCIe 5.0 lanes and 64 Cores+ (the rumour being 72 Cores but if they move to 5nm by then it may be as much as 128 Cores, all over 3GHz and under 250 Watts power consumption).

Anyway, interesting times. Personally if Apple can deliver something that is better then I say they should go for it. I don't think the downsides of software compatability headaches should hold back chip progress.

This is incredibly well explained. I really appreciate it.

I wish the industry didn't focus exclusively on cores though. Most audio DSP algorithms can't deal with cores that well... :/

 

[Azrael9]

Tons of important Mac software is not written in Swyft and does not use standard Apple APIs.

They have vast experience in this. And even more so, this time, in terms of preparation.

I suspect, Apple, have known, all along they were going to make this move with the phenominal success of the A chips in phone and pad.

It's academic...the iPad now has its own OS and is hoovering up the things that make the 'Mac' a 'Mac.' 'Son of Mac' will success his father. It's the natural order of things. One day, the 'iMac' will just be an 'iMac Air' with 'MacOS' minus the cruft.

They've probably got a compiled and in progress optimising Mac OS build running on ARM. The Bloomberg article says (from their sources) that preliminary tests have their A chips out performing the Intel ones.)

The important Mac software. Is just recompile away.

It's the same old argument and 'sky is falling' stuff that we had on the PPC to Intel transition.

Except, Apple is vastly more resourced and prepped to deal with this and has been preparing for this.

They want this. The efficiency. The performance. The control of the entire hardware/software stack. It's about the kind of laptops you can't make with Intel's 'go hotter' chips. And all the other devices they're dreaming of in the Apple secret labs. And the billions more they're going to make as a result. Why give it to Intel when you can pocket those billions yourself? People used to say Apple would never do their own cpu. Now that they have one...they don't want it to go in to their very own Mac.

Perhaps it might occur to people that Apple have thought alot of these details out...and they'll only go A chip if they can handily lay the beat down on any Intel chip.

No longer will they be mocked as a software company that makes hardware because they have to.

Azrael.
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That's quite a lofty assumption. LOL
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ofc.

I'm sure Apple have those very same 'lofty' assumptions...

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

Well, looks like a shareware paint tool in the vein of Sketchbook pro or Artrage or a myriad of others alright? Tablet interface - check. Will it load 32 bit TIFF files though or interpret the alpha channel on a TGA and can you do multi selection in that filebrowser? What's the performance going to be when working on 8K layered images?

I mean what are the benefits of that proposed iOS/macOS convergence? Surely if Apple is pushing for that they have loftier goals than enabling access to a myriad of small-ish utilities with limited scope and games that aren't even made with a desktop computer in mind? We are after all in the Mac Pro forum.

lol. Procreate. A 'shareware' tool?

*looks.* Clearly spoken from experience.

Take it you haven't used Procreate on iPad? It used it back on iPad 3 and it was fast, even then, on that 'iffy' iterative iPad. Now? The Procreate tool is used for Movie posters and is thriving. It's a truly transformational painting experience.

'Will it...'

What's the performance going to be? (I'll consult my crystal ball...) Even more devastating than it is now?

8k isn't that big a deal. I'd argue the reverse. Intel and the gpu makers have been so leisurely in the last 5-ish years that 4 k is still a struggle and we should be right past that and further along to 8k.

Apple goes Mac ARM. In fact, if they bring Procreate to an Mac ARM chip...the performance will be off the charts.

4k canvas images are a doddle for the iPad Pro right now. Yes. And they can have layers. Procreate is a great advert for what a painting app can be. Powerful and elegant without interface clutter. Blistering software painting engine that exploits the potent A12x chip. Makes apps like Photoshop and Painter 2019 look like the clunky relics they are.

There's nothing limited about the scope of iOS. It's helped drag people to bricks and mortar stores to buy more Macs and keep Mac sales up despite those stale specs and high Mac prices. (Particularly in ref' to Mac desktops.) 1 billion 'Son of Mac' devices (folks, they're just Macs with smaller screens...) brings incredible leverage to software and apps for any Mac ARM market. And it looks like Apple are thinking that way with Marizpan.

What's Android got to do with anything? 'Half a jedi.'

And procreate isn't the only example. There is Clip Studio (another great app) which is nigh on 99.% port. Affinity apps (their adoption rates speak for themselves. Great tech'.) Which are nigh on desktop counter parts. Great, great software. For me, the iPad screen isn't big enough. But I'm seeing a future iPad or Mac ARM that has an even bigger screen.

And this is without going to hardware that is 'shackled' to a fanless environment. Without a 12 core A14x Mac ARM.

'I mean'...the benefits?

Guess we're going to find out. The iPad and it's barrage of painting and image app competition are such a threat $$$ that even Adobe have decided to come to the 'Mac' ARM tea party early...

Wonder why.

Maybe Apple knows something we don't.

Azrael.

 

[jinnyman]

If the switch happens, I think you can still expect Apple to support Mac Pro 7,1 for a while.
But you should pretty much give up on possible future 3rd party developer support.

For example, those waiting for 3d rendering support, you better give up the hope.

 

[Azrael9]

Always remember what Apple did with Aperture. They simply dropped it and told their professional users to "just use Photos"

Apple could decide to drop the Final Cut X tomorrow an with it the Mac Pro and tell their professional users to "just use iMovie and an ARM". Apple has shown that they are capable of writing off whole segments of their user base if they are unprofitable.

That said, if I had to guess Apple's plans, I'd guess that keep improving the iPad until it actually can replace the low-end MacBooks but keep the higher end Macs using the Intel CPU until ARM has comparable performance.

But you never know, if they dropped one very widely used and popular professional product, they could do it again.

If it doesn't involve $$$ or direct $$$ to $$$ Apple will chainsaw it.

Software or hardware wise.

Hardware convergence? Maybe. It looks like it's on a collision course.

The iPad is hoovering up mouse/keyboard functionality now... We'll have to see what Mac ARM looks like.

Bigger screens? More performance. Yes. But touch? We'll have to wait and see.

Azrael.

 

[StuAff]

Actually, Apple did plan to make its own Mac CPU way back when, in the Aquarius project. When Motorola's 68K chips were clearly running out of steam, Jean-Louis Gassée bought a Cray XMP for the Aquarius team to design the CPU, to be quad-core & RISC. It was eventually realised it was going to be too much work, Apple just didn't have the resources to do it, and canned Aquarius. Motorola's own RISC design, the 88110, was going to be used by Apple in the successor project, Jaguar. The 88100 (which NeXT was also waiting on) never came good, and Apple ended up going into the AIM alliance and using PowerPC.

 

[Azrael9]

If the switch happens, I think you can still expect Apple to support Mac Pro 7,1 for a while.
But you should pretty much give up on possible future 3rd party developer support.

For example, those waiting for 3d rendering support, you better give up the hope.

I run Z-Brush, Lightwave3d and have downloaded Blender 3D to play with. So, I'm curious as to how '3d rendering' support is going to pan out. Or how these get ported to 'Mac Arm.'

But they'll work with the Intel iMac I buy for many years. So either way, I'm sure it will get sorted out sooner or later.

Azrael.

 

[ondioline]

Every Mac other than the iMac already has an ARM CPU in it: the T2, which is based on the A10. It obviously doesn't increase the cost of Macs that much, especially when you consider the iPhone SE pricing with the A13. 'ARM Based' could also mean a 'T3' with more system functionality offloaded to it, with the addition of an x86_64 chip as a co-processor (which is essentially already the case today)

XNU can presumably arbitrarily execute in a mixed-architecture environment, especially considering mixed-arch fat binaries are already baked in to the OS. No need for any emulation.

 

[bsamcash]

Wow. I didn't mean to spark such a heated debate about TB.

 

[StuAff]

FWIW:
1. Whatever you're running today does not become instantly obsolescent, let alone useless. because there's a new thing out. There are still people getting good use out of PPC Macs and OS9, let alone older Intel machines (my newest machine is a decade old....).
2. Whatever Apple is cooking up will be considerably faster. No ifs, buts, or maybes. The idea that ARM chips couldn't run the macOS is preposterously laughable. Raw benchmarks say otherwise, developments like Ampere's Altra chips say otherwise...Absolutely no reason why Mac Pro couldn't go ARM. More cores and faster clocks and greater efficiency does not a bad thing make.
3. Apple keeps saying that macOS and iOS are not merging. They keep launching new versions of both. I think they get that a screwdriver is not a sledgehammer, or vice versa, and are happy to sell you both kinds of tool, even if some of the customer base don't get it.
4. We've been here before, people. My first-gen Power Mac ran 68K as well or better than its predecessors. OS X ran Classic apps seamlessly (think I actually booted OS 9 about five times after getting the G4). Mac Pro 1,1 annihilated the G5s let alone my dual gig G4 MDD. It'll work out fine.
5. If I were bending Tim's ear, I'd suggest considering Intel, AMD, and A-series chips for each range and use whatever best suits. The software could handle it now as it did in the past (fat binaries for 68K/PPC on OS 9, Carbon for OS 9 & X, universal binaries for PPC and Intel), those of us who Boot Camp and/or use x86 VMs still get it…but even if Apple dump BC, the AMD thing was for testing purposes only and it's all A-series from now, it's highly unlikely there won't be a workaround of some sort, officially supported or not. Worst case, I'll need a Windows gaming rig in a few years. Oh no. The horror.
6. If anyone feels the need to panic sell a 7,1 of decent spec, please do. You'll have plenty of takers.

 

[Plutonius]

The ARM thread is causing a lot of hype and panic that Apple is going to suddenly obsolete machines they just released within a year or two.

If Apple replaces everything with ARM based processors, how long do people think it will take Apple to get the bugs out of the new architecture ?

I myself would wait till at least version three before considering a purchase.

Also, there is no guarantees that the new design will support and have the performance (virtualization) on some specific applications that are currently run on the 7,1.

As I see it, stick with the 7,1 or move away from Apple.
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Apple's done this transition twice before. Both times they had a built-in emulator to run the previous architecture's applications. A 68K emulator and a PPC one. I would assume Apple will have to do something similar here.

My 2nd thought is virtualization. I use VMWare heavily for previous versions of the macOS and Windows. A move to ARM will mean this kind of usage will switch to emulation, rather than virtualization. No one's done Windows emulation on the Mac in around 15 years. Connectix is long gone. Will VMWare or Parallels get into the emulation business? Will a new company emerge? Will they want to add, and will Apple allow them to emulate Intel versions of macOS?

Very good points on emulation.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I just can’t imagine an ARM CPU replacing a Xeon with any adequacy.

I’d bet Mini, MacBook(maybe a new MacBook Air), and the lowest-end iMac get Apple CPU’s while higher end iMacs, maybe a Mini-Pro, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro keep Intel.

Unless they figure out a way to include something like 10 or 15 processors in one box for the highend, but that would be ridiculous. Having two code bases for their model lineup seems to unnecessarily complicate things, again... Windows 8 tried the 'mobile desktop' idea, and it failed for a variety of reasons, but the 'dumbing down' of the OS failed. Pushing under powered processors means that things will have to be 'simplified' to not overtax the them. I don't want an iMac to become a fat and useless tablet with a builtin stand.

 

[oneMadRssn]

The important Mac software. Is just recompile away.

Read this: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1270465602570686464.html

There is A LOT more to it than "just recompile."

They want this. The efficiency. The performance. The control of the entire hardware/software stack. It's about the kind of laptops you can't make with Intel's 'go hotter' chips. And all the other devices they're dreaming of in the Apple secret labs. And the billions more they're going to make as a result. Why give it to Intel when you can pocket those billions yourself? People used to say Apple would never do their own cpu. Now that they have one...they don't want it to go in to their very own Mac.
...
No longer will they be mocked as a software company that makes hardware because they have to.

You know Apple doesn't "make" the A chips, right? TSMC is the fab - TSMC developed the 7nm and now 5nm process nodes and perfected the manufacture of transistors in that size. TSMC developed the process flow and PDK. Apple did a lot, don't get me wrong, but it's not like Apple will be 100% vertically integrated hardware and software. They'll still relying on TSMC's innovations.

You know who else uses TSMC's 7nm technology? AMD Ryzen 4000 CPUs. If Apple wanted to switch fabrication of CPUs away from Intel to TSMC to get all the efficiency and performance of 7nm process, they would easily go to AMD and ask them to buy a TSMC-made AMD CPU. Best of both words - still x86/x84 compatible, but with all the benefits of TSMC and 7nm.

 

[Azrael9]

Read this: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1270465602570686464.html

There is A LOT more to it than "just recompile."




You know Apple doesn't "make" the A chips, right? TSMC is the fab - TSMC developed the 7nm and now 5nm process nodes and perfected the manufacture of transistors in that size. TSMC developed the process flow and PDK. Apple did a lot, don't get me wrong, but it's not like Apple will be 100% vertically integrated hardware and software. They'll still relying on TSMC's innovations.

You know who else uses TSMC's 7nm technology? AMD Ryzen 4000 CPUs. If Apple wanted to switch fabrication of CPUs away from Intel to TSMC to get all the efficiency and performance of 7nm process, they would easily go to AMD and ask them to buy a TSMC-made AMD CPU. Best of both words - still x86/x84 compatible, but with all the benefits of TSMC and 7nm.

It won't be the 'little ticky thing' in the 'checkbox' (there was a bit more to it back in the PPC to Intel days...and I'm sure it would be 'just a ticky thing' now.)

But in terms of the ground work and the dev' tools apple has now? It will probably be a lot easier than it was then. Even Adobe are bringing Photoshop to the iOS. Affinity have ported their apps. Even Clip Studio have a 99% port for iPad. So it seems $$$ make it a whole lot easier...and Apple own the entire stack (bar their own fabs..>) or the 'stack' parts that matter.

Yes. We know Apple don't own their own fabs... (They Design. ...and sub-contract manufacturers...same with their iOS and Mac hardware...)

Azrael.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

FWIW:

2. Whatever Apple is cooking up will be considerably faster. No ifs, buts, or maybes. The idea that ARM chips couldn't run the macOS is preposterously laughable. Raw benchmarks say otherwise, developments like Ampere's Altra chips say otherwise...Absolutely no reason why Mac Pro couldn't go ARM. More cores and faster clocks and greater efficiency does not a bad thing make.

I remember being at a Microsoft meeting where people brought up the 'minimum requirements' for Windows 2000, as I remember. Someone asked 'Well, if a xxx based machine will run Windows 2000, what will run on Windows 2000 in that configuration? Solitaire?' People laughed, the Microsoft guy laughed too. 'Well, obviously we don't want people to actually try to use a system like that. Listen, I don;t know who, or how, people here come up with those configurations, and I wouldn't use one, or submit anyone to them, but they claim it will run Windows.', but I had clients that actually thought that meant Microsoft 'recommended' that level of computer, and then were disappointed when they bought one, and it sucked.

SO will the macOS run on an Atom, or an ARM Cortex? Sure, they could probably get it to run, but what would actually run ON that configuration. Like the Celeron, and the Intel Atom, neither one had any 'torque' for heavy lifting. Atom's would do IE all day, but try any heavy lifting, and it was a skateboard compared to a Ducati. And a Mac Pro based on ARM processors? How many, like I mentioned above. 10? 20? 30? Would the new new new Mac Pro be a massively parallel system full of processors, memory interconnects, pipelines, power supplies, cooling, expense, needless complexity. A Cray-2? Will it use immersive cooling?

ARM's were aimed at low compute complexity devices. Phones, watches, tablets. To put a three cylinder motor in a Formula1 car is possible, but why do it...
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There is A LOT more to it than "just recompile."

Users always seem to think that things are 'easy' when they don't understand the complexity. 'Just rewrite it!' Yeah, how many hours of time, how many millions of lines of code. Yeah, 'Easy!'...

 

[laz232]

Not to be rude, but someone spending $8K let alone $40K, surely is running a business and should recoup that investment within a year or two.

I do run a business (oneperson, but limited liability by stock capital - full accountancy requirements) - and use T&M equipment in the 20k range. Recoup investment = break even point. A 40k computer would typically be written off over 5 years (in the accounts) and in my country, the tax write-off - which counts in terms of actual bottom line for the company - on a 40k CAPEX investment is >10years!

 

[StuAff]

I remember being at a Microsoft meeting where people brought up the 'minimum requirements' for Windows 2000, as I remember. Someone asked 'Well, if a xxx based machine will run Windows 2000, what will run on Windows 2000 in that configuration? Solitaire?' People laughed, the Microsoft guy laughed too. 'Well, obviously we don't want people to actually try to use a system like that. Listen, I don;t know who, or how, people here come up with those configurations, and I wouldn't use one, or submit anyone to them, but they claim it will run Windows.', but I had clients that actually thought that meant Microsoft 'recommended' that level of computer, and then were disappointed when they bought one, and it sucked.

SO will the macOS run on an Atom, or an ARM Cortex? Sure, they could probably get it to run, but what would actually run ON that configuration. Like the Celeron, and the Intel Atom, neither one had any 'torque' for heavy lifting. Atom's would do IE all day, but try any heavy lifting, and it was a skateboard compared to a Ducati. And a Mac Pro based on ARM processors? How many, like I mentioned above. 10? 20? 30? Would the new new new Mac Pro be a massively parallel system full of processors, memory interconnects, pipelines, power supplies, cooling, expense, needless complexity. A Cray-2? Will it use immersive cooling?

ARM's were aimed at low compute complexity devices. Phones, watches, tablets. To put a three cylinder motor in a Formula1 car is possible, but why do it...
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Users always seem to think that things are 'easy' when they don't understand the complexity. 'Just rewrite it!' Yeah, how many hours of time, how many millions of lines of code. Yeah, 'Easy!'...

There have been ARM desktop computers since before the Mac went to PPC. I used them in my school days. You can buy ARM servers and workstations today. Atom and Cortex were not mobile/low power not desktop chips. The ARM architecture, just like x86, is more than flexible enough to accomodate mobile and server/workstation applications. Looking forward to your explanation of how this thing, or something like it, couldn't possibly run macOS.

 

[whooleytoo]

Why saddle a new ARM-based design with Mac OS? I think it's more likely to start a new branch of the Apple tree, if anything more in the laptop/tablet+ direction that sells bigger numbers. There is not huge emerging market awaiting a replacement for desktop/workstation Mac OS—this should be evident in how long it took to replace the last Mac Pro with this one. The Mac Pro may die a natural death, but I doubt it'll be because it was replaced with an ARM-based design in the manner the Mac Pro G5 was replaced by a Xeon design.

That's a good point actually, perhaps Apple intends to release an all-new (ish) platform. Something like iPadOS for desktops.

I'm not convinced about the appeal of it. For me iOS/iPadOS work because they're optimised for the device form-factor. Taking that OS to a 'desktop' machine with keyboard, mouse, it'd need a lot of work to support keyboard shortcuts etc. for me to be anywhere near as quick/productive as I'd be on an existing Mac.

 

[Dustman]

That's still an EXTREMELY short lifespan for those that dropped north of $40k! I have $8k into mine, which IMHO is still a boatload for a computer. I guess it's all relative and depends on perspective. For the stupidly wealthy, that is nothing. For the everyday working man, that's quite an investment!

Ironically the first Intel products had an even shorter lifespan. The MacBook launched with 10.4.6 and was only updated to 10.6.8. Even when they updated Macbooks to Core 2 Duo, they launched with 10.5, and got cut off with 10.7. It was a huge slap in the face. I’m hopeful that with their new-ish commitment to supporting things for a super long time (looking at you, iPhone 5S) that they’ll allow Intel and ARM to co-exist for a while and maintain both platforms.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Even Adobe are bringing Photoshop to the iOS.

It's taken them YEARS and after all that time what they released on iOS/ARM isn't even half of what Photoshop is on Mac/Intel.

If Adobe Photoshop is the best example you have, then the transition to ARM is doomed.

 

[Azrael9]

That's a good point actually, perhaps Apple intends to release an all-new (ish) platform. Something like iPadOS for desktops.

Yes. I think so.

MacOS optimised for larger touch screens? Which will be 'all-new' (ish) to the new Mac ARM platform.

Azrael.

 

[StuAff]

Ironically the first Intel products had an even shorter lifespan. The MacBook launched with 10.4.6 and was only updated to 10.6.8. Even when they updated Macbooks to Core 2 Duo, they launched with 10.5, and got cut off with 10.7. It was a huge slap in the face. I’m hopeful that with their new-ish commitment to supporting things for a super long time (looking at you, iPhone 5S) that they’ll allow Intel and ARM to co-exist for a while and maintain both platforms.

Not forgetting the Core Solo Mac mini. That lasted six months & software support stopped after Snow Leopard.

 

[Azrael9]

It's taken them YEARS and after all that time what they released on iOS/ARM isn't even half of what Photoshop is on Mac/Intel.

If Adobe Photoshop is the best example you have, then the transition to ARM is doomed.

It's not my example. It's Adobe's. Take 'their best' (which hasn't been up to that much...) up with them.

If they want to release beta software on the iPad, that's up to them. But they're clearly here for 'ARM' nice and early *this* time.... ($$$.) As for it being half. Half of what? It's bloated, rentware software. So they only brought half the bloat over? Maybe the other half of their bloated junk can wait as its non-essential? Or better still...

There's loads of image editors that are way better on iPads and 'already' here and waiting for Mac ARM. You can find those examples yourself.

Azrael.