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Why the ARM transition will suck, and why it won't.
- Thread starter darkgoob
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My experience with Macs is that they don't run Windows well in terms of thermals.
I think that I'd just run old versions of macOS.
Yeah, if I had just bought a top-spec Xeon Mac Pro ultra-grater the day before WWDC for $55,000 (or whatever it costs), I might be feeling a tad bit sick.
That really kinda blows my mind. I mean if Apple was saying, "We're not going to drop Intel, we're just gonna have both for the foreseeable future," then that would make a lot more sense to me.
If top-end Macs could come with BOTH kinds of CPUs for awhile at least that would be sweet. I know a lot of devs who use Macbook Pro to develop for non-Mac x86 platforms, and to lose that ability would mean basically they all have to use a PC.
Apple has so far not really explained how well an x86 VMs or Docker container would work or if it's even supported.
Going to be curious how this unfolds
Wouldn't class-compliant audio interfaces still be compatible? Most of the audio interfaces (esp. the simpler 2 channel ones) do not require drivers or any kind of control panel software.
Update: I was thinking about it today and realized that most class compliant audio interfaces do in fact currently work with iOS (Apple silicon) devices (iPads, iPhones). So at the moment, unless they require a special driver or control panel software, they should in theory work with ARM Macs out of the box.
I'm not a silicon genius, but I'm curious how thunderbolt 3 ports will endure through this transition. I thought there was some sort of dependancy on the chipset to support it. Chipsets were also Intel no?
Update: I was thinking about it today and realized that most class compliant audio interfaces do in fact currently work with iOS (Apple silicon) devices (iPads, iPhones). So at the moment, unless they require a special driver or control panel software, they should in theory work with ARM Macs out of the box.
I'm not a silicon genius, but I'm curious how thunderbolt 3 ports will endure through this transition. I thought there was some sort of dependancy on the chipset to support it. Chipsets were also Intel no?
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Yes, TB3 will be supporter via USB4, which has TB3 built in to the specification. Apple Silicon Macs will be probably some of the first consumer products released to have USB4.
Did you go through that transition? To be fair, the move from 68k to PowerPC didn’t wreck that much of my software. But I remember buying a very expensive 17” PowerBook G4 at the end of 2004. Apple customers spending $2,500 in 2004 dollars, were also told that our shiny new PowerMacs would be supported for ”years to come”. I got one OS update cycle for MacOS on PPC (over two years) and three years of total Rosetta support. Then the thing was officially dead way before a $2,500 dollar computer should be at end of life. And PPC was at end of life well before official support for repairs had ended. Developers were leaving universal binary and a three year old machine wasn’t even getting an updated OS.
My late 2013 MacBook Pro retina was running Catalina when I sold it and it still supports Big Sur. I upgraded November 2019 to a new MacBook Pro at a cost of $3,500. I knew Apple silicon would come, but I didn’t know it would be right now or I wouldn’t have sold my old computer or bought the new one.
If history is an indicator I’ll get MacOS 11.2 and 11.3, maaaybe 11.4. Then Intel OS won’t support a three year old, $3,500 dollar machine. My choices will be Windows on BootCamp and stability and security patches for 11.3/4 for the rest of the life of my Mac. And I’ll be praying that I can still run my pro software as I have to abandon Safari and other internet apps in the short run for more secure third party software that will run for another 2 years. I’ll have to sell and replace a beautiful machine in excellent condition years before it has begun to be obsolete in terms of performance power.
Apple is just concerned with streamlining their operation. There isn’t incentive one, for them to continue to support Intel Macs despite the cost to the consumer. I truly wish that Microsoft was real competition of good quality computers in an ecosystem that was integrated like Apples. I have been using Apple computer since IIe. But I swear they have got to figure out Rosetta and universal binary, and it can’t be for two years of new and four years of life-support. No one spends $3k for a computer to be on life support.
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So, in that case everything then would be emulation... nothing not be virtualization anymore. (..sounds like a step backwards), but with performance, i guess that makes up for it.
The only time I’ve seen this is with Windows emulation software on PowerPC Macs. But those companies had to do the R&D and develop theiR own emulation, Apple never did do that work.
Intel Macs will dominate for many years to come as they dwarf the amount of ARM Macs. Apple has sold about 195m Intel Macs since 2006 so it'll take a long time to make that with ARM Macs.
I have this scenario in my mind where the ARM Mac so wildly outperforms Intel and AMD in performance that it makes the platform irresistible to consumers and then businesses want in on it as well. And they just sell like gangbusters. It's not going to happen with gamers but, if there is a huge performance delta and the typical business/consumer software is there, they could have the problem of having to make a ton of them.
I'm in the same boat having bought an MBP16 in December last year. But I don't see the future as that gloomy. I expect that they'll be Intel versions of Mac OS for the next 4-5 years, and security updates for another 3 years after this. 8 years is quite reasonable to get out of a laptop. After this, you just need to be more security conscious about what you keep on the machine, set up firewalls and anti-virus. I only just got rid of my (still working) 2007 MBP last year, and still have a 2011 Mac Mini running as a file server.
I don't really care about keeping secondary computers that are > 8 years old running the latest and greatest version of the OS. I've given away so many old laptops to friends and family with simple needs that I just see it as the natural order to buy something new every 5-6 years. That's a long time in tech!
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There are (I assume) a lot more Intel Macs in use today than there were PowerPC Macs back in 2006 during the last transition, so Apple will be more incentivised to keep existing customers happy, while encouraging them to upgrade to ARM Macs, as they ramp up the numbers in circulation.
Once there are more active ARM Macs than Intel ones, then we'll start to see a decline in support for Intel-based Macs.
I expect Apple is looking at the average update cycles for each model, and trying to align end-of-support for MacOS at about the same time frame. So after "x" years, as you were starting to think about an upgrade, Apple will make the choice easy by removing ongoing OS-updates, and this will give you the "push" to move to ARM Macs.
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I have a PowerMac G5 next to me right now in my home office. It's my charging station for mobile devices. I haven't booted it in at least a year. I think about what it could be useful for and I don't have an answer to that. Yeah, Apple did abandon it.
If they can get translation to work 99% of the time - it would be fantastic. If they could only get emulation to work and get passable performance, that would go some ways - just being able to run it would be better than nothing.