
Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-plans-to-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020
======
mark_l_watson
This might just be a bargaining move on Apple’s part, but I don’t think so. I
think that long term they are much better off controlling their entire
hardware stack. I wouldn’t be surprised to even see them make their own
display screens.

As an Apple customer, I like this idea also. For 20 years, I used to be a
desktop Linux fanatic and later became a fan of Android. In the last few
years, I have switched to using all Apple devices.

Even though I am a computer scientists, I actually spend more time on my iPad
and iPhone, by far, than on my Mac laptops. I only use a laptop for software
development (because of the nature of my work, that is often just SSHed into
Linux servers), the rest of my workflow and entertainment is on iOS devices.

The older I get, the more I want to get my work done expediently, leaving time
to study new technologies and spend time with family and friends. At least for
right now, I am maximally effective in Apple’s environments.

As a bonus, I trust Apple more that Microsoft, Google, Intel, etc.

~~~
sreque
I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob
I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I
have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer
that to mac.

You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience
apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major
operating systems I have to choose from.

Lastly, what does Apple have to gain by switching away from Intel? Not much,
at least, not much that benefits me as a customer. Likely they are interested
in making their laptops have more in common with their iOS devices, which does
little to nothing for me. Apple's behavior towards OSX and macbooks in the
past few years should be of great concern for anyone, especially if you
actually like the devices.

~~~
npunt
2/3s of all PR activity on Github is on a Mac, for what it's worth. Certainly
the platform punches above its weight relative to market share.

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2...](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2023)

~~~
nunez
I don't trust that for two reasons:

1) There is a lot of cargo-culting around the MacBook because _hurr durr
Windows is terribad_ (though, to be fair, Docker _does_ work better natively
with OS X than Windows, even under WSL), and

2) Most companies give their developers the choice of a MacBook or the
shittiest Windows machines known to man (because of irresistable volume deals
from Windows OEMs). I bet the spread would be more even if companies were
willing to offer the Surface Book as an option. This laptop is _nice_.

~~~
mcny
Satisfaction rate among surface owners is abysmal. At this point, I'd call the
surface brand a failed experiment.

~~~
nunez
Do you have stats for that? Maybe I'm an outlier, but I loved the Surface Pro
so much, I bought a Surface Book for work and a Surface Book 2 for personal
use.

~~~
mcny
Sorry for the delay

[https://www.consumerreports.org/laptop-
computers/microsoft-s...](https://www.consumerreports.org/laptop-
computers/microsoft-surface-laptops-and-tablets-not-recommended-by-consumer-
reports/)

Archived at [https://archive.fo/sBiUK](https://archive.fo/sBiUK)

------
Stranger43
Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the
professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward?

I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer
living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app-
store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be
MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photoshop, autocad, mathematica(ok
that one is fairly portable), AfterEffects and whatever it is the pro's use
for video editing those days are a different ballgame.

We saw microsoft stumble down that path with their successfull port of windows
to arm where the OS itself worked but where no major 3rd party business
essential app ever got ported to windows for arm, with a lot of IT departments
choosing to keep windows 7 around our of fear of what 10 would morph into
until MS begun to dial back their ambitions for windows everywhere.

Im guessing that the short run result of Apple going though with OSX on arm is
that a lot of the CAD and video editing heavyweights just drop support for
whatever OSX morphs into to support running on IOS hardware.

~~~
bhouston
Adobe has a lot of stuff that works well on iOS. ARM has neon instructions for
SIMD. I think they will be okay. Changing over from one SIMD architecture to
another is not that hard.

AutoCAD isn't ultra optimized for Mac anyhow, it will be okay.

This transition may screw up or significantly slow down VMs of Intel-based
OSes like Ubuntu.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
I think developers flocked to Intel Macs because it gave them one machine that
could run Mac, Linux, Windows in virtual or bootcamp environments. If x86
compatibility goes away, developers may jump ship to Linux or Windows
machines.

~~~
squiggleblaz
I used to have a PPC G5 iMac running Linux. It was fine; hitched me onto the
Linux-on-Mac train for more than a decade once I finally ditched Mac OS X. And
Linux already works nicely on ARM - it's the most common deployment.

This may be a terrible outcome for multi-OS users, but it's not guaranteed.

------
jimrandomh
Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information
to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple
developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also
very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's
unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is
going to require significant work by third parties outside Apple who haven't
even heard of the possibility of this happening until today.

~~~
cptskippy
Apple did a pretty decent job when they transitioned from PPC to x86_64, it
has Rosetta to translate PPC to x86. Microsoft and partners released ARM based
Windows Laptops this year that can run Win32 apps in emulation.

What's stopping Apple from shipping Macbooks with a custom SoC that can run
existing Apps in emulation until developers can recompile? I would argue that
most Air and Macbook owners aren't developers and probably don't have many
apps that didn't ship with their system.

~~~
danaliv
And before that they successfully managed the transition from m68k to PPC.

The processor doesn't matter.

~~~
pvg
It does matter that the new processor is a lot more powerful and faster than
the old processor. This wouldn't be the case this time.

~~~
klodolph
It's not powerful/faster that sells chips, it's power and speed relative to
envelope. Maybe the iMac pro continues to ship with Xeons, the iMac with Core
i5 and i7 depending on configuration.

But compare the Intel Core m3 to the Apple A11, and a completely different
story will emerge. The A11 is already comparable to relatively recent Macbooks
in terms of performance.

~~~
pvg
The point is, if we're going to bring up what an 'easy' time Apple has had
transitioning from one architecture to another, it's worth remembering each
transition came with a big performance jump. This made the new platform
desirable and emulation bearable. If they are considering a transition again,
'bearable emulation' is not as much of a given.

~~~
mozumder
I'd expect a huge performance jump when the new ARM-based Macs come out, both
in Single-core (they can ramp up the clocks and increase cache and execution
units) and Multi-core (they can add more cores to fit new power budgets as
well).

The current A11 chips for iPhones are within 10% of Intel's top mobile chips
on Geekbench, and within about 30% on their top desktop CPUs.

It's entirely possible for chip architectures to see 2x-3x speeds when moving
from mobile power budgets to desktop power budgets.

An Intel Pentium 4410Y Kaby Lake running at 4.5-6 Watts gets about 1800
single-core on Geekbench, while an Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake running at
115 Watts gets 5600 single-core on Geekbench.

~~~
kllrnohj
> The current A11 chips for iPhones are within 10% of Intel's top mobile chips
> on Geekbench

No, they aren't. iPhone X's multithreaded geekbench score is 10k. The 15"
macbook pro is 15k. That's a lot more than 10%. It's only close if you look at
the lower end Intel chips, the dual core ones (which is what Apple ships in
the 13" macbook pro).

~~~
mozumder
Those are multi-core numbers, not the single-core numbers.

What do you think is the most important for 250million desktop users? Because
the vast majority of them are sitting idle waiting for interaction tasks, like
on your system now.

~~~
michaelmrose
Even browsers are doing a better job of loading multiple cores now and desktop
machines often have more processes running in the background.

------
phire
Does anyone remember Intel's random rant about how "emulation of x86 violates
our intellectual property" from last year?

[https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-sti...](https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-still-
going-strong/)

Intel didn't name names, and everyone at the time assumed it was related to
Microsoft and their efforts to ship windows 10 on ARM with a 32 bit only x86
emulator.

But I wonder if that rant was actually aimed at Apple. Microsoft's emulator
only needs to target a older subset of x86, one that could avoid ant patented
instructions.

If Apple are planning to move from x86 to arm, they will need an emulator that
supports full 64bit with some relatively recent extensions that all MacOS
applications target by default.

~~~
RI_Swamp_Yankee
That would put Intel in the crosshairs of anti-trust. The have a defacto
monopoly on personal computer processors, and this sounds like an abuse of
their market position to stifle innovation.

~~~
scott_karana
How would Apple vs Microsoft change anything in those circumstances, though?

------
lambda_lover
> "A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility
> where it has failed to gain a foothold so far."

> "Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan,
> for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and
> iPad apps on Macs"

Two things here:

1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving
to a walled garden where Apple forces you to publish apps through their App
Store with a paid dev account, etc. just for the privilege of users on their
platform. ARM doesn't _necessarily_ mean this, but it _is_ a different CPU
arch. When Apple transitioned to Intel/x86 from PowerPC, Intel processors were
performant enough compared to PowerPC processors to provide a pleasant
emulated PowerPC environment for applications build for PowerPC. I don't think
that a switch to ARM would provide this benefit, and afaik Intel's mobile
offerings aren't that far off from ARM efficiency. So what's the benefit? Just
vertical integration, I guess? Escaping Intel's backdoors and high prices?

2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps
are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like
checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a
desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there
actually a use case?

3) Given the hellscape of bugs currently present in iOS/macOS, does anybody
have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on
this scale? It sounds like the sort of thing that requires a lot of talent and
a lot of focus. Apple has the capital for this, but not the environment, imo.

Seems to me like this could be the nail in the coffin for Macbooks that's been
pending since the merger of the macOS/iOS teams and the introduction of the
controversial TouchBar/USB-C Pro.

~~~
htormey
“2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps
are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like
checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a
desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there
actually a use case?”

Right now many new desktop apps are just badly ported web apps wrapped in
electron. They are slow and eat a lot of memory as all of their UI is a being
rendered in a glorified standalone chrome tab.

This is less about iOS apps on OSX and more about making it easier for the iOS
developer ecosystem to build desktop apps. Right now it’s web teams that are
building desktop apps because for most companies it’s too expensive to hire a
dedicated desktop team. Even big apps like slack/WhatsApp use electron.

Making it easier for iOS developers to build desktop applications with the
APIs they currently use should hopefully lead to higher quality apps.

~~~
emodendroket
Don't a number of iOS apps use essentially the same technique?

~~~
htormey
Most if not all of the top 100 mobile apps are native applications.

Hybrid mobile frameworks like Cordova tend to get a bad rap these days
especially with the arrival of more performant alternatives like React Native.

~~~
emodendroket
I avoid installing apps for most sites, but I kind of remember in the early
days, anyway, people were just sneaking a Web view in there for most of the
functionality in many apps.

------
uptown
Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that the iPad is "the clearest expression of
our vision of the future of personal computing" and Apple only sells around 4M
Macs per quarter, while iOS devices dwarf this stat. If their plan is to
continue moving users from desktop/laptop devices to their iOS ecosystem, and
the software can be transformed to cross between both classes of devices, then
it only makes sense to unify the processor architecture as-well. Especially
considering the expertise they've brought in-house to accomplish this, and the
success they've demonstrated with their "A" service of chips, complemented by
some of the specialized co-processors which have begun popping up in their
accessories.

I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors --
laptop-like devices and desktop devices, if the market demands this. But for
most users, they don't care what's inside if it let's them accomplish what
they're trying to accomplish.

~~~
joezydeco
_I still expect that they 'll offer devices in traditional form factors_

What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?

~~~
rfrey
Buy two iPads and use one as a keyboard.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not :-)

That said, CPUs have gotten so cost effective that it makes possible something
which has come in and out of favor for a while, which is a network of devices
that do one thing co-operating as a larger system.

So lets say you buy your "iDisk" which is a storage brick that you can put on
a short range wireless network. A couple of iPad monitors, a wireless Apple
keyboard, and a wireless Apple mouse. You set up this box of stuff and arrange
it around on your desk and it is essentially a "single" computer system
perceptually which, running a development "app" could work fine for
development.

~~~
joezydeco
We've been dreaming about this kind of system since the rumors were flying
about the Apple "Brick".

The "brick" turned out to be the all-aluminum MacBook, being carved from a
single piece of metal.

------
israrkhan
Apple has been preparing itself for independence from underlying CPU
arachitecture for a while. In WWDC 2015[1], they announced bitcode. All App
submissions to AppStore are compiled to to bitcode. This allows Apple to re-
optimize/re-compile your app binary in the future for newer hardware without
the need to submit new version of your app to the store.

This allows Apple to switch to intel chip on iPhone, or switch to an ARM chip
on MacOS.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-
devel...](https://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-developer-
news-at-wwdc-that-nobodys-talking-about-bitcode/)

~~~
insaneirish
> This allows Apple to switch to intel chip on iPhone, or switch to an ARM
> chip on MacOS.

I think you're assuming way too much. Says Chris Lattner regarding Bitcode,
"It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of enhancements, but it isn't
a panacea that makes everything magically portable." [1]

[1]: [http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-
transcript/#bitcod...](http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-
transcript/#bitcode)

~~~
jernfrost
I believe Lattner said there was interest in making a CPU architecture
independent bitcode though. At least bitcode is part of the way.

------
thothamon
Well. We'll see what they do, but Apple had better be very careful. If a lot
of OSS software won't run on Apple's new chip, then it becomes very hard for a
software developer like myself to stick with Apple. And it is developer energy
that sustains the software ecosystem for Apple....including many developers
who are in the Mac ecosystem to develop for iOS.

This is not necessarily the wrong move for Apple, but it is fraught with
danger. Here be dragons.

~~~
edude03
OSS software can "just" be recompiled though.

~~~
thothamon
In theory yes, but back in the PPC days a lot of stuff was not available even
though theoretically it could have been.

------
sangd
This looks to be a very good move to optimize and significantly improve Apple
products' security and reliability.

I do not understand why we argue what is better between Mac, Windows and
Linux. It all comes down to the scope of what we're using it for. All of these
3 OSes have complex parts and arguing which one is better is not a a good
conversation to have. The market already says it all for what choices people
are making. These 3 OSes feature development would always follow the market
demand. They're usually not that far off for important features. And whether
they choose to focus/optimize them is a business decision.

I have used all 3 and I like different parts of all 3. I currently use mostly
my Macbook Pro, iPhone and sometimes iPad as they're very reliable and high
quality made products. They often get my job done mostly without a hiccup. I
would choose the product that get my work done best within the least amount of
time so I could focus on other more important things. My wife, however,
prefers her Windows laptop & android phone as she could do her work better and
she prefers android because of its flexibility.

------
jweir
Apple does have a good record of moving their OS and software from different
architectures. 68XXX to PPC to Intel was not a horrible experience. Having
gone through three transitions I don't remember a lot of pain - but maybe I am
repressing it!

~~~
troupe
It is fairly common for newer versions of OS X to break software that worked
on previous versions. If you try to use Photoshop 6 on a modern version of OS
X it isn't going to work. I think this makes the chip transition less painful
because no one really expects their old software to work anyway.

~~~
bobwaycott
> _... no one really expects their old software to work anyway._

My experience with HN comments leads me to believe otherwise, at least among
professionals. :)

~~~
troupe
Well everyone (including myself) likes to complain about it, but there is a
huge difference in how many OS updates it takes to break a legacy application
on OS X and Windows. If we really expected the OS X updates to not break
things, we'd move to a different OS.

------
teemwerk
Maybe a bit tangential, but from an economic it's interesting to see Intel's
market cap vs TSMC, given that TSMC is purely a foundry. Nowadays what 10nm or
14nm actually means is a lot fuzzier than previous nodes, but the general
consensus seems to be Intel's fab tech lead is either pretty precarious or
already gone, so I'm just gonna assume even (which is admittedly a poor,
oversimplified assumption).

Then TSMC and Intel are pretty even, which is slightly interesting to
extrapolate all manner of conclusions.

Intel has slowly opened it's fabs to outsiders, however the first one was
Altera, who Intel now owns, so... Main point is in 20, 30 years, is Intel's
main business going to be fabbing their own chips, or someone else's? I dunno,
I just enjoy following the industry.

~~~
SomeHacker44
If TSMC's fab is as good as or better than Intel's, then fabless companies
like AMD and Apple will reap competitive benefits over Intel, which now has to
have IP for CPUs it sells as well as IP for its fab business.

------
blacklight
I personally hate close fences with no rooms for customization, and many
computer scientists are on the same wavelength.

Windows is an awful choice for software development, a job that usually
requires a lot of interaction with Unix servers. Microsoft's recent crush for
Linux and open source can't fix many years of closed standards, closed
protocols, and Embrace-Extend-Exterminate evil culture.

And MacOS, even though it's still loosely based on a Unix *BSD flavor, still
falls into the "closed fence" category - brew is nice but can't be compared
with the maturity of the package managers on any Linux distro, you can't just
recompile or update the kernel on the fly to get support for a new device, and
OS internals are purposely obscure to developers. Paying all that money for
such a closed box, if you're anything more than an average users, is simply a
waste of money.

Linux distros are by far the best environment for a computer scientists - made
by developers, for developers - but there's no major vendor that sells
machines with Linux pre-installed and supported, and getting Linux installed
on the newest Surface or Dell toy is often a challenge that gets many
frustrated.

There's definitely a huge gap in the market, and as a computer scientist I
feel that none of the major vendors cares to provide me with a solid machine
to do my work.

~~~
metafunctor
I, too, used to love tinkering with Linux. I would compile my own kernels,
hack drivers and fix bugs to make it run better on the hardware I chose to
buy. I wanted everything to be just so.

Then, I realized that I have more money than time. I can choose Apple
hardware, and run OS X (now macOS), trouble free. The only time I patched my
Linux kernel was when some piece of hardware didn't work. Now, I simply choose
hardware that works with my mac. It's not that much more expensive, usually.

On the software side, my old workflow with terminals, SSH, and browsers is
pretty much unchanged. The only thing I really liked but Apple dropped (and I
hate them for it) was virtual desktops. For that, I use TotalSpaces2.

That said, I think you can still get a Dell XPS with Linux preinstalled, no?

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
I've always kind of wondered what you guys are doing with your computers where
you run into issues with Linux. For 95% of users, even software developers, in
there off time you just want a web browser.

If you are developing, Linux is almost certainly better. The vast majority of
languages have all their libraries available in the built in package manager,
the included versions being guaranteed to work together.

I'm obviously not suggesting you run Arch Linux, but any Debian based distro
will pretty much just work. And Ubuntu LTS doubly so.

~~~
haZard_OS
I second that. I own a System76 laptop (Ubuntu 16.04 pre-installed) and an HP
stream that I bought specifically to run POP! OS. I have also replaced several
of my colleagues' OS with a Linux distro and I have yet to encounter a problem
that took more than an hour to solve...and even those minor problems rarely
occur.

    
    
      I am by no means a Linux guru - I just grew disgusted with Windows and wasn't willing to switch to Apple.

------
monocasa
A transition to aarch64 would provide a unique challenge to Apple.

The other transitions (68k->PPC, and PPC->x86) brought with them nearly an
order of magnitude increased raw performance, which let them paper over some
of the emulation overhead in Rosetta or their 68k emulator.

They won't have the same intrinsic benefit working for them this time; it's
hard to beat Intel at raw performance, especially single threaded.

~~~
throwaway84742
It’s doable for them. For one thing, even their iPhone chips are currently
nipping at the heels of Intel’s low-tdp mobile CPUs, exceeding some ULV parts
in performance. For another, they could just push all the difficult stuff into
specialized coprocessors. Wrap that into system frameworks and nobody will
ever know.

~~~
monocasa
I think they'll get between 5 and 10 percent of Intel by then, but that still
means that an x86 emulator is punching light, even before you get into
emulation overhead.

By comparison, the 68k emulator on PPC wasn't even a JIT. It just interpreted
68k machine code, and even then it was still 2x faster than a native 68k.

Moore's law really helped them.with their previous transitions, but Moore
ain't cashing checks like he used to.

~~~
throwaway84742
I’m pretty sure Rosetta wasn’t an interpreter, and Intel chips were less than
2x the speed of PowerPC.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_\(software\))

~~~
monocasa
Their x86 cores were about 5x faster when you accounted for everything. And
even though Rosetta was a JIT it ended up running a little slower than the
PowerPC chips it was replacing.

So to start off with chips that, let's assume are only about 90% of the chips
that you're replacing in native code, you're now at least under half the
performance of x86 while emulating. And that means half the battery life too.

~~~
throwaway84742
You’re making the unwarranted assumption that they’ll actually emulate
anything. The state of tooling is much better than it was back then, and this
time there’s no 32 bit mode to worry about.

According to Anandtech report in 2006, btw, the real world difference was far
less than 5x. Indeed, Intel chips had substantially worse FP performance back
then, something Apple uses quite a bit in their graphics subsystem.

------
cjensen
One of the authors of this piece is Mark Gurman. Lately, Gurman has gotten
legit scoops on news, but has then interpreted the small gem of a scoop into a
story which is entirely wrong.

In other words, take this with a huge grain of salt.

------
SomeHacker44
As a Mac user since 2004 for my daily driver and professional software
engineering as well as light gaming and recreation... I really hope not. Being
able to run Windows and Linux easily in both VMs and on metal are much too
important to me.

Of course, I am already not buying another Mac until they give me a keyboard
with a physical ESC and F-keys so maybe it doesn’t matter at this point.

~~~
princekolt
The current MacBook Pro is what caused Apple's revised compromise on the Pro
PC line. So I think there's still hope. Otherwise I too will be patching up
rMBP models like the one I have (probably second-hand ones though) until they
run out.

------
0x0
I'm not going to miss Intel ME.

I am going to miss running windows and linux VMs, and commercial software by
microsoft, adobe, and blizzard. I'm also going to miss hand-optimized x86_64
assembly variants of ffmpeg, lame, x265, nodejs/v8, java hotspot, and more.

~~~
wpdev_63
IME cannot do everything you think it can.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJCLX2dtw&list=WL&index=17...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJCLX2dtw&list=WL&index=17&t=479s)

------
promeus
Finally. I was a hardcore apple fan. I believed in well thought design and
optimized software. But after Jobs this company is pissing me off constantly.
Stupid iWatch is device without real use case (but it was a reason iPhone to
look like every other smartphone), ditching the skeuomorphic interface for
flat stupidity (instead of simplifying and cleaning it), mac mini fiasco
(great idea, left in the dust), mac book air (best laptop form factor, still
with low quality TN display), killing of Final Cut Studio (the most
comprehensive audio/video suite ever) and dumbing down the software (my
friends still use Old versions of Final Cut), no Mac Pro (iMac pro is not a
professional system), ditching the core user base (the reason of existence in
the first place). Finally this year after staring down in disbelief at iPhone
X (o god face id is the new norm) for the first time i started looking in
other alternatives in smartphone market. The only device that i still cannot
replace is my iPad Air 2 (media consumption and good battery life) but is
questionable. This is the last drop.For me Apple is gone. It was a good ride
Steve. Now its time to ditch the bandwagon, and say hello to my old Penguin
friend. To all developers in the world: Start making top notch software for
linux. Make it expensive and reliable. Start with Photoshop. Than Illustrator.
Than Video editing and DAW systems. The hipsters like me who from years are
paying for apple GUI design (now non existent in good quality and fading away
every day) are ready to pay. Go find yourself The old Apple (Snow Leopard) HIG
and start your engines. Big Money is coming in your face, because professional
designers, videographers, composers, architects, etc. are really pissed off :)

------
Talyen42
I think this was inevitable given the insane YoY performance increase we've
seen from A-series chips.

Anyone want to chime in on why Intel can't get more than 5% YoY while Apple
has been getting 30-40%?

~~~
zitterbewegung
Because they have moved past the easy parts of optimization. Apple's
optimizations still have thermal throttling issues (sustained use of an A11
will not beat an Intel chip due to better cooling and IPC).

Compared to other ARM licencees they do beat the pants off of. This is
probably why Apple put in a T1 chip and a touch bar in the Macbook Pro and the
T2 chip (dedicated power module) in the iMac Pro. They are prototyping the
individual pieces with Intel as the main processor so that they can attempt to
swap the chip in 2020.

EDIT: nitpick on t1 and t2 chips.

~~~
madeofpalk
FWIW, the TouchBar MacBook Pros have the T1, and the iMac has the next
generation T2 chip.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Thank you for correcting me :)

~~~
madeofpalk
:)

------
jernfrost
This is such an obvious move, that I predicted it 2 years ago:
[https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-
switch-f...](https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-switch-from-
intel-to-arm-a6816058a1b2)

My prediction in 2016, was that Apple would switch to ARM based laptops in
2019, so it looks like I am off by just 1 year.

A quick summary of my argument back then was that ARM was getting fast ENOUGH,
but are considerably cheaper. Standardizing on one CPU architecture for all
their products makes sense. In addition it allows them to differentiate
themselves from competitors.

The only choice I am still uncertain about is the Mac Pro lineup. Since
performance will matter a lot more in this segment it is harder to see a
transition away from intel. A possible solution would be for apple to go
massively parallel and simply use a lot of ARM CPU cores. Sure single thread
performance wont be able to compete with intel but they might not need to.

A lot of the stuff you need a Mac Pro for like compiling large programs fast,
video processing etc is likely very paralelizable.

~~~
otterley
What if it turns out not to be based on the ARM architecture?

~~~
xaduha
What else is there?

~~~
mitchty
RISC V possibly, but unlikely.

~~~
tromp
would also be too good to be true...

------
andr
While a x86-ARM translator of some sort is certainly possible, keep in mind
that Xcode added support for BitCode back in 2015, which means that binaries
are uploaded to the App Store in LLVM IR and compiled to the target
architecture by Apple. While this will not cover 100% of Mac OS applications
out there, it will certainly minimize the effort of porting stuff to ARM
MacBooks.

~~~
insaneirish
Relevant: [http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-
transcript/#bitcod...](http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-
transcript/#bitcode)

I wouldn't assume that Bitcode is a huge help with this. Per Chris Lattner in
the linked transcript, "It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of
enhancements, but it isn't a panacea that makes everything magically
portable."

------
ggg9990
Intel’s R&D budget is $13 billion and Apple’s operating income is $61 billion,
so Apple has more than enough money to play this game. I do wonder why it
makes sense for them, other than a possible unification from top to bottom of
the desktop and mobile computing paradigms, with everything from the Apple
Watch to the Mac Pro running the same instruction set.

~~~
pm90
I think scaring Intel enough to be better about its software and security
practices is a big enough effect that would be beneficial for everyone. Not
that I'm a big fan of close-source-everything Apple. But Intel's Software is
just a horrible mess (note that I'm talking specifically about software: they
seem to contract out software development to other firms and the code quality
seems to be objectively bad as a result)

------
tambourine_man
That would be the end of the Hackintosh, which would be kind of a shame.

Even having never built one myself, it remained a last resort of some kind in
the back of my mind.

~~~
emodendroket
For someone not still in high school that struck me as way more effort than it
was worth.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Hah, now that you mention it does seem like a huge chunk of the community is
in high school. When I went to college I just got a real Mac and it is 100x
better than the MSI Wind I used to use (though that was a great device too!).

~~~
emodendroket
That's kind of the crowd for something that saves you a bit of money at the
cost of a huge chunk of your time, isn't it?

------
awinter-py
1\. apple likely believes intel's hardware division benefits from apple's
large investment in compilers. In general, apple is attacking all its
technology partners to cut them out of the stack (i.e. qualcomm).

2\. apple seems to be underestimate the value of openness in driving certain
kinds of customers to their hardware (developers, for example). Further
splitting the ecosystem will drive some users to linux laptops. (Hear hear).

3\. intel's incentives are now highly aligned with the linux community (esp
given msft's windows shutdown)

4\. this is the first time since 2005 that there's a legitimate spread trade
between intc and aapl.

------
simonh
AMD has the rights to produce x86 compatible CPUs. If Apple were to design the
chips but AMD manufactured them on contract, would that avoid IP/licensing
issues with Intel?

~~~
bob1029
Yes. I am finding it almost bemusing that people are dancing so delicately
around the only rational possibility here: A semi-custom AMD-produced x86-64
CPU, very much like the Samsung-produced A-series ARM CPUs for their phones
and tablets. I see zero reason that the next Axxxx chip cant be a rebranded
Zen core with Vega GPU and custom Apple IP magic sprinkled in -
[https://www.amd.com/en-us/solutions/semi-custom](https://www.amd.com/en-
us/solutions/semi-custom)

Just because Apple says they are done with Intel and are making their own
chips, does not preclude the possibility that they are simply working with a
_different_ x86 vendor on a custom/semi-custom design.

I see zero way Apple gets off the x86 architecture in the next few years,
simply due to the tremendous software ecosystem that has grown up around the
platform since the switch from PowerPC. They would have to offer a dual path
for years to get their larger software partners prepared.

~~~
npunt
That’s a lot of fuss for at best a lateral shift, and a step down in the all-
important performance-per-watt metric (Zen and Vega are totally unproven
here).

You may be underestimating the possible paths Apple has to a) transition
software developers quickly with better tooling, and b) provide sufficiently
performant JIT / compatibility layer by sprinkling a bit of x86 compatibility
into future A-series chips, and you’re certainly underestimating the value in
c) reducing complexity on the software-side.

Apple is already making their own GPU and CPU and throwing all their weight
behind that, why would they hop onto the (brilliant but rather unreliable and
on mobile totally unproven) AMD train?

~~~
simonh
That’s assuming Apple manly uses existng core designs from AMD etc and doesn’t
significantly contribute improvements for their own systems, to gain
advantages over the chips available to their competitors. But surely adding a
hefty dose of their own secret sauce would be the only thing that would make
such a move worthwhile?

What’s being suggested is not that Apple use AMD designs. It’s that Apple
partner with AMD in order to gain licensing cover for their own largely or
completely in-house engineered chips.

------
eastdakota
If true, and assuming the chip will be based around ARM, then this may be the
final nail in Intel's _server_ business. The biggest gate in adopting ARM-
based servers is development and testing on a local environment. If x86 is
being emulated and ARM is native then developing software for ARM-based
servers just got a lot easier.

------
jrnichols
"according to people familiar with the plans." usually = "stuff we made up."
Same with the WSJ. They're known for Apple news stock manipulation. went from
167 to 164, which at a decent volume and buying at the lower price, could net
a nice profit.

"Intel shares dropped as much as 9.2 percent, the biggest intraday drop in
more than two years, on the news."

Ahh. That too.

Plus all of the ad revenue from all of the people clicking on this startling
article. I don't trust Bloomberg for _anything_ related to Apple.

------
craigc
If the current MacBook Pro is any indication, then I would be surprised if
people are still buying Macs at all in 2020.

~~~
jacquesc
Pretty sure I'll still be using / rebuying the 2015 model

~~~
contingencies
Try an XPS15.

------
jakobegger
If Apple really moves to custom chips in Macs, it's going to be about one
thing only: independence. Apple wants to control the entire stack; and relying
on a single vendor is too big of a risk.

It's not a question of price; it's about getting the chips they need.

Intel has missed a lot of targets in recent years, and (according to rumors)
more than one recent Mac model has been delayed because Intel did not have the
next chip generation ready in time.

Current Macbook Pros max out at 16GB RAM because the Intel chips don't support
LPDDR4 RAM.

On iOS, Apple can control everything. They can plan ahead, and know that in 3
years they'll have the chips they need.

On the Mac side, they can only hope that Intel doesn't delay their roadmap
longer than usual.

(The story about Marcipan (a shared iOS / macOS UI framework) seems unrelated
to the chip issue. Sounds like they included it in this article only to make
it look a bit more substantial. There is already a lot of shared code between
macOS and iOS, and the CPU architecture isn't holding anything back in that
regard.)

~~~
trurl
Yeah, I can definitely see this as being the reason. The switch from PPC to
Intel was partly motivated by IBM dropping the ball. Now Intel is failing to
keep up as well, so given that Apple has the resources, why not control their
own destiny?

------
ocdtrekkie
While it's had a rocky start, Microsoft's starting to push Windows 10 laptops
based on ARM chips, so it's definitely not out of the realm of sanity that
Apple is interested in doing the same.

------
toxican
Probably too early to tell, but I'd imagine this will mark the death of the
Hackintosh? It's a shame, because I had a lot of fun hunting down all of the
information and files I needed to convert one of my old PC's over.

~~~
kylec
Eventually, probably. But they'll still support existing Macs with new
software for a while after the transition.

------
JohnTHaller
For everyone speculating that this means a move to ARM and they'll write an
emulator for x86 code, it's good to note that the first Windows tablet based
on ARM, the $1,000 HP Envy x2, has pretty terrible performance for x86 code
when running on a Snapdragon 835. The Celeron N3450 launched almost 2 years
ago found in super low end $200 Windows laptops outperforms it by ~50%. And
ARM on Windows can only run 32-bit apps (no 64-bit apps, no drivers, no system
level utilities).

~~~
npunt
Good data point, though they may have just not invested much in writing a good
emulator, let alone dedicating some extra silicon to speeding it up. If Apple
makes this shift, my strong suspicion is they’d do both.

------
bhouston
What will happen to people who use VMs of Intel-centric OSes like Ubuntu,
Fedora and other cloud OSes?

~~~
neolefty
For web development, I think Ubuntu for ARM will be fine:

[https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/arm](https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/arm)

------
wiremine
Seeing a lot of assumptions and speculations on this thread (which makes sense
given how early and high level the sourcing is).

I wonder if anyone has seen side by side roadmaps of Apple and Intel's
roadmaps, or projections of those roadmaps? I doubt Apple is moving away from
Intel for pricing reasons, given the margins they work with. It seems more
likely (or at least as likely) there are broader technical reasons. Feels like
an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison would be helpful.

~~~
saagarjha
> I wonder if anyone has seen side by side roadmaps of Apple and Intel's
> roadmaps

This would be easy to do, if we knew what was on Apple's roadmap…

------
SZJX
So Apple seems to be willing to give up on the developer market almost
entirely, and will turn the Macs into multimedia centers just as iPads then?
Maybe that's indeed where the majority of their revenue lies, and they
couldn't care less whether fewer developers buy their Macs if that means more
home users buy them. But still, I doubt whether it will be the right move in
the long run.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a change of processor architecture mean
that the majority of the apps that currently run on Mac won't run anymore and
would require the app developers to make extensive changes to make them run on
the new architecture?

I've parted with my MBP after having used it for 4 years and switched to Arch
Linux. It has been a blast so far, apart from the spotty HiDPI support and
lack of built-in dictionaries. It's also much nicer than Ubuntu as a dev
distro (not as a production distro of course) since you can install the newest
version of almost any software you want in a flash without involving the messy
PPAs. I was worrying about Apple's shifts in the recent years in the Mac line
but they pale in comparison to this change. Gives me less of an incentive to
use any Apple product for sure.

~~~
pertymcpert
The vast majority of apps don't use things like inline assembly or rely on
architecture specific features, so it's just a recompile.

------
scarface74
I've read through a lot of the comments, but no one asked the question - why
would Apple invest the R&D resources to create and support ARM based Macs when
Macs are such a small part of their revenue and profits? Would they make more
money by selling ARM based Macs?

Why not just add capabilities to iOS and make an iOS laptop? The only thing I
see missing is true multi-user support (not the hack they do in the education
market) and pointer support.

~~~
Dunedan
> why would Apple invest the R&D resources to create and support ARM based
> Macs when Macs are such a small part of their revenue and profits?

They already invest a lot in the development of their ARM-based processors for
iOS. I don't think the additional investment for making them ready for Macs
would be that high. Take the 12" MacBook for example. I can even imagine they
could simply stick the current A11 processor into it and it'd be fine.

> Would they make more money by selling ARM based Macs?

Yes. Profit margin would be much higher.

~~~
scarface74
They would still have to develop their own custom thunderbolt controller, an
emulator, etc.

The only thing changing as far as cost would be the processor. Let's say they
save $100 on the processor (not likely). They sell about 14 million Macs a
year. That's only $1.4 Billion - pocket change to Apple.

------
haakon
Intel stock is down 7.3% currently.

~~~
cctt23
Well yes, but the whole market is taking a dive today. -500 on the DOW last I
checked.

~~~
jacquesm
-722

------
andmarios
I think for a site full of developers, the almost exclusively welcome
reactions to such a change are intriguing.

Don't you worry you will have to cross-compile to run your programs on the
amd64 server? Or how you are going to debug locally bugs that may arise from a
different architecture? Or that homebrew could be in an inconsistent state for
some years until all software catches up with the new architecture?

~~~
trollied
Apple dealt with this last time with Universal Binaries
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary)

------
jmull
If this is true, I'm pretty interested to see how they intend to pull it off
(and how it works out in real life).

I'd be more skeptical if Apple hadn't already pulled off CPU architecture
transitions with impressive smoothness multiple times already.

Will Apple do an x64 CPU?

Or maybe x64 emulation? ...maybe with custom hardware assist?

Could they possibly do a crazy "you must recompile for ARM if you want to run
on the latest Macs" thing?

The performance of Apple's ARM CPUs is already fine for the lower end of
lappys, and have superior power usage. Moving up into midrange performance
lappys doesn't seem like a stretch at all to me, or even higher end lappys,
especially if you're looking for more cores. But what about iMacm, iMac Pro
and Mac Pro? Does Apple really have a solid plan that makes ARM CPUs
competitive there? Or will there be Intel-based Macs at the high-end and ARM-
based Macs at the mid to low end?

Could Apple possibly tie all this to some unification of iOS and MacOS?

And/or tie it to a unification of the iOS App Store and Mac App Store?

Interesting stuff.

------
akulbe
I wonder if this means that virtualization will be impossible without some
sort of emulation layer. If so, that seriously blows.

------
sagitariusrex
The thing I've come to realize over the past couple years is that the dream of
_performant_ open hardware is still beyond reach for at least a decade or two.

But this is probably the next best thing to have. A company that at least
tries to be sensitive in terms of privacy and security building their own
hardware, albeit not open. I respect Apple for that.

------
dep_b
That would be 30 years after they started ARM together with Acorn.

------
brockers
I cannot imagine that is is a good plan. I just don't see enough innovation
coming from the processor space to justify the overhead of design,
development, testing, and manufacturing while effectively re-inventing most of
the underlying system. Unless they build them as x86 clones... but even then
it seems like they would be playing catch-up to new innovation.

If Apple really plans on doing this, it MUST be because of some fundamentally
new capability that they are either unwilling to divulge to Intel, or Intel is
unwilling to invest in. Some kind of core change to the way that Macs interact
with or behave with users; otherwise it just doens't make sense to me.

------
erric
My questions:

ARM? Walled garden of an app ecosystem? Command line?

There has been convergence between iOS and MacOS for a while now.

~~~
TheSoftwareGuy
I see the question marks but I'm not entirely sure what your questions
actually are

~~~
erric
It was just a stream of consciousness and I was planning on editing it but got
distracted. It also wasn't formatted very well. My mistake.

I'm sure this has been going on for a long time behind the scenes. That is
what happened when the PPC -> x86 transition became public. Since Apple has
it's own ARM chips/fab, I wonder if ARM is where they are going? It would make
sense from a couple different points of view: Lower power use and security.
Can there be equivalence between the two architectures, meaning would similar
CPUs net you a similar workload?

There is much to like about the iOS app store, but there also is much to
dislike. Apple is the gatekeeper here, and if they don't like your app, you
are out of luck. That's not the case with MacOS, at least not yet. You can
still write what ever kind of app you desire for what ever your client base
may pay for and Apple can't really do much to stop you. Merging iOS and MacOS
would need to address this.

Finally I use the command line a lot. I don't have access to that on my tablet
or phone unless I jailbreak it which has it's own risks with doing so. If
Apple decides this is no longer acceptable, that will certainly change my
choices for getting work done.

~~~
saagarjha
Your concerns would be better founded if this was news of iOS coming to
desktop instead of Apple switching desktop processors.

~~~
erric
There are several reports about this happening. Granted it’s rumor:
[https://www.cultofmac.com/519763/apples-got-secret-plan-
merg...](https://www.cultofmac.com/519763/apples-got-secret-plan-merge-ios-
mac-apps-2018/)

------
trisimix
Puts them in a unique position where they may see increased sales if the can
prove the lack of the invasive portions of a management engine. How can they
create and push to market something as complex as an x86 processor in 2 years.
Sounds like a ton of work.

------
aloukissas
It's kinda hilarious that nobody has commented on the "Kalamata" code name :D

~~~
georgek
That's because there ar

------
imagetic
I just had a flashback to the G4 and G5 era. The day they announced Apple
announced the move to Intel there was a huge sigh of relief from everybody I
knew, especially those in the Media industry.

I don't see a lot of good coming from this move.

------
amq
People here were anticipating this, should be no surprise. Presumably, Intel
also knows for some time, but their long-term strategy on how to stay relevant
seems unclear. I could imagine them becoming a pure fab-company one day.

------
WheelsAtLarge
This is a multi-year transition even after 2020 but this is a step closer
towards a cloud-based MAC where the hardware is connected 100%, has super long
battery life and the majority of the processing is done in the cloud.

------
makecheck
It would be in line with their warnings on 32-bit apps. You certainly wouldn’t
want to have to continue supporting 32-bit as a first-class development target
when you’re about to change your entire architecture.

------
40acres
This is no surprise, it's in Apple's culture to want to own the stack
completely. I wonder how they will execute on this however, Apple's design
team is pretty good.. but who do they have doing pre and post silicon
validation? Will they go the extra mile someday and build their own fab? There
are lots of intricacies to consider when trying to make your own chip. I guess
the biggest question is how far is Apple willing to go to have complete
control over their product, microprocessors are probably the most capital
intensive part of their product.

------
utahcon
I was just discussing this weekend the strength I was seeing in the ARM
market. Looking at the Apple trend lately with the A9-A11 chips, being ARM
based, and then the advances Qualcomm has made making workstations and servers
based on ARM chips, this just seems like a no brainer. Build cheaper, more
efficient chips, custom designed to work with your own ecosystem.

Finally, the ARM and NVIDIA deals could make large strides in the market of
getting blockchain ready and making machines purpose built for dealing with
the inevitable future of blockchain in everything.

------
deagle50
About time. I'm tired of Intel's minimally viable laptop processors (and their
security blunders). Apple has the margins and the volume to throw a lot of
transistors at a problem, like they do in iOS devices. I want 13" Macbook with
more than 2 cores, good GPU, and decent memory bandwidth. Apple can do
big/little cores, large caches, wider memory buses (HBM please), inference
acceleration, 120hz variable refresh with good battery life, etc. These things
have a questionable ROI for Intel but set Apple apart and sell more hardware.

~~~
FireBeyond
These things are available, Apple chooses not to use them in their quest for
thinness.

~~~
deagle50
I disagree. They have certainly sacrificed battery size at the altar of
thinness but not transistors. Who else is doing 100mm^2 SoCs in consumer
devices? Now take that up to 200-300mm^2 and imagine the possibilities with
tailor-made blocks and cutting edge memory. Look at Intel's dual core die
shots, >50% GPU and my laptop is still jankier than my iOS device.

------
jpalomaki
How the performance of fastest current ARM chips compare to the latest
generation of low power, quad core Intel i7 chips (~15W) used in contemporary
non-workstation laptops?

------
chrisper
I wonder what impact this will have on the hackintosh community.

------
orionblastar
Some of the old X86 clone chip companies got bought out by others. Cyrix,
Centaur, Winchip ect got bought out by VIA and I had not heard of VIA is still
in business.

Apple once made PowerPC chips with Motorola, IBM, and others.

There is also a rumor of Apple using ARM chips with X86 codes or X86
emulation.

I'd like to see Apple make a version of a modern PowerPC CPU and use an ARM as
a co-processor to run iOS stuff. Cut out Intel or do it via emulation like
Rosetta did for PowerPC code.

------
pokemongoaway
Component manufacturers & companies like newegg should get together and fund a
Linux distro that has great ports of all the most popular OSX software :)

------
awat
It will be interesting to see how Apple handles this. Last time around users
got a compatibilty layer in Rosetta to bridge compatibilty between Power Pc
applications on Intel. I would imagine that would be the case this time but
some of the questionable changes in terms of user friendliness (imho) in the
recent past removing headphone jack etc. makes me wonder if this will be a
cold switch for older software.

------
hyperpallium
It's trivially credible that Apple will use its own chips in macs - it already
has cpu's faster that its low-end, ultra portables. They could have done it
years ago.

But less credible that they will _only_ use their own chips. However, there
have been complaints that Apple's high-end hasn't been very high recently -
maybe laying the ground-work, lowering expectations?

------
vondur
I wonder if Apple is maybe looking at AMD for chips? That would be a much less
painful switch instead of transitioning to ARM for the Desktop.

~~~
phire
It's unlikely. Apple has shown a clear trend towards trying to get rid of
absolutely any 3rd party components from their devices. They want the control
that full vertical integration gives them.

The got rid of the 3rd party ARM design in their iphones/ipads, going for
their own ARM/AARCH64 design. They are currently in the process of getting rid
of the PowerVR GPU, to be replaced with their own GPU.

Moving to their own AARCH64 CPU for laptops/desktops fits with that trend.
Many people have been wondering 'when' this will happen, not if.

Moving to AMD doesn't fit with this long term trend.

~~~
vondur
Probably correct. Apple could easily purchase AMD and also get the video card
tech from ATI which they seem to favor on their desktop machines.

------
magice
I sometimes wonder why Apple would do this. I mean: i) the end-users frankly
don't care. Seriously. ii) 90% (if not 99.99%) of dev would not (be able to)
care

I mean, I doubt if more than perhaps 5% of Apple internal dev can take
advantage of "tight integrat[ion] of new hardware and software." This
integration probably takes form of either some specific app (think Pixel
camera phone), some specific library, or compiler optimizations. The first one
(specific app) can be accomplished much cheaper through add-on chips (guess
what, that's what Pixel does). The 2nd and 3rd can be done much more
effectively through a generally available chips (like, well, Intel's chip)
since more people, from vendor's engineers to researchers to random open
source ninjas, would be able to experiment and help out.

In other words, from a purely technical point of view, there is absolutely
zero reason to do this. Whatever happens, Intel is among if not the best
capable chip producers. And Apple is not "disrupting" (i.e. focuses on
unaddressed aspect), but merely directly competing with Intel's core
competencies. It's not Amazon entering details against WalMart's. It's
Target's competing against WalMart's, except they don't have Target's existing
competencies. Which, again, makes no technical sense.

On the other hand, if they want to completely lock in users......

~~~
RI_Swamp_Yankee
I don't think they'd attempt it unless they had something that would disrupt
the market. Intel has been rusting on its laurels without credible
competition, and if Apple manages to steal a march on them with a new
technology, that would be the impetus to bring it in-house.

------
rjurney
‪How they managed not to mention the shrinking economy of scale for PC chips
vs growing economy of scale for mobile chips is beyond me.‬

------
dannyw
SemiAccurate has reported this all the way back in 2012 that they had a ten
year plan to switch to ARM. I’m not surprised.

------
Zeklandia
Anything to get more competition in that market is greatly appreciated. Intel
products have become a massive disappointment.

------
BlackLotus89
Is this maybe why they are looking for Linux kernel developers?

Tim Pritlove predicted this move for some years now on his freakshow(.fm).

Anyway the only interesting thing to me is if they will share a codebase
between macOs and ios or if they will create something new and not based on
darwin. Maybe they will take the step steve didn't want and switch to linux.

~~~
saagarjha
I seriously doubt this will happen. Why would they throw away three decades of
work that's known to work on both x86 and ARM?

~~~
BlackLotus89
You are probably right. I myself however am curious why they would need linux
kernel devs.

------
finchisko
I think Tim Cook is laughing out loud in his office now, how they just tricked
Intel to lower their CPU prices. However I wonder how this insider info went
out public, having direct impact on Intel shares.

Sorry but transiting from Intel doesn't make sense to me. It would burn huge
pile of money for very low benefit.

------
samstave
What I find funny is that in ~2006 I had a net eng working for me that was a
die-hard Mac fan.

I claimed at the time, that I would bet him that apple would start making
machines with Intel chips. He ___LOST_ __it and said "THAT WILL NEVER
HAPPEN!!"

And thought I was a complete moron for even suggesting as such.

:-)

~~~
saagarjha
This was public knowledge in 2005…

~~~
samstave
I may have got the year wrong. I don’t recall the year.

------
tambourine_man
Interesting thread on the way Steve dealt with the press during the PPC -> X86
transition.

[https://twitter.com/nickwingfield/status/980882009156329472](https://twitter.com/nickwingfield/status/980882009156329472)

------
_emacsomancer_
I remember when Atari and Apple used to use Motorola chips. I miss the greater
variety of those days, so I see this as positive, even if I'm not an Apple
user myself. (And I look forward to trying out Apple-produced chips second-
hand, and running Linux on them....)

------
carlhjerpe
It'd be really cool if they rolled down the
[https://riscv.org/](https://riscv.org/) path. They wouldn't have to pay
anyone anything and could do whatever they wanted.

Then again, wont happen

------
SCAQTony
I am curious as to how Apple can just jump into a new complex business and be
instantly pro at it without buying out a chip manufacturer who is. Will there
be a learning curve? Will Apple machines circa 2020 have a bumpy road or not
as fact?

~~~
danappelxx
Don’t they manufacture chips for their iOS line of products?

~~~
SCAQTony
I can find no evidence that Apple manufactures chips of any kind.

~~~
Dunedan
Neither does it plan to do so.

------
lovamova
I think the first step is to produce a GPU that integrates well with Intel
CPUs. The next Metal version will need to have even deeper hardware
integration while external GPUs support will be a solution for those who need
AMD or NVIDIA solutions.

------
nerdymanchild
I sensed this transition from the point that Apple released the new small
MacBook.

------
intrasight
A non-event and long-forecasted IMHO. As others have pointed out, they've
already done this twice before. I do like the idea that they can thus build a
very secure platform. Might even make me buy a Mac again.

------
yoavmmn
The only thing that could go wrong with this kind of switch is software
compatibility, and as long as this chips could run x86 software properly and
will have same or better performance, I don't mind.

------
patrickg_zill
Surprised by the comments on performance. Putting a second cpu/SoC on the
board and keeping it in a low power sleep mode, then spinning it up as needed
would be trivial for Apple.

------
jdlyga
Apple is fantastic with hardware, so this sounds like a great idea.

------
m3kw9
This will give them even more advantages because they are a vertical
integrated company they can differentiate them selves with hardware and
software integrations

------
hickeygareth
Here's the full Bloomberg piece over audio:
[https://goo.gl/V999a4](https://goo.gl/V999a4)

------
shmerl
So Apple laptops will become glorified underpowered netbooks. macOS users
totally won't start abandoning the platform even more than now.

------
thrillgore
Oh boy, more universal binaries.

What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production, as opposed
to doing a A11-style ARM derivative?

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production..._

Zero, since it's wildly improbable that Intel would grant them a license to
use the x86 architecture.

~~~
cjensen
You don't need a license to use x86.

Moreover, the x64 was created by AMD, not Intel.

~~~
FireBeyond
> Moreover, the x64 was created by AMD, not Intel.

With the assistance of a veritable phone book of cross-licensing of patents
with both Intel and VIA.

------
zrm
Does this mean we can have Open Firmware again?

------
fancyfacebook
I wonder if they will be ARM only or if there is some sort of x86 solution
built in too. This report has basically zero info.

~~~
mitchty
Its hardly a report. It is at best a rumor.

My strategy with any apple news: ignore it until its released or said from the
horses mouth. Remember the iphones that had clickwheels like ipod rumors prior
to the iphone? Thats what I consider this.

~~~
israrkhan
The clickwheel iphone "rumor", might have been true. During initial design of
the original iPhone, both Scott Frostall (from Mac OS division), and Tony
Fadell (from iPod division) were tasked with creation of iPhone. Both groups
took their existing software (from iPod/Mac), and tuned it for a phone.
Ultimately trimmed down OSX solution won over iPod's evolved firmware. I was
reverse engineering iPod video/classic firmware around 2005/2006, and I do
remember seeing references to "iphone".

~~~
mitchty
Sure it might have existed, but that isn't what was released. That version of
the iphone might just have been a proof of concept or prototype, but it didn't
end up a product.

Just like this rumor might be.

------
Ataraxy
Meanwhile with the impending containerization and vm efforts chromeos will
begin to look more and more attractive.

------
gxs
Steve Jobs mentioned in interviews what a hell of a job his teams did in the
initial change to x86 and the immense work it required.

I wonder what he'd say in this scenario. Not saying "Steve Jobs would have
NEVER allowed this apple is going to shit", simply wondering if the effort
required to move to x86 should be essentially discarded (depending on the
implementation)

Edit: I agree with the replies, they are a good reminder to me of the sunk
cost fallacy

~~~
Stranger43
It's also worth noting that the OS they migrated was not the one that ran on
the bulk of the old ppc system but a relatively new Unix fork that at least at
the time was pretty possix compliant.

~~~
ianai
Which is to say, they have experience migrating an entire platform to a
different architecture. Not many companies have that background.

------
Myrmornis
Can someone explain the current and hypothesized future role of Intel, ARM and
now Apple chips among Apple products?

------
adamnemecek
All the vestiges of 90's computing are dying! I couldn't be happier actually.
2020 computing here I come.

------
iliaznk
Is Apple competent enough to build an equally powerful CPU? Or is it a no-
brainer for the kind of money they got?

~~~
dwighttk
Apple's Cash (77B) is about 1/3 of Intel's Market Cap (224B), maybe they could
just buy Intel.

~~~
bproven
Buying AMD is an option if they really need x86... either short term or long
term.

~~~
neolefty
Unfortunately AMD's licensing deals with Intel terminate if AMD is purchased.

------
justinzollars
I'm pretty happy with my Xeon.

------
amelius
What is next, Apple building its own wafer-steppers / lithography machines?

------
callesgg
As long as i get a unix shell i wont complain about what apple does to the
hardware.

------
asimpletune
This coupled with LLVM creates a powerful position for Apple in the future.

------
cletus
So what I'm hearing is the 2019 Macbook Pro will be the one to buy?

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Assuming that Apple has the good sense to ditch the touchbar, absolutely.

------
Apocryphon
Would they be able to design their chips to avoid Spectre-type attacks?

~~~
simonh
Bear in mind Apple’s own mobile CPUs were also vulnerable to these attacks.
The vulnerability was with commonly used architectural features found in many
processor designs from different design houses, including both Apple and Intel
among others.

------
Tloewald
One possibly nice fallout of this would be Intel offering Xeons to consumers
to leverage its economies of scale on the server-side for the consumer market
(since I believe Apple is the biggest customer for high-end consumer CPUs).

------
machinehermit
IMO if you have never tried KDE plasma and install KDE connect on your mobile
devices you have no idea what you are missing.

KDE connect is irreplaceable 5 minutes after you install it.

------
jiveturkey
if true it means they have version 1 chips already today. perhaps this is why
the new support for external GPU.

------
Datsundere
Sure Apple, how did it go last time when you tried to implement your own SSL
library without any tests or static analysis? goto fail; goto fail;

------
rotub
Will this make the prices go up or down?

Down, right?

------
coinerone
I think and hope that Apple will merge osx and ios and thus only needs to
maintain one software and hardware architecture.

------
baybal2
So that was not an April 1 joke?

------
fulafel
Their own ARM or x86?

------
ianai
Hey Apple, could we get those chips made in germanium? Kthx

------
flamedoge
who didn't see this coming?

------
ape4
Its going to be a 128 bit chip (it could be)

------
ksec
I just read 1060 comments, 400 of them are about macOS, 200 of them are not
even related to the CPU topic. And no one has any more insight to share?

I find it very strange people think Apple SoC aren't any good for desktop
workload.

[https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/7795892?baselin...](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/7795892?baseline=7796004)

This is an Macbook Top Spec from Intel on a Fanless Design, against an iPad
Pro also a fanless design. Let's ignore the small difference of TDP for a
minutes because both are limited by its Fanless design, and Geekbench do runs
on for a few minutes, so it is an indication or how close they are in these
specific workloads.

The Intel Core i7-7Y75 can turbo boost to 3.4Ghz if needed, comparing that to
max 2.4Ghz of the A10X. If we also ignore the frequency, iPad Single Core
performance is with 10% of Intel's best Core processor at this TDP. The A10
core here is a generation older then the A11 used in iPhone X and iPhone8, and
A12 coming in this September will likely have even better IPC.

The JavaScript testing performance on both Mac and iOS Safari shows
performance is similar and A11 even edge out Intel in some cases.

So no matter how you spin it, in certain workload Apple A11 has already
matched up or exceed Intel within a Fanless TDP design. That is excluding the
advantage Apple will have on Multicore when it has 4x Core compared to 2 Core
4 thread in Intel.

Intel's 14nm++ is also matured and better then then TSMC 10nm, which is merely
a testing node for its 7nm.

i.e Assuming Apple wanted to, they could have a 7nm Quad Core A12X shipping in
6 months time that is better then Intel's Core at Fanless TDP or <15W design,
at 1/3 of the cost.

The reality is Intel hasn't been executing its plan for a few years. And If
this rumours is true it is only themselves to blame. When Apple were designing
its 2015 Macbook, Intel's roadmap were clear, three years later in 2017, the
Macbook was suppose to have Quad Core in its design. And looking at all the
latest roadmap, it doesn't seem there will be a 10nm Quad Core CPU shipping
this year either. Not in fanless design. We are looking at 2019 march, four
years since its introduction to get that through.

Then there is the LPDDR4 memory support. You wanted 32GB Laptop Memory? Well
Intel doesn't allow you to have it. Not even in 2018. The delay in 10nm, the
little to no improvement in IPC, AVX2 is very much a niche. As a normal
customer I dont really have a reason to buy Intel anymore unless you want
absolute Price / Single Core Performance, otherwise AMD is a much better
choice. So I dont think we are the one who are frustrated. Apple is likely
too.

I also wonder how this moves means in the Modem space. Which is the much more
important pcs for Apple. I have often argued one reason Apple didn't make the
Mac to ARM move earlier was because Apple needed Intel's modem to fence off
Qualcomm's "double dipping". Now that Broadcom failed to acquire Qualcomm,
Intel is being dumped from Apple. Does that mean Apple is going back to
Qualcomm modem soon? Likely along with a deal of using Qualcomm Centriq on
servers and likely later in Pro lineup of Mac?

Previously Apple's rumoured Project McQueen were to bring all the Server
inhouse, using less resources from AWS, Azure and Google. Apple is a large
Server customers on its own. If Qualcomm has Apple to kick start its Server
CPU business, along with Apple push to help PC transition to ARM, it may be
well worth Qualcomm to lower its royalty and modem prices.

------
justherefortart
Great, we can go back to the macrumors nonsense about how this PPC is "just as
fast" as the x86 days.

With their focus on iOS vs MacOS, this doesn't surprise me. MacOS will simply
die once they port their tools to iOS.

Terrible choice IMO.

~~~
Joeri
Except apple has demonstrated they can design cpu’s that outperform the
(android) competition. Who is to say they can’t make ARM cpu’s that genuinely
outperform intel? Intel hasn’t executed all that well lately anyway.

~~~
olympus
Being able to go toe to toe with low-power areas says little about being able
to compete against full-power areas, and vice versa. Intel is a laughing stock
when trying to compete in low power areas even though they dominate full
power. ARM is the only choice in low power outside of a few Chinese chips and
Samsung's Exynos, but yet ARM hasn't made a dent in full power applications.
The two areas do not scale as easily as they sound.

Intel has been iterating their design decades longer and was in stiff
competition for much of that time period. They will be hard to catch in the
desktop/laptop space for anyone starting with a cell phone CPU.

ARM has not had real competition in their market, most chipmakers are
licensing ARM tech, so they should be easier to catch up to, which Apple has
done (with a healthy dose of borrowed ideas from ARM).

~~~
enitihas
Isn't Exynos also ARM?

~~~
olympus
You're right, for some reason I was thinking Exynos wasn't ARM based because
it wasn't Qualcomm- not sure why. That takes the list of ARM competition down
to just the Chinese offerings, unless I'm mistaken about that.

------
searine
Because that worked so well last time?

~~~
Tloewald
To what are you sarcastically referring?

Apple's switch to PowerPC which gave them a performance lead over Intel for
five years and kept them competitive for another five or Apple's switch to its
own ARM Core designs which have given them a 12-24 month performance lead over
the entire Android ecosystem?

Bear in mind that Apple dominates the high-end desktop / laptop market, both
in market share and profit share* which could put a huge dent in Intel's
economies of scale for high end consumer CPUs.

* I'm assuming these figures omit servers. Also, there was a lot of noise in around 2009 saying that Apple had over 90% of the high-end PC market, but I've not seen more recent figures one way or another. Given that PC prices seem to have, if anything, slipped, I doubt it's gotten worse for Apple (and goodness knows the tech press _loves_ any statistic that makes Apple look bad).

~~~
cjensen
He is referring of course to the PowerPC architecture. It did not have a
performance lead over Intel for as long as you suggest. Even when it had a
lead, it wasn't that big. (I bought the best G5 when it came out, so it's a
painful memory)

The problem with switching to a different architecture is that if it falls
behind Intel, people will say "not as fast as a PC." If you stay with Intel
and it falls behind, people say nothing. It's risk vs. no reward.

~~~
CodeWriter23
Pretty sure "last time" refers to the transition from Power PC to Intel.

------
martin1975
Apple couldn't have started digging their own grave soon enough. Now all
that's left to do is for Microsoft to play its end game - provide a bridge for
NT/Win32 apps to run atop Linux, and spend the next couple of years
bolting/porting/reinventing their new UI on a rock solid server OS - Linux,
which will soon become a rock solid desktop OS.

Bye bye Apple. Nice to have known you. Game over-Linux wins, we all win. No
more proprietary OS.

------
nullvector
Tim Cook is fundamentally an operations person who drives cost out of the
supply chain. During his time as CEO, Apple seems to be innovating in the
supply chain instead of the products. At Apple's scale, building your own
chips and iPhone screens makes sense but doesn't intrinsically add value to
customers. I wish Apple would invest as much in their software as they do in
reducing cost.

Fortune Magazine in 2008: Think of Cook’s contribution like this. There are
two basic ways to get great profit margins: Charge high prices or reduce
costs. Apple does both. The marketing and design drive consumers wild with
desire—and make them willing to pay a premium; Cook’s operational savvy keeps
costs under control. Thus Apple is a cash-generating machine. Cook has called
the company a place that is “entrepreneurial in its nature but with the mother
of all balance sheets.” At last count that meant $24.5 billion in cash and no
debt.

