
Pegatron likely to land new MacBook orders from Apple, say sources - tosh
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/29/pegatron-to-make-arm-based-apple-macbook/
======
jmount
I know Apple has gone through these transitions before (68K -> PWR -> Intel).
But if there is a move to ARM this is the first time they have moved away from
a currently dominant ecosystem (yes, to another popular one in this case; but
the earlier moves were all abandon ship style transitions). I don't see a lot
of motivation for pre-compiled open source projects (such as R/CRAN) to
maintain two copies of their software (one Apple AMD64 and one Apple ARM64)
during the transition. Yet another thing that is going to make Macs less
convenient for research and development.

~~~
derefr
I would expect that Apple would bring back the Rosetta component for such
cases (i.e. the same interface to the OS, but now a component doing Intel->ARM
dynamic binary translation rather than PWR->Intel dynamic binary translation.)

Actually, maybe _dymamic_ binary translation wouldn't be needed all that
often. A new Rosetta would likely also be helped out quite a bit by the fact
that modern macOS binaries contain embedded copies of their their LLVM
intermediate representation; you could transpile that IR (by patching Intel-
targeted intrinsics with ARM polyfills) and then run it through the LLVM
optimizer again, and then cache the result. That's a fully static binary
translation, and the resulting binaries would probably be pretty fast.

(You'd still need dynamic binary translation for anything with its own JIT,
but maybe there are few enough programs with their own JITs—and all such
programs are "big" enough in terms of development resources—that Apple _can_
require these to ship an ARM target. In which case, maybe they don't need to
build a new dynamic binary translation component at all!)

~~~
jmount
The translation stuff may be okay for user code (and I know Apple has done it
before). But for scientific code it is just too much cost and too many things
to break. I know scientists are not Apple's target market, but this just makes
getting a Linux laptop a much better proposition.

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obl
On one hand it's cool to have more effort into desktop CPUs (ie high single
thread perf) that are not x86.

On the other hand, although the ISA is public, I'm guessing the whole boot-
process & platform will become more and more closed as apple moves towards
custom chips all the way down.

Is there any chance you can still run linux on mac hardware in 5 years ?

~~~
mattl
I could see them going Intel for pro and ARM for consumer.

~~~
diroussel
Yep. I see this too. Mac app store apps have been dual architecture for a long
time. 32 bit and 64 bit. Adding ARM as another compilation target will take
some work but is doable.

Maybe they go to three architectures in the app store, or maybe they only
support ARM after 32 bit is dead. Which works out nicely with the recent
deprecation of 32 bit apps.

~~~
Moto7451
Since the iOS simulator is an x86 target it might not need any work. Adding a
compiler target for ARM OS X may just be a matter of allowing the
configuration.

Also, given the Intel OS X project was cooking long before they announced the
transition, it’s likely safe to believe that full blown OS X on ARM is already
running somewhere in a lab at Apple.

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frou_dh
What is day one of ARM-based MacBook ownership going to be like for a software
developer?

Do we open Terminal and go to `brew install` a bunch of development tools...
and then it hits us... this machine is cool and all, but half the stuff we
need to get work done does not build or run on arm64?

~~~
solarkraft
Apple has done this before for PowerPC software on Intel hardware and
Microsoft is doing it right now for Intel software on ARM hardware:
Compatibility modes (or how you'd call it - they enable the software to run
without modification, albeit at lowered performance).

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
When Apple did the PowerPC -> Intel switch, they were going to a higher
performing CPU, so the efficiency loss in having to emulate was somewhat
offset by the higher performance processor. In this case, they will most
likely be taking a step down in performance, compounding the loss of
efficiency in having to emulate.

~~~
solarkraft
Yet Apple has enough ecosystem power to force most developers to switch
quickly. And if they don't the worst customer complaint will be the app
running slowly. But I'd expect them to release a tool chain months before they
start selling an ARM mac.

~~~
jwilliams
Plus, the Mac App Store makes this a lot easier this time round. Apple will
have a big "optimized for Air" sticker on the App. 99% of common apps will
switch in no time.

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mattl
I believe it’ll be called the iBook.

~~~
mtgx
Could be why they renamed iBooks to Apple Books at WWDC.

~~~
mattl
Yep. I think this is it.

~~~
protomyth
I get the feeling since the whole 'i' thing is iOS that iBook might be an iOS
portable and we'll get some other name for the Mac. An iOS portable would
compete fairly well in schools where Chromebooks are winning and iPads are
not.

~~~
tracker1
<$250 is still a long way from >$750 for schools with thousands of students,
Chromebooks will probably win more often than not.

~~~
protomyth
I don't disagree, but given the iPad price and the price of Intel MacBooks, I
would hope they come in a lot less than $750.

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deepnotderp
This has been speculated for a while, but it was bound to happen at some
point, Apple has one of, if not _the_ best chip design teams.

~~~
st26
What would make them the best?

~~~
mikhailt
Beside the benchmarks showing their mobile SoC leading the market since their
custom SoC (A6?) and being the first to 64-bit ARM?

The upcoming ARM A67 SoC evolution is expected to be behind Apple soon to be
two year old chip: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12785/arm-cortex-a76-cpu-
unve...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12785/arm-cortex-a76-cpu-unveiled-7nm-
powerhouse/4)

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simplezeal
I can see low cost ARM based MacBook (savings from not paying Intel tax)
marketed as long battery high end hardware replacement for ChromeBooks. It can
still run modified OS X which allows for Mac App Store apps (MS Office just
announced Mac App Store support), browser, email etc. Throw in native
iTunes/iPhoto with cloud storage and you got a pretty nice offering.

~~~
diroussel
A modified OS X? It will be macOS or it won't be a Mac. I don't see any need
for modification beyond a new major release.

The term "modified OS X" makes it sound hybrid, but I don't see space in
apples line for something between a Mac and an iPad.

There's not technal reason to not go with full macOS. It's Unix and it runs on
ARM.

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oceanghost
The writing has been on the wall for ages with this one.

Intel's CPU limitations are at the heart of most of the complaints about
Apple's computer line (power vs performance tradeoffs).

Apple will always choose thin (poor heat dissipation) over fast.

Is anyone doing OSX development? Is Apple collecting the LLVM intermediate
code for OSX apps like they do for iOS? Its been a few years since I've done
OSX/iOS dev, I could be off base. But it has often occurred to me they could
use the intermediate code to retarget apps to different

~~~
tracker1
I dev on macOS. Mostly node and related though. Almost everything I use will
be unaffected... Video/Photo creative types are likely to see an exodus if it
happens though.

I think this would be a great time for Adobe to partner with Canonical as a
supported platform for Creative Suite. With improved funding and work towards
getting NVidia and AMD support top of line.

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stealthmodeclan
Any x86 emulation layer to support natively x86 executables on ARM without
shedding any performance?

~~~
diroussel
Do we even need emulation? All supported software can be recompiled. All the
rest is unsupported.

It's not nice for those with unsupported software bit I don't see this holding
back Apple.

~~~
tracker1
I could see this being a time for Adobe to partner with say Canonical to do
make a linux commercial release supported.

~~~
dev_tty01
Not sure I see the relevance. Mac OS US installed base is about 46 million,
Linux is about 5.8 million. (Based on browsing data for share of total
installed base of about 350 million in the US.)

The actual numbers can be sliced and diced different ways of course, but by
any accounting the Mac is small compared to Windows and Linux is much smaller
than that. I just don't see the economic motivation for companies like Adobe,
particularly when you add in the diversity of Linux versions that would have
to be supported. Whether or not Adobe can generate working code on a platform
is only a small part of the cost of releasing on that platform. Don't hold
your breath...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/670172/united-states-
ins...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/670172/united-states-installed-
base-desktops-laptops-tablets/)

~~~
tracker1
I don't know for certain, but I'd venture to guess half of Adobe's users are
on Macs, and that an ARM based architecture won't work well for creative works
(heavy image manipulation, video editing and encoding). And that could lead to
a lot of Mac creative types looking for somewhere to go.

It could be an opportunity for Adobe, if they played their cards right.

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dddddaviddddd
Pretty old rumor

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plg
will it have a Retina display?

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dang
Url changed from [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/29/pegatron-to-make-arm-
ba...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/29/pegatron-to-make-arm-based-apple-
macbook/), which points to this.

~~~
mamon
And the new url is not working (site being unavailable or something), thank
you very much.

~~~
dang
Ok, since it's not working for everyone, we'll change it back and keep the
original source's title.

p.s. Please don't be abrasive when posting here. It's against the site
guidelines
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).

