
Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month - mike_ivanov
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/9/21284960/apple-arm-based-macs-wwdc-2020-report-intel-laptops-desktops-power-efficiency
======
sciurus
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465364)

------
the_duke
This is just a rehash of Bloomberg reporting.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-
pla...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-plans-to-
announce-move-to-its-own-mac-chips-at-wwdc)

older: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-
aim...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-
macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021)

\---

Personally, I gave up on the Apple ecosystem years ago and moved to Linux. But
I feel ambivalent about this.

On one hand, the iPhone/Pad chips have impressive performance and power
consumption, at least for the mobile use case. Some competition in this space
can't hurt, and it will be interesting how well they fare against Intel and
AMD in a different environment.

On the other hand: this seems like a golden opportunity for Apple continue the
path of merging iOS and Mac OS, turning the desktop platform into an equally
walled and locked down garden.

This will also be a rocky road for very performance sensitive applications
which Macs are used for a lot. Like video editing, Photoshop etc.

~~~
skissane
> On the other hand: this seems like a golden opportunity for Apple continue
> the path of merging iOS and Mac OS, turning the desktop platform into an
> equally walled garden.

They can't turn macOS into a totally walled garden, without making it
impossible to use as a development platform. If I can't compile and run my own
software, or software I downloaded from others in source form, I can't use it
as a development platform.

And Apple needs a development platform, for people to develop iOS/macOS apps
on, and for its own OS developers to use in developing iOS/macOS.

~~~
whatshisface
You can run your own code on an iPhone if you have a developer account. They
could easily do the same for the Mac.

~~~
wayneftw
...for 7 days. Then you have to plug your iPhone back into your Mac and re-
compile the software and reinstall it.

It’s an extremely shitty limitation that Apple put in place to give the
appearance that they allow sideloading.

~~~
whatshisface
Sounds like the future for Mac on the desktop.

------
dan-robertson
I feel like this would probably be a good thing for a lot of Apple customers.
Especially is they started this with their cheaper models.

Switching to arm might improve power efficiency (though surely most power goes
to the screen?) but it could have a bigger impact on cpu temperature and
reducing thermal throttling.

Bloomberg suggests that other laptop makers might also switch to arm. I think
this is a place where apple could have a key advantage because their arm chips
seem to always be significantly better than the competition (at least for
mobile).

Most people will do computing consisting of:

\- browsing the web/using complicated web apps

\- watching video

\- word processors or similar programs

I think these days we should be less concerned about some traditionally
compute-heavy tasks because they have been being encouraged to switch to gpu
compute for performance gains for a while now. Most things that care about
performance will have been ported to gpu already if possible.

I feel like programs like word processors are probably more memory than cpu
constrained and a small potential drop in cpu performance would not matter so
much to programs that were designed to run on much slower hardware.

Web browsers (well chrome and safari) have already been seriously optimised
for running on atm chips.

------
z9e
I envision there being a lot of ARM support issues across apps that I rely on.
We finally got over the keyboard drama, I don't have confidence this will go
well either.

~~~
cptskippy
Well they've already figured out multi-targeting in XCode and gave done this
once before so I would imagine for a lot of developers it will just be a
recompile.

I saw a really cheap MacBook Air deal the other day and was tempted until I
saw they're i3 based. Assuming App support, I could see them replace that with
an ARM based CPU without anyone noticing.

~~~
meatmanek
They've done this 2 to 5 times before, depending on whether you count the
32-bit to 64-bit conversions and iOS.

68k->PPC, PPC->PPC64, PPC->x86, x86->x86-66, arm->arm64

~~~
jdxcode
what is x86-66?

~~~
MarkSweep
X86-64 is the 64-bit version of x86, also known as AMD 64 and Intel 64. The
first computers that apple shipped with Intel processors only supported x86
(32-bit). The most recent version of macOS removed support for x86, only
allowing 64-bit apps to run.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64)

~~~
vdfs
Yes, but what is what is x86-66?

~~~
rurban
A typo

------
ccmcarey
Interesting. I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat
layer as otherwise this kills every application available for macos right now.

I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos (though I imagine they
intend to) by restricting applications to only being available from the app
store. That would set a terrible precedent for personal computing.

~~~
zapzupnz
> I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat layer

Just like they did with the mk86->ppc transition, just like they did with the
ppc->x86 transition.

> I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos

Let's not confuse moving Macs to ARM processors with turning Macs into iOS
devices. Apple has always treated the OS families differently and will
continue to do so because they know more than anybody that they meet different
needs.

~~~
mikepurvis
I wouldn't be so sure. Apple was happy to leave behind "pro" customers who
needed floppy drives (1998), optical drives and ethernet (2013), and USB ports
(2017).

Sure, the industry ended up following them on a lot of this, but that should
be as much a cause for concern as the rest of it. An awful lot of the pro
audio / video work that happens on high end Apple hardware could absolutely
happen on a machine where the only software comes in via an app store.

~~~
loktarogar
> Apple was happy to leave behind "pro" customers who needed floppy drives
> (1998), optical drives and ethernet (2013), and USB ports (2017).

sure, but all that functionality remained externally - just not as part of the
laptop. locking down the laptop is fundamentally different.

------
NKosmatos
I would love to see new MacBook pros with the latest AMD Ryzen, speedy and
power efficient, processors. I can understand the move to ARM, since iPhones
and iPads are already there and it make sense to unite the ecosystem.

Fun fact: Kalamata is the second largest city in southern Greece. I tried
finding why they named the Apple project like this, but couldn’t find anything
relevant. Any ideas?

~~~
gorgoiler
Olives are to apples, as arm cores are to intel cores.

(Kalamata is a kind of olive, a small tougher and pithier version of its
blander behemoth brethren.)

~~~
toyg
I was thinking more like Kalamatas are black instead of green.

------
sdepablos
After the last few years of hardware problems with Macs let's see who's the
brave one to buy a v1 of any Apple new product (meanwhile there's probably
people already making a queue to buy one)

~~~
Alex3917
If you look at the problems with the 2016 - 2019 MBP, and also the problems
with the first generation intel MBPs, the biggest issue in both cases was
heat. (Although there were clearly other issues as well.) The new Apple chips
are going to be much more power efficient, so I think there is actually hope
here. I still wouldn't buy a v1 because I think they'll have problems, but I
think whatever problems they'll have will be less than previous v1s.

~~~
slantyyz
> the biggest issue in both cases was heat.

I don't think Apple was in any way naive about how hot Intel chips can run
under load. It's also not impossible to make a laptop body that can run those
chips with decent temperatures... if you're willing to make compromises on
size.

IMO, the biggest issue was they still chose to make the systems thin in spite
of the thermal tradeoffs that would result from that.

Yes, thinner's probably more desirable, but would people have stopped buying
MBPs if they were a little less thin? I don't think their sales would have
shrunk by much, since most Mac users are for the most part a captive audience,
because they love MacOS.

~~~
Alex3917
> I don't think Apple was in any way naive about how hot Intel chips can run
> under load.

It seems like for the 2016 MBP, they either made significant last minute
changes or moved up the release date by several months. When they released the
computers the Apple stores didn't even have the right screwdrivers to open
them for several months. That doesn't seem like something that was planned,
but rather the result of some sort of timeline shift.

My guess is that they decided they needed them out the door before Christmas
and so skipped the last six months of QA. Maybe it was something else, but I
think it was more than just being unwilling to compromise on size.

Regardless, the 2020 models are basically flawless so far, so at least there's
that.

------
designdesign
Their iPhone chips blow everything out of the water so this is exciting.

Also adds more fuel to the merging of iOS/macOS.

~~~
Koshkin
I am having a hard time deciding which name for the result of this merge would
be better: iOS XP or macOS CE.

~~~
snazz
I think it would still be normal macOS, just on ARM chips. I find it hard to
believe that they would get rid of macOS too given that the iPad Pro exists.

------
nsajko
I wonder have they considered switching back to PowerPC (power9/power10) now
that it is open (for whatever that means, I am not sure)? I am sure they would
appreciate the control that could give them.

Does somebody have an idea how much approximately would it cost Apple to
switch the Apple A14 from ARM to POWER? Usually it is said that the
instruction decoder is a small part of a CPU core, and the architectures are
not hugely different (compared to AMD64/Intel, at least).

~~~
dathinab
They have already heavily invested into customized ARM chips. They do all they
need. So no reason to look back at POWER.

Sure for high end mac the ARM chips probably wouldn't be the best fit for now.
But staying with x86 for them is just way easier. POWER might only be
interesting if they do a server OS. Which they made pretty clear they are not
interested in in the near future. (The rack mounted mac is still a rack
mounted workstation. Rack mounting high end workstations isn't that uncommon
in certain audio/video processing related job areas. For a server it is
missing some pretty basic thinks like: Redundant power supply, management
interface, trivial easy to swap RAM/Disks without removing it from the rack,
and probably more. ).

------
aidos
Last time they did this they managed to pull it off really well. From memory
there was the ability to package apps for both architectures so they would run
on either machine. And to bridge the gap there was Rosetta which allowed
PowerPC binaries to run on intel Mac’s by translating in real-time with a
small performance penalty.

How close are arm chips to PowerPC? They’re both risc architectures, right?

~~~
timw4mail
Eh, really well is a matter of opinion. Compared to the earlier transition
from 68k to PowerPC, the PowerPC to x86 transition was much more jarring.

The 68k emulation was present up until the death of Mac OS 9, so there is some
software that could run on the original Mac all the way to the Classic
environment in OS X.

Rosetta was sufficient for most applications during the transition, but there
will always be software that doesn't get re-written. Rosetta was introduced in
10.4, and dropped in 10.7. Only 3 versions.

------
dan-robertson
This seems to be the source for the verge article:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-
pla...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-plans-to-
announce-move-to-its-own-mac-chips-at-wwdc)

------
ed25519FUUU
I think this is a good news. The vast amount of people use their laptop for
little more than running a web browser, and AArch64 chips will make those
laptops cheaper to produce (intel charges Apple upwards of $400+ for high end
chips[1])

Then there's everyone doing local development in interpreted languages, most
of which have stable support for AArch64. Java, python, ruby, go on AArch64?
No problem.

The biggest hit things will be mac-specific programs and software built
specifically to work with BSD syscalls. We'll see about that stuff.

1\. [https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/24/how-
much-d...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/24/how-much-does-
intel-charge-apple.aspx)

~~~
sigjuice
What is special about BSD syscalls on AArch64? Are you saying they will be
different or absent?

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Presumably there would be some incompatibility.

~~~
sigjuice
What would be an example of such an incompatibility?

------
tenebrisalietum
What's been going on with the embedded ME/PSP in x86-compatible hardware for
the last 10 years is ugly. If this is real--I'm hoping this evolves into a
real alternative to that architecture though it's possible it could start
doing the same thing.

~~~
rzzzt
Do you see any major differences between a T2-backed system and an ME/PSP one?
How about TrustZone?

~~~
tenebrisalietum
I really have to do some research on this. I haven't because I have not really
been planning on purchasing a MAC. Here's some questions I would want to have
answers to.

\- Does the T2 have a private uncontrolled connection to system RAM? I know it
has some connection to the onboard SSD, other IO and serves as an enclave for
platform keys.

\- Does the T2 have a private bus/connection to any onboard Ethernet adapter
or Wifi like ME does?

\- Does the T2 serve as the foundation of remote management features (that are
present in all CPUs even if not vPro enabled) like ME does? This is important
because it means that it's supposed to be accessed remotely by design.

\- Does the T2 serve as the foundation of anti-theft features like ME does?
This facility also has remote-access-by-design components.

\- Does the T2 serve as the foundation of Protected Video or Audio path type
features?

\- What can the T2 make the CPU do? Can the T2 freeze the CPU, redirect the
CPU to other code, then restore CPU state (I'm fairly sure the ME can do this)

\- Intel CPU's have a built-in display adapter and you can't really disable or
sidestep it. Hence, there is no separation between what is on the screen and
the CPU, and by proxy the ME. To what extent can the T2 modify video RAM
without the CPU knowing?

~~~
dathinab
But don't ARM chips have TrustZone which is quite similar to ME/PSP wrt. the
danger it can have. And isn't T2 additional to the TrustZone on their ARM
chips? Or did it replace the TrustZone?

------
int_19h
What's going to happen to Boot Camp? Are they planning to support Windows on
ARM, or?..

~~~
firloop
I have a hunch they'll use the opportunity to kill Boot Camp, which has been
unloved for years. However I hope to be wrong here — supporting ARM based
operating systems would be a super cool thing for Apple to do.

------
chrisseaton
Time to urgently make sure your favourite backend is generating decent AArch64
code and you app is compatible with a weak memory model...

~~~
ladberg
The memory model of the ISA != the memory model of your code. C has a memory
model and any correct C code is compiled to the correct ARM assembly. It's
only really an issue if you are translating over x86 assembly, and then you
probably have lots of other issues to worry about.

~~~
gpderetta
a _lot_ of code (especially old code bases) does not actually target the c11
memory model but just happens to work on x86. A lot of code that targets the
c11 memory model but primarily targetting x86, still assumes cheap (or free)
release/acquire memory barriers (although admittedly arm64 should have
reasonably cheap release/acquire and Apple could make them as cheap as they
want).

------
underdeserver
With this and AMD's Threadripper benchmarks, Intel really needs to step up
their game.

------
Shivetya
So is this an underlying reason for Catalina jettisoning so much older
software? Is there a successor to Rosetta, one that will only support 64bit
software?

Going to be interesting which models actually debut this month and their
availability. Currently I am not in favor of moving to ARM but I leave the
door open for Apple to surprise and tempt me

------
mthoms
I wonder what this will mean for Bootcamp. Stupid question time: Does MS make
an ARM version of Windows 10?

~~~
ryeights
Already exists, no? [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/arm/](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/)

------
niahmiah
what does this mean for running docker containers on macos?

~~~
mattbillenstein
It means you better think about buying a thinkpad.

~~~
john_alan
Docker runs on Arm chips.

~~~
kjksf
Yes, but Docker on ARM won't run your x86 containers.

Docker can run a different OS but not a different arch.

The point of Docker is kind of having the exactly same thing here and there.

With Docker, I can compile, run, test and debug my backend service on Windows
or Mac and deploy to Linux, knowing that I ran and tested the exact same
binary.

If you deploy on x86 (as you do), having ARM Docker doesn't help you much.

~~~
john_alan
Good point!

------
hartator
People seem to say it will be hard to transform apps to new architecture. Is
that really true?

My understanding is when you develop for Mac, you already have to compile to
bytecode which means it's already compatible with other architectures.

~~~
timw4mail
No way. Even if the Swift language works that way, virtually all Mac software
relies on being compiled in some fashion.

The only software platform that might be the case is Android.

------
0xDEEPFAC
It seems like these new Macs might as well be phone with a keyboard in the way
they treat their software and "pro" consumers.

Wake me up when they use less glue to hold their computers together...

------
rb808
Is this going to be like the surface Pro X? Ie a copy with arm that is kinda
interesting buy no one buys because its not very good - but v3 probably will
be. [https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20948092/microsoft-
surfac...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20948092/microsoft-surface-pro-
x-review-arm-windows-10-apps-features-specs-price)

------
jshaqaw
Ugh I’ve been holding out on my 2012 retina MacBook Pro and was just about to
upgrade to the 16 inch MacBook Pro. Now I guess I need to limp along another
year to see what comes next rather than pay 3500 big ones to end up orphaned.

------
pathartl
It's fine that Apple is moving to ARM. It's not okay that this is going to be
a proprietary, locked down CPU. T2 has shown that Apple customers no longer
own their hardware.

~~~
_bxg1
> proprietary, locked down CPU

Is it somehow more proprietary and locked-down than the Intel ones?

~~~
gpderetta
I think the worry is a locked bootloader.

~~~
pathartl
That and Apple being able to introduce security via obscurity means we'll
probably never see a non-Apple OS on the platform.

~~~
_bxg1
It's already quite difficult and unideal to install a non-Apple OS on a Mac,
aside from Windows via Bootcamp. Not being able to install a custom OS is a
long way from "not owning your hardware". Apple OSes are part of the sum
package; if you don't want that, you aren't the kind of person who's buying
Apple hardware in the first place.

~~~
pathartl
3-4 years ago it wasn't difficult at all to replace macOS with pretty much any
EFI-enabled OS. Moving to a proprietary ARM CPU/GPU will probably result in
not being able to write applications unless it's using Apple's toolchain. If
you have no say over what software you can run on your computer, you no longer
own that computer.

We really haven't seen such a large technological separation like this. At
least back in the old days you could still run what you want.

macOS moving to the iOS route where you have to jailbreak your device to get
any sort of usability out of it is not a space I want to participate in, and
yet it seems that's how the entire Apple line is moving. They're almost the
complete opposite compared to Microsoft these days.

~~~
_bxg1
As long as developers continue buying Macs for building non-Apple-native
software, there will be ways to get them to run whatever you want, because
that's required for a dev machine. If Apple ever decides it no longer cares
about selling Macs to developers, well, I guess that's a possibility but it
would be incredibly stupid, because that's a significant fraction of their
current market.

------
tengbretson
If only LLVM bytecode were actually portable instead of "looks like it should
be portable but definitely isn't."

------
eatbitseveryday
I asked this on another thread when it came up, but didn't get any replies..
What does this mean for Intel as a business?

------
michaelmarion
Thanks for playing, Intel.

------
bananamerica
The Verge is a pretty good source, isn’t it?

~~~
leecb
Isn't this the Verge's summary of the Bloomberg article from Mark Gurman? Why
not link to the original article?

------
rjeli
, according to leaks

------
layoutIfNeeded
Big if true.

------
king_magic
Welp, I'm out, Apple. No interest in an ARM-only world. Like my x64 apps too
much.

------
xacky
Now will be a good time to stock up on Intel macs. At least we will still have
hackintoshes.

