
ARM Macs are coming, three years after Apple’s attitude change - Corrado
https://www.macworld.com/article/3529428/arm-macs-are-coming-three-years-after-apples-attitude-change.html
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406216)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22410918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22410918)

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thought_alarm
I very much doubt it.

This is nothing like the transition to Intel, which offered a huge benefit to
the 95% of users who were trapped in the Windows ecosystem.

In the last 8 years or so, Apple's big ideas for the Mac have been complete
duds (the trashcan Mac Pro, their entire laptop lineup from 2015 to 2020...)

Mac OS X recently dropped support for 32-bit software, and this should have
freed up their OS engineers. Instead, the most recent release of Mac OS
(10.15, Catalina) is widely viewed as one of the worst releases in recent
memory.

I don't want an ARM Mac. I want Apple to refocus on the basics of Mac hardware
and software.

~~~
Lammy
Moving away from Intel sounds like a huge benefit to me due to the number of
ways they have held back computers over the decades. I believe that ECC
memory, for example, would be standard in all desktops and laptops today if
Intel didn't use it for market segmentation. That doesn't even touch on all
the security issues.

~~~
catblast
> I believe that ECC memory, for example, would be standard in all desktops
> and laptops today if Intel didn't use it for market segmentation.

This is an extraordinary claim. Don’t get me wrong, I love ECC, but it has a
very real cost associated with it. Why would any alternative to Intel change
the pricing dynamic?

~~~
Lammy
We can't know, because choosing ECC or non-ECC based on price vs features
isn't a choice most Intel consumers get to make. I do personally think the
benefits would have proven themselves worth the cost over the previous couple
of decades if The Market wasn't artificially constrained by an intentional
limitation in the processors 99% of people use. Prices would come down with
additional volume too.

~~~
dogma1138
The memory controller supports ECC if Apple cared about it they would’ve
forced Intel’s hand a long time ago it would not be particularly difficult for
Apple to request a custom SKU with ECC enabled.

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Mister_Snuggles
I really enjoy working with the Mac and am very productive with it, but this
would most likely represent the end of the road for me to use it in a
professional capacity.

One of the tools that I require to do my job, a development environment for an
ERP system, is a Windows application. It's a closed-source commercial
application. The likelihood of it getting ported to MacOS is zero, so it's
always going to require me to run Windows in some capacity in order to use it.

There are three ways I see this tool working on an ARM-based Mac:

* MacOS emulates enough of the Intel instruction set that VMware still runs. And doesn't kill it in the next version like they did the PowerPC emulation after the Intel switch.

* VMware runs but gives me a virtual ARM CPU which runs an ARM version of Windows which emulates an Intel CPU. I'm not sure what the ARM virtualization story is, so this may not even be a thing,

* I keep an Intel machine under my desk and use RDP. This is somewhat cheating and it's unlikely that work would be willing to pay for two machines.

On the flip side, Windows 10 seems to be getting really good, so switching
actually wouldn't be that bad. WSL will basically give me all of the command-
line tools that I need, Hyper-V can meet my virtualization needs (though I
won't require it like I do on the Mac), and all of my other tools are
available on Windows.

~~~
XMPPwocky
I think you're missing a fourth option: VMware or some open-source tool doing
dynamic binary translation to run Windows on an ARM CPU.

As far as I know, qemu can do this today.

~~~
saagarjha
Note that this is somewhat slow.

~~~
chongli
I doubt performance is a major factor for an ERP. Emulation should work just
fine.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
Yeah, and this is just the IDE for writing code for said ERP and some other
development tools.

If anything network performance is more important than CPU performance - the
IDE is very chatty when it talks to the server.

------
burlesona
Despite the headline this is still just speculation. _But_ it is a pretty
obvious bet at this point. The iPad pros are so fast, and have serious
physical limitations compared to laptop and especially desktop computers.

I’m excited to see what Apple’s processor team could pull off with the higher
budget, better heat dissipation, and much larger battery capacity that comes
with a MacBook Pro housing.

~~~
Corrado
Agreed. I've thought for quite a while that Apple should/could put multiple
ARM processors in a laptop and turn them on/off depending on need and power
supply. This is the best of both worlds, in my view. Doing lots of heavy
computing (gaming, etc.)? Turn on all 6 ARM processors! Working from the
library and remoting into your server? Only turn on 1 ARM processor.

I could even see being able to choose the number of processors when you buy
the machine. Trying to save money? Get the single processor option. Need to
compile Rust code daily? Get the 6 processor model. Or get a low end Mac Pro
today and upgrade it tomorrow with processor cards. There are a lot of options
when you control the complete system; Hardware, Firmware, and Software.

------
drivingmenuts
The thing that worries me, and this is possibly unnecessary, is that Catalina
is paving the way for the appification of OS X, turning into a version of iOS
on the desktop, complete with sandboxes and silo’d apps; more like an iPad
with built-in keyboard than a general-purpose laptop.

Jobs did not want iOS devices to create content, only to consume it, and with
Apple’s focus shifting to services, I worry that they will continue this push
for ever more consumption, to the detriment of all else. We see it in their
overtaking of and reported indifference to independent developers. We see it
their push to create an all-encompassing media empire, like Disney, but with a
watch and handhelds. We see it in their push to develop ever.more expensive
hardware that doesn’t have commensurate increases in functionality.

I still use Apple and love it, but the hardware and software hasn’t yet moved
away very far from what it started out as after the switch to OS X. But I can
also see the end of that in my lifetime, perhaps in the next 15-20 years. By
that that time, I can see development limited to a few approved vendors with
deep pockets for expensive licensing, but the bulk of it coming from Apple.

~~~
alwillis
_I still use Apple and love it, but the hardware and software hasn’t yet moved
away very far from what it started out as after the switch to OS X._

You do realize Mac OS X 10.0 was released in March 2001. Here are the specs of
the early 2001 iMac: It featured a 500 MHz processor, 64 MB of RAM, a 20 GB
hard drive and a 56 kbps modem,was available in Indigo, Blue Dalmatian or
Flower Power, and was priced at $1199 U.S.

So yeah, we've come a long way.

 _I can see development limited to a few approved vendors with deep pockets
for expensive licensing, but the bulk of it coming from Apple._

I doubt this will happen; there's no point. The recent release of Swift
Playgrounds [1] for the Mac has the potential to create a new generation of
Mac developers.

Apple wouldn't have created Catalyst to increase the number of apps for the
Mac by giving a path to iOS developers to bring their apps to macOS.

Darwin isn't going anywhere; you'll still be able to run all of the Unix
stuff, with the vast majority just needing to be compiled for ARM.

Not to be pedantic, but sandboxed apps on macOS goes back to the 10.5 days. I
just checked on my Catalina machine; most GUI apps are sandboxed, but none of
the Unix apps are. By definition, sandboxing has to work differently on the
Mac than it does on iOS.

There's no doubt that Apple has to do better; the 10.15 Catalina release was
way more buggy than we're used to seeing. Apple seems to have a lot of balls
in the air, with macOS 10.16 coming in a few months at WWDC, plus new iOS,
watchOS, tvOS and who knows what else.

If the transition to ARM is going to happen about a year from now, that means
there are alpha versions of macOS running on prototype ARM Macs _right now_.

Hopefully, the Catalina release was a wakeup call for them to get their act
together; guess we’ll know soon enough.

[1]: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swift-
playgrounds/id1496833156](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swift-
playgrounds/id1496833156)

------
csdreamer7
I don't think this will happen. I believe (but do not know) that a RISC
emulation of a CISC processor is much harder than the reverse.

If AMD had died and Intel's top of the line enthusiast CPU was a 10 core; I
wouldn't blame Apple. They would be leaving a lot of performance on the table
that they could get from TSMC.

AMD has made the x86 space much more competitive and likely saved x86 in the
long run in the server space. Same with gaming enthusiasts. Some of them dual
boot to use Windows software/games while keeping the mac in that creative
space. It would just be much easier to source AMD parts. Especially since both
of them use TSMC.

It is a lot of software effort at a time when the quality control of Catalina
is buggy mess. A lot of software work to emulate and optimize a new CPU. I am
seeing, at least youtubers, consider other platforms. Snazzy labs recently
moved to Linux because they couldn't afford a Mac Pro, risk a Hackintosh, or
use Windows 10 because their 10 gig networking didn't work well on Win10.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2dACq3F_W4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2dACq3F_W4)

If Apple does switch over they better have the CPU horsepower to justify it.
Their brand new Mac Pro is only 18 cores and AMD's 3000 16 core can match it
on Windows. AMD is very strong right now and Intel has had fire lit under them
for the past year that may cause them to respond soon.

~~~
hajile
It's easier to emulate CISC with RISC than the other way around. CISC
instructions break down into RISC instructions but detecting which RISC
instructions can be added together into a complex CISC instruction is much
harder (though I'd note that RISCV attempts to fuse certain instructions as an
optional optimization).

------
etaioinshrdlu
Bad news if you develop in Docker on a Mac and then deploy in the cloud. You
probably are taking great advantage of the fact that your binaries work fast
both locally and on the majority of cloud servers. There are ARM servers but
they are still fringe and seem to be unsupported by other fun platforms like
Google Cloud Run and similar stuff.

It really would be quite a drag.

On second thought, most web dev tasks aren't very CPU intensive and would work
under emulation pretty much fine. And we all expect code to run faster in prod
than on dev anyways!

------
Mountain_Skies
In the 1995 movie 'Hackers' there was a scene
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL9yCWv7NS0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL9yCWv7NS0))
where they're talking about RISC being the future. The hype about RISC was
strong at the time but a few years later that scene seemed dated. Now here we
are in 2020 and ARM keeps taking over more and more of the world.

~~~
csdreamer7
That is because they were on the PowerPC RISC platform. They moved to x86 when
they realized Intel's lead had grown too much to ignore.

~~~
alwillis
Motorola and IBM said they could keep pace with Intel but hit all kinds of
technical challenges.

The last Power Mac G5 with its 9 fans plus water cooling just to get two dual-
core PowerPC G5 processors to run reliably was the last straw:
[https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powerma...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_quad_2.5.html)

------
tiew9Vii
I'd buy a arm based Macbook as a companion media/email/word/excel machine if
it was extremely light and portable with long battery life for travel.

An Ipad / laptop cross, I'd guess you could call it a "Surface Pro x" clone.
The IPad pro comes close if the OS was a bit more powerful.

I'd still need a real x86 machine for work. I deploy on x86 so need to
develop/test locally on x86.

------
doctoboggan
While not mentioned here, I have seen speculation that if this were to happen
Apple could offer an intel co-processor that could be used as a compatibility
layer for old intel apps.

Does anyone with better computer arch knowledge know if something like that
would be reasonable from a price and performance perspective?

------
voltagex_
"But this week, reliable Apple supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that
Apple plans on releasing a Mac with an Apple-designed processor in the first
half of 2021"

I'd buy one of these, but it'd probably be priced in line with the current
Macbook lineup

~~~
hinkley
I suspect it’ll start with the Air, as many others have predicted. Then later
the MacBook while the Pro is Intel.

------
Waterluvian
Would ARM macs have some emulation or nativeish support for all the existing
software out there?

I remember my first intel Mac having support for PowerPC apps was really
important to me.

------
heelix
Jesus Christ...They finally put the escape key back and potentially sorted the
keyboard. While I'm sure there is a consumer market for such a thing, this
would really make a mess things as a developer's laptop. The battery is
already maxed out for what you could carry on an airplane. They need to use
some of that space they saved by welding all the components to the mainboard
and cool the i9 so it does not throttle itself. (Crazy talk to even hope for
RAM slots... cause who wants a system you could expand...)

~~~
alwillis
The ARM performance per watt is so much better than mainstream Intel
processors; battery life would noticeably and perhaps dramatically improve.

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mtzaldo
I just want a powerful arm linux laptop that supports multiple monitors with
different dpi. Nice trackpad and nice keyboard.

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p9s
That's better late than never!

It's good to see ARM spreading as a cheap alternative to traditional CPU for
personal computers.

~~~
tasogare
Cheap? We’re speaking of Apple here, it will likely be in machine costing 4
digits.

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alwillis
Having been through the 680x0 to PowerPC to Intel transitions, this doesn’t
surprise me in the least.

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nodesocket
Wouldn't switching to ARM break all currently installed brew packages and
virtualization using VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox?

~~~
saagarjha
Yes, unless they add binary translation, which would fix the first case.

~~~
catblast
uhh.. most brew shit is built from source, for which prebuilt binaries are
often available. You’d just brew as usual building from source or prebuilt arm
packages would be provided as usual.

~~~
saagarjha
> Wouldn't switching to ARM break all _currently installed_ brew packages

(Emphasis mine.) Most Homebrew programs are _not_ installed from source; and
they'll require recompilation for the new architecture by the Homebrew team
and a reinstall of all packages (to fetch the new packages) to work.

~~~
mcphage
If you’re switching to an ARM Mac, it’ll be a brand new machine; there won’t
_be_ any currently installed brew packages.

~~~
saagarjha
I think a lot of people use Migration Assistant or Time Machine when setting
up a new Mac.

~~~
mcphage
I've used Migration Assistant, but I don't think it carried over brew
packages. Does Time Machine?

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sys_64738
Could it run RISC OS?

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bob1029
AMD Semi-Custom?

