The end of intel and the move to ARM

Surprised no one has discussed it, but what does everything think about the move to ARM?

Apple have said theyā€™re releasing ā€˜at least oneā€™ Mac with a custom designed ARM processer.

I take that to mean that most of the mainstream Macs will remain Intel at least in the short term and so I havenā€™t been paying too much attention to it.

I see it as a ā€˜generation beyond the next generationā€™ issue but YMMV.

From what I understand the whole Mac lineup is going arm over the next two years.

Iā€™m not too impressed for so many reasons. I think the Mac will loose out on a lot of software, and instead of stuff being designed for the Mac, weā€™ll end up with developers making slight modifications to their iPhone/iPad apps to run on Mac and call it a day.

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ATP and others said that Apple forecast the transition to Intel years ago would take 2 years, but they did it in 9 months.

This transition may be quick for all but the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro.

I suspect that many iPhone owners who do not own Macs may now be attracted to the platform due to it being able to run the iPhone and iPad apps that they are familiar with.

This increased attention will generate many more Mac sales.

The increased installed base of Macs and the endless search for more functional and powerful software should lead to more sales of the native Mac apps.

Apple were transistioning to a CPU that was already in very widespread use and using a deritvative of a *nix operating system on it. An operating system that is inherently designed for multi-tasking and multi-user usage.

This time theyā€™re going the other way, from an inherently multi-tasking and multi-user operating system and processer series to one that has only recently offered limited multi-tasking and still isnā€™t multi-user.

Thatā€™s a lot bigger jump for the programmers to make.

Iā€™ll be sad to see the end of Bootcamp and potentially Hackintoshes but other than that I think itā€™ll be good. I donā€™t think itā€™ll make much difference to daily use even during the transition. Once itā€™s done perhaps a few peripherals will lose driver support and a few legacy apps will die, but the big hitters will still be there.

I think youā€™re conflating iOS and macOS. The Apple silicon transition has nothing to do with merging iOS into macOS. It is just a CPU architecture transition for the same macOS we know and love ā€“ an OS that is already essentially CPU architecture agnostic and has been since 10.0.0.

Itā€™s going to be fine. :slight_smile:

Edit: Itā€™s going to be great! :slight_smile: I still remember how big a game changer Intel performance was over G4/5s. I think this will be similar. Canā€™t wait.

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Itā€™s not going to be good for the last generation of intel machines, just like it was terrible for the last gen of PPC machines. Similarly the first gen of Apple Silicon will probably be like the first gen of intel machines and also have a short support cycle. Then weā€™ll have several years of an OS which is not fantastically optimised due to having code for a different processor (ie Leopard) which probably will stay there till Intel support gets dropped.

Apple has lovingly (NOT) dropped my MacBook Pro in Big Sur (for no particular reason as usual) and it looks to be 2-3 years before there will be a mature Apple Silicon product for me to buy which sucks.

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I have a 2017 13ā€ MacBook Pro, I have to decide if I upgrade to Intel or Arm. Iā€™m hoping thereā€™s a 14ā€ Pro (or Air) in the future.

Does anyone think this will finally open the door to a Mac hybrid?

For anyone with doubts about ARM ā€¦

https://top500.org/news/japan-captures-top500-crown-arm-powered-supercomputer/

I still want to see MacOS running on an iPad Pro. If Apple were to sell you a 27" display (again) which when plugged into a iPad Pro gave a full desktop experience, and not just iOS on a larger screen, that would be a very compelling product for plenty of their customers. Lets face it, iPads are getting towards the cost of a real computer and Apple been touting the iPad as ā€˜Your next computerā€™ anywayā€¦ This would be the next logical step in my mind.

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Iā€™m taking a $500 loss on my 16-inch MacBook Pro bought in January, selling it now while itā€™s got value still. Iā€™ll get by on older gear until ARM Macs later in the year. Intel hardware is the past. Canā€™t wait to see what these new Apple Silicon Macs can do.

I donā€™t think it has been specifically announced that a 16ā€ ARM MacBook Pro will be released this year.

Iā€™m hopeful that the ARM move wonā€™t have any real effect for a few years yet as I ordered a new 27" i7 3.8 GHz iMac with 1TB SSD just over a week ago that Iā€™m waiting to arrive. I will be upgrading the memory myself once I have it, just need to work out if I just go to 16GB or if I add 16GB to take it to 24GB (assuming this is supported)

This is to replace my ageing 2012 MacBook Pro and I intend to do some iMovie editing on it along with once again trying to learn Mac/iOS programming once I find a really good resource, thinking the AppCoda series that Simon Ng has done might be good and open to other ideas as well.

Interesting times ahead. I think ARM is the way forward. Intel has lost the way. Meanwhile Raspberry Pi and others have introduced people to what they can do, and honestly when I can buy a 64 core arm based mainboard with the processor onboard, add some desktop or laptop memory + have sata6g ports and m2 sata/nvme slots and pcie with an atx power connector (some exist already). I will be happy, because something like that will run Linux sweet. Especially as it could have a GPU added and get better GPU support on arm.

Itā€™s going to be good to see for Mac as well. Watch the space.

Wasnā€™t it on the BBC World News only last week that Cambridge based ā€˜Arm Ltdā€™ are to be sold off to US tech giant ā€˜Nvidiaā€™ for US $40 Billion! British MPā€™s were urging the UK Government to use their powers under the Enterprise Act 2002 to stop the sale on national security grounds citing job losses and the loss of British intellectual property to a foreign nation.