Apple Announces "3rd Transition" for macOS: From Intel CPUs to Apple Silicon

[trs96]

See the following post for what I think is the primary reason among a few others, Apple decided to switch to their own custom Silicon in the Mac lineup.

Apple Previews macOS 11.0 Big Sur - Available Fall 2020

Here's some info as to why Apple decided to eventually say goodbye to Intel and start using variants of their own A-Series systems on a chip (SoCs). We all know Apple hates leaks. There are leaks all over the internet that are incredibly accurate these days. We know pretty much every last...

www.tonymacx86.com

 

[skroutz999]

Apple won't kill their fresh Mac Pro line computers in 2 years... no way! And I can't find any easy way to be able to switch motherboards with new chips inside. The transition will start from the bottom and will need some time to reach high end computers! DO NOT afraid my fellow hackintoshers! There are many years still to enjoy our systems and until the time has come... it's not sure if we still can't build hackintoshs!

 

[Bustycat]

Apple won't kill their fresh Mac Pro line computers in 2 years... no way! And I can't find any easy way to be able to switch motherboards with new chips inside. The transition will start from the bottom and will need some time to reach high end computers! DO NOT afraid my fellow hackintoshers! There are many years still to enjoy our systems and until the time has come... it's not sure if we still can't build hackintoshs!

Apple expects two years for the transition so an Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be highly-likely to be released before mid-2022. It doesn’t mean all Intel-based Macs will become obsolete immediately after that, but it is still possible that the last macOS version for them will be released between 2023 and 2025. Remember that Leopard, which is the last for PowerPC-based Macs, was released in 2007, just 2 years after the beginning of PowerPC to Intel transition.

 

[CapedOpossum]

One thing I have been wondering after hearing the Apple Silicon announcement is not necessarily the lockdown of hardware (that, to me, is pretty obvious), but whether Apple will extend their "walled garden" pattern to macOS software/applications. Given that the dev kit offered to developers uses an A12X, I have to assume Xcode is able to produce native executables from source code. But what about distribution? Will installing 3rd-party apps require the Mac App Store? Maybe the security settings in recent macOS releases have been heralding the day when installing software not sanctioned by Apple will require a macOS jailbreak? Just curious...

 

[remix0120]

Apple expects two years for the transition so an Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be highly-likely to be released before mid-2022. It doesn’t mean all Intel-based Macs will become obsolete immediately after that, but it is still possible that the last macOS version for them will be released between 2023 and 2025. Remember that Leopard, which is the last for PowerPC-based Macs, was released in 2007, just 2 years after the beginning of PowerPC to Intel transition.

I am super excited for Arm Mac to come, I love Hackintosh for the upgradability.
but I am more expecting for performance and power consumption to come.
we can pretty much predict from Apple's iPhone improvement each year.
but we didn't see that on intel powered Mac

 

[IAMNOTDEFECTIVE]

I'm going to put my views here:
What I'm hoping what will happen is that Apple prove what Acorn Computers did from 1987-1998: It's possible to use ARM in high performance desktops! And such eventually with people wanting to copy Apple, we'll eventually see Motherboards with high core count ARM chips with RAM and PCIe slots in a standard form factor (mATX, ATX,mITX).

Technically Gigabyte does a ARM motherboard/server. But that using a ThunderX2 processor, which is not exactly easy to get... ^^"

 

[MysticalOS]

I'd happily go back to official hardware if they'd just release something consumer level with PCI and storage expansion. Apple still ignores that tier entirely since 5,1 mac pros. Imacs are mid range at best and current mac pro design is utter over kill and STILL fully lacks an understanding of consumer level expansion.

I'm not worried about their A series chips at all. They are going to own and make PC market question their path with intel. However, I still dont trust apple to mac right call with expansion or even GPUs. They'll probably chase what remaining gaming companies they have left on their platform away and as for pro software, that remains to be seen.

 

[marbak]

I've just bought a SFF 9020 with the idea of putting together my first Hackintosh. It's the first PC I've owned and already it's annoying me with random Windows updates while I'm doing other stuff... probably I should be offline when I eventually start on the Hack ?.
Seeing Acorn Computers mentioned and thinking about Raspberry Pi and Apple's move to ARM makes me think that the Hackintosh community could morph into something else.
Haven't watched it yet but Micro Men looks interesting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92 You can watch it here:

I also found an Acorn A3010 - A3020 - A4000 Training Reference Manual (1993-01) and have attached a PDF which I hope is okay by the forum rules... but for "security" reasons it won't let me attach the PDF, sorry.

 

[marbak]

I managed to create an album with a few screenshots from the Acorn manual. It may be completely irrelevant for this community discussion so feel free to ignore or delete the post.
The Acorn Manual was in amongst dozens of old magazines from the 1980s I found in a 6gb+ usenet download with titles like Risc User, Electron User, Beebon, Acorn User and more.
It'll be good to see the back of the Covid pandemic and get back to full-time work again, too much free time at the moment

Acorn

• marbak
• Jun 28, 2020
• 5

 

[tabarus]

Imagine a 64 core Apple CPU, that produces 1/3 the heat of an equivalent Intel Xeon. They won't need all the over engineered cooling system that the current 2019 MP has. It won't need the 1.3 megawatt PSU. They will take what they learned from the Cheese grater and make the next AS based Mac Pro completely silent. Pro audio people will love that. It's still hard to believe they will refresh the MP by the end of 2022 but that's what is supposed to happen. I'd estimate a December of '22 release date. Will be the last Mac converted to Apple Silicon.

Yeah that sound awesome, but the question still remains valid, will apple lower their prices if things get cheaper to produce.
My intentions says NO they will rather raise the price or at least keep their current 'value', but hopefully I am wrong

Next question is, how will developer deal with x86 specific things like SSE or AVE ?
I assume that Open GL/CL will be also removed in future so developer also have to implement Metal beside Open CL/GL.

Thast sounds alot of work, time and money to me. Can any developer aford this ? Will developers drop support for macOS ?