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

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I know that most of you people want the state-of-the-art computer, but frankly my 8 year old Z68 with only an i3 on it gives me full satisfaction (I don't say I wouldn't appreciate something faster but... ;-) ), so even building the last possible hackintosh when the time comes will still make plenty of sense. Ok, after 3 years, you won't get Apple updates anymore, so what? I've got a G4 Mini 1st gen and the potential security risk of using an old machine is really exaggerated, in my opinion... As for performance, well, except if you have to do calculations for the NASA all day long, aren't current computers enough for what you do? ;-)

In the end, the hackintosh community will become a vintage club, like PowerPC die-hards are now... :)
 
Who else produces ARM based desktop hardware ?
I think it's impossible to install even found the ARM board.
Because Apple may added their unique micro-codes into their CPUs. And it may not boot if these micro-code is required during boot.
Need to buy ARM arch license when the vendors want to build ARM CPU, but the micro-code is customizable.
 
can someone explain what about us we just bought a brand new MacBook Pro ? we are fine or the new arm chips will over-perfom us?


I did too. Debating if I should return it.
 
People Apple Silicon CPUs are only ARM CPUs at the most basic level. They are highly customized. Please stop kidding your selves that you are gonna go find some embedded arm board that you are gonna be able to hack and make MacOS run on it.
 
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I did too. Debating if I should return it.
While I don’t know what model you have there was a reason that only the most basic of tasks was shown today. It will be quite some time before these CPU compete with Apple Pro level products. From everything I have read there is gonna be a mini and a new MacBook announce this year. That’s it. And who knows if they will even actually computer this year. Even if the are the first CPUs to jump to 4nm late next year they are still going to have very efficient highly multi-threaded software with potentially in the hundreds of cores to replace the pro level products. Apple knows this.

That being said, if I had just dropped like 30k on a machine just for Apple to say that they are changing the whole architecture of the ecosystem in 2 years, I would be furious! And what they did today has pretty much killed the sales of the new Intel macs coming out this year and next. If I had one that was inside of the return window it would be back at Apple tomorrow. The thing that irritates me the most honestly is the fact that I won’t be able to dual boot into windows and play games. I really hope that they get their act together. Cause unless they can post some crazy compelling performance they are gonna have a lot of people saying NOPE! That being said we live in a world where sales matter and the power users are actually very few. If the make a super light and affordable machine. If it runs office and email and browses then web well there are many corporate clients that will be just fine with that. Especially if apple puts in good tools to lock them down and control what users do. Corporate IT types love that ****. Hate say it but unless they do something amazing Apple is gonna be selling the Mac equivalent of a Chromebook.
 
Hackintoshing aside, this actually worries me for software developers for mainstream applications and games. For example, will Adobe release CS 2022 completely re-written from the ground up for the Apple ARM CPU? What about Aspyr porting Civilization VII to the new Macs? It's relatively easy for developers to re-compile code from Windows to Mac OS thanks to shared Intel architecture, and I worry that newer releases will be either hampered or non-existent. A good example would be games released on the Intel vs PPC, or Xbox 360 ports on the PS3 (ya I know they are both PPC based but radically different). Sure, the ports "ran" on the latter examples but at a cost and some developers simply didn't even bother because the trade-offs were not worth it from both quality and financial perspectives.

Apple may be a leader in smartphones and tablets, however they don't even break the 10% user base for home computers. While switching to an in-house ARM design is great for Apple, fragmenting home PC architecture will only hurt both the developers and consumers. Moving from PPC to Intel went smoothly because 90% of the desktop PC industry already ran on the X86 platform. How many AAA apps and games are currently on ARM? I honestly do not think Apple has enough sway to pull off another 2006.

But hey, that's just my 2 cents, perhaps I will be completely wrong... and I hope I am.
 
If I can scrape together the cash, I’ll put one more together, once we know a little more about what the timeline for Intel support is going to look like. A desktop UNIX that doesn’t suck is worth the effort, at least to me.

The A-series CPUs really have come a long way, though. The A12Z is already no slouch, it’ll be interesting to see how things shape up when the dev kits ship. An A12Z with an actual cooling system attached to it could be a different beast from the one in the iPad Pro 2020.
 
Correct me if I am wrong but they never mention ARM going into a pro machine. MacbBook Pro 13" first, then the new 24" iMac (and of course the dev machine).

Current ARM tech is nowhere close to what Intel is doing with Xeon CPUs. I am assuming based on this that the Mac Pro will be around... forever. At least for another 20-30 years. If Apple can even catch up at all I would be surprised. 28 core Xeons crush ARM chips.

Same with GPU tech. ARM cannot compete with NVIDIA or AMD. Sure, ARM is fast for iPad games but for doing work outside of making spreadsheets? I am very skeptical.

I built my current i9 machine to last for 10 years. With this news, I still feel pretty safe about those 10 years, and ill probably build a few more. I work in Avid often anyway and most editors/directors are still in Mojave. If I update to Catalina before 2022 I would be surprised :D
 
If I can scrape together the cash, I’ll put one more together, once we know a little more about what the timeline for Intel support is going to look like. A desktop UNIX that doesn’t suck is worth the effort, at least to me.

The A-series CPUs really have come a long way, though. The A12Z is already no slouch, it’ll be interesting to see how things shape up when the dev kits ship. An A12Z with an actual cooling system attached to it could be a different beast from the one in the iPad Pro 2020.
Yeah I really think that this is a good thing for Apple in the long run. especially if it helps them reduce the cost. I mean a big chunk of the cost of a Mac Pro is that big Honking XEON chip if apple can replace that with something that only cost them a couple hundred dollars to make it could make priced decline dramatically. It Mac become affordable machines with plenty of software I dont think I would. mind. The Primary reason I hackintosh is cost. if Apple can eliminate that reason then I will buy one for sure. I own several real macs as it is. Still if I had just paid 30K for a fully loaded MacPro today would have felt like a total dick punch.
 
The big question is are they gonna make desktops with PCI-E support? the DTK is a A12Z with 16GB ram and a 500GB SSD. It doesnt have any PCI-E exposed, nor does it have any Thunderbolt 3. I think they are going to wait for USB 4 when Thunderbolt 3 gets rolled into the spec before anything substantial happens. I think at most well prolly see the return of the fan-less MacBook that will be based on Apple Silicon.

Studios will just go use linux before going ARM if the apps aren't there. A lot of the pro apps already run on Linux. unless they can make a chip that is a compelling level of performance per dollar than Intel. and let be real Apple is prolly pretty convinced that they have something is in the pipeline or they wouldn't be doing this. Who knows a Mac Pro with 128 cores and 2 TB of ram? and doesn't cost more than a decent car? I mean I think we would all be down for that.
 
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