First ARM based Macs revealed, 13-Inch MacBook Pro and Redesigned iMac

[TempestCatto]

First Arm-Based Macs to Be 13-Inch MacBook Pro and Redesigned iMac, Launches Coming in Late 2020 or Early 2021.

 

Quote

Apple plans to introduce its Arm-based custom designed chips for Macs at WWDC, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in a note to investors today, agreeing with an earlier report from Bloomberg. Kuo says that the first Mac models to adopt Arm-based chips will be the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and an iMac with a redesigned form factor, with Apple planning to launch the new models in the in fourth quarter of 2020 or early in 2021 at the earliest.

A Mac...Pro? Something tells me this is gonna be interesting...

 

Quote

• The new model’s form factor design will be similar to that of the existing Intel 13.3-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌. Apple will discontinue the Intel 13.3-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ production after launching the ARM 13.3-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌.
• ARM‌ ‌iMac‌ will be equipped with the all-new form factor design and a 24- inch display. Apple will launch the refresh of existing Intel ‌iMac‌ in 3Q20 before launching the ‌ARM‌ ‌iMac‌.

Bye bye Mac. A book for new readers!

 

Quote

Starting in 2021, Kuo says that all new Mac models will be equipped with Apple processors, and that it will take 12 to 18 months for Apple to transition to an all-Arm lineup.

Does that include GPU's as well now?

 

Quote

Kuo also says that an unspecified MacBook model with an "all-new form factor design" and an Arm-based chip will go into mass production in the second half of 2021, while a MacBook model with a mini-LED display will launch in the first half of 2021.

So are they finally gonna have fan grills in the lower chassis?

 

 

Well this is gonna be a big deal even if it sucks major donkey dooky. But they will have the new AMD lineup to compete with as well - plus AMD knows how to keep cool

 

Spaghetti Sauce: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/21/apple-arm-13-inch-macbook-pro-imac/?fbclid=IwAR0inWNuOpGyla80isShmqPfxx1qkdiOgr5-N2daXLvehL8XNvLJIHn93r8

Edited June 23, 2020 by TempestCatto
Removed unnecessary ad (EDIT: wow rude :( )

[svmlegacy]

RISC is back, baby. (Well, not that it ever really left.)

 

13 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Does that include GPU's as well now?

GPU's aren't ARM.

[atxcyclist]

What about the Mac Pro? Do people that need real processing power want this move? Not to mention losing dual-booting support and immense application support.

[GDRRiley]

if this is true that they think in 1-2 years all software will be converted they are more insane then I though

[atxcyclist]

5 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

if this is true that they think in 1-2 years all software will be converted they are more insane then I though

 

Apple went from PowerPC to Intel platforms in about that time frame, so it's possible.

[Kisai]

25 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

First Arm-Based Macs to Be 13-Inch MacBook Pro and Redesigned iMac, Launches Coming in Late 2020 or Early 2021.

 

 

Ming-Chi Kuo has been predicting this for over a decade, one of these years he might be right.

[GDRRiley]

10 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

 

Apple went from PowerPC to Intel platforms in about that time frame, so it's possible.

right but the software catalog was smaller and there wasn't as much cross platform cus powerPC was rare vs x86

 

this seems really stupid given they just refreshed this laptop

[atxcyclist]

16 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

right but the software catalog was smaller and there wasn't as much cross platform cus powerPC was rare vs x86

 

this seems really stupid given they just refreshed this laptop

 

I think it's a bad move, but apparently Apple thinks it's more important to allow tablet "apps" on a computer than it is to have people do real work on their machines.

[Jotoco]

Surface pro X new hackintosh?

[mr moose]

22 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

right but the software catalog was smaller and there wasn't as much cross platform cus powerPC was rare vs x86

 

this seems really stupid given they just refreshed this laptop

Wasn't the software catalogue basically all apple products and office?

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Wasn't the software catalogue basically all apple products and office?

a lot of what they cared about was 1st party.

[D13H4RD]

48 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

What about the Mac Pro? Do people that need real processing power want this move? Not to mention losing dual-booting support and immense application support.

I don't think a RISC-based workstation is on the cards yet.

[GDRRiley]

11 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

I don't think a RISC-based workstation is on the cards yet.

matters what you do most of the larger linux repositories have been ported and you can compile yourself. a typical office job could 100% use it with Linux

[Zodiark1593]

30 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

I don't think a RISC-based workstation is on the cards yet.

Technically speaking, aren’t most modern x86 CPUs internally RISC that happens to convert x86 instructions to the Micro Ops that the machine runs?

[Bombastinator]

28 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Technically speaking, aren’t most modern x86 CPUs internally RISC that happens to convert x86 instructions to the Micro Ops that the machine runs?

My memory is that one of  the main differences between x86 and risc is the absence of microcode.  If what you say is true there wouldn’t be any microcode.  There were Transmeta CPUs around the turn of the century that might have done something like that.  I never did quite learn how transmeta worked.  There was some sort of conversion I think.  Transmeta specialized in low performance extremely low wattage chips.  I only ever saw them in really small laptops.

[captain_to_fire]

3 hours ago, Jotoco said:

Surface pro X new hackintosh?

Unless Apple give Windows 10 on ARM via Bootcamp a green light, chances are the new macOS for ARM will exclusively run on Apple’s in-house chips unless someone tampers the OS to make it run on Qualcomm Snapdragon chips but even if that’s possible, it’ll probably be useless because Qualcomm doesn’t have drivers compatible for macOS. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

My memory is that one of  the main differences between x86 and risc is the absence of microcode

There is still microcode, the fly over from above difference (quick and dirty) is basically the name itself. PowerPC also had to release microcode updates to fix Spectre vulnerabilities. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-impact-processors-power-family/

 

Modern processors today take input of large instructions but end up breaking them down (the decoder) in to many smaller ops which is where the comments about everything basically being RISC comes from. Actual RISC processors don't have these decoders though so your doing more of that yourself in code and compilers, and you might not be better at it than Intel optimized compilers and CPU decoders are.

[RejZoR]

One of reasons for Apple going with ARM will probably be locking their OS to their hardware entirely. Where current Macs can run Windows. Until Microsoft releases a more ARM focused Windows version that also runs x86 stuff well.

[Guest]

Let’s face it, any old egg can speculate Apple was going to move to ARM in low end models, and with the bezel leak of the new iMac, it’s probably it might be one too. 
 

 

[leadeater]

18 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

One of reasons for Apple going with ARM will probably be locking their OS to their hardware entirely. Where current Macs can run Windows. Until Microsoft releases a more ARM focused Windows version that also runs x86 stuff well.

 

Quote

In addition to UWP apps, Windows 10 on ARM can also run your x86 Win32 apps unmodified, with good performance and a seamless user experience, just like any PC. These x86 Win32 apps don’t have to recompiled for ARM and don’t even realize they are running on an ARM processor. Note that 64-bit x64 Win32 apps are not supported, but the vast majority of apps have x86 versions available. When given the choice of app architecture, just choose the 32-bit x86 version to run the app on a Windows 10 on ARM PC.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm

[DrMacintosh]

I doubt these predictions are accurate. Going headfirst into x86 from PPC was a whole lot different than going headfirst from x86 to ARM would be. 
 

Sure, for the average consumer (Apples entire market essentially), 100% of their needs can be satisfied with ARM. ARM is actually superior for basic tasks like email and browsing the web because of its power efficiency....but what about the actual “Pros”? 
 

XCode, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, etc. These workflows can’t be easily converted from x86 to ARM. XCode and other programming languages especially. What happens to Niche apps that won’t get ported to ARM? Emulation? 
 

The biggest oof about this transition would be Bootcamp support. A key feature of the Mac is being able to dual boot. Windows 10 for ARM is nowhere near macOS is inherently thanks to essentially all iOS apps being easily ported over to Mac with a few clicks. If people can’t do that anymore, why bother with the Mac at all and just get the full x86 performance of a Windows PC? 
 

I don’t think Craig Federighi is dumb enough to commit Apple to this course fully. 

[RejZoR]

@leadeater

Any specific reason why 64bit apps are not working? It's just now that 64bit got the most popular...

[leadeater]

Just now, RejZoR said:

@leadeater

Any specific reason why 64bit apps are not working? It's just now that 64bit got the most popular...

Not sure, might be limitations with current ARM or the emulation layer or Windows itself, or combination of those. I can't see 64bit support not happening because there are actually a lot of apps with 64bit only now. No idea how popular Windows on ARM actually is though, never tried it myself.

 

Performance isn't supposed to be terrible either.

Quote

The WOW64 layer of Windows 10 allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows 10. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again. The caches are produced for each module so that other apps can make use of them on first launch.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation

 

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171

[Dabombinable]

Anything to allow Macbooks to be fine with minimal cooling...

[hishnash]

5 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

What about the Mac Pro? Do people that need real processing power want this move? Not to mention losing dual-booting support and immense application support.

You can already get 32core ARM cpus and there are 80Core ARM cpus on the way the instruction sets has nothing to do with the total compute power of the cpu that is all down to the internals of the cpu not how you talk to it. Apple can build a high power macPro cpu, they can also license it of the self from others if they dont want to build it themselves or license parts of it and use thier own cores mixed with IBM, ARM or AMD memory and PCIe controlers. 

You will be able to duel boot since it is an important part of apple being able to have lots of developers test the new os every year, so there will be duel booting and linux and windows both have arm64 versions that will be made to work (mabye not using the intergrated gpu on the laptops but for sure using AMDs gpus on the higher end parts without issue).

 

 

29 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Any specific reason why 64bit apps are not working? It's just now that 64bit got the most popular...

MS did 32bit first since even if your app is 64bit the chances are it depends on some 32bit parts very few things in windows are 100% 64bit just yet. They have said 64bit emulation is on the way soon.... 

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Actual RISC processors don't have these decoders though

Modern ARM cpus (at least apples) do have decoders (they support SIMD etc) but they are a lot simpler than the x86 version (mostly due to the mess that x86-32 was),  RISC-V might be the only modern arc that does not.