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

TempestCatto
By TempestCatto
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Posted
14 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@leadeater

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

Almost certainly because of the register sizes. Running ARM or PPC emulation on 32-bit Intel CPU was always "impossible" without significant performance degradation because x86 doesn't have enough registers. 64-bit Intel/AMD CPU's have large enough registers they can emulate 32-bit CPU's easily. However, the same problem crops up if you want to emulate 64-bit CPU's on 64-bit CPU's. Intel doesn't have large enough registers to do it, so they "could" but it would come at a steep performance. Take note that the Intel HAXM emulator used for Android development on Intel platforms requires a 64-bit CPU.

https://github.com/intel/haxm/wiki/Installation-Instructions-on-Windows

Quote

Additionally, Intel HAXM can be used only with Android x86 and x86_64 emulator images provided by Intel. Intel HAXM cannot be used with ARM Android emulator images or non-Intel x86 or x86_64 Android emulator images.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_recompilation

PS3/Xbox360 Emulators have largely taken the dynamic recompilation direction that was first seen with the N64 emulators.

 

It's not unreasonable to invoke dynamic recompilation on your own OS (eg Windows on WIndows, or OSX on OSX) , which at least on Windows would allow Win16 and Win32 software to work on any 64-bit CPU they port the OS to. Win64 software might simply be a "look we gave you the tools to hit recompile, so do that instead." Which is basically the mechanism Apple took with OSX when they went to enforce 64-bit compliance. 

 

However, again, I must stress the point that Apple or Microsoft would rather you not be crappy developer and instead produce native binaries.

 

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Posted
19 hours 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

Na, Intel forced their hand. The reason they're making the switch is the same reason they made the switch from PowerPC to Intel in the first place. 

 

They would likely have considered AMD, but with their own in-house resources and capabilities in chip design they probably wanted to go that route anyway as it would have given them complete control over their own destiny and development. That and ARM is so ubiquitous these days its probably not the hurdle it once was.

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Posted
54 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

They would likely have considered AMD, but with their own in-house resources and capabilities in chip design they probably wanted to go that route anyway as it would have given them complete control over their own destiny and development. That and ARM is so ubiquitous these days its probably not the hurdle it once was.

I think custom/customized AMD chips would have been the way to go but they want to make everyones life a pain

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

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Posted
1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

I think custom/customized AMD chips would have been the way to go but they want to make everyones life a pain

Yes, I'm 100% sure that's how it went down. The Senior Lead Team met for their Wednesday morning meeting and collectively went "Yeah, f**** everyone. Lets go ARM."

 

🤣

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Posted
21 minutes ago, Results45 said:

You guys forgot the A12Z-based Mac Mini "transition kit" that was announced today:

.

Video doesn’t say whether or not it’s a12z.  I hope it isn’t. I don’t think it’s fast enough.  It will be for general office work related stuff, but I’m doubting it will work for heavier horsepower industrial stuff.  4 and 4 big/little just isn’t that fast.  It will make for some truely thin laptops though.  Heat requirements should be ridiculously low.  4 and 8 might. At least to get things into range.  This seems like a bit of a panicky  move by Apple to me.  They seem to want out of the intel space real bad to be putting hot rodded phone chips in laptops

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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Posted

Glad I bought my MacBook Pro a month ago. Because if I wanted an ARM based computer I would have bought a Chromebook. 

I just want to sit back and watch the world burn. 

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Posted
17 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Video doesn’t say whether or not it’s a12z.

I time stamped the video

 

Screenshot (376).png

There is more that meets the eye
I see the soul that is inside

 

 

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Posted
48 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

Yes, I'm 100% sure that's how it went down. The Senior Lead Team met for their Wednesday morning meeting and collectively went "Yeah, f**** everyone. Lets go ARM."

 

🤣

I'm saying AMD would have been the easier choice and still would have given apple lots of control but they went for the full vertical integration, I just hope it bites them.

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
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"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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Posted
Just now, gabrielcarvfer said:

Cook said they still have plenty of products with Intel processors in the pipeline. It probably won't flop like Windows RT/Windows 10 S.

they are going to have to. and i'm not surprised lead time is months if not a year for some of these products.

it could and I wish it would

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

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Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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Posted
11 hours ago, Jotoco said:

Apple will probably wall that garden up even more now. The T2 chip will probably be beefied up and you won't be able to even boot without it checking the SN on the SSD to the CPU, RAM and other components. Probably even checking against screen, keyboard and other components just to be sure and to make repair impossible. 

The new ARM based Macs won't need a separate T2 chip because all of their current iPhone/iPad chips has the secure enclave co-processor inside. In fact, the T2 chip in new Macs are just modified A10 Fusion chips found in the iPhone 7/7+ but was repurposed to handle the SSD controller, encryption by the secure enclave, etc.

 

I wouldn't go so far that Apple's chips would even inspect the screen and keyboard if replaced. But now that Apple is transitioning to ARM chips, chances are that iFixIt will give these upcoming Macs the same scores as the iPhone and iPad.

There is more that meets the eye
I see the soul that is inside

 

 

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Posted
16 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I time stamped the video

 

Screenshot (376).png

Sure, but that puts together 2 different pieces of info.  One that the cpu they are launching in phones is a12z, and the other that Apple is producing a laptop with an ARM cpu.  Very good chance it is correct, but it’s double rumor, and that means the fractional probability gets multiplied.  That Apple is releasing laptops with arm CPUs is very near 1.0.  The probability that they will put 12z on laptops remains a bit under that though.   That Apple would release the same cpu for both a phone and a laptop still seems a bit unlikely to me.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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Posted
8 hours ago, Commodus said:

This definitely isn't the 1990s.  Apple didn't have its own chip design wing (let alone one this successful) a quarter-century ago.  It wasn't using a Unix-based OS or universal binaries, didn't have a PC industry that focuses on mobility and always-on internet, and wasn't dealing with an Intel that was struggling to catch up to everyone else.

 

For that matter, ARM is an industry standard.  If you're using a phone or mobile tablet to browse this, you're using ARM right now.

 

Yes, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, but if we're going to borrow truisms, the past also isn't automatically indicative of the future.  The circumstances are very different this time around.

 

Their first transition, from Motorola 68k series to IBM PowerPC used custom PowerPC chips from the "AIM Alliance" and did not end well, in fact ended in Steve Jobs himself announcing the switch to Intel at a WWDC keynote. The PowerPC was out of steam.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC

 

OS/X, absolutely had "Fat Binaries", I still have all the beta and official CD's and DVD's. Heck, even have an old G4 "Yikes" model with the collection of posters they sent to us for being early adopters. Fun times!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary

 

OS/9 had the "Classic Environment" I remember well. Made lots of money supporting lots of people with all their problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_9

 

I predict they will transition to AMD before they fully transition to their ARM custom chips. People don't want that custom crap on their desktop. It's the Old Apple back to their old tricks. It's too bad.

 

 

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Posted
43 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Sure, but that puts together 2 different pieces of info.  One that the cpu they are launching in phones is a12z, and the other that Apple is producing a laptop with an ARM cpu.  Very good chance it is correct, but it’s double rumor, and that means the fractional probability gets multiplied.  That Apple is releasing laptops with arm CPUs is very near 1.0.  The probability that they will put 12z on laptops remains a bit under that though.   That Apple would release the same cpu for both a phone and a laptop still seems a bit unlikely to me.

It's not unlikely. He posted a picture of a slide from their presentation also linked. The iPhone 11, Pro, and SE2 all use the A13 chip while the 2020 iPad Pro is on the A12Z. They are also talking about their new macs running iPhone and iPad apps natively since they are on the same chips. So it's not really unlikely, it's exactly what they are doing.

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Posted
54 minutes ago, willies leg said:

I predict they will transition to AMD before they fully transition to their ARM custom chips. People don't want that custom crap on their desktop. It's the Old Apple back to their old tricks. It's too bad.

When Apple has a transition time of about two years, why would it bring out AMD models and introduce needless complexity into its hardware lineup?

 

I don't think it's Old Apple.  This is the Apple whose cheapest phone outperforms all Android phones realizing that it might have a chance at dominating computer performance as well.  No guarantees it'll succeed, but it's in a good position to try.

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Posted

The biggest impact that this transition will have on the typical Mac user will be the ability to run iOS apps near seamlessly out of the box. App developers would definitely need to redesign them for a pointer based environment as opposed to touch, though. Software support for macOS isn't necessarily the best, and opening up macOS to iOS apps will liven up the scene. 

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Posted
25 minutes ago, Commodus said:

When Apple has a transition time of about two years, why would it bring out AMD models and introduce needless complexity into its hardware lineup?

 

I don't think it's Old Apple.  This is the Apple whose cheapest phone outperforms all Android phones realizing that it might have a chance at dominating computer performance as well.  No guarantees it'll succeed, but it's in a good position to try.

The timing of the move is somewhat reminiscent of something Azula would do in Avatar the Last Airbender, if Azula was a big shot CEO of course. 
 

*I swear, I hadn’t been binge watching 😛*
 

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Video doesn’t say whether or not it’s a12z.  I hope it isn’t. I don’t think it’s fast enough.  It will be for general office work related stuff, but I’m doubting it will work for heavier horsepower industrial stuff.  4 and 4 big/little just isn’t that fast.  It will make for some truely thin laptops though.  Heat requirements should be ridiculously low.  4 and 8 might. At least to get things into range.  This seems like a bit of a panicky  move by Apple to me.  They seem to want out of the intel space real bad to be putting hot rodded phone chips in laptops

If Maya and Shadow of The Tomb Raider were, in fact, running on the A12Z as shown in WDDC (keeping in mind they were running in Rosetta), I don’t think there’s much to worry about, performance-wise. If a souped-up tablet chip can produce the results displayed today, future scaled-up workstation chips should prove quite potent. 

My eyes see the past…

My camera lens sees the present…

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Posted
2 hours ago, LostElric said:

It's not unlikely. He posted a picture of a slide from their presentation also linked. The iPhone 11, Pro, and SE2 all use the A13 chip while the 2020 iPad Pro is on the A12Z. They are also talking about their new macs running iPhone and iPad apps natively since they are on the same chips. So it's not really unlikely, it's exactly what they are doing.

Wishful thinking on my part perhaps.  Apple is rarely known for terrible marketing and putting the same chip in a phone and a tablet more or less guarantees the laptop won’t sell.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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Posted
1 hour ago, leadeater said:

PC game running on a Mac?

 

that-s-when-mr-fluftykillsknew-hell-had-

Nah.  One could do that since the 90’s.  The problem is they never ran very fast.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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Posted
29 minutes ago, Results45 said:

Worldwide DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS Conference

Well, someone had better get on it then. :D

 

My eyes see the past…

My camera lens sees the present…

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Posted

Well, I for one am interested to see how this transition goes. 

 

Not like an ARM-based computer is out of the realm, given the number of Snapdragon-based Windows machines I've seen. 

 

But if Apple manages to squeeze great real world performance combined with better thermal and power management, at least for lesser-demanding tasks, it might just about work out. 

The Workhorse (AMD-powered custom desktop)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X | GPU: MSI X Trio GeForce RTX 2070S | RAM: XPG Spectrix D60G 32GB DDR4-3200 | Storage: 512GB XPG SX8200P + 2TB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda Compute | OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

 

The Portable Workstation (Apple MacBook Pro 16" 2021)

SoC: Apple M1 Max (8+2 core CPU w/ 32-core GPU) | RAM: 32GB unified LPDDR5 | Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD | OS: macOS Monterey

 

The Communicator (Apple iPhone 13 Pro)

SoC: Apple A15 Bionic | RAM: 6GB LPDDR4X | Storage: 128GB internal w/ NVMe controller | Display: 6.1" 2532x1170 "Super Retina XDR" OLED with VRR at up to 120Hz | OS: iOS 15.1

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Posted
4 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

The timing of the move is somewhat reminiscent of something Azula would do in Avatar the Last Airbender, if Azula was a big shot CEO of course. 
 

*I swear, I hadn’t been binge watching 😛*

1c6433f0dd640dd331441fe5e2b73da5.jpg.9f10dcea0b61f970343ab0cba05e9457.jpg

 

Hmm so what does that mean for apple?...

 

 

I didn't just binge all the graphic novels... and the Legend of Korra...

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