Should my dad wait for an ARM Mac?

[Sandro Linux]

Should my dad wait for an ARM Mac or should he just buy an intel one now? He is looking to do creative work on it and will primary use Logic Pro X.

[dizmo]

No one can answer that properly, since they're not out and performance isn't known.

If he needs one now, buy now.

[Bombastinator]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Pro
 

Apple owned music production software.  
One of the big questions for the Apple ARM conversion is will a given app be ported?  Apple owning the software makes the probability a lot higher.  It’s hard to know if the port will be any good because it’s not done yet. 
The first port will be lower end mac laptops.  If he needs a higher power system he may be waiting a while. 

[mahyar]

i suggest going for intel because softwares on arm macs will a bit slow for a bit of time due to switch

[Drama Lama]

16 minutes ago, Sandro Linux said:

Should my dad wait for an ARM Mac or should he just buy an intel one now? He is looking to do creative work on it and will primary use Logic Pro X.

Unless he really really wants to wait and really really wants the positives of ARM Macs 

buy it now

Your Computer is just a tool

[Roee Lupo]

Honestly you can't know, I'd suggest waiting for the ARM-based macbooks to come out and have a look at some benchmarks,

then you can decide if you want to buy an ARM-based macbook or the "old" intel-based one (also prices will probably drop)

[Darkseth]

If he can wait, he should.
You will most likely get a noticeable better Machine for the same Price, or even cheaper.

 

Apple's own Applications will run native from Day 1.

If you need Windows/Linux with VMs, that will be a Problem.

 

But if he needs a machine now, waiting isn't an Option. It's just a little over 3 more Weeks untill we know more.

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, Sandro Linux said:

Should my dad wait for an ARM Mac or should he just buy an intel one now? He is looking to do creative work on it and will primary use Logic Pro X.

I wouldn't buy an ARM Mac. At least not a first gen one. Id buy an Intel one now. Let the ARM ones mature a few generations. Because know one knows how good software support is going to be at the start. Yeah Apple's own apps will be ported over, but who knows when it comes to third party devs. 

[Kilrah]

But then as we know Apple buying an Intel mac now might mean that you've got an unsupported and "obsolete" machine in just a couple of years... so the best is probably not to buy any mac at all. 

 

Obviously if he needs a mac because he's tied to Apple software... well no choice.

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

But then as we know Apple buying an Intel mac now might mean that you've got an unsupported and "obsolete" machine in just a couple of years... so the best is probably not to buy any mac at all. 

 

Obviously if he needs a mac because he's tied to Apple software... well no choice.

Would depend on how long Apple supports intel macs for.  If “a couple” is more than 10 that could happen.  Less than 6 probably not.

[Kilrah]

With "a couple" I meant "about 2", since 2 years is how long Apple kept PPC compatibility after moving to Intel. Thats short.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

With "a couple" I meant "about 2", since 2 years is how long Apple kept PPC compatibility after moving to Intel. Thats short.

Apple has made statements about such things. They seem to have promised a pretty slow transition as I remember. There will be quotes.  2 years seems waaaaaay too short at least via what they implied.  The big difference here is intel already had a whole family of chips for them to move into.  They’re having to design and build themselves.  All they’ve got a chip for now is the lowest end of the laptops.  They’ll have to design and build more stuff before they ca swap to it and they’ll have to have a complete line of those before they can cut x86 off completely.

[Sandro Linux]

9 hours ago, Darkseth said:

If he can wait, he should.
You will most likely get a noticeable better Machine for the same Price, or even cheaper.

 

Apple's own Applications will run native from Day 1.

If you need Windows/Linux with VMs, that will be a Problem.

 

But if he needs a machine now, waiting isn't an Option. It's just a little over 3 more Weeks untill we know more.

He can wait

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

They’re having to design and build themselves.

Who says they haven't been doing that the last few years? This is not a decision they just pulled out of their ass, this was a decision made years ago. My thought process is Apple has already designed a chip or two to help with the transition. They probably already have a few prototypes running ARM. 

[Kilrah]

They ve got 10? years of experience making their mobile device chips, this will just be a variation of that.

[Commodus]

18 hours ago, Sandro Linux said:

Should my dad wait for an ARM Mac or should he just buy an intel one now? He is looking to do creative work on it and will primary use Logic Pro X.

I wouldn't wait. Like was mentioned earlier, Apple likely won't bring ARM to its higher-end Macs until later. And since your dad is doing creative work, compatibility is very important — right now it's more important that everything run properly than theoretically eking out more performance. Apple's approach to running x86 code on ARM seems to be quite elegant and will likely be just fine, but I wouldn't count on it even if your dad will rely primarily on Logic Pro X.

[Roswell]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Who says they haven't been doing that the last few years? This is not a decision they just pulled out of their ass, this was a decision made years ago. My thought process is Apple has already designed a chip or two to help with the transition. They probably already have a few prototypes running ARM. 

They actually already have Mac mini development kits running ARM available to purchase. They've been out for a while but they're under NDA if you buy one.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Who says they haven't been doing that the last few years? This is not a decision they just pulled out of their ass, this was a decision made years ago. My thought process is Apple has already designed a chip or two to help with the transition. They probably already have a few prototypes running ARM. 

We know they have, but the only thing that has gone out for testing afaik is the one low end laptop replacement.  CPUs take a long time to design.   They have at least one chip.  They have not announced any others though, One can assume secret advancements I suppose.  There have been statements made by Apple that the transition would be gradual.  To make it not gradual one has to assume that Apple was lying when they claimed a gradual transition, and that they have additional unannounced secret designs ready for production.  It’s a lot of assume. The issue is the low end laptop already uses one of the biggest single chip ARM systems ever built.  More powerful machines would require even larger chips which there is no evidence of existing in a finished form.  There has yet to be public demonstration that they can be made at all. Given the incomplete data us mushroom users have, the best that can be come up with is a fairly fuzzy range.  The extreme short end of that seems to be a few years while the extreme long end of that is never.   Both are not impossible but I think not terribly likely.  For the two year thing to be met a whole bunch of things have to go right, and Apple has to be willing to further antagonize it’s user base.  Someone above mentioned there would perhaps be more information in three weeks, and the OP said waiting that long is possible, so revisit in three weeks.  Perhaps some of the fuzziness may be reduced.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Vitamanic said:

They actually already have Mac mini development kits running ARM available to purchase. They've been out for a while but they're under NDA if you buy one.

Are these different than the laptop kits?  I heard those referred to as more or less a iPad with more memory and a usbC connector.  What was meant by “more or less” is vague though.  Could have been talking about form factor or internals.  If internals That could be being sent out in a mac mini form factor.  I don’t know. 

[Kilrah]

9 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Given the incomplete data us mushroom users have, the best that can be come up with is a fairly fuzzy range.  The extreme short end of that seems to be a few years while the extreme long end of that is never.

Apple have clearly announced a 2-year transition, i.e in 2 years all their macs would use their chips. That's of course not an indication of how long they'll support Intel macs.

 

10 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

and Apple has to be willing to further antagonize it’s user base

That's never been a problem for them lately. 

 

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Apple have clearly announced a 2-year transition, i.e in 2 years all their macs would use their chips. That's of course not an indication of how long they'll support Intel macs.

 

That's never been a problem for them lately. 

 

My memory was not that the transition would be complete in two years, and I saw no statement confirming that they even had chips capable of handling their higher end stuff at all. Remember their line goes all the way up to the mac pro. 

 

As for the antagonization thing, they do have a reputation for a great willingness to do that.  They seem to have been a bit more careful with their desktop users lately.  It’s possible they could do that. 

Edited October 25, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Kilrah]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

and I saw no statement confirming that they even had chips capable of handling their higher end stuff at all.

Why would they need to have any now? What that says is they plan on having them 2 years from now.

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Why would they need to have any now? What that says is they plan on having them 2 years from now.

Because chips take a long time to make and what one winds up with is to some degree unknown when one starts. 
 

I hold this up as yet another example of why quote clipping has issues.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Bombastinator