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Desktops (Apple) iMac

Apple Aims To Sell Macs With Its Own Chips Starting in 2021 (bloomberg.com) 173

Posted by msmash from the no-intel-inside dept.
Apple is planning to start selling Mac computers with its own main processors by next year, relying on designs that helped popularize the iPhone and iPad, Bloomberg reported Thursday. From the report: The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is working on three of its own Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. The first of these will be much faster than the processors in the iPhone and iPad, the people said. Apple is preparing to release at least one Mac with its own chip next year, according to the people. But the initiative to develop multiple chips, codenamed Kalamata, suggests the company will transition more of its Mac lineup away from current supplier Intel Corp. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Apple's partner for iPhone and iPad processors, will build the new Mac chips, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private product plans. The components will be based on a 5-nanometer production technique, the same size Apple will use in the next iPhones and iPad Pros, one of the people said.
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Apple Aims To Sell Macs With Its Own Chips Starting in 2021 More

Apple Aims To Sell Macs With Its Own Chips Starting in 2021

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  • I'm sure I'm not the only person that wants a desktop Mac with an upgrade path. A model in between an iMac and a Mac Pro. I've been waiting for this for 20 years. Ready and able to give Apple my money if they decide that's something they want.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      I'm sure I'm not the only person that wants a desktop Mac with an upgrade path. A model in between an iMac and a Mac Pro. I've been waiting for this for 20 years. Ready and able to give Apple my money if they decide that's something they want.

      "Here's a business idea: Make a low-margin product for people who aren't our customers and haven't been for decades. Allow user upgrades so we have to support thousands of different cheap components the users might try to stick inside."

      "Why didn't we think of this before?"

      • Re:Affordable / upgradable desktop Mac (Score:4, Interesting)

        by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @02:18PM (#59980930)

        Make a low-margin product

        I don't think anybody would reasonably expect that from Apple

        for people who aren't our customers and haven't been for decades

        What company wouldn't want to win over longstanding holdouts who show a desire to actually buy their products?

        Allow user upgrades so we have to support thousands of different cheap components

        I don't know about cheap components but the new Mac Pro is very upgradeable with mostly off-the-shelf parts.

        I see this attitude from Apple fanboys all of the time (I'm not saying you are one but you seem to have similar beliefs). Tons of people are expressing their desire to buy an Apple product if it was just a bit more upgradeable or repairable. Apple responds by coming out with an upgradeable and repairable computer, the Mac Pro, but they price it twice as high as similarly-capable machines. When people complain about the price, Apple fanboys come out and state that these people aren't good enough for Apple's products since they're not huge production studios. They seem perfectly fine leaving the huge market of professional YouTubers, software developers, etc. with no affordable and upgradeable products. I can't recall ever seeing a company that had so many people eager to buy their products only to have the company willfully snub them, let alone the rabid fanbase that enjoys seeing these people snubbed. It's weird but it's certainly entertaining.

        • I don't think anybody would reasonably expect that from Apple

          The lowest priced iPhone has a faster processor than the most expensive flagship Android.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            The lowest priced iPhone has a faster processor than the most expensive flagship Android.

            The interpreter overhead caused by Apple's JIT ban eats up a lot of this speed difference.

    • watch out for the pits

    • There's the Mac Pro, but damn is that thing expensive (and by the time you need to upgrade it technologies will have changed so much that you'd just replace it).

    • I'm sure I'm not the only person that wants a desktop Mac with an upgrade path.

      You are in a market segment that is not as common as you think, nor as profitable as you think.

      Most people don't want to open up their Macs and fiddle with the guts. They want it to "just work". That is why they buy Macs.

      If an iMac has user-upgradeable memory, then instead of buying the 32GB model (just in case you might need it), you will buy the 16GB model, and maybe upgrade with 3rd-party RAM in a few years. Obviously this will mean less profit for Apple. So why should they cater to you?

      Apple is the

    • Re:Affordable / upgradable desktop Mac (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ranton ( 36917 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @01:11PM (#59980562)

      I'm sure I'm not the only person that wants a desktop Mac with an upgrade path. A model in between an iMac and a Mac Pro. I've been waiting for this for 20 years. Ready and able to give Apple my money if they decide that's something they want.

      You are certainly not the only person who wants this; you just don't represent a market segment Apple is interested in. But you are in good luck because there are plenty of companies who are vying for your business.

      The most important aspect of any corporate strategy is deciding what they don't want to do. Apple doesn't want to compete in low margin segments. They want customers who are not very price conscious and who care about the status of a high end brand. If that isn't you, they aren't very interested in you as a customer. And that is perfectly okay, there are plenty of people hungry for a hamburger at any given moment and Apple isn't interested in their business either.

      • I think that with Jobs gone the landscape of 2020 is quite different.

        Apple used to be 'alone' in catering to that market. Now Samsung, Google and others have realized they can make something $1k+ and people will buy it.

        Thee 2020 iPhone SE has a faster processor than the highest end Android phone.

        There is still a market for a 'lowend but not Allwinner cheap'.

        • Thumbs up all the way. My original iPhone was a 5c which I bought new for $350. I had to upgrade for two reasons. 1) No more software updates so my banking app was refusing to run. 2) My battery was only 53% good. I replaced it three years ago I bought an iPhone SE for $350 which is still working without a hitch. (93% good battery). Even though I don't need the new SE, it's nice to know the price hasn't gone up too much.

          Now compare that to the Mac Minis. Went through sticker shock when I saw the price incre

    • You are not the only one. There are dozens. Divide dozens by 20 years, and there is very little reason to cater to your tastes.
    • I believe Apple just told you they have this: it's called the iPad Pro.

  • Here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @12:13PM (#59980248)
    I remember the switch to Intel. I originally had a G4 mac mini and it sucked compared to my Core Duo Macbook I had a year later. The big question is bootcamp and backward compatiblity. Apple killed Rosetta and then 32 bit quite quickly. I'm assuming whatever emulator they include in the ARM version of MacOS will be killed off for native ARM apps in the version after next. Also will the Mac Pro get ARMed. Will professionals want to spend $6000 on an ARM computer that will likely won't work with their professional tools.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Henriok ( 6762 )
      I'm not sure that a emulator like they had the previous two transitions is needed this time. The software stack is much more prepared this time. The long tail of abandoned, legacy applications is already shed, and everything running in current macOS is built on a toolchain with excellent ARM support, including the majority of open source products. Applications in the Mac App Store is at worst a recompile away, and many can be recompiled by Apple in the store itself. Everything on iOS/iPadOS is already 100%

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Wolfrider ( 856 )

        --Most people buy a Mac to run OSX / Mac OS on it, and maybe Linux when the hardware gets too old for the latest Mac OS. I have no idea why someone would pay the price premium for Mac hardware and then dirty their environment with the complete shitshow that is Win10. There are plenty of x64 PCs and laptops for that.

        --It was admittedly a little different back in the Win7 + bootcamp days. And you can still run Win10 in a VM on Mac hardware today if you need to. But that is where my concern comes in - what

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Windows is also available for arm these days and linux always has been, there's no reason to believe that macos running on arm wouldn't be able to dual boot or run other systems through a hypervisor just like the x86 version can.

    • This could well be a longer transition than previous moves to different architectures (first PowerPC, then x86) but I think Apple has been planning this for a long enough time that the software side of things won't be a major roadblock. They'll certainly have all of their own apps ready on Day 1 and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a lot of developers will just need to recompile and things will mostly work, at least as long as they didn't have a lot of code specifically targeting x86 or using specia

    • Re: Here we go again (Score:5, Informative)

      by NoMoreACs ( 6161580 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @12:51PM (#59980458)

      I remember the switch to Intel. I originally had a G4 mac mini and it sucked compared to my Core Duo Macbook I had a year later. The big question is bootcamp and backward compatiblity. Apple killed Rosetta and then 32 bit quite quickly. I'm assuming whatever emulator they include in the ARM version of MacOS will be killed off for native ARM apps in the version after next. Also will the Mac Pro get ARMed. Will professionals want to spend $6000 on an ARM computer that will likely won't work with their professional tools.

      What horseshit are you smoking?

      Apple âoekilled Rosettaâ for two reasons:

      1. Performance sucked. They didnâ(TM)t write it; so there was only so much they could do to fix that.

      2. Big, important software publishers, notably Adobe, Microsoft and Avid, were seriously dragging their feet in releasing an Intel-native version of their key software products. See #1, above, for an explanation of why that was an untenable situation for Apple and its customers.

      As for 32 bit support, it was only actually removed with the latest version of MacOS, 10.15 âoeCatalinaâ, released in late 2019; some 14 years after the Intel switch in 2005. Somehow, 14 years doesnâ(TM)t seem âoequite quicklyâ...

      Also, it is unlikely that the transition to Arm will be as quick, or as complete, as the transition to Intel from PPC. And remember, Apple is the hands-down master of delivering dual-platform binaries. And in fact, for Mac App Store Applications, they only deliver the appropriate binary to the target; so there isnâ(TM)t any wasted space keeping a non-executable hunk of code in someoneâ(TM)s machine.

      And it will be quite some time (maybe never) before the MacBook Pro, IMac Pro, and Mac Pro move to Arm. First There will be a low-cost Arm Macbook, then later, the Air, iMac and maybe Mac mini.

      • Both the removal of Rosetta and the switch to 64-bit sucked for me, because I had software that stopped working in both cases.

        And that is entirely the reason I don't use a Mac unless forced to by work. Their laptop cases are still the best, and that is all they have going for them at this point.
      • The point of the OP was that these transitions are always difficult for customers as well as developers. In the last transition, customers benefited transitioning to a relatively stagnant platform (PowerPC) to a platform that was in the process of making huge gains (the CoreDuo, and later Core2Duo were pretty revolutionary for their time). The customers were also gaining the ability to run Windows (PC gamers could actually consider buying a Mac) as well as running alternative OSes such as Linux or BSDs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Why couldn't they run windows, linux or bsd?
          https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com]
          windows for arm even has x86 emulation for running legacy binaries

          I believe a large proportion of mac sales are laptops, so the reduced power usage would be beneficial to most apple customers.

          • Why couldn't they run windows, linux or bsd?

            It depends on whether Microsoft makes a business decision to offer Windows 10 on ARM as a separate license, unbundled from a Snapdragon laptop. If not, there's a 95-year wait to (legally) run Windows on any other ARM-powered computer.

    • Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WalrusSlayer ( 883300 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @01:03PM (#59980504)

      I remember the switch to Intel. I originally had a G4 mac mini and it sucked compared to my Core Duo Macbook I had a year later. The big question is bootcamp and backward compatiblity. Apple killed Rosetta and then 32 bit quite quickly. I'm assuming whatever emulator they include in the ARM version of MacOS will be killed off for native ARM apps in the version after next. Also will the Mac Pro get ARMed. Will professionals want to spend $6000 on an ARM computer that will likely won't work with their professional tools.

      And partly what makes my Mac Air so useful is that I can easily run Windows under Parallels. Or if I really needed 100% glitch-free Windows, just BootCamp the thing. Going ARM puts a huge freakin wrench in that strategy.

      I've even been toying with getting a decent iMac, use its screen as a third in tandem with the other two 27" screens running of my Windows tower right now. I primarily do just Mail/Web on my head-end computer, and most every other activity is an RDP session into one of the VM's in my server rack. So the head-end computer could just as easily be a Mac. Though that said, ruling out a locally-running copy of Windows entirely gives me pause for that strategy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        It's not just that (I agree to all of it).

        It's also the very practical: My work notebook would not have been a Macbook Pro if it couldn't run the company standard Windows on a Bootcamp partition.

      • I suspect that the long term goal (5, 10, 15 years) will be moving everything towards ARM and maybe some on-chip architecture for x86 compatibility. In the short term I could see Apple moving Mac Air to ARM and keeping MBP on x86. Home users will still get most of what they care about and Professional users pay the "professional tax" to get the x86. I feel it's a decision I could get behind, because to me there's no real reason to buy a Mac Air except cost.

    • > Will professionals want to spend $6000 on an ARM computer that will likely won't work with their professional tools.

      Because of the iPad, Adobe already has ARM assembly code optimizations.

    • The probably will ship them with two processors, one ARM (or several?) and one Intel.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      It's likely they will provide a transition phase using emulation, until existing apps get ported. Porting should in most cases just be a recompile anyway.

      There's no reason boot camp couldn't be continued, windows and linux are both available for arm.

      There should really never have been a 32bit x86 version, they should have gone straight to 64bit as such chips were already widely available at the time. The only 32bit x86 macs were the first gen mac mini and macbook, maybe the imac too? The mac pro was 64bit f

  • How many years have we been hearing that Apple will start using their own chips “soon”? I’m guessing since they started designing their own for their iPhones. Intel right now is making it easier for them; but I would have thought Apple would switch to AMD before using their own as that’s a much bigger change.

  • ARM specs for a Xeon price tag

  • According to Bloomberg, eight high performance cores and four low power cores. (As a comparison, an iPhone XR has two high performance and four low power cores, each with about 10% of the performance of the high performance ones).

    That should keep up very well with all the current Intel based laptops with up to eight cores. With equal or higher performance at lower power, and being able to do little things at very little power. And these ARM chips have huge caches. Sounds very interesting.

    • That should keep up very well with all the current Intel based laptops with up to eight cores.

      Perhaps, but how will it compare with the next generation of Ryzen that will likely be coming out at the same time or even before then?

      With equal or higher performance at lower power

      I have no idea what this belief is founded on. It's a pretty safe bet that the processor will consume less power, but what makes you think it will be as powerful? I don't doubt that it will perform extremely well in certain niche ca

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Has there been some kind of a massive breakthrough in ARM high power performance? Last I checked, ARM performance at high power is absolute garbage that gets trounced by even low end x64 chips. It just doesn't scale well. And last effort I know of to utilize ARM in servers died on a vine due to lack of performance.

      Which is why ARM remains the architecture of choice for low power scenarios like phones and tablets, and x64 remains architecture of choice for high power scenarios. Like desktops and laptops with

  • For iPhones and iPads. Where the battery is a big deal having a custom chip will allow for more efficient use of processing for the power needed.

    But for Macs where we are still mostly going to be plugged in. I would rather have the flexibility of a general purpose Cpu.

    • What do you plan on doing with your "general purpose" cpu?

    • But for Macs where we are still mostly going to be plugged in. I would rather have the flexibility of a general purpose Cpu.

      The speed will probably be better, at least in common benchmarks. The problem will be that any MacOS binaries you had will now be broken.

      • > The problem will be that any MacOS binaries you had will now be broken.

        That's a significant problem.

        The proposition that the only important software people are using is supported by "currently active developers who can easily recompile their apps" is invalid, and those who push such foolishness are being disingenuous (at the very least.)

        32-bit OSX apps are currently fine with an Intel CPU under a virtualized earlier rev of OSX; with a custom Apple CPU that isn't binary-compatible (which hasn't really b

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rho ( 6063 )

      A general purpose CPU for the average user runs a web browser, manage photos, maybe manage videos, email, some word processing, and chat.

      Hell, you can even run a bit of AutoCAD on iOS now. The iPhone is capable of real-time AR. I'm not sure how a "general purpose CPU" is better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )

      "I would rather have the flexibility of a general purpose Cpu"

      I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

  • Rolling out the change slowly gives us a lot of benchmarking and tire-kicking time. Hopefully, Apple will respond well to reviews and feedback.
    The layers upon layers of duct-tape and WD-40 needed to keep the 1970's Intel architecture instruction set relevant after all this time has probably reached its limits.

    • Hopefully, Apple will respond well to reviews and feedback.

      Apple responds to feedback like a mule with a poker shoved up its ass: it kicks and screams, and doesn't do a damn thing useful.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )
      Even with the legacy, isn't X86-64 relatively clean? (real question, I'm asking because I don't know)

      Could a CPU be made that chopped out the cruft and was x86-64 with no backwards compatibility that was fairly clean?

      I'd assume that the vast majority of the CPU is cleanly optimized modern paths, since the old stuff by virtue of being older (when things were slower) doesn't need to be as optimized.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      That would be why we don't use intel's 1970s architecture any more to any significant degree. We use AMD's 2000s one. Pedantry works both ways.

      • Apple's ARM uses ARM's 2010s one, though. And AMD was apparently still forced to leave a lot of cruft in AMD64 because some companies whined. For example, VMWare because of segment registers.

  • Another possibility... AMD Semicustoms (Score:3)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @01:42PM (#59980742)

    While the general consensus (me included) is that apple will transition to an ARM processor based on the A-series chips, there is another possibility for apple's "own chips" that, while very low probability, is non-zero either...

    AMD. AMD has a division which is called "semi-custom" chips. There are AMD processors, coupled with ATi (for lack of a better word) graphics, specifically tailored to the needs of a particular customer.
    Want a chip that has lots of graphics but little processing for your NN training needs? Check.
    Want a chip with no graphics but able to handle many a VM? check.
    Wanna include some instructions to speed up some weird cryto algorithm that is mandated by your govt? Check.
    Are you making a console and need some specific balance of Proc/Graphics/Cache? Check.

    Notable customers of the semi-custom division include Verizon, Microsoft, Sony, and THATICC.

    Is possible that this rumored apple's "own chip" is a semicustom X-64 chip devepoled by AMD to apple's exact specs. Apple has diverged from the rest of the X-86/A-64 industry. Their current OS is NOT 32bit. They do NOT EVEN RUN 32 bit apps. The went with metal instead of Vulkan/DX12.

    Of course, removing 16 and 32 bit from an X-86/A-64 is a huge undertaking, and probably will not be done, but removing the optimizations for 16 and 32 bit is feasible, if that saves on transistor budget, or delivers a speed up of 64bit apps.

    Optimizing the Graphic units for metal is also possible.

    Again, I agree with the general consensus that eventually Macs will land in the arms of ARM (pun intended)...

    But I just wanted to point out the other posibility, for the sake of completness.

  • Thats (Score:3)

    by MemoryDragon ( 544441 ) on Thursday April 23, 2020 @01:53PM (#59980816)

    the comeback of Acorn Risc Machine computers...
    Under the Apple Logo!

  • App store only and Finder PRO only $10.99

  • Yes 2021, not 2018, 2019, or 2020 will finally be the year of ARM on the Desktop!

    (for the record I believe Apple will eventually move the Mac to their own chips, but I am simply tired of people predicting when it will happen)

  • Make the processor control your destiny. AAPL have volume to support their own fab, license design and roll-in proprietary tweaks.

    PA-Risc integrated well for Apple. MOTO couldn't keep up, Qualcomm maelstrom of supplier extortion, patent infringement and legal battles, AAPL can afford to roll its own, hold the dies and license ARM design. Avie's kernel has been a roll your own success that begat the foundation upon which everything software runs including Apple itself post NeXT.

    Its a first step toward ASIC'

  • I have a Samsung XE513C24 Chromebook with a hexa-core ARM-architecture CPU (I believe it is a Rockchip RK3399 [wikidot.com]; Samsung called it an "OP1 with dual A72 / quad A53"). I love it; it has super-long battery life, it's lightweight, and it has no moving parts (no cooling fan needed). I decided to buy one more on eBay to give to my wife.

    I have the Debian container enabled and I am able to work with my favorite Linux-based tools: vim, Python, etc. But I can also install Android apps for things like watching Netfl

  • OS X ran on PPC, then when Apple transitioned to Intel they had Rosetta for awhile, then Rosetta was killed, and then Apple started killing OS support for Intel chips modern versions of Windows were fine with. Now Apple is going to move to ARM. Good luck keeping your programs for long, if you are still on the "need to buy new software cuz Apple doesn't care about the installed base" treadmill.

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