Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-plans-to-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020 <comment><USER4> This might just be a bargaining move on Apple's part, but I don't think so. I think that long term they are much better off controlling their entire hardware stack. I wouldn't be surprised to even see them make their own display screens.

As an Apple customer, I like this idea also. For 20 years, I used to be a desktop Linux fanatic and later became a fan of Android. In the last few years, I have switched to using all Apple devices.

Even though I am a computer scientists, I actually spend more time on my iPad and iPhone, by far, than on my Mac laptops. I only use a laptop for software development (because of the nature of my work, that is often just SSHed into Linux servers), the rest of my workflow and entertainment is on iOS devices.

The older I get, the more I want to get my work done expediently, leaving time to study new technologies and spend time with family and friends. At least for right now, I am maximally effective in Apple's environments.

As a bonus, I trust Apple more that Microsoft, Google, Intel, etc.

<comment><USER5> I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac.

You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have to choose from.

Lastly, what does Apple have to gain by switching away from Intel? Not much, at least, not much that benefits me as a customer. Likely they are interested in making their laptops have more in common with their iOS devices, which does little to nothing for me. Apple's behavior towards OSX and macbooks in the past few years should be of great concern for anyone, especially if you actually like the devices.

<comment><USER6> 2/3s of all PR activity on Github is on a Mac, for what it's worth. Certainly the platform punches above its weight relative to market share.

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2...](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2023)

<comment><USER7> I don't trust that for two reasons:

1) There is a lot of cargo-culting around the MacBook because _hurr durr Windows is terribad_ (though, to be fair, Docker _does_ work better natively with OS X than Windows, even under WSL), and

2) Most companies give their developers the choice of a MacBook or the shittiest Windows machines known to man (because of irresistable volume deals from Windows OEMs). I bet the spread would be more even if companies were willing to offer the Surface Book as an option. This laptop is _nice_.

<comment><USER8> Satisfaction rate among surface owners is abysmal. At this point, I'd call the surface brand a failed experiment.

<comment><USER7> Do you have stats for that? Maybe I'm an outlier, but I loved the Surface Pro so much, I bought a Surface Book for work and a Surface Book 2 for personal use.

<comment><USER8> Sorry for the delay

[https://www.consumerreports.org/laptop- computers/microsoft-s...](https://www.consumerreports.org/laptop- computers/microsoft-surface-laptops-and-tablets-not-recommended-by-consumer- reports/)

Archived at [https://archive.fo/sBiUK](https://archive.fo/sBiUK)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward?

I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app- store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photoshop, autocad, mathematica(ok that one is fairly portable), AfterEffects and whatever it is the pro's use for video editing those days are a different ballgame.

We saw microsoft stumble down that path with their successfull port of windows to arm where the OS itself worked but where no major 3rd party business essential app ever got ported to windows for arm, with a lot of IT departments choosing to keep windows 7 around our of fear of what 10 would morph into until MS begun to dial back their ambitions for windows everywhere.

Im guessing that the short run result of Apple going though with OSX on arm is that a lot of the CAD and video editing heavyweights just drop support for whatever OSX morphs into to support running on IOS hardware.

<comment><USER10> Adobe has a lot of stuff that works well on iOS. ARM has neon instructions for SIMD. I think they will be okay. Changing over from one SIMD architecture to another is not that hard.

AutoCAD isn't ultra optimized for Mac anyhow, it will be okay.

This transition may screw up or significantly slow down VMs of Intel-based OSes like Ubuntu.

<comment><USER11> I think developers flocked to Intel Macs because it gave them one machine that could run Mac, Linux, Windows in virtual or bootcamp environments. If x86 compatibility goes away, developers may jump ship to Linux or Windows machines.

<comment><USER12> I used to have a PPC G5 iMac running Linux. It was fine; hitched me onto the Linux-on-Mac train for more than a decade once I finally ditched Mac OS X. And Linux already works nicely on ARM - it's the most common deployment.

This may be a terrible outcome for multi-OS users, but it's not guaranteed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by third parties outside Apple who haven't even heard of the possibility of this happening until today.

<comment><USER14> Apple did a pretty decent job when they transitioned from PPC to x86_64, it has Rosetta to translate PPC to x86. Microsoft and partners released ARM based Windows Laptops this year that can run Win32 apps in emulation.

What's stopping Apple from shipping Macbooks with a custom SoC that can run existing Apps in emulation until developers can recompile? I would argue that most Air and Macbook owners aren't developers and probably don't have many apps that didn't ship with their system.

<comment><USER15> And before that they successfully managed the transition from m68k to PPC.

The processor doesn't matter.

<comment><USER16> It does matter that the new processor is a lot more powerful and faster than the old processor. This wouldn't be the case this time.

<comment><USER17> It's not powerful/faster that sells chips, it's power and speed relative to envelope. Maybe the iMac pro continues to ship with Xeons, the iMac with Core i5 and i7 depending on configuration.

But compare the Intel Core m3 to the Apple A11, and a completely different story will emerge. The A11 is already comparable to relatively recent Macbooks in terms of performance.

<comment><USER16> The point is, if we're going to bring up what an 'easy' time Apple has had transitioning from one architecture to another, it's worth remembering each transition came with a big performance jump. This made the new platform desirable and emulation bearable. If they are considering a transition again, 'bearable emulation' is not as much of a given.

<comment><USER18> I'd expect a huge performance jump when the new ARM-based Macs come out, both in Single-core (they can ramp up the clocks and increase cache and execution units) and Multi-core (they can add more cores to fit new power budgets as well).

The current A11 chips for iPhones are within 10% of Intel's top mobile chips on Geekbench, and within about 30% on their top desktop CPUs.

It's entirely possible for chip architectures to see 2x-3x speeds when moving from mobile power budgets to desktop power budgets.

An Intel Pentium 4410Y Kaby Lake running at 4.5-6 Watts gets about 1800 single-core on Geekbench, while an Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake running at 115 Watts gets 5600 single-core on Geekbench.

<comment><USER19> > The current A11 chips for iPhones are within 10% of Intel's top mobile chips > on Geekbench

No, they aren't. iPhone X's multithreaded geekbench score is 10k. The 15" macbook pro is 15k. That's a lot more than 10%. It's only close if you look at the lower end Intel chips, the dual core ones (which is what Apple ships in the 13" macbook pro).

<comment><USER18> Those are multi-core numbers, not the single-core numbers.

What do you think is the most important for 250million desktop users? Because the vast majority of them are sitting idle waiting for interaction tasks, like on your system now.

<comment><USER20> Even browsers are doing a better job of loading multiple cores now and desktop machines often have more processes running in the background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone remember Intel's random rant about how "emulation of x86 violates our intellectual property" from last year?

[https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-sti...](https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-still- going-strong/)

Intel didn't name names, and everyone at the time assumed it was related to Microsoft and their efforts to ship windows 10 on ARM with a 32 bit only x86 emulator.

But I wonder if that rant was actually aimed at Apple. Microsoft's emulator only needs to target a older subset of x86, one that could avoid ant patented instructions.

If Apple are planning to move from x86 to arm, they will need an emulator that supports full 64bit with some relatively recent extensions that all MacOS applications target by default.

<comment><USER22> That would put Intel in the crosshairs of anti-trust. The have a defacto monopoly on personal computer processors, and this sounds like an abuse of their market position to stifle innovation.

<comment><USER23> How would Apple vs Microsoft change anything in those circumstances, though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > "A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility > where it has failed to gain a foothold so far."

> "Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan, > for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and > iPad apps on Macs"

Two things here:

1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving to a walled garden where Apple forces you to publish apps through their App Store with a paid dev account, etc. just for the privilege of users on their platform. ARM doesn't _necessarily_ mean this, but it _is_ a different CPU arch. When Apple transitioned to Intel/x86 from PowerPC, Intel processors were performant enough compared to PowerPC processors to provide a pleasant emulated PowerPC environment for applications build for PowerPC. I don't think that a switch to ARM would provide this benefit, and afaik Intel's mobile offerings aren't that far off from ARM efficiency. So what's the benefit? Just vertical integration, I guess? Escaping Intel's backdoors and high prices?

2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there actually a use case?

3) Given the hellscape of bugs currently present in iOS/macOS, does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale? It sounds like the sort of thing that requires a lot of talent and a lot of focus. Apple has the capital for this, but not the environment, imo.

Seems to me like this could be the nail in the coffin for Macbooks that's been pending since the merger of the macOS/iOS teams and the introduction of the controversial TouchBar/USB-C Pro.

<comment><USER25> "2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there actually a use case?"

Right now many new desktop apps are just badly ported web apps wrapped in electron. They are slow and eat a lot of memory as all of their UI is a being rendered in a glorified standalone chrome tab.

This is less about iOS apps on OSX and more about making it easier for the iOS developer ecosystem to build desktop apps. Right now it's web teams that are building desktop apps because for most companies it's too expensive to hire a dedicated desktop team. Even big apps like slack/WhatsApp use electron.

Making it easier for iOS developers to build desktop applications with the APIs they currently use should hopefully lead to higher quality apps.

<comment><USER26> Don't a number of iOS apps use essentially the same technique?

<comment><USER25> Most if not all of the top 100 mobile apps are native applications.

Hybrid mobile frameworks like Cordova tend to get a bad rap these days especially with the arrival of more performant alternatives like React Native.

<comment><USER26> I avoid installing apps for most sites, but I kind of remember in the early days, anyway, people were just sneaking a Web view in there for most of the functionality in many apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that the iPad is "the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing" and Apple only sells around 4M Macs per quarter, while iOS devices dwarf this stat. If their plan is to continue moving users from desktop/laptop devices to their iOS ecosystem, and the software can be transformed to cross between both classes of devices, then it only makes sense to unify the processor architecture as-well. Especially considering the expertise they've brought in-house to accomplish this, and the success they've demonstrated with their "A" service of chips, complemented by some of the specialized co-processors which have begun popping up in their accessories.

I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors -- laptop-like devices and desktop devices, if the market demands this. But for most users, they don't care what's inside if it let's them accomplish what they're trying to accomplish.

<comment><USER27> _I still expect that they 'll offer devices in traditional form factors_

What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?

<comment><USER28> Buy two iPads and use one as a keyboard.

<comment><USER29> I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not :-)

That said, CPUs have gotten so cost effective that it makes possible something which has come in and out of favor for a while, which is a network of devices that do one thing co-operating as a larger system.

So lets say you buy your "iDisk" which is a storage brick that you can put on a short range wireless network. A couple of iPad monitors, a wireless Apple keyboard, and a wireless Apple mouse. You set up this box of stuff and arrange it around on your desk and it is essentially a "single" computer system perceptually which, running a development "app" could work fine for development.

<comment><USER27> We've been dreaming about this kind of system since the rumors were flying about the Apple "Brick".

The "brick" turned out to be the all-aluminum MacBook, being carved from a single piece of metal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apple has been preparing itself for independence from underlying CPU arachitecture for a while. In WWDC 2015[1], they announced bitcode. All App submissions to AppStore are compiled to to bitcode. This allows Apple to re- optimize/re-compile your app binary in the future for newer hardware without the need to submit new version of your app to the store.

This allows Apple to switch to intel chip on iPhone, or switch to an ARM chip on MacOS.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest- devel...](https://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-developer- news-at-wwdc-that-nobodys-talking-about-bitcode/)

<comment><USER31> > This allows Apple to switch to intel chip on iPhone, or switch to an ARM > chip on MacOS.

I think you're assuming way too much. Says Chris Lattner regarding Bitcode, "It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of enhancements, but it isn't a panacea that makes everything magically portable." [1]

[1]: [http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview- transcript/#bitcod...](http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview- transcript/#bitcode)

<comment><USER32> I believe Lattner said there was interest in making a CPU architecture independent bitcode though. At least bitcode is part of the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well. We'll see what they do, but Apple had better be very careful. If a lot of OSS software won't run on Apple's new chip, then it becomes very hard for a software developer like myself to stick with Apple. And it is developer energy that sustains the software ecosystem for Apple....including many developers who are in the Mac ecosystem to develop for iOS.

This is not necessarily the wrong move for Apple, but it is fraught with danger. Here be dragons.

<comment><USER34> OSS software can "just" be recompiled though.

<comment><USER33> In theory yes, but back in the PPC days a lot of stuff was not available even though theoretically it could have been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This looks to be a very good move to optimize and significantly improve Apple products' security and reliability.

I do not understand why we argue what is better between Mac, Windows and Linux. It all comes down to the scope of what we're using it for. All of these 3 OSes have complex parts and arguing which one is better is not a a good conversation to have. The market already says it all for what choices people are making. These 3 OSes feature development would always follow the market demand. They're usually not that far off for important features. And whether they choose to focus/optimize them is a business decision.

I have used all 3 and I like different parts of all 3. I currently use mostly my Macbook Pro, iPhone and sometimes iPad as they're very reliable and high quality made products. They often get my job done mostly without a hiccup. I would choose the product that get my work done best within the least amount of time so I could focus on other more important things. My wife, however, prefers her Windows laptop & android phone as she could do her work better and she prefers android because of its flexibility.

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple does have a good record of moving their OS and software from different architectures. 68XXX to PPC to Intel was not a horrible experience. Having gone through three transitions I don't remember a lot of pain - but maybe I am repressing it!

<comment><USER37> It is fairly common for newer versions of OS X to break software that worked on previous versions. If you try to use Photoshop 6 on a modern version of OS X it isn't going to work. I think this makes the chip transition less painful because no one really expects their old software to work anyway.

<comment><USER38> > _... no one really expects their old software to work anyway._

My experience with HN comments leads me to believe otherwise, at least among professionals. :)

<comment><USER37> Well everyone (including myself) likes to complain about it, but there is a huge difference in how many OS updates it takes to break a legacy application on OS X and Windows. If we really expected the OS X updates to not break things, we'd move to a different OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Maybe a bit tangential, but from an economic it's interesting to see Intel's market cap vs TSMC, given that TSMC is purely a foundry. Nowadays what 10nm or 14nm actually means is a lot fuzzier than previous nodes, but the general consensus seems to be Intel's fab tech lead is either pretty precarious or already gone, so I'm just gonna assume even (which is admittedly a poor, oversimplified assumption).

Then TSMC and Intel are pretty even, which is slightly interesting to extrapolate all manner of conclusions.

Intel has slowly opened it's fabs to outsiders, however the first one was Altera, who Intel now owns, so... Main point is in 20, 30 years, is Intel's main business going to be fabbing their own chips, or someone else's? I dunno, I just enjoy following the industry.

<comment><USER40> If TSMC's fab is as good as or better than Intel's, then fabless companies like AMD and Apple will reap competitive benefits over Intel, which now has to have IP for CPUs it sells as well as IP for its fab business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I personally hate close fences with no rooms for customization, and many computer scientists are on the same wavelength.

Windows is an awful choice for software development, a job that usually requires a lot of interaction with Unix servers. Microsoft's recent crush for Linux and open source can't fix many years of closed standards, closed protocols, and Embrace-Extend-Exterminate evil culture.

And MacOS, even though it's still loosely based on a Unix *BSD flavor, still falls into the "closed fence" category - brew is nice but can't be compared with the maturity of the package managers on any Linux distro, you can't just recompile or update the kernel on the fly to get support for a new device, and OS internals are purposely obscure to developers. Paying all that money for such a closed box, if you're anything more than an average users, is simply a waste of money.

Linux distros are by far the best environment for a computer scientists - <USER2> by developers, for developers - but there's no major vendor that sells machines with Linux pre-installed and supported, and getting Linux installed on the newest Surface or Dell toy is often a challenge that gets many frustrated.

There's definitely a huge gap in the market, and as a computer scientist I feel that none of the major vendors cares to provide me with a solid machine to do my work.

<comment><USER42> I, too, used to love tinkering with Linux. I would compile my own kernels, hack drivers and fix bugs to make it run better on the hardware I chose to buy. I wanted everything to be just so.

Then, I realized that I have more money than time. I can choose Apple hardware, and run OS X (now macOS), trouble free. The only time I patched my Linux kernel was when some piece of hardware didn't work. Now, I simply choose hardware that works with my mac. It's not that much more expensive, usually.

On the software side, my old workflow with terminals, SSH, and browsers is pretty much unchanged. The only thing I really liked but Apple dropped (and I hate them for it) was virtual desktops. For that, I use TotalSpaces2.

That said, I think you can still get a Dell XPS with Linux preinstalled, no?

<comment><USER43> I've always kind of wondered what you guys are doing with your computers where you run into issues with Linux. For 95% of users, even software developers, in there off time you just want a web browser.

If you are developing, Linux is almost certainly better. The vast majority of languages have all their libraries available in the built in package manager, the included versions being guaranteed to work together.

I'm obviously not suggesting you run Arch Linux, but any Debian based distro will pretty much just work. And Ubuntu LTS doubly so.

<comment><USER44> I second that. I own a System76 laptop (Ubuntu 16.04 pre-installed) and an HP stream that I bought specifically to run POP! OS. I have also replaced several of my colleagues' OS with a Linux distro and I have yet to encounter a problem that took more than an hour to solve...and even those minor problems rarely occur.

      I am by no means a Linux guru - I just grew disgusted with Windows and wasn't willing to switch to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A transition to aarch64 would provide a unique challenge to Apple.

The other transitions (68k->PPC, and PPC->x86) brought with them nearly an order of magnitude increased raw performance, which let them paper over some of the emulation overhead in Rosetta or their 68k emulator.

They won't have the same intrinsic benefit working for them this time; it's hard to beat Intel at raw performance, especially single threaded.

<comment><USER46> It's doable for them. For one thing, even their iPhone chips are currently nipping at the heels of Intel's low-tdp mobile CPUs, exceeding some ULV parts in performance. For another, they could just push all the difficult stuff into specialized coprocessors. Wrap that into system frameworks and nobody will ever know.

<comment><USER45> I think they'll get between 5 and 10 percent of Intel by then, but that still means that an x86 emulator is punching light, even before you get into emulation overhead.

By comparison, the 68k emulator on PPC wasn't even a JIT. It just interpreted 68k machine code, and even then it was still 2x faster than a native 68k.

Moore's law really helped them.with their previous transitions, but Moore ain't cashing checks like he used to.

<comment><USER46> I'm pretty sure Rosetta wasn't an interpreter, and Intel chips were less than 2x the speed of PowerPC.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_\(software\))

<comment><USER45> Their x86 cores were about 5x faster when you accounted for everything. And even though Rosetta was a JIT it ended up running a little slower than the PowerPC chips it was replacing.

So to start off with chips that, let's assume are only about 90% of the chips that you're replacing in native code, you're now at least under half the performance of x86 while emulating. And that means half the battery life too.

<comment><USER46> You're making the unwarranted assumption that they'll actually emulate anything. The state of tooling is much better than it was back then, and this time there's no 32 bit mode to worry about.

According to Anandtech report in 2006, btw, the real world difference was far less than 5x. Indeed, Intel chips had substantially worse FP performance back then, something Apple uses quite a bit in their graphics subsystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> One of the authors of this piece is Mark Gurman. Lately, Gurman has gotten legit scoops on news, but has then interpreted the small gem of a scoop into a story which is entirely wrong.

In other words, take this with a huge grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER40> As a Mac user since 2004 for my daily driver and professional software engineering as well as light gaming and recreation... I really hope not. Being able to run Windows and Linux easily in both VMs and on metal are much too important to me.

Of course, I am already not buying another Mac until they give me a keyboard with a physical ESC and F-keys so maybe it doesn't matter at this point.

<comment><USER48> The current MacBook Pro is what caused Apple's revised compromise on the Pro PC line. So I think there's still hope. Otherwise I too will be patching up rMBP models like the one I have (probably second-hand ones though) until they run out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm not going to miss Intel ME.

I am going to miss running windows and linux VMs, and commercial software by microsoft, adobe, and blizzard. I'm also going to miss hand-optimized x86_64 assembly variants of ffmpeg, lame, x265, nodejs/v8, java hotspot, and more.

<comment><USER50> IME cannot do everything you think it can. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJCLX2dtw&list=WL&index=17...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJCLX2dtw&list=WL&index=17&t=479s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Finally. I was a hardcore apple fan. I believed in well thought design and optimized software. But after Jobs this company is pissing me off constantly. Stupid iWatch is device without real use case (but it was a reason iPhone to look like every other smartphone), ditching the skeuomorphic interface for flat stupidity (instead of simplifying and cleaning it), mac mini fiasco (great idea, left in the dust), mac book air (best laptop form factor, still with low quality TN display), killing of Final Cut Studio (the most comprehensive audio/video suite ever) and dumbing down the software (my friends still use Old versions of Final Cut), no Mac Pro (iMac pro is not a professional system), ditching the core user base (the reason of existence in the first place). Finally this year after staring down in disbelief at iPhone X (o god face id is the new norm) for the first time i started looking in other alternatives in smartphone market. The only device that i still cannot replace is my iPad Air 2 (media consumption and good battery life) but is questionable. This is the last drop.For me Apple is gone. It was a good ride Steve. Now its time to ditch the bandwagon, and say hello to my old Penguin friend. To all developers in the world: Start making top notch software for linux. Make it expensive and reliable. Start with Photoshop. Than Illustrator. Than Video editing and DAW systems. The hipsters like me who from years are paying for apple GUI design (now non existent in good quality and fading away every day) are ready to pay. Go find yourself The old Apple (Snow Leopard) HIG and start your engines. Big Money is coming in your face, because professional designers, videographers, composers, architects, etc. are really pissed off :)

</comment><comment><USER52> I think this was inevitable given the insane YoY performance increase we've seen from A-series chips.

Anyone want to chime in on why Intel can't get more than 5% YoY while Apple has been getting 30-40%?

<comment><USER53> Because they have moved past the easy parts of optimization. Apple's optimizations still have thermal throttling issues (sustained use of an A11 will not beat an Intel chip due to better cooling and IPC).

Compared to other ARM licencees they do beat the pants off of. This is probably why Apple put in a T1 chip and a touch bar in the Macbook Pro and the T2 chip (dedicated power module) in the iMac Pro. They are prototyping the individual pieces with Intel as the main processor so that they can attempt to swap the chip in 2020.

EDIT: nitpick on t1 and t2 chips.

<comment><USER54> FWIW, the TouchBar MacBook Pros have the T1, and the iMac has the next generation T2 chip.

<comment><USER53> Thank you for correcting me :)

<comment><USER54> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is such an obvious move, that I predicted it 2 years ago: [https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will- switch-f...](https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-switch-from- intel-to-arm-a6816058a1b2)

My prediction in 2016, was that Apple would switch to ARM based laptops in 2019, so it looks like I am off by just 1 year.

A quick summary of my argument back then was that ARM was getting fast ENOUGH, but are considerably cheaper. Standardizing on one CPU architecture for all their products makes sense. In addition it allows them to differentiate themselves from competitors.

The only choice I am still uncertain about is the Mac Pro lineup. Since performance will matter a lot more in this segment it is harder to see a transition away from intel. A possible solution would be for apple to go massively parallel and simply use a lot of ARM CPU cores. Sure single thread performance wont be able to compete with intel but they might not need to.

A lot of the stuff you need a Mac Pro for like compiling large programs fast, video processing etc is likely very paralelizable.

<comment><USER55> What if it turns out not to be based on the ARM architecture?

<comment><USER56> What else is there?

<comment><USER57> RISC V possibly, but unlikely.

<comment><USER58> would also be too good to be true...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> While a x86-ARM translator of some sort is certainly possible, keep in mind that Xcode added support for BitCode back in 2015, which means that binaries are uploaded to the App Store in LLVM IR and compiled to the target architecture by Apple. While this will not cover 100% of Mac OS applications out there, it will certainly minimize the effort of porting stuff to ARM MacBooks.

<comment><USER31> Relevant: [http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview- transcript/#bitcod...](http://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview- transcript/#bitcode)

I wouldn't assume that Bitcode is a huge help with this. Per Chris Lattner in the linked transcript, "It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of enhancements, but it isn't a panacea that makes everything magically portable."

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Intel's R&D budget is $13 billion and Apple's operating income is $61 billion, so Apple has more than enough money to play this game. I do wonder why it makes sense for them, other than a possible unification from top to bottom of the desktop and mobile computing paradigms, with everything from the Apple Watch to the Mac Pro running the same instruction set.

<comment><USER61> I think scaring Intel enough to be better about its software and security practices is a big enough effect that would be beneficial for everyone. Not that I'm a big fan of close-source-everything Apple. But Intel's Software is just a horrible mess (note that I'm talking specifically about software: they seem to contract out software development to other firms and the code quality seems to be objectively bad as a result)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> That would be the end of the Hackintosh, which would be kind of a shame.

Even having never built one myself, it remained a last resort of some kind in the back of my mind.

<comment><USER26> For someone not still in high school that struck me as way more effort than it was worth.

<comment><USER63> Hah, now that you mention it does seem like a huge chunk of the community is in high school. When I went to college I just got a real Mac and it is 100x better than the MSI Wind I used to use (though that was a great device too!).

<comment><USER26> That's kind of the crowd for something that saves you a bit of money at the cost of a huge chunk of your time, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py 1\. apple likely believes intel's hardware division benefits from apple's large investment in compilers. In general, apple is attacking all its technology partners to cut them out of the stack (i.e. qualcomm).

2\. apple seems to be underestimate the value of openness in driving certain kinds of customers to their hardware (developers, for example). Further splitting the ecosystem will drive some users to linux laptops. (Hear hear).

3\. intel's incentives are now highly aligned with the linux community (esp given msft's windows shutdown)

4\. this is the first time since 2005 that there's a legitimate spread trade between intc and aapl.

</comment><comment><USER64> AMD has the rights to produce x86 compatible CPUs. If Apple were to design the chips but AMD manufactured them on contract, would that avoid IP/licensing issues with Intel?

<comment><USER65> Yes. I am finding it almost bemusing that people are dancing so delicately around the only rational possibility here: A semi-custom AMD-produced x86-64 CPU, very much like the Samsung-produced A-series ARM CPUs for their phones and tablets. I see zero reason that the next Axxxx chip cant be a rebranded Zen core with Vega GPU and custom Apple IP magic sprinkled in - [https://www.amd.com/en-us/solutions/semi-custom](https://www.amd.com/en- us/solutions/semi-custom)

Just because Apple says they are done with Intel and are making their own chips, does not preclude the possibility that they are simply working with a _different_ x86 vendor on a custom/semi-custom design.

I see zero way Apple gets off the x86 architecture in the next few years, simply due to the tremendous software ecosystem that has grown up around the platform since the switch from PowerPC. They would have to offer a dual path for years to get their larger software partners prepared.

<comment><USER6> That's a lot of fuss for at best a lateral shift, and a step down in the all- important performance-per-watt metric (Zen and Vega are totally unproven here).

You may be underestimating the possible paths Apple has to a) transition software developers quickly with better tooling, and b) provide sufficiently performant JIT / compatibility layer by sprinkling a bit of x86 compatibility into future A-series chips, and you're certainly underestimating the value in c) reducing complexity on the software-side.

Apple is already making their own GPU and CPU and throwing all their weight behind that, why would they hop onto the (brilliant but rather unreliable and on mobile totally unproven) AMD train?

<comment><USER64> That's assuming Apple manly uses existng core designs from AMD etc and doesn't significantly contribute improvements for their own systems, to gain advantages over the chips available to their competitors. But surely adding a hefty dose of their own secret sauce would be the only thing that would make such a move worthwhile?

What's being suggested is not that Apple use AMD designs. It's that Apple partner with AMD in order to gain licensing cover for their own largely or completely in-house engineered chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> If true, and assuming the chip will be based around ARM, then this may be the final nail in Intel's _server_ business. The biggest gate in adopting ARM- based servers is development and testing on a local environment. If x86 is being emulated and ARM is native then developing software for ARM-based servers just got a lot easier.

</comment><comment><USER67> "according to people familiar with the plans." usually = "stuff we made up." Same with the WSJ. They're known for Apple news stock manipulation. went from 167 to 164, which at a decent volume and buying at the lower price, could net a nice profit.

"Intel shares dropped as much as 9.2 percent, the biggest intraday drop in more than two years, on the news."

Ahh. That too.

Plus all of the ad revenue from all of the people clicking on this startling article. I don't trust Bloomberg for _anything_ related to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER68> If the current MacBook Pro is any indication, then I would be surprised if people are still buying Macs at all in 2020.

<comment><USER69> Pretty sure I'll still be using / rebuying the 2015 model

<comment><USER70> Try an XPS15.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> If Apple really moves to custom chips in Macs, it's going to be about one thing only: independence. Apple wants to control the entire stack; and relying on a single vendor is too big of a risk.

It's not a question of price; it's about getting the chips they need.

Intel has missed a lot of targets in recent years, and (according to rumors) more than one recent Mac model has been delayed because Intel did not have the next chip generation ready in time.

Current Macbook Pros max out at 16GB RAM because the Intel chips don't support LPDDR4 RAM.

On iOS, Apple can control everything. They can plan ahead, and know that in 3 years they'll have the chips they need.

On the Mac side, they can only hope that Intel doesn't delay their roadmap longer than usual.

(The story about Marcipan (a shared iOS / macOS UI framework) seems unrelated to the chip issue. Sounds like they included it in this article only to make it look a bit more substantial. There is already a lot of shared code between macOS and iOS, and the CPU architecture isn't holding anything back in that regard.)

<comment><USER72> Yeah, I can definitely see this as being the reason. The switch from PPC to Intel was partly motivated by IBM dropping the ball. Now Intel is failing to keep up as well, so given that Apple has the resources, why not control their own destiny?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> While it's had a rocky start, Microsoft's starting to push Windows 10 laptops based on ARM chips, so it's definitely not out of the realm of sanity that Apple is interested in doing the same.

</comment><comment><USER74> Probably too early to tell, but I'd imagine this will mark the death of the Hackintosh? It's a shame, because I had a lot of fun hunting down all of the information and files I needed to convert one of my old PC's over.

<comment><USER75> Eventually, probably. But they'll still support existing Macs with new software for a while after the transition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> For everyone speculating that this means a move to ARM and they'll write an emulator for x86 code, it's good to note that the first Windows tablet based on ARM, the $1,000 HP Envy x2, has pretty terrible performance for x86 code when running on a Snapdragon 835. The Celeron N3450 launched almost 2 years ago found in super low end $200 Windows laptops outperforms it by ~50%. And ARM on Windows can only run 32-bit apps (no 64-bit apps, no drivers, no system level utilities).

<comment><USER6> Good data point, though they may have just not invested much in writing a good emulator, let alone dedicating some extra silicon to speeding it up. If Apple makes this shift, my strong suspicion is they'd do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What will happen to people who use VMs of Intel-centric OSes like Ubuntu, Fedora and other cloud OSes?

<comment><USER77> For web development, I think Ubuntu for ARM will be fine:

[https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/arm](https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/arm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Seeing a lot of assumptions and speculations on this thread (which makes sense given how early and high level the sourcing is).

I wonder if anyone has seen side by side roadmaps of Apple and Intel's roadmaps, or projections of those roadmaps? I doubt Apple is moving away from Intel for pricing reasons, given the margins they work with. It seems more likely (or at least as likely) there are broader technical reasons. Feels like an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison would be helpful.

<comment><USER79> > I wonder if anyone has seen side by side roadmaps of Apple and Intel's > roadmaps

This would be easy to do, if we knew what was on Apple's roadmap…

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> So Apple seems to be willing to give up on the developer market almost entirely, and will turn the Macs into multimedia centers just as iPads then? Maybe that's indeed where the majority of their revenue lies, and they couldn't care less whether fewer developers buy their Macs if that means more home users buy them. But still, I doubt whether it will be the right move in the long run.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a change of processor architecture mean that the majority of the apps that currently run on Mac won't run anymore and would require the app developers to make extensive changes to make them run on the new architecture?

I've parted with my MBP after having used it for 4 years and switched to Arch Linux. It has been a blast so far, apart from the spotty HiDPI support and lack of built-in dictionaries. It's also much nicer than Ubuntu as a dev distro (not as a production distro of course) since you can install the newest version of almost any software you want in a flash without involving the messy PPAs. I was worrying about Apple's shifts in the recent years in the Mac line but they pale in comparison to this change. Gives me less of an incentive to use any Apple product for sure.

<comment><USER81> The vast majority of apps don't use things like inline assembly or rely on architecture specific features, so it's just a recompile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I've read through a lot of the comments, but no one asked the question - <USER3> would Apple invest the R&D resources to create and support ARM based Macs when Macs are such a small part of their revenue and profits? Would they make more money by selling ARM based Macs?

Why not just add capabilities to iOS and make an iOS laptop? The only thing I see missing is true multi-user support (not the hack they do in the education market) and pointer support.

<comment><USER83> > why would Apple invest the R&D resources to create and support ARM based > Macs when Macs are such a small part of their revenue and profits?

They already invest a lot in the development of their ARM-based processors for iOS. I don't think the additional investment for making them ready for Macs would be that high. Take the 12" MacBook for example. I can even imagine they could simply stick the current A11 processor into it and it'd be fine.

> Would they make more money by selling ARM based Macs?

Yes. Profit margin would be much higher.

<comment><USER82> They would still have to develop their own custom thunderbolt controller, an emulator, etc.

The only thing changing as far as cost would be the processor. Let's say they save $100 on the processor (not likely). They sell about 14 million Macs a year. That's only $1.4 Billion - pocket change to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Intel stock is down 7.3% currently.

<comment><USER85> Well yes, but the whole market is taking a dive today. -500 on the DOW last I checked.

<comment><USER86> -722

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I think for a site full of developers, the almost exclusively welcome reactions to such a change are intriguing.

Don't you worry you will have to cross-compile to run your programs on the amd64 server? Or how you are going to debug locally bugs that may arise from a different architecture? Or that homebrew could be in an inconsistent state for some years until all software catches up with the new architecture?

<comment><USER88> Apple dealt with this last time with Universal Binaries [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> If this is true, I'm pretty interested to see how they intend to pull it off (and how it works out in real life).

I'd be more skeptical if Apple hadn't already pulled off CPU architecture transitions with impressive smoothness multiple times already.

Will Apple do an x64 CPU?

Or maybe x64 emulation? ...maybe with custom hardware assist?

Could they possibly do a crazy "you must recompile for ARM if you want to run on the latest Macs" thing?

The performance of Apple's ARM CPUs is already fine for the lower end of lappys, and have superior power usage. Moving up into midrange performance lappys doesn't seem like a stretch at all to me, or even higher end lappys, especially if you're looking for more cores. But what about iMacm, iMac Pro and Mac Pro? Does Apple really have a solid plan that makes ARM CPUs competitive there? Or will there be Intel-based Macs at the high-end and ARM- based Macs at the mid to low end?

Could Apple possibly tie all this to some unification of iOS and MacOS?

And/or tie it to a unification of the iOS App Store and Mac App Store?

Interesting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER90> I wonder if this means that virtualization will be impossible without some sort of emulation layer. If so, that seriously blows.

</comment><comment><USER91> The thing I've come to realize over the past couple years is that the dream of _performant_ open hardware is still beyond reach for at least a decade or two.

But this is probably the next best thing to have. A company that at least tries to be sensitive in terms of privacy and security building their own hardware, albeit not open. I respect Apple for that.

</comment><comment><USER92> That would be 30 years after they started ARM together with Acorn.

</comment><comment><USER93> I cannot imagine that is is a good plan. I just don't see enough innovation coming from the processor space to justify the overhead of design, development, testing, and manufacturing while effectively re-inventing most of the underlying system. Unless they build them as x86 clones... but even then it seems like they would be playing catch-up to new innovation.

If Apple really plans on doing this, it MUST be because of some fundamentally new capability that they are either unwilling to divulge to Intel, or Intel is unwilling to invest in. Some kind of core change to the way that Macs interact with or behave with users; otherwise it just doens't make sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER94> My questions:

ARM? Walled garden of an app ecosystem? Command line?

There has been convergence between iOS and MacOS for a while now.

<comment><USER95> I see the question marks but I'm not entirely sure what your questions actually are

<comment><USER94> It was just a stream of consciousness and I was planning on editing it but got distracted. It also wasn't formatted very well. My mistake.

I'm sure this has been going on for a long time behind the scenes. That is what happened when the PPC -> x86 transition became public. Since Apple has it's own ARM chips/fab, I wonder if ARM is where they are going? It would make sense from a couple different points of view: Lower power use and security. Can there be equivalence between the two architectures, meaning would similar CPUs net you a similar workload?

There is much to like about the iOS app store, but there also is much to dislike. Apple is the gatekeeper here, and if they don't like your app, you are out of luck. That's not the case with MacOS, at least not yet. You can still write what ever kind of app you desire for what ever your client base may pay for and Apple can't really do much to stop you. Merging iOS and MacOS would need to address this.

Finally I use the command line a lot. I don't have access to that on my tablet or phone unless I jailbreak it which has it's own risks with doing so. If Apple decides this is no longer acceptable, that will certainly change my choices for getting work done.

<comment><USER79> Your concerns would be better founded if this was news of iOS coming to desktop instead of Apple switching desktop processors.

<comment><USER94> There are several reports about this happening. Granted it's rumor: [https://www.cultofmac.com/519763/apples-got-secret-plan- merg...](https://www.cultofmac.com/519763/apples-got-secret-plan-merge-ios- mac-apps-2018/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Puts them in a unique position where they may see increased sales if the can prove the lack of the invasive portions of a management engine. How can they create and push to market something as complex as an x86 processor in 2 years. Sounds like a ton of work.

</comment><comment><USER97> It's kinda hilarious that nobody has commented on the "Kalamata" code name :D

<comment><USER98> That's because there ar

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I just had a flashback to the G4 and G5 era. The day they announced Apple announced the move to Intel there was a huge sigh of relief from everybody I knew, especially those in the Media industry.

I don't see a lot of good coming from this move.

</comment><comment><USER100> People here were anticipating this, should be no surprise. Presumably, Intel also knows for some time, but their long-term strategy on how to stay relevant seems unclear. I could imagine them becoming a pure fab-company one day.

</comment><comment><USER101> This is a multi-year transition even after 2020 but this is a step closer towards a cloud-based MAC where the hardware is connected 100%, has super long battery life and the majority of the processing is done in the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER102> It would be in line with their warnings on 32-bit apps. You certainly wouldn't want to have to continue supporting 32-bit as a first-class development target when you're about to change your entire architecture.

</comment><comment><USER103> This is no surprise, it's in Apple's culture to want to own the stack completely. I wonder how they will execute on this however, Apple's design team is pretty good.. but who do they have doing pre and post silicon validation? Will they go the extra mile someday and build their own fab? There are lots of intricacies to consider when trying to make your own chip. I guess the biggest question is how far is Apple willing to go to have complete control over their product, microprocessors are probably the most capital intensive part of their product.

</comment><comment><USER104> I was just discussing this weekend the strength I was seeing in the ARM market. Looking at the Apple trend lately with the A9-A11 chips, being ARM based, and then the advances Qualcomm has made making workstations and servers based on ARM chips, this just seems like a no brainer. Build cheaper, more efficient chips, custom designed to work with your own ecosystem.

Finally, the ARM and NVIDIA deals could make large strides in the market of getting blockchain ready and making machines purpose built for dealing with the inevitable future of blockchain in everything.

</comment><comment><USER105> About time. I'm tired of Intel's minimally viable laptop processors (and their security blunders). Apple has the margins and the volume to throw a lot of transistors at a problem, like they do in iOS devices. I want 13" Macbook with more than 2 cores, good GPU, and decent memory bandwidth. Apple can do big/little cores, large caches, wider memory buses (HBM please), inference acceleration, 120hz variable refresh with good battery life, etc. These things have a questionable ROI for Intel but set Apple apart and sell more hardware.

<comment><USER106> These things are available, Apple chooses not to use them in their quest for thinness.

<comment><USER105> I disagree. They have certainly sacrificed battery size at the altar of thinness but not transistors. Who else is doing 100mm^2 SoCs in consumer devices? Now take that up to 200-300mm^2 and imagine the possibilities with tailor-made blocks and cutting edge memory. Look at Intel's dual core die shots, >50% GPU and my laptop is still jankier than my iOS device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> How the performance of fastest current ARM chips compare to the latest generation of low power, quad core Intel i7 chips (~15W) used in contemporary non-workstation laptops?

</comment><comment><USER108> I wonder what impact this will have on the hackintosh community.

</comment><comment><USER109> Some of the old X86 clone chip companies got bought out by others. Cyrix, Centaur, Winchip ect got bought out by VIA and I had not heard of VIA is still in business.

Apple once made PowerPC chips with Motorola, IBM, and others.

There is also a rumor of Apple using ARM chips with X86 codes or X86 emulation.

I'd like to see Apple make a version of a modern PowerPC CPU and use an ARM as a co-processor to run iOS stuff. Cut out Intel or do it via emulation like Rosetta did for PowerPC code.

</comment><comment><USER110> Component manufacturers & companies like newegg should get together and fund a Linux distro that has great ports of all the most popular OSX software :)

</comment><comment><USER111> It will be interesting to see how Apple handles this. Last time around users got a compatibilty layer in Rosetta to bridge compatibilty between Power Pc applications on Intel. I would imagine that would be the case this time but some of the questionable changes in terms of user friendliness (imho) in the recent past removing headphone jack etc. makes me wonder if this will be a cold switch for older software.

</comment><comment><USER112> It's trivially credible that Apple will use its own chips in macs - it already has cpu's faster that its low-end, ultra portables. They could have done it years ago.

But less credible that they will _only_ use their own chips. However, there have been complaints that Apple's high-end hasn't been very high recently - maybe laying the ground-work, lowering expectations?

</comment><comment><USER113> I wonder if Apple is maybe looking at AMD for chips? That would be a much less painful switch instead of transitioning to ARM for the Desktop.

<comment><USER21> It's unlikely. Apple has shown a clear trend towards trying to get rid of absolutely any 3rd party components from their devices. They want the control that full vertical integration gives them.

The got rid of the 3rd party ARM design in their iphones/ipads, going for their own ARM/AARCH64 design. They are currently in the process of getting rid of the PowerVR GPU, to be replaced with their own GPU.

Moving to their own AARCH64 CPU for laptops/desktops fits with that trend. Many people have been wondering 'when' this will happen, not if.

Moving to AMD doesn't fit with this long term trend.

<comment><USER113> Probably correct. Apple could easily purchase AMD and also get the video card tech from ATI which they seem to favor on their desktop machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> I sometimes wonder why Apple would do this. I mean: i) the end-users frankly don't care. Seriously. ii) 90% (if not 99.99%) of dev would not (be able to) care

I mean, I doubt if more than perhaps 5% of Apple internal dev can take advantage of "tight integrat[ion] of new hardware and software." This integration probably takes form of either some specific app (think Pixel camera phone), some specific library, or compiler optimizations. The first one (specific app) can be accomplished much cheaper through add-on chips (guess what, that's what Pixel does). The 2nd and 3rd can be done much more effectively through a generally available chips (like, well, Intel's chip) since more people, from vendor's engineers to researchers to random open source ninjas, would be able to experiment and help out.

In other words, from a purely technical point of view, there is absolutely zero reason to do this. Whatever happens, Intel is among if not the best capable chip producers. And Apple is not "disrupting" (i.e. focuses on unaddressed aspect), but merely directly competing with Intel's core competencies. It's not Amazon entering details against WalMart's. It's Target's competing against WalMart's, except they don't have Target's existing competencies. Which, again, makes no technical sense.

On the other hand, if they want to completely lock in users......

<comment><USER22> I don't think they'd attempt it unless they had something that would disrupt the market. Intel has been rusting on its laurels without credible competition, and if Apple manages to steal a march on them with a new technology, that would be the impetus to bring it in-house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> How they managed not to mention the shrinking economy of scale for PC chips vs growing economy of scale for mobile chips is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER116> SemiAccurate has reported this all the way back in 2012 that they had a ten year plan to switch to ARM. I'm not surprised.

</comment><comment><USER117> Anything to get more competition in that market is greatly appreciated. Intel products have become a massive disappointment.

</comment><comment><USER118> Is this maybe why they are looking for Linux kernel developers?

Tim Pritlove predicted this move for some years now on his freakshow(.fm).

Anyway the only interesting thing to me is if they will share a codebase between macOs and ios or if they will create something new and not based on darwin. Maybe they will take the step steve didn't want and switch to linux.

<comment><USER79> I seriously doubt this will happen. Why would they throw away three decades of work that's known to work on both x86 and ARM?

<comment><USER118> You are probably right. I myself however am curious why they would need linux kernel devs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> I think Tim Cook is laughing out loud in his office now, how they just tricked Intel to lower their CPU prices. However I wonder how this insider info went out public, having direct impact on Intel shares.

Sorry but transiting from Intel doesn't make sense to me. It would burn huge pile of money for very low benefit.

</comment><comment><USER120> What I find funny is that in ~2006 I had a net eng working for me that was a die-hard Mac fan.

I claimed at the time, that I would bet him that apple would start making machines with Intel chips. He ___LOST_ __it and said "THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!!"

And thought I was a complete moron for even suggesting as such.

:-)

<comment><USER79> This was public knowledge in 2005…

<comment><USER120> I may have got the year wrong. I don't recall the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Interesting thread on the way Steve dealt with the press during the PPC -> X86 transition.

[https://twitter.com/nickwingfield/status/980882009156329472](https://twitter.com/nickwingfield/status/980882009156329472)

</comment><comment><USER121> I remember when Atari and Apple used to use Motorola chips. I miss the greater variety of those days, so I see this as positive, even if I'm not an Apple user myself. (And I look forward to trying out Apple-produced chips second- hand, and running Linux on them....)

</comment><comment><USER122> It'd be really cool if they rolled down the [https://riscv.org/](https://riscv.org/) path. They wouldn't have to pay anyone anything and could do whatever they wanted.

Then again, wont happen

</comment><comment><USER123> I am curious as to how Apple can just jump into a new complex business and be instantly pro at it without buying out a chip manufacturer who is. Will there be a learning curve? Will Apple machines circa 2020 have a bumpy road or not as fact?

<comment><USER124> Don't they manufacture chips for their iOS line of products?

<comment><USER123> I can find no evidence that Apple manufactures chips of any kind.

<comment><USER83> Neither does it plan to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> I think the first step is to produce a GPU that integrates well with Intel CPUs. The next Metal version will need to have even deeper hardware integration while external GPUs support will be a solution for those who need AMD or NVIDIA solutions.

</comment><comment><USER126> I sensed this transition from the point that Apple released the new small MacBook.

</comment><comment><USER127> A non-event and long-forecasted IMHO. As others have pointed out, they've already done this twice before. I do like the idea that they can thus build a very secure platform. Might even make me buy a Mac again.

</comment><comment><USER128> The only thing that could go wrong with this kind of switch is software compatibility, and as long as this chips could run x86 software properly and will have same or better performance, I don't mind.

</comment><comment><USER129> Surprised by the comments on performance. Putting a second cpu/SoC on the board and keeping it in a low power sleep mode, then spinning it up as needed would be trivial for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER130> Apple is fantastic with hardware, so this sounds like a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER131> This will give them even more advantages because they are a vertical integrated company they can differentiate them selves with hardware and software integrations

</comment><comment><USER132> Here's the full Bloomberg piece over audio: [https://goo.gl/V999a4](https://goo.gl/V999a4)

</comment><comment><USER133> So Apple laptops will become glorified underpowered netbooks. macOS users totally won't start abandoning the platform even more than now.

</comment><comment><USER134> Oh boy, more universal binaries.

What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production, as opposed to doing a A11-style ARM derivative?

<comment><USER135> > _What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production..._

Zero, since it's wildly improbable that Intel would grant them a license to use the x86 architecture.

<comment><USER47> You don't need a license to use x86.

Moreover, the x64 was created by AMD, not Intel.

<comment><USER106> > Moreover, the x64 was created by AMD, not Intel.

With the assistance of a veritable phone book of cross-licensing of patents with both Intel and VIA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> Does this mean we can have Open Firmware again?

</comment><comment><USER137> I wonder if they will be ARM only or if there is some sort of x86 solution built in too. This report has basically zero info.

<comment><USER57> Its hardly a report. It is at best a rumor.

My strategy with any apple news: ignore it until its released or said from the horses mouth. Remember the iphones that had clickwheels like ipod rumors prior to the iphone? Thats what I consider this.

<comment><USER30> The clickwheel iphone "rumor", might have been true. During initial design of the original iPhone, both Scott Frostall (from Mac OS division), and Tony Fadell (from iPod division) were tasked with creation of iPhone. Both groups took their existing software (from iPod/Mac), and tuned it for a phone. Ultimately trimmed down OSX solution won over iPod's evolved firmware. I was reverse engineering iPod video/classic firmware around 2005/2006, and I do remember seeing references to "iphone".

<comment><USER57> Sure it might have existed, but that isn't what was released. That version of the iphone might just have been a proof of concept or prototype, but it didn't end up a product.

Just like this rumor might be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER138> Meanwhile with the impending containerization and vm efforts chromeos will begin to look more and more attractive.

</comment><comment><USER139> Steve Jobs mentioned in interviews what a hell of a job his teams did in the initial change to x86 and the immense work it required.

I wonder what he'd say in this scenario. Not saying "Steve Jobs would have NEVER allowed this apple is going to shit", simply wondering if the effort required to move to x86 should be essentially discarded (depending on the implementation)

Edit: I agree with the replies, they are a good reminder to me of the sunk cost fallacy

<comment><USER9> It's also worth noting that the OS they migrated was not the one that ran on the bulk of the old ppc system but a relatively new Unix fork that at least at the time was pretty possix compliant.

<comment><USER140> Which is to say, they have experience migrating an entire platform to a different architecture. Not many companies have that background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER141> Can someone explain the current and hypothesized future role of Intel, ARM and now Apple chips among Apple products?

</comment><comment><USER142> All the vestiges of 90's computing are dying! I couldn't be happier actually. 2020 computing here I come.

</comment><comment><USER143> Is Apple competent enough to build an equally powerful CPU? Or is it a no- brainer for the kind of money they got?

<comment><USER144> Apple's Cash (77B) is about 1/3 of Intel's Market Cap (224B), maybe they could just buy Intel.

<comment><USER145> Buying AMD is an option if they really need x86... either short term or long term.

<comment><USER77> Unfortunately AMD's licensing deals with Intel terminate if AMD is purchased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER146> I'm pretty happy with my Xeon.

</comment><comment><USER147> What is next, Apple building its own wafer-steppers / lithography machines?

</comment><comment><USER148> As long as i get a unix shell i wont complain about what apple does to the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER149> This coupled with LLVM creates a powerful position for Apple in the future.

</comment><comment><USER150> So what I'm hearing is the 2019 Macbook Pro will be the one to buy?

<comment><USER151> Assuming that Apple has the good sense to ditch the touchbar, absolutely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER152> Would they be able to design their chips to avoid Spectre-type attacks?

<comment><USER64> Bear in mind Apple's own mobile CPUs were also vulnerable to these attacks. The vulnerability was with commonly used architectural features found in many processor designs from different design houses, including both Apple and Intel among others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER153> One possibly nice fallout of this would be Intel offering Xeons to consumers to leverage its economies of scale on the server-side for the consumer market (since I believe Apple is the biggest customer for high-end consumer CPUs).

</comment><comment><USER154> IMO if you have never tried KDE plasma and install KDE connect on your mobile devices you have no idea what you are missing.

KDE connect is irreplaceable 5 minutes after you install it.

</comment><comment><USER155> if true it means they have version 1 chips already today. perhaps this is why the new support for external GPU.

</comment><comment><USER156> Sure Apple, how did it go last time when you tried to implement your own SSL library without any tests or static analysis? goto fail; goto fail;

</comment><comment><USER157> Will this make the prices go up or down?

Down, right?

</comment><comment><USER158> I think and hope that Apple will merge osx and ios and thus only needs to maintain one software and hardware architecture.

</comment><comment><USER159> So that was not an April 1 joke?

</comment><comment><USER160> Their own ARM or x86?

</comment><comment><USER140> Hey Apple, could we get those chips made in germanium? Kthx

</comment><comment><USER161> who didn't see this coming?

</comment><comment><USER162> Its going to be a 128 bit chip (it could be)

</comment><comment><USER163> I just read 1060 comments, 400 of them are about macOS, 200 of them are not even related to the CPU topic. And no one has any more insight to share?

I find it very strange people think Apple SoC aren't any good for desktop workload.

[https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/7795892?baselin...](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/7795892?baseline=7796004)

This is an Macbook Top Spec from Intel on a Fanless Design, against an iPad Pro also a fanless design. Let's ignore the small difference of TDP for a minutes because both are limited by its Fanless design, and Geekbench do runs on for a few minutes, so it is an indication or how close they are in these specific workloads.

The Intel Core i7-7Y75 can turbo boost to 3.4Ghz if needed, comparing that to max 2.4Ghz of the A10X. If we also ignore the frequency, iPad Single Core performance is with 10% of Intel's best Core processor at this TDP. The A10 core here is a generation older then the A11 used in iPhone X and iPhone8, and A12 coming in this September will likely have even better IPC.

The JavaScript testing performance on both Mac and iOS Safari shows performance is similar and A11 even edge out Intel in some cases.

So no matter how you spin it, in certain workload Apple A11 has already matched up or exceed Intel within a Fanless TDP design. That is excluding the advantage Apple will have on Multicore when it has 4x Core compared to 2 Core 4 thread in Intel.

Intel's 14nm++ is also matured and better then then TSMC 10nm, which is merely a testing node for its 7nm.

i.e Assuming Apple wanted to, they could have a 7nm Quad Core A12X shipping in 6 months time that is better then Intel's Core at Fanless TDP or <15W design, at 1/3 of the cost.

The reality is Intel hasn't been executing its plan for a few years. And If this rumours is true it is only themselves to blame. When Apple were designing its 2015 Macbook, Intel's roadmap were clear, three years later in 2017, the Macbook was suppose to have Quad Core in its design. And looking at all the latest roadmap, it doesn't seem there will be a 10nm Quad Core CPU shipping this year either. Not in fanless design. We are looking at 2019 march, four years since its introduction to get that through.

Then there is the LPDDR4 memory support. You wanted 32GB Laptop Memory? Well Intel doesn't allow you to have it. Not even in 2018. The delay in 10nm, the little to no improvement in IPC, AVX2 is very much a niche. As a normal customer I dont really have a reason to buy Intel anymore unless you want absolute Price / Single Core Performance, otherwise AMD is a much better choice. So I dont think we are the one who are frustrated. Apple is likely too.

I also wonder how this moves means in the Modem space. Which is the much more important pcs for Apple. I have often argued one reason Apple didn't make the Mac to ARM move earlier was because Apple needed Intel's modem to fence off Qualcomm's "double dipping". Now that Broadcom failed to acquire Qualcomm, Intel is being dumped from Apple. Does that mean Apple is going back to Qualcomm modem soon? Likely along with a deal of using Qualcomm Centriq on servers and likely later in Pro lineup of Mac?

Previously Apple's rumoured Project McQueen were to bring all the Server inhouse, using less resources from AWS, Azure and Google. Apple is a large Server customers on its own. If Qualcomm has Apple to kick start its Server CPU business, along with Apple push to help PC transition to ARM, it may be well worth Qualcomm to lower its royalty and modem prices.

</comment><comment><USER164> Great, we can go back to the macrumors nonsense about how this PPC is "just as fast" as the x86 days.

With their focus on iOS vs MacOS, this doesn't surprise me. MacOS will simply die once they port their tools to iOS.

Terrible choice IMO.

<comment><USER165> Except apple has demonstrated they can design cpu's that outperform the (android) competition. Who is to say they can't make ARM cpu's that genuinely outperform intel? Intel hasn't executed all that well lately anyway.

<comment><USER166> Being able to go toe to toe with low-power areas says little about being able to compete against full-power areas, and vice versa. Intel is a laughing stock when trying to compete in low power areas even though they dominate full power. ARM is the only choice in low power outside of a few Chinese chips and Samsung's Exynos, but yet ARM hasn't made a dent in full power applications. The two areas do not scale as easily as they sound.

Intel has been iterating their design decades longer and was in stiff competition for much of that time period. They will be hard to catch in the desktop/laptop space for anyone starting with a cell phone CPU.

ARM has not had real competition in their market, most chipmakers are licensing ARM tech, so they should be easier to catch up to, which Apple has done (with a healthy dose of borrowed ideas from ARM).

<comment><USER167> Isn't Exynos also ARM?

<comment><USER166> You're right, for some reason I was thinking Exynos wasn't ARM based because it wasn't Qualcomm- not sure why. That takes the list of ARM competition down to just the Chinese offerings, unless I'm mistaken about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER168> Because that worked so well last time?

<comment><USER153> To what are you sarcastically referring?

Apple's switch to PowerPC which gave them a performance lead over Intel for five years and kept them competitive for another five or Apple's switch to its own ARM Core designs which have given them a 12-24 month performance lead over the entire Android ecosystem?

Bear in mind that Apple dominates the high-end desktop / laptop market, both in market share and profit share* which could put a huge dent in Intel's economies of scale for high end consumer CPUs.

* I'm assuming these figures omit servers. Also, there was a lot of noise in around 2009 saying that Apple had over 90% of the high-end PC market, but I've not seen more recent figures one way or another. Given that PC prices seem to have, if anything, slipped, I doubt it's gotten worse for Apple (and goodness knows the tech press _loves_ any statistic that makes Apple look bad).

<comment><USER47> He is referring of course to the PowerPC architecture. It did not have a performance lead over Intel for as long as you suggest. Even when it had a lead, it wasn't that big. (I bought the best G5 when it came out, so it's a painful memory)

The problem with switching to a different architecture is that if it falls behind Intel, people will say "not as fast as a PC." If you stay with Intel and it falls behind, people say nothing. It's risk vs. no reward.

<comment><USER169> Pretty sure "last time" refers to the transition from Power PC to Intel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER170> Apple couldn't have started digging their own grave soon enough. Now all that's left to do is for Microsoft to play its end game - provide a bridge for NT/Win32 apps to run atop Linux, and spend the next couple of years bolting/porting/reinventing their new UI on a rock solid server OS - Linux, which will soon become a rock solid desktop OS.

Bye bye Apple. Nice to have known you. Game over-Linux wins, we all win. No more proprietary OS.

</comment><comment><USER171> Tim Cook is fundamentally an operations person who drives cost out of the supply chain. During his time as CEO, Apple seems to be innovating in the supply chain instead of the products. At Apple's scale, building your own chips and iPhone screens makes sense but doesn't intrinsically add value to customers. I wish Apple would invest as much in their software as they do in reducing cost.

Fortune Magazine in 2008: Think of Cook's contribution like this. There are two basic ways to get great profit margins: Charge high prices or reduce costs. Apple does both. The marketing and design drive consumers wild with desire—and make them willing to pay a premium; Cook's operational savvy keeps costs under control. Thus Apple is a cash-generating machine. Cook has called the company a place that is "entrepreneurial in its nature but with the mother of all balance sheets." At last count that meant $24.5 billion in cash and no debt.</comment>


D&D Fifth Edition is coming, players asked to guide remake - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html

<comment><USER2> UUuuugghhh, not another new version of D&D. This crap is _exactly_ the reason I'm so down on playing. I spent a ton of money on AD&D 2nd Ed. stuff back in the mid 90's when I was playing a lot... then I took a few years off from playing, and when I looked at it again, v3.5 was out. Fine, I figured that was fair, a few years had gone by and 2nd ed was pretty dated.

But right after I spent _another_ ton of money on v3 and v3.5 materials, they announce 4th edition! WTF?!? I resisted even touching that edition until last year when I caved in and bought a player handbook and rolled out a character for an impromptu game with a few friends one weekend. And now they want to roll out yet another new version?

Please... I know there's pressure to rev stuff in order to sell more copies of the core rulebooks, but WotC are - IMO - shooting themselves in the foot with the constant version changes. I'm sorry, but I'm not throwing out and replacing a big investment in D&D materials every 4 years or so.

Seriously Wizards, if you want more of my money, you'd be better served pushing out more material for an existing D&D version (preferably 3.5). Give us an updated Ravenloft campaign setting and related stuff, give us a modern Planescape, create entirely new realms (have you done anything completely new since Eberron?), etc.

OK, rant over. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the last sentence of the NYT article was priceless- currently, the only way anyone is bringing D&D material to the table on an iPad is if they steal it, because Wizards _still_ doesn't sell any core digital content (magazine articles and access to a rules website you can get for a monthly subscription, but no books)</comment></comment>


The Four Worst Programming Languages Today - <AUTHOR> https://www.freelancer.com/community/articles/the-four-worst-programming-languages-today <comment><USER2> I'm a long time c++ programmer. I can't understand why people thinks c is better than c++.

At work I deal with a large project of mixed c and c++ (few million lines of code), with legacy code written in c and newer code in c++.

My experience of dealing with those c code is very painful. 2 concrete examples:

1\. people say they hate c++ but like c. but they still embrace the concept of OOP in the c code. they use c struct to fake what c++ class does (and make every member variable a public one). in C++ when you set and get a member variable, you often use a getter and a setter. this makes it easy to find out where a variable has been accessed and changed (set a break point in the setter or getter). but in c code, since all members of a struct are referenced via pointers, it's very painful to debug when and where a member is changed. I have to use memory break point. Even setting memory break point in c++ is easier, as I have the constructor function to break into, to find out where an object is allocated, but in c code, it could be everywhere, my only hope is using the grep tool.

And I'm talking about debugging and maintaining undocumented large code base written in c by other people.

2\. C++ class encourages programmers to partition and organize their code more reasonably. usually a class represents a single module of functionality. and usually a class is written in a header and a cpp file. You know you should look at the header for its interface, and you know to find its cpp for implementation.

but in the c code I'm dealing with, there is no such partition. several interfaces could be groups into a single header, and the implementation of those interfaces could be scattered across several c files or mixed into a single c file. This is just painful to look at.

<comment><USER3> My language of choice is Lisp. I'm also comfortable programming in C and Java, though I'm not really a fan of either of those languages.

C is a simple language, and I prefer simple languages to complex ones, as in my experience most complexity in computing is accidental, rather than essential. As a low level, portable, assembly language substitute, C is a reasonably good choice. As a high-level language, it leaves a lot to be desired: its lack of a garbage collector, weak type system, lack of safety, numerous gotchas, etc.

You cannot make a good language by starting with a bad one and just adding features. You first have to remove the features which made the language bad.

C++ is a derivative of C, and began life by adding object orientation. Then it continued to add features (references, templates, operator overloading, lambdas, etc.) without any attempt at cleaning up the language. So it's now an extremely complicated language, used for high-level programming, based on (and for the most part backwards compatible with) a language (C) unsuited for high- level programming for the reasons I just mentioned.

A better approach was taken with Java. The language is simple (albeit slowly becoming less so), strongly typed, and safe. The approach seems to have been to remove all the things that make C unsuitable as a high-level language, add a garbage collector, add a simple OO variant (Smalltalk--), and stop there. Complexity is buried inside libraries. Java also enforces the link between classes and files, so you know where to find stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was hoping JS would be listed. I wasn't disappointed!

Let the hate flow through you. Then hire me.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that JavaScript began with good intentions: Brendan Eich wanted it to be more like Scheme, but was given a ludicrously short deadline (10 days) and told it had to look like Java.</comment></comment>