Apple ARM Based MacBooks and iMacs to come in 2021

Who in their right mind specifically buys a MacBook, iMac, or Mac Pro for specifically for gaming?
No one and everyone. Nobody buys these machines to game and yet lots of people do. Try not to think about it because Mac users certainly haven't.
These computers, and their user-base, are almost exclusively developers or video/audio/photo production and media content production professionals.
Something those users would like you to think, but then why would they buy a machine that thermal throttles like mad? These are Mac users, which means they'll buy the gold plated edition just to use Photoshop. Apple products are more about the esthetic and prestige and not so much about function.
It amazes me that you apparently can't wrap your head around anyone else not doing what you do with a computer, aka, gaming.
I've heard the same thing from Linux users and Linux wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for Valve. Gaming has been the main driving force of computer evolution for quiet some time. Do you really think the graphics card was invented for accelerating video editing and encoding? Gaming is such a big deal that people eventually found a use for 3D accelerators besides playing Quake 3 Arena and Doom. It's standard now for this very reason. Also more people had copies of Doom than Windows 95. True story.

How many people you think own an iPad and iPhone for productivity compared to gaming?
News flash, these aren't gaming computers,
Don't tell that to Mac users.

and just because they are shifting away from x86-64 to ARM doesn't mean gaming-in-general is dead on this platform - that is pure speculation on your part, not proven fact.
I'm sure you'll get all the same games on iOS on these Macs. So technically gaming won't be dead if you enjoy playing mobile games. But nobody is going to go through the trouble to port Assassin's Creed Valhalla to ARM just for the very few ARM based Macs that exist.
What is your source for saying "no developer will make games on these ARM based Macs"?
Some common sense and Steam dropped Mac like a hot potato. More than 95% of Steam users were using Windows and Linux so this move to ARM won't help.
From what I have seen thus far, especially in the 2020 keynote presentation, it is quite the opposite.
Oh of course, listening to Apple tell you how "brave" they are and how everyone is going to do it. I already predicted this would happen and I'm predicting it won't be an easy transition for Apple. If you have a x86 based Mac then hold onto it for a while because the value of these Macs are gonna sky rocket. There won't be any Boot Camp on these ARM based Macs, and users are gonna complain that their software either doesn't work or works very slowly. What will likely happen in that Apple will realize that people aren't gonna jump onto ARM that quickly and will make Intel based Macs for a very very long time. Maybe even make a Mac with both Intel and ARM CPU's to help with the transition. These ARM CPU's are costing Apple nothing compared to Intel so the incentive won't go away.

I've said before that ARM is the future, but that future won't be paved by Apple. Maybe Nvidia, AMD, but not Apple. Even then, I'd expect that ARM CPU's would need some layer of x86 compatibility if not to perform x86 applications equally as well, then at least not nearly that much worse. While Apple has poored millions into their ARM SOC's, but I doubt they have the engineering and experience to make CPU's that perform better than what Nvidia and AMD could do. At some point even Intel will jump onto ARM. As of right now there's no ARM based CPU with the IPC performance of x86, and I really doubt the first ARM that can do this will come from Apple.
 
No one and everyone. Nobody buys these machines to game and yet lots of people do. Try not to think about it because Mac users certainly haven't.

Something those users would like you to think, but then why would they buy a machine that thermal throttles like mad? These are Mac users, which means they'll buy the gold plated edition just to use Photoshop. Apple products are more about the esthetic and prestige and not so much about function.

I've heard the same thing from Linux users and Linux wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for Valve. Gaming has been the main driving force of computer evolution for quiet some time. Do you really think the graphics card was invented for accelerating video editing and encoding? Gaming is such a big deal that people eventually found a use for 3D accelerators besides playing Quake 3 Arena and Doom. It's standard now for this very reason. Also more people had copies of Doom than Windows 95. True story.

How many people you think own an iPad and iPhone for productivity compared to gaming?

Don't tell that to Mac users.


I'm sure you'll get all the same games on iOS on these Macs. So technically gaming won't be dead if you enjoy playing mobile games. But nobody is going to go through the trouble to port Assassin's Creed Valhalla to ARM just for the very few ARM based Macs that exist.

Some common sense and Steam dropped Mac like a hot potato. More than 95% of Steam users were using Windows and Linux so this move to ARM won't help.

Oh of course, listening to Apple tell you how "brave" they are and how everyone is going to do it. I already predicted this would happen and I'm predicting it won't be an easy transition for Apple. If you have a x86 based Mac then hold onto it for a while because the value of these Macs are gonna sky rocket. There won't be any Boot Camp on these ARM based Macs, and users are gonna complain that their software either doesn't work or works very slowly. What will likely happen in that Apple will realize that people aren't gonna jump onto ARM that quickly and will make Intel based Macs for a very very long time. Maybe even make a Mac with both Intel and ARM CPU's to help with the transition. These ARM CPU's are costing Apple nothing compared to Intel so the incentive won't go away.

I've said before that ARM is the future, but that future won't be paved by Apple. Maybe Nvidia, AMD, but not Apple. Even then, I'd expect that ARM CPU's would need some layer of x86 compatibility if not to perform x86 applications equally as well, then at least not nearly that much worse. While Apple has poored millions into their ARM SOC's, but I doubt they have the engineering and experience to make CPU's that perform better than what Nvidia and AMD could do. At some point even Intel will jump onto ARM. As of right now there's no ARM based CPU with the IPC performance of x86, and I really doubt the first ARM that can do this will come from Apple.

2005 ended over 15 years ago, might want to get caught up to 2020, just FYI.
Again, you give PC gamers a bad name.

Also, that video is from 2006... has life just stopped for you in the mid-2000s, because everything you are saying would be totally spot-on, if it were the mid-2000s.
It is 2020, however, so get with the times.

I've said before that ARM is the future, but that future won't be paved by Apple. Maybe Nvidia, AMD, but not Apple.
AMD does not publicly have a current ARM processor in development; I'm sure they have continued development, but that is just personal opinion, and judging by their previous ARM processors, I doubt it will have anywhere near the IPC or clock-for-clock performance that Apple's ARM processors have.
NVIDIA paving the way with their ARM processors... outside of the embedded and dev kit market (which is more geared towards their GPUs than the off-the-shelf ARM processors they use), I highly doubt that.

Glad you aren't anyone's market analyst - yikes.
 
My Macbook Pro can run AAA games just fine, using a RTX 2080TI on an EGPU in Bootcamp while also having 8tb external NVME storage running full bore plus 10GBe at full bandwidth - something no 13 inch PC laptop can do.
 
2005 ended over 15 years ago, might want to get caught up to 2020, just FYI.
I don't understand that comment. If you remember Apple before x86, they lied about their PowerPC performance a lot. To the point where they couldn't keep lying and had to transition over to x86. That's why PowerPC to x86 went smoothly because Intel CPU's were much faster than IBM's. x86 to ARM won't be and I predict Apple will do a lot of lying to show that ARM is better, because that's what Apple do.

Also, that video is from 2006... has life just stopped for you in the mid-2000s, because everything you are saying would be totally spot-on, if it were the mid-2000s.
It is 2020, however, so get with the times.
Old meme but still very relevant today. Or do you see a surge of Mac gaming lately that I'm to PCMasterRace to notice?
AMD does not publicly have a current ARM processor in development; I'm sure they have continued development, but that is just personal opinion, and judging by their previous ARM processors, I doubt it will have anywhere near the IPC or clock-for-clock performance that Apple's ARM processors have.
NVIDIA paving the way with their ARM processors... outside of the embedded and dev kit market (which is more geared towards their GPUs than the off-the-shelf ARM processors they use), I highly doubt that.
You do know that Apple makes their own GPU's for their SOC's but they'll like continue to use AMD GPU's on these ARM based Macs because they can't make them nearly as performant. Apple will not push for IPC but for multi-threaded work loads and power efficiency because they can't make it nearly as performant either. Linus Tech Tips even noted how Apple seems to be deliberately heating up their new Intel Mac by not putting the cooling fan on it. Good chance the new ARM Macs will be compared to these overheating Intel Macs to show how much better the ARM Macs are. Add misleading benchmarks and emphasis on being thin and Apple will drive customers to it.

If AMD and Nvidia can engineer better GPU's than Apple then they can engineer better ARM based CPUs as well. They haven't pushed hard for this because there's no market for introducing a new CPU platform to try and get customers to painfully transition to it. Not to forget to get developers to transition over to ARM where very few people are currently using it. Nvidia seems to have stepped away from this market for this very reason. Nobody is going to want to transition away from x86 and deal with software compaibility just to benefit Apple, and it will be benefiting them mostly.


Glad you aren't anyone's market analyst - yikes.
And yet I'm always right. You wait and see that Apple won't dump Intel or x86 for a very long time. The only way Apple could get users to jump onto ARM is if they incorporate some amount of x86 on these CPU's, which would bring the wrath of Intel. Apple isn't one to shy away from fighting patents in counts but they may not yet want to bite the hand that currently feeds them, which is Intel. Look at how well Microsoft fared with Windows on ARM. Dicks out for those guys who bought ARM based Windows laptops. People are not going to want to dump years of applications they bought for ARM.
 
I'm sure you'll get all the same games on iOS on these Macs. So technically gaming won't be dead if you enjoy playing mobile games. But nobody is going to go through the trouble to port Assassin's Creed Valhalla to ARM just for the very few ARM based Macs that exist.

Porting to ARM is not an issue. It's porting to Metal, and other Apple API's. Porting to a different CPU architecture is mostly just a recompile, unless the CPU architecture is strange in some way like the PS3 CPU was.

Some common sense and Steam dropped Mac like a hot potato. More than 95% of Steam users were using Windows and Linux so this move to ARM won't help.

Valve dropped Mac SteamVR, not Steam.


I already predicted this would happen and I'm predicting it won't be an easy transition for Apple.

The playbook this time, is just like PPC->Intel, and that was quite smooth transition. It should be just as smooth this time, if not more so. This time a bunch of developers aren't stuck back on Carbon.


There won't be any Boot Camp on these ARM based Macs, and users are gonna complain that their software either doesn't work or works very slowly. What will likely happen in that Apple will realize that people aren't gonna jump onto ARM that quickly and will make Intel based Macs for a very very long time. Maybe even make a Mac with both Intel and ARM CPU's to help with the transition. These ARM CPU's are costing Apple nothing compared to Intel so the incentive won't go away.

No real reason to believe any of that will happen. They already showed very decent Rosetta performance on Devkit HW, and the real HW will be faster than the devkit. If I were in the market for a Mac, and didn't need Windows application support, I would be holding off waiting for a ARM Mac. It will likely be a sweet little package with equivalent CPU and superior GPU to Intel IGP performance and run cooler/quieter with better battery life, and longer support window out in front of them.

I've said before that ARM is the future, but that future won't be paved by Apple. Maybe Nvidia, AMD, but not Apple. Even then, I'd expect that ARM CPU's would need some layer of x86 compatibility if not to perform x86 applications equally as well, then at least not nearly that much worse. While Apple has poored millions into their ARM SOC's, but I doubt they have the engineering and experience to make CPU's that perform better than what Nvidia and AMD could do. At some point even Intel will jump onto ARM. As of right now there's no ARM based CPU with the IPC performance of x86, and I really doubt the first ARM that can do this will come from Apple.

NVidia ARM SoC have generally sucked. Apple has by far the best ARM CPU cores, which may already match Intel/AMD IPC, though it's hard to tell because we don't have extensive cross platform benchmarks.
 
My Macbook Pro can run AAA games just fine, using a RTX 2080TI on an EGPU in Bootcamp while also having 8tb external NVME storage running full bore plus 10GBe at full bandwidth - something no 13 inch PC laptop can do.


Unfortunately, you're a user that doesn't exist to Apple.

They've destroyed 99% of Steam's game library on their newest OS, with the removal of 32-bit game support, and the future removal of OpenGL will castrate any remnants of that.

The additional overhead needed to emulate x86 games makes this even more impossible to overcome!

You're already dead to them, so it's time for you to move-on. Apple is going to be statisfied with the complexity of mobile games (and also getting 30% from your app store purchase!)
 
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Unfortunately, you're a user that doesn't exist to Apple.
Apple is the company that has pushed and created a market for eGPU's more than any other company. Mostly because Apple knows its client base is interested in getting work done. The reason for this is that Apple is interested in devs. They aren't necessarily interested in gamers. Yet.

Unfortunately, you're a user that doesn't exist to Apple.

They've destroyed 99% of Steam's game library on their newest OS, with the removal of 32-bit game support, and the future removal of OpenGL will castrate any remnants of that.
This has more to do with legacy support than than anything else. Windows refuses to dump anything legacy and as a result has become a bloated nightmare. But directly to your point, basically all games over the past 4-5 years or so have been 64-bit anyway. And games that are older than that are either not played or have updated themselves (like Counter Strike as an example or the entire Blizzard library).

There is this absurd notion that more=better. I don't care if there are a billion games to be played if I have to support DOS, Glide, OpenGL, PowerVR, DirectX, Vulcan, 32-bit, 64-bit, etc on down the list in order to get them all. More is not more to me. I don't have time for a bunch of games anyway. You're not describing a scenario that matters to people that use computers for productivity reasons.

Also, Apple isn't necessarily interested in Steam and what Steam wants. As much as I am loathe to admit this, they would be happy to be the only distribution (App Store). That will never happen though.

The additional overhead needed to emulate x86 games makes this even more impossible to overcome!
Did you watch the same thing I watched? Because apparently it really isn't. More to the point, because of Universal Binary 2 and Catalyst, pretty much any program can be recompiled for ARM. There doesn't need to be x86 emulation. Everything can just be run natively.

You're already dead to them, so it's time for you to move-on. Apple is going to be statisfied with the complexity of mobile games (and also getting 30% from your app store purchase!)
The 30% gain of course is certainly true. But you're also not looking at mobile games in the right light either. There are a huge amount of devs that have knowledge of how to program in Swift using Metal as a result of iOS development for over 10 years. Meaning more games than ever before have the ability to come to Mac. Sad to say, but Mac x86 had fewer people with knowledge than Mac ARM does, and that is with 15 years of being on the x86 platform. In gaming specifically you can see that, because specialty companies like Aspyr essentially had to be the middlemen/women in porting to Mac. Only companies as big as Blizzard ported their own games.

However, I still think all of this thinking is overblown anyway. If I get zero games to Mac (which will never happen btw), it won't change really whether or not I'm on the system. Because the concern is with getting work done, not gaming. I don't live in a binary world. I can buy other hardware if I want or need to. If I really cared to build a PC I could. Or just buy a PS5. There is a dumb amount of false equivalence when talking so-called "PC versus Mac". Like I have to just "pick one" and I'm not allowed to actually use the freedom of the market or the marketplace.

Windows is garbage. It has been since its inception (and I've literally lived through all of it). But it was useful garbage (emphasis on was). I'd rather pay 30% to Apple for my purchases than deal with Windows terrible security and literal spyware and selling of my personal user data on a daily basis. I don't care to make PRISM operate more effectively. Heck I'd rather pay Apple the 30% cut just to have an operating system that's stable, well thought through, with hardware that doesn't crash, and an OS I have to manage. If I'm picking my poison my work is coming first and gaming along with the PCMR mentality comes at a distant (I don't even know how far down the list) 100th (or more).

EDIT: Also, I should note that people that casual game on iOS greatly outnumber the entire PCMR as well as consoles. Apple sells more iOS devices in a year than X1X, PS4, Switch have sold in their total lifetimes combined (6+ years). Also, way more money is made for game devs on iOS devices than consoles at this point. I can tell you whose marketshare these companies care about.
To that end I know people that play competitive Fortnite, CoD, etc on iOS. And although that may seem "casual" to you, dollar wise it's a more important market. And these games do have a significant amount of complexity. Hell all of XCOM and all of Civ VI is on iOS, two of the most complex strategy games you can play on any platform. It's clear even in gaming you have a very narrow view of complexity and also what is important for reaching a much bigger share of the market.
Because right now, PCMR is like XBox 360 and the Wii is about to drop. One might be "for casuals" but also at the end of the day it's going to capture a lot more households and a lot more gamers.
 
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. Everything can just be run natively

No, it doesn't. steam games were ported because x86 and OpenGL support made it easier. Valve put in the time and effort to port their games over to OpenGL, and forged a path.

Only NEW games were ported to the platform (older games had no reason for the devs to attempt a port for such a small market).

There are tons of games that are 32-bit only (only games releasd after 2014 tend to have 64-bit bnaries, but NOT ALL OF THEM), and the thought that the developers care about Apple killing their games in an aready tiny market is just as salf-centered as I would expoect an Apple user to be.

Just like you're not going to get a 64-bit recompile of older games, you're also not going t get a sudden outpouring of support form game developers moving everything over to ARM. Just like the PowerPC to Intel transition, you're going to lose hundreds of games once Apple stops shipping their x86 emulator. But you already lost most pf them cutting-off 32-bit!
 
No, it doesn't. steam games were ported because x86 and OpenGL support made it easier. Valve put in the time and effort to port their games over to OpenGL, and forged a path.

Only NEW games were ported to the platform (older games had no reason for the devs to attempt a port for such a small market).

There are tons of games that are 32-bit only (only games releasd after 2014 tend to have 64-bit bnaries, but NOT ALL OF THEM), and the thought that the developers care about Apple killing their games in an aready tiny market is just as salf-centered as I would expoect an Apple user to be.

Just like you're not going to get a 64-bit recompile of older games, you're also not going t get a sudden outpouring of support form game developers moving everything over to ARM. Just like the PowerPC to Intel transition, you're going to lose hundreds of games once Apple stops shipping their x86 emulator. But you already lost most pf them cutting-off 32-bit!
Read the rest of my post. No one really cares. As you note this only matters for games pre 2014. Which most people don't play anymore. Apparently other than people like you who aren't on the platform anyway.
And don't worry about the devs, they also know people aren't buying 6 year old games. And they don't bother to support them either 6 years on.

If devs want a piece of the pie they'll come. If they don't, they won't. Same as it ever was. Except now they're dealing with a much more well-known platform that they can push to over 1 billion activated devices through both iOS and macOS.

EDIT: also, not sure why you keep bringing up Apples 30% App Store cut when Steam literally does the same thing. I hope you’re exclusively an EGS shopper.
 
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Porting to ARM is not an issue. It's porting to Metal, and other Apple API's. Porting to a different CPU architecture is mostly just a recompile, unless the CPU architecture is strange in some way like the PS3 CPU was.
That depends on the code. Some code is just a matter of recompiling and some requires a lot of serious work. But yea the API's are a big problem since Apple isn't exactly working with standards.
Valve dropped Mac SteamVR, not Steam.
Yea Steam is still on Mac but the VR is in "Legacy Builds".

No real reason to believe any of that will happen. They already showed very decent Rosetta performance on Devkit HW, and the real HW will be faster than the devkit.
How good was the performance?
 
Going by what you said a 10 year old laptop will do what most people need. A 5 year old cell phone will do what most people need. But that's not what people want or expect when buying an Apple laptop. They expect the best and their applications to run, what few there will be. The transition from PowerPC to x86 was an easy and smooth transition but I don't believe the same can be said about x86 to ARM for Apple. As it is a number of companies are pulling away from Apple thanks to their Metal API and lack of OpenGL support, so this will just further push developers away. I expect Adobe products and most open source projects to make their way onto these new ARM based Macs, but gaming will be officially dead on these ARM based Macs. So anyone who plans to own these future Macs won't be seeing World of Warcraft or other game ports on these ARM Macs. Rosetta 2 might help but no developer will make games on these ARM based Macs. Without gaming the Mac platform might as well be dead. Which gaming on the Mac platform was already struggling lately.

Such horse shit lol, games have always and I mean ALWAYS been barely supported on Macs. No one has ever cared. Just because you like gaming, doesn’t mean the vast majority of Mac users do.

You don’t buy a Mac for gaming... just like you don’t buy a Windows PC to get work done :ROFLMAO:

If anything, gaming will improve on Macs as all mobile apps will be supported and allow developers to write for both platforms simultaneously.
 
Unfortunately, you're a user that doesn't exist to Apple.

They've destroyed 99% of Steam's game library on their newest OS, with the removal of 32-bit game support, and the future removal of OpenGL will castrate any remnants of that.

The additional overhead needed to emulate x86 games makes this even more impossible to overcome!

You're already dead to them, so it's time for you to move-on. Apple is going to be statisfied with the complexity of mobile games (and also getting 30% from your app store purchase!)

I can't move on because no PC 13 inch laptop has the required hardware I need for work. I'm not interested in taking a step backwards.

Anyway, my biggest fear is that Apple will drop TB3 with their new ARM macs. I have built my entire workflow around it. If they keep TB3 and can beat performance I currently get with their Intel chips, I'll buy it. If they can't, I'll just keep my current laptop for another couple years. What I won't do is go to Windows full time until the user experience and hardware match that of MacOS. For my job I use linux, MacOS, and Windows every day - Windows is the ONLY operating system that routinely makes me want to quit and collect unemployment instead of dealing with it.


For my video rendering machine/gaming PC at home, I actually built a hackintosh that dual boots Windows 10 and MacOS using Opencore. I actually have both a RTX 2080TI and a 5700XT in it, one for each OS. Believe it or not, Windows 10 is less reliable running on native hardware than freaking MacOS is hacked onto it. My hackintosh can literally get perfect OS updates from the Mac store without fail, whereas every windows update breaks something.
 
If anything, gaming will improve on Macs as all mobile apps will be supported and allow developers to write for both platforms simultaneously.

Sorry dude, but that is horseshit. Apple is taking the hardest way out of this one, and porting touchscreen games to an OS with no touchscreen support!

Multitouch iOS games are just going to be useless, and you're not guaranteed to have controller support, either!

Motion controls could d be clunky-emulated, but not that well.

You're going to need a custom overlay/key mapping for every game in existence.

Use keyboard and mouse for third-person shooters, what are you, crazy? It's going to be a decade before iOS-style games catch up with the new hardware interface offerings on an ARM mac. Until that point, it's going to be a big-old-mess of bandaids
 
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Anyway, my biggest fear is that Apple will drop TB3 with their new ARM macs.

No reason to expect that. Apple is deep into TB. What would they replace it with? Also TB3 is now a royalty free standard.

That depends on the code. Some code is just a matter of recompiling and some requires a lot of serious work. But yea the API's are a big problem since Apple isn't exactly working with standards.

How good was the performance?

Recompile for architecture change should never be a lot of serious work. Might be some issues if switching Big-Endian to Little-Endian, but that shouldn't be an issue in x86->ARM. Apple is adding a new

They ran x86 Shadow of the Tomb Raider at pretty decent looking frame rate, on devkit with Rosetta emulator/translator.

Some benchmark leaks from the devkit show geekbench x86 scrores (Rosetta emulation/translation) as fast Microsoft Surface Pro X scores in Native ARM.
https://www.thurrott.com/apple/237225/first-apple-silicon-benchmarks-destroy-surface-pro-x
 
No reason to expect that. Apple is deep into TB. What would they replace it with? Also TB3 is now a royalty free standard.
They just need to get support into their SoC; traditionally TB3 has meant external controllers on the PCB and so forth. Granted these largely link up through PCIe and require video signals, but neither of these should be a problem for Apple.
 
They just need to get support into their SoC; traditionally TB3 has meant external controllers on the PCB and so forth. Granted these largely link up through PCIe and require video signals, but neither of these should be a problem for Apple.

There is talk of USB4 being adopted, the dev kit will soon reveal what is actually happening as they had it running their XDR display which runs on thunderbolt.
 
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Do you really think the graphics card was invented for accelerating video editing and encoding? Gaming is such a big deal that people eventually found a use for 3D accelerators besides playing Quake 3 Arena and Doom. It's standard now for this very reason. Also more people had copies of Doom than Windows 95. True story.

Complete rewrite of the history of graphics cards, bro.
 
There is talk of USB4 being adopted, the dev kit will soon reveal what is actually happening as they had it running their XDR display which runs on thunderbolt.

Devkit reveals nothing because it's using the iPad silicon. Which doesn't have TB, and doesn't have PCIe connections either to connect an external TB chip. So there is no TB on devkit.

Specs of the Devkit can be found here. USB and HDMI, no TB, since the iPad chip doesn't have that capability.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/universal/#modal-tech-specs

But, production ARM Macs will use custom silicon which will no doubt have TB/PCIe.
 
Devkit reveals nothing because it's using the iPad silicon. Which doesn't have TB, and doesn't have PCIe connections either to connect an external TB chip. So there is no TB on devkit.

Specs of the Devkit can be found here. USB and HDMI, no TB, since the iPad chip doesn't have that capability.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/universal/#modal-tech-specs

But, production ARM Macs will use custom silicon which will no doubt have TB/PCIe.

The dev kit was driving their XDR display which is 6K Thunderbolt.
 
The dev kit was driving their XDR display which is 6K Thunderbolt.

The dev kit specs are available. There is clearly no thunderbolt.

Shocking as it might be, there can be some inaccuracies about what was driving the display during demos.
 
If I were in the market for a Mac, and didn't need Windows application support, I would be holding off waiting for a ARM Mac.
You had me until this. This is exactly what you're arguing against, yet here you are admitting it. It's a wonderful platform and great, except you can't use it. How many others will be in the same boat? Will they end up with an x86 emulator to allow these types of apps like Intel did with Itanium? That worked well. I know they can "easily" recompile their own apps, but they are at the mercy of third parties to do the same. I can see apps from app store being ported, but that's mostly useless for a desktop. I think they will do better than M$ did with surface, but really Microsoft didn't even recompile their own office apps!!! It's like they didn't want it to work out. Apple will give it a real go, whether it works out or not is not fully in Apples control (which means this decision couldn't have been easy, Apple hates not being in control). Seems they are going this route so only time will tell. I don't know, I'm torn and can see it failing or working out depending on how much they can sweet talk third parties.
 
They ran x86 Shadow of the Tomb Raider at pretty decent looking frame rate, on devkit with Rosetta emulator/translator.
The only thing I can find about this is here, and while it looks good it isn't exactly a benchmark value.
Some benchmark leaks from the devkit show geekbench x86 scrores (Rosetta emulation/translation) as fast Microsoft Surface Pro X scores in Native ARM.
https://www.thurrott.com/apple/237225/first-apple-silicon-benchmarks-destroy-surface-pro-x
So according to that link the emulated Geekbench runs on the new Mac with a "single-core score of 811 and an average multi-core score of 2871". This is all running on the Apple A12Z. But normally that SOC gets a score of 1,117 and 4,712. That's about 25.4% slower in single-core and 45.2% slower in multi-core. That's what I would expect and not very different from QEMU. It looks respectable, but again this is based on a synthetic benchmark that isn't exactly telling us the whole story. Also, you are losing at least 25 percent of your systems performance in x86 applications. We don't even know if the Apple A12Z is what Apple will use in their new Macs.
 
Complete rewrite of the history of graphics cards, bro.
I'm sorry, did you buy a Voodoo graphics card to do video editing? Or even a TNT2? These things were made with the intent to play video games and nothing more.
 
You had me until this. This is exactly what you're arguing against, yet here you are admitting it. It's a wonderful platform and great, except you can't use it. How many others will be in the same boat? Will they end up with an x86 emulator to allow these types of apps like Intel did with Itanium? That worked well. I know they can "easily" recompile their own apps, but they are at the mercy of third parties to do the same. I can see apps from app store being ported, but that's mostly useless for a desktop. I think they will do better than M$ did with surface, but really Microsoft didn't even recompile their own office apps!!! It's like they didn't want it to work out. Apple will give it a real go, whether it works out or not is not fully in Apples control (which means this decision couldn't have been easy, Apple hates not being in control). Seems they are going this route so only time will tell. I don't know, I'm torn and can see it failing or working out depending on how much they can sweet talk third parties.

Are you commenting on this without reading/watching the keynote information? They demoed Rosetta 2, so there is no question they will have emulation/translation. This is also the Macs third architecture switch, and Rosetta 1, worked quite well for PPC->Intel, no reason to expect it will be any less successful this time especially since they demoed it in a couple of applications including a game. Running a fairly modern AAA game (SotTR) in with architecture emulation is pretty impressive.

They also demoed Native ARM versions of MS Office and Adobe Applications. Arguably the most important Applications to get ported, so they should hit the ground soon after ARM Macs and I expect all other active apps to follow quite quickly. Apple development community is VERY responsive.

Bottom line here: Learn the lessons of the past. The emulation will work well, and porting will have happen quickly. Much quicker this time as no one is stuck back on Carbon. This should be Macs smoothest architecture transition ever, as this one wasn't forced on them. This one they had years to get everything ready behind the scenes.

Now as why I would choose to new ARM Mac, over Intel Mac going forward. Intel Macs will have less support in the years to come than an ARM Mac, and they ARM Mac will start with decent emulated performance to start, but that will easily eclipse Intel Macs when they get native applications which will be very soon. I would only buy a new Intel Mac if I desperately needed to run x86 Windows applications on a Mac, or looking at super high end (Mac Pro). Either way that is a small minority of potential Mac buyers.

We don't even know if the Apple A12Z is what Apple will use in their new Macs.

Apple specifically said A12Z won't be used in new ARM Macs. Unsurprisingly they are developing new Mac Specific chips.

Reliable Apple leakers stated the first Mac ARM chip is 12 cores, with 8 of those being high performance cores.
 
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Bottom line here: Learn the lessons of the past. The emulation will work well, and porting will have happen quickly. Much quicker this time as no one is stuck back on Carbon. This should be Macs smoothest architecture transition ever, as this one wasn't forced on them. This one they had years to get everything ready behind the scenes.
One of the problems Microsoft had when making Windows for ARM was that they didn't allow you to get applications from anyplace else besides the app store. I'm not sure if Apple is going to make the same mistake here, but I imagine that's the direction Apple wants to go with their ARM Macs as well. That won't sit well for many Mac users, and you will lose performance from using x86 -> ARM emulation. For many people it may not worth the trouble to transition to ARM Macs just yet.
Now as why I would choose to new ARM Mac, over Intel Mac going forward. Intel Macs will have less support in the years to come than an ARM Mac, and they ARM Mac will start with decent emulated performance to start, but that will easily eclipse Intel Macs when they get native applications which will be very soon. I would only buy a new Intel Mac if I desperately needed to run x86 Windows applications on a Mac, or looking at super high end (Mac Pro). Either way that is a small minority of potential Mac buyers.
There's not many disadvantages of running x86 in the future compared to ARM. If Apple does end support for x86 you still have Windows. Until we have more data of what's going on this Rosetta 2 and ARM performance, we can't conclude that ARM > x86. Right now the move to ARM makes a lot of sense for Apple since they've been making their own SOC's for many years now, but the same cannot be said for the users. For the user this will interrupt your work flow and application compatibility until either all applications are ported to ARM or until you buy new versions of these applications. For users the benefits are going to be better battery life and lower temperatures, assuming Intel doesn't just release a newer better product in the near future. But this is also a reset for many users and may backfire on Apple if users decide to go with Windows x86 laptops instead. Which may also cause some developers to step away from the Mac platform as Apple isn't making their lives any easier. Time will tell how this will work out.

Apple specifically said A12Z won't be used in new ARM Macs. Unsurprisingly they are developing new Mac Specific chips.

Reliable Apple leakers stated the first Mac ARM chip is 12 cores, with 8 of those being high performance cores.
That's interesting that the CPU will act like a mobile chip. So 4 low power cores to save on battery and 8 high performance cores, but then it isn't a 12 core CPU in terms of what end users can effectively use. This suggests that this will definitely be aimed at mobility.
 
One of the problems Microsoft had when making Windows for ARM was that they didn't allow you to get applications from anyplace else besides the app store. I'm not sure if Apple is going to make the same mistake here, but I imagine that's the direction Apple wants to go with their ARM Macs as well. That won't sit well for many Mac users, and you will lose performance from using x86 -> ARM emulation. For many people it may not worth the trouble to transition to ARM Macs just yet.

Already addressed. There is no app store requirement. Though you can expect at some point that Mac App Store, will require Universal Binaries.



That's interesting that the CPU will act like a mobile chip. So 4 low power cores to save on battery and 8 high performance cores, but then it isn't a 12 core CPU in terms of what end users can effectively use. This suggests that this will definitely be aimed at mobility.

Hard to say what ends up fused off, in different applications. For dev kit, the assumption is the that the low power cores of the A12Z are disabled.

The first two ARM macs are rumored to be an iMac and Macbook Pro, with the same chip I bet.

I could see the iMac only getting the performance cores. Maybe 6 on a lower end version, and 8 on higher end.

While the MBP might get 4 low power and up to 6 high power cores.

One way to segment that chip for multiple products.
 
If I did enough of what Macs do well, I might choose a Mac; but I don't.

What would really get my attention, though, would be something like multi-day battery life under regular user workloads.
 
If I did enough of what Macs do well, I might choose a Mac; but I don't.

What would really get my attention, though, would be something like multi-day battery life under regular user workloads.

If they released a cheaper ARM entry level Mac Mini. I might bite to use as an HTPC. My Android box is kind of pain to use.

Something half way between the current Mac Mini and Apple TV in size and price.

Apple could build a killer ARM NUC if they wanted to. Passively cooled for silence, SSD and no moving parts. It would be perfect basic mainstream desktop and HTPC.
 
Are you commenting on this without reading/watching the keynote information? They demoed Rosetta 2, so there is no question they will have emulation/translation. This is also the Macs third architecture switch, and Rosetta 1, worked quite well for PPC->Intel, no reason to expect it will be any less successful this time especially since they demoed it in a couple of applications including a game. Running a fairly modern AAA game (SotTR) in with architecture emulation is pretty impressive.

They also demoed Native ARM versions of MS Office and Adobe Applications. Arguably the most important Applications to get ported, so they should hit the ground soon after ARM Macs and I expect all other active apps to follow quite quickly. Apple development community is VERY responsive.

Bottom line here: Learn the lessons of the past. The emulation will work well, and porting will have happen quickly. Much quicker this time as no one is stuck back on Carbon. This should be Macs smoothest architecture transition ever, as this one wasn't forced on them. This one they had years to get everything ready behind the scenes.

Now as why I would choose to new ARM Mac, over Intel Mac going forward. Intel Macs will have less support in the years to come than an ARM Mac, and they ARM Mac will start with decent emulated performance to start, but that will easily eclipse Intel Macs when they get native applications which will be very soon. I would only buy a new Intel Mac if I desperately needed to run x86 Windows applications on a Mac, or looking at super high end (Mac Pro). Either way that is a small minority of potential Mac buyers.



Apple specifically said A12Z won't be used in new ARM Macs. Unsurprisingly they are developing new Mac Specific chips.

Reliable Apple leakers stated the first Mac ARM chip is 12 cores, with 8 of those being high performance cores.

Like i said, it's a big if in my mind still. Rosetta 2 is cool and all, but it does not work with things like parallels that allow people to run windows apps on Mac. This was the part of your post I was responding.too, there are windows apps you need. As things stand, this means you have no support on the new Mac. This could change of course, but so far this is all we know. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...boot-camp-not-an-option-on-apple-silicon/amp/

The real question will be how quicky things get ported, nobody wants to buy a new Mac to run an emulator to run apps slower than their old Mac. They need to get it done quickly and it has to be useful stuff. I was just trying to say some of it is not up to Apple if it gets ported. I can easily imagine both scenarios where they have enough push to get it done or they can't convince enough 3rd parties and no apps = no hardware sales (catch 22) and it either drags on for way to long or they have to ditch it. Like I said either one is likely enough. I give them much better odds than M$ half ass attempt.
 
Like i said, it's a big if in my mind still. Rosetta 2 is cool and all, but it does not work with things like parallels that allow people to run windows apps on Mac. This was the part of your post I was responding.too, there are windows apps you need. As things stand, this means you have no support on the new Mac. This could change of course, but so far this is all we know. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...boot-camp-not-an-option-on-apple-silicon/amp/
This is an absurd argument. Mac needs zero Windows applications. Just like Windows needs zero Mac applications. Boot Camp was a convenience and back in 2006 it was a way to convince an increased user base to come over when the Mac was at its lowest point, install base wise. If you need to be on Windows, then be on Windows. Most of the user base who is on Mac doesn't need Boot Camp. Anyone on the fence obviously will simply buy a Windows laptop or a Windows machine.

The real question will be how quicky things get ported, nobody wants to buy a new Mac to run an emulator to run apps slower than their old Mac. They need to get it done quickly and it has to be useful stuff. I was just trying to say some of it is not up to Apple if it gets ported. I can easily imagine both scenarios where they have enough push to get it done or they can't convince enough 3rd parties and no apps = no hardware sales (catch 22) and it either drags on for way to long or they have to ditch it. Like I said either one is likely enough. I give them much better odds than M$ half ass attempt.
Ugh... read the thread. Basically everything in macOS is coded in Swift, uses Universal Binary 2 and Metal. Basically everything that is on macOS x86 can be readily and easily recompiled with Catalyst to run ARM natively. All that needs to happen from that point is basically check for bugs and optimize. Devs can be on ARM day one with little effort, and that is also the point of the dev kits that are released.
Adobe products (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects), Microsoft Office, and Apple ProApps (FCPX, Logic Pro, etc) are all already running native. That's what most of the professional user base needs to get work done.
Everyone else inside the install base is more casual (which isn't to say just Apple, this is true on PC as well), ARM will be attractive because the same 3-5 things they normally do (watch Youtube, Netflix, browse, use social media, write some papers) will all be way more power efficient on ARM than x86. ARM will decimate Chromebooks, Ultraportables, et al while being way more powerful and just as light or lighter (not even requiring moving parts or fans). Anything under $1000 Apple will basically eat with this platform, and that is where the most sales and the most money is. The top will come around when the bottom does.
 
his is an absurd argument. Mac needs zero Windows applications. Just like Windows needs zero Mac applications. Boot Camp was a convenience and back in 2006 it was a way to convince an increased user base to come over when the Mac was at its lowest point, install base wise. If you need to be on Windows, then be on Windows. Most of the user base who is on Mac doesn't need Boot Camp. Anyone on the fence obviously will simply buy a Windows laptop or a Windows machine.
Have you ever used parallels? It was nice for people that preferred Mac but had apps that require windows. I understand your sentiment, if you need windows get a window pc/laptop. That really what people will do without as an option. Right now to they have a choice. It's probably a small niche but still exists. I've worked with a few guys that were in that niche. I don't think it's substantial enough to make a much difference, but just another data point that could push someone on the fence off.

Good news on Adobe being on board, that makes it much more likely to succeed. You do realize universal binary 2 just means a single file that can contain multiple executables right? It in no way is like an intermediate representation that can be compiled to native. Software still needs to be compiled and deployed for each target. It just allows them to coexist, doesn't force them to. Same for the original universal binary that allowed ppc and x86 to coexist. Now if someone would start making universal intermediate representations that could be compiled native to any target, then we'd be talking instant compatibility :).
Amazing that Microsoft is on board to support office when they couldn't even do the same for their own platform, lol. Seems like they have a good chance of success with M$ + Adobe, but not guaranteed. Only time will tell.
 
Microsoft didn’t control the entire ecosystem like Apple does.

Plus Microsoft deosn't seem to really give a shit about creating a viable ARM ecosystem. They are still doing ARM machines (Surface Pro X) but they haven't even bothered to port all their own software to ARM. How can they expect third parties to get on the ball with ARM ports, when MS isn't even bothering. On top of that, their x86 emulator doesn't even work on 64 bit code.

Apple already ported ALL their internal software to ARM Macs, and their emulation is 64 bit (only).
 
Have you ever used parallels? It was nice for people that preferred Mac but had apps that require windows. I understand your sentiment, if you need windows get a window pc/laptop. That really what people will do without as an option. Right now to they have a choice. It's probably a small niche but still exists. I've worked with a few guys that were in that niche. I don't think it's substantial enough to make a much difference, but just another data point that could push someone on the fence off.

Good news on Adobe being on board, that makes it much more likely to succeed. You do realize universal binary 2 just means a single file that can contain multiple executables right? It in no way is like an intermediate representation that can be compiled to native. Software still needs to be compiled and deployed for each target. It just allows them to coexist, doesn't force them to. Same for the original universal binary that allowed ppc and x86 to coexist. Now if someone would start making universal intermediate representations that could be compiled native to any target, then we'd be talking instant compatibility :).
Amazing that Microsoft is on board to support office when they couldn't even do the same for their own platform, lol. Seems like they have a good chance of success with M$ + Adobe, but not guaranteed. Only time will tell.
https://www.parallels.com/blogs/apple-silicon-wwdc/
 
Hopefully they are able to. I was just going by what I read up to that point. As I said, it could obviously change but sounds like they are working on it already. That would be another step in the right direction and another reason to believe it can be a success. Thanks for the link, hasn't seen that yet (probably because I don't really care to much for apple stuff in general, to locked down for my taste).
 
This is an absurd argument. Mac needs zero Windows applications.
Need is a strong word. Want is more accurate.
Just like Windows needs zero Mac applications.
Windows has all the applications. Why would Windows consider using Mac applications?

Boot Camp was a convenience and back in 2006 it was a way to convince an increased user base to come over when the Mac was at its lowest point, install base wise. If you need to be on Windows, then be on Windows. Most of the user base who is on Mac doesn't need Boot Camp. Anyone on the fence obviously will simply buy a Windows laptop or a Windows machine. There's a reason why no such thing as a Parallels like application is found on Windows to run Mac apps.

Ugh... read the thread. Basically everything in macOS is coded in Swift, uses Universal Binary 2 and Metal. Basically everything that is on macOS x86 can be readily and easily recompiled with Catalyst to run ARM natively.
Yes but, who will actually do it and deal with losing money to port their app and support in? Especially when the obvious answer is to get them to buy the newest version?
Adobe products (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects), Microsoft Office, and Apple ProApps (FCPX, Logic Pro, etc) are all already running native. That's what most of the professional user base needs to get work done.
Is that all Mac users need to use their computers for?
ARM will be attractive because the same 3-5 things they normally do (watch Youtube, Netflix, browse, use social media, write some papers) will all be way more power efficient on ARM than x86.
Those don't sound like productivity applications.
ARM will decimate Chromebooks, Ultraportables, et al while being way more powerful and just as light or lighter (not even requiring moving parts or fans).
That's not how the law of thermal dynamics works. ARM is efficient but once you make it as fast as an Intel then the efficiency goes out the window. If Apple doesn't put a fan then you're running the CPU at 100C. Just look at what they do with their Intel laptops.
Anything under $1000 Apple will basically eat with this platform, and that is where the most sales and the most money is. The top will come around when the bottom does.
I'm going to have a fun time explaining to people why they can run certain games on these ARM Macs because they made a mistake and bought an Apple product. Fun times are coming.
 
Like i said, it's a big if in my mind still. Rosetta 2 is cool and all, but it does not work with things like parallels that allow people to run windows apps on Mac. This was the part of your post I was responding.too, there are windows apps you need. As things stand, this means you have no support on the new Mac. This could change of course, but so far this is all we know. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...boot-camp-not-an-option-on-apple-silicon/amp/

The real question will be how quicky things get ported, nobody wants to buy a new Mac to run an emulator to run apps slower than their old Mac. They need to get it done quickly and it has to be useful stuff. I was just trying to say some of it is not up to Apple if it gets ported. I can easily imagine both scenarios where they have enough push to get it done or they can't convince enough 3rd parties and no apps = no hardware sales (catch 22) and it either drags on for way to long or they have to ditch it. Like I said either one is likely enough. I give them much better odds than M$ half ass attempt.

Did you read the ONE line you quoted from my post where you first pounced? :
" If I were in the market for a Mac, and didn't need Windows application support, I would be holding off waiting for a ARM Mac. "

Now you are rambling about needing Windows applications.

Obviously if you NEED windows applications I would not suggest waiting for an ARM Mac. There is subset of people that do need this, but they aren't the majority.

Thus I think the majority of potential Mac buyers(those that don't need Windows), would be better served waiting to see the ARM machines.
 
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