As a Mobile OS, I would take Windows Mobile over iOS or Android ever day of the week without question. The only problem with Windows Phone, as well as BB10 and WebOS was when it came to market. It was always an app issue and not because of problems with coding. Microsoft made it super easy to code on the platform, as well as incentives. But because user base was small, developers didn't feel the need to do anything on the platform (not realizing they were A MAJOR part of the problem). The only people who think that it was a train wreck were those who never used (or even looked into it).
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Apple to Announce its own Mac Processor
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No it was a train wreck, unstable and inconsistent. Our company returned over 100 devices and will never use them again. Glad you love Microsoft so much, why are you in this thread again? Apple are who they are, live with it or go elsewhere lol. They will never work like Microsoft and many are glad for this fact.
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Little does everyone realise, all your work in iOS will now work on Mac with little to no extra work.
cybereality
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Right. I'm not upset, and I will plan to support the new mac processors, if possible.
Not trying to start a holy war or anything, just my 2 cents.
Not trying to start a holy war or anything, just my 2 cents.
In front of me, I have an iPhone 8 and Pixel 3a. Thinkpad for work at home and Mac at work. Crap, in my drawer, I have a Nokia 1520 and 925.
I can be in any thread that I want..lol.
But to my original point, as a mobile OS, it was a better OS, in my opinion. What it lacked was apps. Most people that actually used it raved about how smooth it was, its base features, the camera and native navigation. I don't know why your company returned them but most of the environments that I know did it based off the lack of developed apps used in the enterprise (unless you were Microsoft centric). The less that it was used, the less development went into it. It is what it is and honestly, I use what I want.
As far as this quote
Tell that to enterprise admins who run active directory. lol
Red Falcon
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No, a holy war is exactly what we need, it's just going to cost an ARM and a leg - and as the saying goes, no RISC, no reward.
I mean, they had holy wars back in the 1980s:
That moment you facepalm and chuckle at the same time.No, a holy war is exactly what we need, it's just going to cost an ARM and a leg - and as the saying goes, no RISC, no reward.
I mean, they had holy wars back in the 1980s:
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![Zarathustra[H]](https://cdn.hardforum.com/data/avatars/m/9/9298.jpg?1707758471){kind=avatar}
Zarathustra[H]
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Interesting. I had no idea they had reverted to the old name.
Whenever I hear that name it makes.me thing of the old OS that ran on Motorola 68k Macs.
Either way, I don't care what they do. Macs are and always have been completely irrelevant to me.
It's like they don't even exist, except for when a thread pops up in the news every now and then.
Blackberries QNX was objectively a far better mobile OS. Nobody cared.
Apple took a shit in pro users souls repeatedly. They stuck with Apple. When the trash can came out there was an instant after market for rackcases to put the trash can in and run thunderbolt to PCIexpress breakout boards. They killed Shake and Color. When they killed FCP 7 people jumped on FCP X like they were totally fine to have to use their personal media cloud to manage multiple clients media. Features cut, its okay there will be bolt on add-ons by third party developers in not time.
The Mac Pro is still running Xeon in the time of threadripper and people will massively overpay for the privilege.
Apple is solving a problem most people in this forum don't have and will never have, but that shit loads of people do have. Its not performance or even ease of use.
Apple took a shit in pro users souls repeatedly. They stuck with Apple. When the trash can came out there was an instant after market for rackcases to put the trash can in and run thunderbolt to PCIexpress breakout boards. They killed Shake and Color. When they killed FCP 7 people jumped on FCP X like they were totally fine to have to use their personal media cloud to manage multiple clients media. Features cut, its okay there will be bolt on add-ons by third party developers in not time.
The Mac Pro is still running Xeon in the time of threadripper and people will massively overpay for the privilege.
Apple is solving a problem most people in this forum don't have and will never have, but that shit loads of people do have. Its not performance or even ease of use.
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Deleted member 243478
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As Steve jobs said, they don’t care about corporate because the people using the products aren’t the ones paying the bills so things like design and premium build are lost to the bean counters. They focused on end users instead of racing to the whims of cost saving corporate garbage like Dell.
Funny enough the industry has gone the other way though, favouring iOS for the ability to lock it down so well and its robust device management.
Active Directory... god I rest my case. 20yr old garbage that Microsoft doesn’t have the balls to change for the better.
Zarathustra[H]
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I'd buy almost anything Dell over almost anything Apple.
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Thats nice dear...
Apple throughout the 90s had no focus at all, which is why it almost went bankrupt. They were literally throwing everything at the wall to try to find something that would stick and the result was a dumpster fire.
They had several computer lines, many of which were the same, and in those lines, many of the models were the same, only denoting what software packages were bundled with the machine, or which retail store was selling them. This was at the behest of the retail companies as a marketing ploy to say they had exclusivity of selling the fastest xyz Macintosh model.
Their OS prospects were equally dismal, they couldn't get their next gen Copland OS nailed down for a release. It was stuck in a quagmire of feature creep and political infighting within the company on the direction of the OS. In a desperate attempt to remain relevant, they were on an expensive perpetual technology buying spree to incorporate into Mac OS. By the time OS 9 came around, it was a bloated unstable mess of APIs smashed together, it was a miracle it worked.
Consumers were an afterthought. Apple by the end of the 90s had a series of horrible machines like the with serious design flaws and a very unstable OS that was held together with duct tape and chewing gum.
Steve Jobs returning saved them from bankruptcy and gave them a second wind in the early 2000s, but that era is long gone. When he passed in 2011, Apple again started a downhill slide into what it is today, one of the most anti-consumer companies in the world. They're literally leading the fight against consumers rights to ownership and repair of their devices and treat their own customers like yesterdays garbage. They're again stuck in a position where they can't innovate and are doing everything they can to lock in users to a walled garden so they can't escape, and lock 3rd party vendors out so they hold all of the cards.
Why wouldn't be?
The problem wasn't the ISA, but the microarchitectures. And those problems were, in the end, a consequence of PowerPC being a low volume architecture.
It is the same old reason why x86 did conquer the workstation and server business and won over the old RISC guys: Alpha, HP-RISC, SPARC, MIPS... It wasn't because x86 was the better ISA. It was because it was the higher-volume ISA thanks to the popularization of the PCs. Higher-volume did mean deepen pockets for research of new microarchitectures, and cheaper chips.
Rockenrooster
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I gave iOS as an ARM comparison, I didn't say anything about the iOS market share, this thread is about their Desktop OS, not mobile OS. The market share for their desktop OS is waaay lower.
I know developing simple apps for Android isn't that hard as I have done that myself, I haven't for iOS, so you may have a point there. I would develop for both because the incentive is there (market share)
Apple can get away with being hostile towards iOS developers because of market share, and look at where it got them for macOS.........Their solution is to run Windows (Bootcamp)!
Rockenrooster
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PowerPCs main problem in Macbooks was power usage I thought. x86 CPUs were much more efficient than PowerPC. Laptops were a newish thing back then.
They are going to do the same thing with ARM now that it is possible to get acceptable performance compared to x86.
They will save a lot in power usage and battery life, but they will lose a lot in software supported (bootcamp).
I would like to see performance comparisons core for core and clock for clock with say a ryzen 4000 APU.
I know ARM CPUs are getting pretty fast these days but all they are doing is running the same phone apps since like 2009, I mean no one really plays games or does content creation on phones...
I think that the Nintendo Switch is really the only example of what ARM can do at the moment, and its not like Nintendo was ever known for pushing the boundaries as far as CPU/GPU power...
ARM CPUs have been running from full-desktop applications to scientific/engineering high performance code
https://developer.arm.com/solutions/hpc
Zarathustra[H]
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Well, if they wanted to arrive at the point in 2020 where they are ready to transition, they would have to have started planning several years ago, so if someone leaked accurate information right at the start, it doesn't sound that off.
Zarathustra[H]
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Yep. We just haven't really seen much in the way of performance comparison in maintream desktop workloads.
That's where something like this could be interesting.
I have no doubt one could scale up ARM to be good in this application, and Apple's mobile ARM chips are as good as ARM chips get. They have done a phenomenal job at developing the best ARM chips on the market going from non-existent to dominant in only a few years.
It will be interesting to see how maturely their designs wi perform in desktop apps. Their mobile ARM chips are really good for mobile applications, but even a slow desktop/laptop CPU runs circles around the fastest mobile CPU, so unless there is a special higher performance desktop chip, this will likely be a disappointment, and if there is a special chip, it will be interesting to see how it does, side by side in the same applications.
Yes. The 2018 rumor mentioned replacing would happen by 2020.
https://gizmodo.com/apple-reportedly-killing-laptops-with-intel-inside-the-1824262384
pendragon1
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theyve been saying it for waaaay long than that
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...ck-from-moving-intel-macs-to-custom-arm-chips <---2015
Zarathustra[H]
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Yeah, but I don't understand why we are arguing about this.
There is nothing prohibiting ARM from being scaled up to more powerful desktop and server chips. In some cases it has already been done. The mistake many people make is to equate ARM with "low power" or "mobile". ARM is a full featured instruction set which can be adapted to many different power / performance levels.
It is fully possible Apple may be doing this. It may even make sense, since they already have their own chip design capability which is highly regarded, and it would give them more control (we all know how apple loves their control) and greater similarities between their platforms, making development easier / cheaper.
..or, it could just be time to renegotiate that Intel chip deal, and they decided to drop some rumors to see if they can use them as leverage in negotiations.
Who knows.
One way or another I don't give a rats ass. I was never going to buy an Apple product anyway
I just hope ARM doesn't take over the personal computer world. I mean, it may make sense for Apple due to the synergies with their mobile platforms but it really feels like moving towards ARM, a royalty based instruction set, at this point of time is just foolish. If we have to move away from x86, I'd rather see a shift toward something without royalties, so we don't have a continuation of the bullshit that has been going on between Intel and everyone else who has tried to release an x86 chip over the years. RISC-V (or royalty free MIPS, but it is 4 generations older and more flawed) would be nice.
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Power usage wasn't a problem, it was because Apple had a power envelope in mind and specific PowerPC CPUs didn't fit it. This resulted in several delays on their laptop lines.
You have to understand that at the time of the G3/G4 laptops, x86 had things like the Pentium 4-M and Mobile Pentium 4, which had TDPs in the 50-80W range, and more for the HT models. AMD did have mobile parts as well, but they were basically rebadged desktop parts with unlocked multipliers and had equally high TDPs. There was a long dry spell of power efficient CPUs in the 2000-2005 time frame.
The later G5 did definitely have power problems that prohibited it from use in a laptop, even the slower parts drew insane amounts of power. I have a G5 2.0 GHz DP and when that thing is loaded, it has typhoon like conditions behind the case and sounds like a vacuum cleaner. It moves a serious amount of air and produces enough heat to double as a space heater. And mine is a low end G5, there were DP DC variants which required liquid cooling for normal operation.
Rockenrooster
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i'm sure those P4s and other x86 mobile CPUs had much mor perf/watt than PowerPC CPUs too.
Apple could get away with using a "slower" x86 CPU that used much less power because it was still as fast or faster than the PowerPC variants.
And when your device sounds as loud as a vacuum cleaner, then power usage is definitely a problem. Decreasing power = less heat = less noise.
Halon
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Yes, and that was after the amount of cache was hobbled to keep thermals and power consumption under control, which had the unfortunate side effect of crippling per-clock performance relative to the POWER4 chips the G5 was based on. It was definitely time to jump to a more competitive architecture, and Intel offered that in the volume Apple needed at the time. ARM will be another advantageous jump for them, but Apple’s more obsessed with control than they ever have been before. I will probably never have occasion to buy an ARM Mac, but here’s hoping they make their customers happy. I just foresee more of the trends we’ve seen to date.
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Thats because the transition has been in the works for many years... and yes they can beat Intel... the current top of the line Apple chips can match a mobile i7 with 1/4 the power consumption and thermals. Not to mention the graphics built in far exceeding Intel.
That is before we even discuss that Apple chips have made very good jumps in performance each year with Intel stagnating.
Major news sites are covering this now, it’s happening.
longblock454
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No reason for them to do so, the Apple folks will buy anyhow and they will make even more money.
I'm having a really hard time finding good benchmarks for the time. The only one I can find right now is this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010203180200/http://www.barefeats.com/pentium.html
It looks like the 500 MHz G4 is about half the speed of the Pentium 4 at 1.4 GHz in Quake III Arena. The other benchmarks are for dual 500 MHz G4s, which are a match for the Pentium 4, at applications that can take advantage of SMP, but there was never a dual G4 laptop as far as I'm aware. Power consumption is much better for the G4 though. The P4 1.4 uses ~26W while the G4 uses 7-14W, up to 73% less. At that time, I'd love to have a laptop with the G4's power consumption, but I'd never pay Apple prices for such a configuration. The Pentium III-M was a good contender, but Intel was pushing hard to get everyone on the Netburst bandwagon and the failure that went along with it.
Yeah, I remember those times well and even have a G5 to remind me how bad they were with power consumption. Apple was very lucky the Core 2 came along when it did, so was Intel. Apple was considering using Pentium 4 CPUs and early Intel prototypes did have Pentium 4 CPUs. I remember watching one of the Apple WWDCs where jobs had a demo machine with a Pentium 4 in it I think. Intel was lucky that their Israeli team had held on to the Pentium 3 arch, else they likely would have gone bankrupt since at that point, they were being creamed by AMD with their Athlon 64 and Opteron chips.
Red Falcon
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Not quite, Netburst was garbage, and from the beginning in the early 1990s, PowerPC always had higher IPC and performance than x86 CPUs.
It wasn't until AMD released the Athlon 64 (Socket 754) in 2003 that x86 (now x86-64) became a true contender with PowerPC.
Your statement is correct on this, though - the Apple G5 Quad using dual dual-core IBM 970MP CPUs that, while having higher performance overall clock-for-clock, could only clock to 2.5GHz with a 250 watt TDP (per CPU).
The performance per watt on those was pure garbage, and the then-new dual-core Athlon 64 X2 (Socket 939) CPUs destroyed them in performance per watt.
The main thing that killed the IBM 970MP CPUs, and PowerPC on Apple workstations, were the low yields and extremely high costs to IBM, with nearly no headroom to grow on workstations and outside of server markets, so Apple had to choose, and the then-new Intel Core 1 (not Core 2, yet) x86 CPUs were promising, thus the path for Apple was clear.
The Intel Core 1 CPUs were actually quite capable, and were very comparable clock-for-clock to AMD's Athon 64 X2 CPUs of the time.
By that point, x86 and x86-64 had caught up with the desktop variants of PowerPC in IPC and overall performance, and only the server variants of the now Power ISA would continue to outperform x86-64, for much higher prices, though (Apple is Walmart compared to IBM on costs).
The dual IBM 970MP CPUs each having a 250 watt TDP @ 2.5GHz, and a proprietary closed-loop liquid cooler and giant HSF, that all was a major deciding factor.
If only we could have had that G5 laptop...
d3athf1sh
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Red Falcon
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More of an opinion piece, but not a bad read:
https://www.windowscentral.com/apple-right-embrace-arm-and-dump-intel-some-its-macbook-laptops
https://www.windowscentral.com/apple-right-embrace-arm-and-dump-intel-some-its-macbook-laptops
And?
Your 2015 link is about the rumors that the company "could eventually migrate its Macs from Intel x86 processors to ARM chip designs of its own."
The 2018 link I gave above is about the rumor that Apple is going to use its own ARM CPUs in "all Apple computers by 2020".
The recentest rumor (this thread) is about Apple making the announcement at WWDC.
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Red Falcon
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Not even counting meltdown, spectre, foreshadow, zombieload, and about 60 other hardware exploits from Sandy Bridge (2011) to Kaby Lake (2016) that massively decreased performance, depending on the workload.
At least AMD is keeping up the x86-64 competition with ARM64 CPUs... but for how long?
Apple is migrating all its Macs to ARM, not to AMD Zen2/3 whatever.
Amazon is migrating all its internal workloads to ARM, not to AMD Rome.
#1 in Green500 list is an ARM HPC build, not some AMD Rome + GPU build.
kirbyrj
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<Yawn>...wake me up when MacOS has enough marketshare to actually matter what they put in their machines.
I'd move full time to Linux before I moved full time to MacOS.
I'd move full time to Linux before I moved full time to MacOS.
Meh. Short term this only makes Macs less interesting to me, as they lose the ability to run Windows software to fill in gaps via Bootcamp, Parallels, Wine, Wineskin, etc...
Though I bet if Apple is doing this, it won't be piecemeal, but whole scale and within a year there will be no more x86 Macs, so they will be an exclusively ARM shop.
More interesting to the Industry would be if/when the same change occurs on Windows, which would drive a stake through the heart of x86, open the doors to wide variety of PC chip makers...
Suddenly you wouldn't be choosing from two suppliers (Intel and AMD) but maybe ten...
The prospect of Windows going ARM must be terrifying for both AMD and Intel.