https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_ARM

Former Intel engineer says "we fucked up Skylake so bad and Apple was super pissed"
https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/24/former-intel-e … mac-transition/

I got accepted for the DTK (developer transition kit) and am looking forward to see how it performs 😉
And how fast Dosbox runs etc. I won't be allowed to post a benchmark but probably some general hints. Will need to look through the agreement when the time comes to not step on Apple's toes. Wouldn't be nice to lose my developer account and iOS app...

Dominus wrote on 2020-06-25, 16:22:

I got accepted for the DTK (developer transition kit) and am looking forward to see how it performs 😉
And how fast Dosbox runs etc. I won't be allowed to post a benchmark but probably some general hints. Will need to look through the agreement when the time comes to not step on Apple's toes. Wouldn't be nice to lose my developer account and iOS app...

If you compare with how iDOS2/DOSPad performs on a 2017 iPad Pro, an ARM DOSBox will probably be slightly better. Just slightly.

I believe you can also try QEMU, I'd love to hear how it performs for the Windows 9x VM's, I have these VM's running on iOS QEMU's fork (UTM) for my 2017 iPad Pro, albeit with a very huge penalty in speed that might disappear with the A12Z performance Apple has been bragging on about.

Having those working in an ARM Mac just solves 30% of my problems. Other 35% each are related to Windows x64 games and third party developers wiling to port their apps to ARM.

Meanwhile I've been looking at the prices for Dell XPS laptops...

Huge speed penalty is probably rather due to the x86 to ARM translation. Similar to how Dosbox needed an ARM compatible dynamic core.

Dominus wrote on 2020-06-25, 16:28:

Huge speed penalty is probably rather due to the x86 to ARM translation. Similar to how Dosbox needed an ARM compatible dynamic core.

Yes. I tried it once with a Raspberry Pi 3B, there's indeed a huge speed penalty for DOSBox. I think QEMU will perform better.

But then, Raspberry ARM cpu is nothing like the A12Z, or we would have seen tablets based on raspberry pi taking the fight to iPad Pros. Not a chance.

Did you try the SVN of Dosbox? (Or rather when was it?)
Same as the iOS port of Dosbox. It's very old and has no dynamic core so it's really slow in most cases

Anyway, it's going to be interesting to tinker with that

Dominus wrote on 2020-06-25, 16:35:

Did you try the SVN of Dosbox? (Or rather when was it?)
Same as the iOS port of Dosbox. It's very old and has no dynamic core so it's really slow in most cases

Actually no. I've tested on desktop only with a fork called DOSBox-X, for the additions it has.

All I have related to DOSBox on iOS is an old iOS 11 Xcode project by litchie for iDOS2, I got it compiled (with several errors) for iPad Pro, and it runs well; But I am only using MSDOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 on it, with DOS games. The most demanding game I have tested on it was Grand Prix 2, and even with tweaks to core and clock speed, I recall it not being far from the desktop x86 version performance; always near 100% processor occupancy. QEMU's UTM fork for iOS also been tested for this game, slightly better performance, I can even play Grand Prix 3 with a Win98 VM at a reasonable speed, but I believe with a 2020 iPad Pro I'd get near desktop QEMU performance from it.

Just to make the point stick, I've tested UTM with an iPhone X and it does run Ubuntu 16.04 (or was it 18.04?) with near desktop speeds. All I need now is to pair keyboard/mouse and plug a cable to a HDMI monitor... I was about to try out Windows 10 on it - I have seen folks on youtube trying Windows XP, 7 and even OS X Snow Leopard on UTM.

The developer of UTM has a golden mine in his hands if he does indeed port his app to macOS like he has said before.

EDIT: But then, neither iDOS2 and UTM have 3d acceleration for games, which is a must have for me now. However, there's a patch to bring 3dfx/glide support to QEMU, if it worked on ARM, then the UTM developer would be convinced to adopt it too. Still, there's one hole left to cover and it is Parallels/VMware's job to cover it: Windows games that require DX11/DX12. Pretty sure Parallels have the upper hand on it there if they really demoed an ARM Parallels version rather than emulating through Rosetta 2 in that keynote last monday.

The Tomb Raider game they demoed was a x86 from Mac App Store emulated through Rosetta 2; I was able to see that there is definitely a speed penalty in that too.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-23, 16:39:

When Apple was going down hill back in the 1990’s it was the switch to Intel CPU’s in there computers from Motorola
CPU’s that revived Apple. The quality and performance of the Intel CPU put confidence in the consumer to try the Apple computer.
Consumers did not like the Motorola CPU’s.

In the 90´s the switch was from Motorola 68K to Motorola (IBM) PowerPC.

In the 00´s the switch was from Motorola (IBM) PowerPC to Intel x86.

That said; I think they will do great with the transition to ARM, and I think it will help Apple with their long term goal in unifying iOS with macOS.

I understand why they are doing that. I really do.

But I can't stand it because it lacks BootCamp or Windows x86 virtualization for apps and games that do not have a macOS version.

Vintage emulation as well will struggle. But before I decide what path I will follow for the next 5 years, I have to wait for what VMware and Parallels will announce next month in regards to ARM Macs virtualization software.

I guess someone could test Shadow of the Tomb raider on their x86 mac with the settings adjusted to what they looked like in the video and then downclock their cpu until it's roughly the same to see what performance might possibly be like if we are assuming the x86 to arm being the bottleneck. Unknown how fast the gpu will be on the arm macs . If you can downclock the GPU that may help as well.

Anytime I've compared gaming on my host vs gaming in virtualization it's been horrible to me but may be bearable to someone if that's all they are used to or can do on that hardware. (Not just performance but bugs and glitches) Since 1999 I've bought the best hardware to maximize my games (within reason) so when I'm limited artifically it's annoying. It's likely that if the experience is not good enough then those users will just stream from Stadia or MS but I expect most Apple users who game won't care about old games and will just play whatever is the latest fad from the Apple store or if Steam offers Arm versions of new games then they will play those games. As we've seen with the 32bit fiasco most devs are too cheap and lazy to update their software so I'm sure it'll be the same.

Mabye Crossover can work some magic in combination with rosetta.

As for DOSBox, pcem etc. They'll run but performance will be subpar. I'll be ready to close the threads with a comment to buy x86 or wait for a faster arm chip when people complain here. 😀

After watching a pair of WWDC videos, I am aware that there is still a way to disable SIP, csrutil is still there, so they still have the terminal, which is another small good news for me. The bad news is that their bootloader is pretty much the same used for iOS and iPadOS, meaning that its locked to macOS system signed by Apple, in similar fashion to iOS. Meaning that they effectively killed the Hackintosh community (oh God, I'm glad I've left it behind 3 years ago).

But they added the ability to boot unsigned ARM macOS versions with a switch on recovery boot. It involves a few tricks, though. The video didn't made clear if we could boot any linux ARM distro even with unsecure boot enabled. I'll assume that it is a "no, you can't".

EDIT: The videos I saw also talked about Rosetta and how it works, but nothing that we didn't saw or know from the main WWDC video on monday.

EDIT2: They are also leaving Kexts (Kernel Extensions) behind with a new DriverKit.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-26, 02:29:

But they added the ability to boot unsigned ARM macOS versions with a switch on recovery boot. It involves a few tricks, though. The video didn't made clear if we could boot any linux ARM distro even with unsecure boot enabled. I'll assume that it is a "no, you can't".

MS released an ARM version surface a while ago. I suspect that Bootcamp will make a come back iff ARM Windows succeeds in grabbing a sizeable laptop OS market share.

I'll be looking out for a highend intel mac pro as I believe Apple would definitely try to remove Intel from the top line. The last gen intel mac would be a symbolic mark of a time period.

The ARM Windows is terrible, terrible. If it were good enough, Apple would've demoed it in their keynote instead of an ARM Debian Linux.

I will wait for what VMware and Parallels have in line for x86 virtualization, as well as for how well QEMU will perform on it.

From there I will see if I will get the last Intel MacBook Pro, or the 2nd gen ARM MBP (I will not get the 1st gen ARM MBP for sure, historically 1st gen Apple devices have serious issues).

I am not doing any serious gaming for years, I was thinking about returning to sim racing but clearly I cannot pull it off for a number of reasons, not really related to hardware/software. I first need to choose a game platform (rF, AC, iRacing) and from there find a proper league I like, with a good community, to race on weekends. I used to do that from 2006-2010 with rF before I went to indoor karting tournaments. Probably I might have better luck with casual gaming on ARM Mac racing games if there is any (well, for example, there's Real Racing on iOS which is too good not to be ported to ARM Macs).

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-26, 04:51:

From there I will see if I will get the last Intel MacBook Pro, or the 2nd gen ARM MBP (I will not get the 1st gen ARM MBP for sure, historically 1st gen Apple devices have serious issues).

And 2nd and 3rd and..............

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-26, 02:29:

After watching a pair of WWDC videos, I am aware that there is still a way to disable SIP, csrutil is still there, so they still have the terminal, which is another small good news for me. The bad news is that their bootloader is pretty much the same used for iOS and iPadOS, meaning that its locked to macOS system signed by Apple, in similar fashion to iOS. Meaning that they effectively killed the Hackintosh community (oh God, I'm glad I've left it behind 3 years ago).

But they added the ability to boot unsigned ARM macOS versions with a switch on recovery boot. It involves a few tricks, though. The video didn't made clear if we could boot any linux ARM distro even with unsecure boot enabled. I'll assume that it is a "no, you can't".

I bet it works exactly the same as on Intel Macs with the T2 chip: you can boot anything you want if you disable secure boot, but the built-in storage is off-limits.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-26, 02:29:

EDIT2: They are also leaving Kexts (Kernel Extensions) behind with a new DriverKit.

I think they announced this 2 years ago. When Mojave was released, they said it would be the last version of macOS to fully support kexts.

>>MS released an ARM version surface a while ago. I suspect that Bootcamp will make a come back iff ARM >>Windows succeeds in >>grabbing a sizeable laptop OS market share.

I`m sure they will went with a own way of booting.

Anyway if they lockdown MacOS like iOS they will get less and lesser users..
i want to control my computer, not being controlled by it.

matze79 wrote on 2020-06-26, 08:07:

>>MS released an ARM version surface a while ago. I suspect that Bootcamp will make a come back iff ARM >>Windows succeeds in >> […]
Show full quote

>>MS released an ARM version surface a while ago. I suspect that Bootcamp will make a come back iff ARM >>Windows succeeds in >>grabbing a sizeable laptop OS market share.

I`m sure they will went with a own way of booting.

Anyway if they lockdown MacOS like iOS they will get less and lesser users..
i want to control my computer, not being controlled by it.

It never made sense to hear this from a Mac user. Like.. what?

Dominus wrote on 2020-06-25, 16:22:

I got accepted for the DTK (developer transition kit) and am looking forward to see how it performs 😉
And how fast Dosbox runs etc. I won't be allowed to post a benchmark but probably some general hints. Will need to look through the agreement when the time comes to not step on Apple's toes. Wouldn't be nice to lose my developer account and iOS app...

Nice. I was surprised that you have to return the Mac Mini at the end. That is a bummer. But they probably don't want any leaks of hardware and such. You're also not allowed to open the device...

Looking forward to a native DOSBox experience!

Also, I wonder if I will hold on further to my 2013 iMac, upgrade before the switch, or after...

or if Steam offers Arm versions of new games then they will play those games

I think that transitions will mostly kill desktop releases for Mac. Even as x86, install base is too small to really bother. So gaming destiny of future macs is most likely tied to streaming services.

i want to control my computer, not being controlled by it.

It's quite ironic how Apple more and more resembles the stuff they opposed in their infamous commercial.