Nothing has happened yet and Intel would likely barely notice considering Apple accounts for just 5% of Intel revenue and if Intel does care they have 2+ yrs to find ways to replace that revenue.

Don't even want to think about those poor gamers\developers\workers trying to use their x86 applications on arm but anyone crazy enough to stick with a mac laptop or desktop if this switch happens is probably happy with ios apps anyway.

Haven't Apple tried this before? They'll be back (if they ever leave).

There was a rumor a couple of years back that suggested that Apple was planning to do something like this, just another way to screw their customers and at the same time stop people from doing Hacktenosh builds but dumping Intel isn't going to be so easy as all the millions of shitty Intel macs they've already sold.

I wonder how they will be able to create their next Rosetta,
if SSE and other SIMDs of x86-64 (aka x64) are still protected.

Implementing an x86-only emulation, perhaps, just like MS does with Win10 on ARM ?
I'd would be ironic, since Apple is officially going to abandon 32-Bit code. 😉

this one is from 02
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018- … chips-from-2020

what is the date of the movie?

a bit more sober point of view:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/ … ssors-macs-date

The changeover is likely to begin with laptops such as the 12-inch MacBook.
(...)
Intel chips will almost certainly remain in Apple’s top-end machines like the iMac Pro and forthcoming Mac Pro revision until the company can produce in-house chips that are capable of meeting the demands of professional Mac users.

The until is the key here 😉

ARM is developing fast now, but gonna hit same problem intel already did many years ago.

So Apple is going to migrate completely over to ARM for everything... how quaint.

The historical industry shift from RISC to CISC despite all the naysayers and now the backpedalling to RISC is really amusing.

To be honest, I'll be surprised if they even have a desktop "Mac" lineup left by the time they drop x86. I'm pretty much expecting them to go iOS-only in the next few years. They'll keep pumping out dozens of variations of the iPhone & iPad and raking in the cash from those, while they drop every semblance of an advanced user's product. Maybe they'll carry the "Macbook Air" on as a super-gimped Chromebook-like thing, or maybe they'll just decide no one needs a keyboard anymore and axe it too. Sad end to a great hardware legacy, but they've been on that track for a few years already.

appiah4 wrote:

The historical industry shift from RISC to CISC despite all the naysayers and now the backpedalling to RISC is really amusing.

It depends on the point of view, modern x86 can be seen as a fusion of both RISC and CISC.
Internally, x86 instructions are often converted to individual instructions of fixed size (RISC like).
In essence and contrast, ARM is relying on GPU computing instead of using built-in SIMDs (x86: AVX, SSE, MMX, etc).

xjas wrote:

To be honest, I'll be surprised if they even have a desktop "Mac" lineup left by the time they drop x86.
I'm pretty much expecting them to go iOS-only in the next few years.

Only the future can tell. Personally, I believe they won't give up Macs soon. They are required for development of iOS apps, after all.

Modern ARM isn't 'real' RISC anymore either.
They are about as convoluted as x86 with all the different modes (Thumb, 32-bit, 64-bit) and extensions (various FPUs, NEON etc).

In essence and contrast, ARM is relying on GPU computing instead of using built-in SIMDs (x86: AVX, SSE, MMX, etc).

ARM's NEON extensions are SIMD: https://developer.arm.com/technologies/neon
There are also some third-party SIMD extensions. So it's pretty much EXACTLY like x86. You can use SIMD, and you can use GPU.
When I ported my Direct3D11 engine from x86/x64 to ARM (Windows Phone/RT), I basically just used the same math templates, but instead of using SSE intrinsics, they were now compiled with NEON intrinsics. Microsoft had already solved that for me, very nicely.

Scali wrote:

Modern ARM isn't 'real' RISC anymore either.
They are about as convoluted as x86 with all the different modes (Thumb, 32-bit, 64-bit) and extensions (various FPUs, NEON etc).

I see, my bad. 😦 Last time I looked into the details of the architecture was when I programmed for my Pocket PCs (SH3/StrongARM based).

Nice, I'd buy an iMac to run RISC OS on it.

This article sums it up nicely: STOP PANICKING! https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/04/st … hips-in-the-mac very much a fan boy article but what can you expect from AppleInsider 😀
But seriously... get a grip... there is always time for torches and pitchforks when you know stuff for sure (and even then Apple will not care)

It's not apparent yet, but Apple has to be very careful about their developments going forward. They may be doing exceptionally well now, but it wouldn't take too many mis-steps for all of that to come crashing down, and I'm not sure their arrogance would allow them to admit that they were wrong and adjust course quickly enough to avert disaster. This is a company that has circled the drain a number of times, and has been days from insolvency at least once. In recent years, they seem to have had this calculated way of progressively alienating their most devoted customers, and squandering the loyal professional base that helped keep the company alive long enough to evolve into the corporate monstrosity that it is now.

I first heard rumours of this change years ago, so I suspect it has at least been a "skunkworks" project since Steve Jobs was running the company. Part of the problem there is that the compatibility afforded by having their desktop line designed around Intel processors is what allowed the "Mac" to flourish. Do we sincerely expect that current behemoth-Apple is going to share enough of the details of their designs to get other operating systems running on their machines? Do we really think they won't try to cryptographically lock them down, so that other operating systems cannot run on their machines?

If or when they complete this transition, if the ARM architecture isn't delivering significantly better performance than it is now, they will effectively design themselves out of the core gaming market (among others) altogether. In addition to core processing power, the mobile-oriented graphics cores they are licensing now can't hold a candle to nVidia, AMD or even Intel's high-end designs. Then again, maybe they really do want to be a company that makes nothing more than disposable consumer toys, and leave the productivity tools to serious companies. Sure, it may be profitable, but for how much longer?

Let's also not even get started on their atrocious software designs over the past few years. They desperately need to hire someone to form a serious testing division, with the authority to yell at anyone over stability, usability and security short-comings, even if the target of the tirades is Sir Ive. Apparently, and in more ways than one, Apple is the new Microsoft.

Dominus wrote:

STOP PANICKING!

you mean DON'T PANIC... 😵

Qjimbo wrote:

Nice, I'd buy an iMac to run RISC OS on it.

RPi is good enough for that.. and its free on there!
Like the old saying goes... the best Apple is an Amiga... the best Archimedes... is a later Acorn 🤣

No ones mentioned 'Marzipan'! Coming out this year for macOS... very soon you will be able to run iOS apps in macOS... now we need touch screens for macbooks. Give it two years and I doubt a mac user will know if the program they are running is executing natively on the hardware they have, or through a compatibilty layer....or even if its executed by a data centre on the other side of the planet o.0... ergo they probably won't noticed a fundamental shift in the underpinning architecture anyhows.

Its getting to the point that there isn't much IP left for Apple to license from... which is essentislly the whole point of this exercise... RIP ImgTec ... I think the lesson to learn here is... if you work with Apple... they WILL f*ck you over.... eventually 😢.

xjas wrote:

To be honest, I'll be surprised if they even have a desktop "Mac" lineup left by the time they drop x86. I'm pretty much expecting them to go iOS-only in the next few years.

I have had the same sentiment, to an extent. It could be that that is the long-term goal of "Marzipan"; a gradual transition away from what we now think of as a Macintosh, or maybe desktop computers as a whole. Hopefully, the rumours of a next-generation OS that fuses the two have some validity, because I wouldn't want to live in a world where the only operating systems we have look and work like iOS, and involve giving away that much control.

xjas wrote:

They'll keep pumping out dozens of variations of the iPhone & iPad and raking in the cash from those, while they drop every semblance of an advanced user's product.

I don't disagree, but the interesting fact is that there has been more growth in the Mac than the iPad over a number of quarters. If the Mac continues to outperform the iPad, I think they'll keep it around in some form or other, at least in the short term.

Then again, the apparent sentiment in the "what's a computer?" ad seems to indicate that they want us to believe that the post-PC era has arrived, and they are the leaders.

spiroyster wrote:

No ones mentioned 'Marzipan'! Coming out this year for macOS... very soon you will be able to run iOS apps in macOS... now we need touch screens for macbooks.

The question is why we should want to run mobile software on a desktop computer. Tim Cook has already told us how much of a "compromised" experience touch on the desktop provides, so how will this work exactly?

Are any details available? Will iOS software really be running on the Mac, or will there just be some link to an iOS device? Current and legacy software straight from the store, or will they be twisting developers' arms to rebuild their applications to support this?

spiroyster wrote:

Give it two years and I doubt a mac user will know if the program they are running is executing natively on the hardware they have, or through a compatibilty layer....or even if its executed by a data centre on the other side of the planet o.0... ergo they probably won't noticed a fundamental shift in the underpinning architecture anyhows.

You do realise that we've been hearing the same story for over twenty years, right? In recent memory, first it was Java with "write once, run anywhere" and "the network is the computer". Then, some claimed that .NET would finally usher in that era, and more such predictions were made repeatedly. We're getting a little closer now, but we're still waiting, and given poor availability of high-speed Internet service and ridiculous overage charges for data usage on home and mobile connections in a number of countries, I doubt we're quite ready for that yet.

640K!enough wrote:

You do realise that we've been hearing the same story for over twenty years, right? In recent memory, first it was Java with "write once, run anywhere" and "the network is the computer". Then, some claimed that .NET would finally usher in that era, and more such predictions were made repeatedly.

Well, I would say that Java and .NET did actually deliver on that promise, to a certain degree.
Java applications have been around for years, and in most case you can indeed run them on various OSes and CPU architectures (for example, I regularly use Eclipse and Netbeans).
.NET was initially mostly a Windows desktop/server affair, but with Windows Phone/RT, you now actually had apps that could run on various versions of Windows and on various CPU architectures.
And of course .NET was also used for the Azure cloud platform, which supports both ARM and x86 machines currently.
And more recently, with .NET core, .NET is also moving closer to the Java ideal of having any kind of application (including web-based/cloud ones) run on any kind of OS and CPU architecture, since there is now official support for non-Windows OSes.

I think both Java and .NET achieved these goals... The fact that most computer systems still use x86 CPUs, and the fact that many applications are still written with native OS-specific and CPU-specific code doesn't change that.

Not sure I agree with .Net as it's really not platform agnostic as it was fist sold as an idea, but Java certainly is where it aimed to be..