My bet: in 10 years, x86 will be comfortably ahead once again, and Apple will be asking AMD to cook up a custom solution with a ridiculously fast IGP connected to ridiculously fast (albeit non-upgradeable) memory. Similar to what they've been providing the console makers.

I mean, Apple already seems to have a soft spot for Radeon graphics, and AMD's CPU cores keep getting faster. Even Zen 2 is slightly faster than Comet Lake, clock-for-clock, and the performance/watt is substantially higher.

I'd even buy a Mac at that point!

darry wrote on 2020-06-30, 15:54:

One point of worry is that Rosetta 2 likely won't be supported forever (if the first one is any indication). This means that, at some point in the future, third party virtualization software that allows an x86 guest to run on ARM MacOS with decent performance better be available (hopefully).

Agreed. Like I said before in this thread, the ball is on vmware/parallels park to play their game and show what they can do for the ARM Macs virtualization solutions. Notice that I didn't even mention the free solution (virtualbox). Windows 10 performance on Virtualbox with limited VRAM is complete garbage. I don't think Oracle does bother about doing something on it, they didn't even bother to improve the video drivers for virtualbox as well as directx 11 support to take the fight against the two big dogs I mentioned above. They don't even bother to fix the SB16 crackling sounds issue for years. Virtualbox actually is slowly dying.

VMware is about to release a tech preview version with support to run macOS Big Sur VMs, but no idea on ARM versions of their VMware Fusion software to test.

Then there is QEMU and a third party QEMU frontend GUI called UTM for iOS. If the developer does make a macOS version, it will be a good replacement for certain tasks. I think that this developer has a golden mine in his hands. Someone will buy his idea and make it a product when their virtualization attempts fail and realize that they may have to turn to emulation (not that I prefer this way, I prefer the other way).

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-30, 14:06:

And the DTK has only 16GB of RAM and 4 of the 8 cores enabled, but an extra GPU core enabled. Now imagine if they had unleashed […]
Show full quote

And the DTK has only 16GB of RAM and 4 of the 8 cores enabled, but an extra GPU core enabled. Now imagine if they had unleashed the full power of it + added a cooling system. It’d be bonkers and it’s a 2 yr old gen cpu!

And the DTK isnt even close to what the production units will be.

The A13 is supposedly 12-15% faster, so the future A14 that will in fact power the real ARM Macs will be absolute monsters.

I just need to know in which position we are in terms of virtualization/emulation of x86 OS. I need to keep my vintage VMs working and a W10 VM for a few modern games 😀

Now I will wait for the next chapters less worried than I was two weeks ago.

Even if you double the core count, double the clockspeed and add 50% IPC gains it's still less than half the Ryzen 4000 mobile CPU's compute power.

Apple ARM CPUs are hopeless overpriced junk as far as Desktop is concerned. The small cores are useless as hell for a desktop user's work flow. I will laugh my ass off watching all these professed MBP loving content creators try to encode videos on these.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-30, 11:28:

Mac Mini and surface pro x are completely different form factors, and the A12 in that Mac Mini is probably running at an uncompa […]
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Mac Mini and surface pro x are completely different form factors, and the A12 in that Mac Mini is probably running at an uncomparable TDP limit.

EDIT: And I checked, of course the Surface Pro X is only 7W TDP while the regular Mac Mini can handle up to 28W TDP (4 times!!!). For all we know that A12 also had its thermal limits increased significantly. Garbage comparison is garbage.

For what it's worth, here is what a 15W Ryzen Mobile 4800U x86_64 can do in Geekbench:

Apple can GTFO with their useless overpriced junk. Big core/small core shit belongs to the mobile and will die a terrible death on the desktop.

EDIT2: Another issue with the comparison is that Windows 10 on ARM is incredibly poorly optimized for the Big/Small core architecture, and thus running it native instead of through emulation does not even remotely have the kind of benefit you think it does.

Don't know what your problem is, but it's yours. I am totally amazed, that apple makes it's own chips. I don't see the "death of the mac-desktop", the IOS-only stuff...I see amazing products to come...an apple gaming machine that kills the consoles...perhaps the nex-gen too. exklusive titles...a mac-gaming-desktop etc.

totally fascinating...

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-30, 17:40:

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-30, 14:06:

And the DTK has only 16GB of RAM and 4 of the 8 cores enabled, but an extra GPU core enabled. Now imagine if they had unleashed […]
Show full quote

And the DTK has only 16GB of RAM and 4 of the 8 cores enabled, but an extra GPU core enabled. Now imagine if they had unleashed the full power of it + added a cooling system. It’d be bonkers and it’s a 2 yr old gen cpu!

And the DTK isnt even close to what the production units will be.

The A13 is supposedly 12-15% faster, so the future A14 that will in fact power the real ARM Macs will be absolute monsters.

I just need to know in which position we are in terms of virtualization/emulation of x86 OS. I need to keep my vintage VMs working and a W10 VM for a few modern games 😀

Now I will wait for the next chapters less worried than I was two weeks ago.

Even if you double the core count, double the clockspeed and add 50% IPC gains it's still less than half the Ryzen 4000 mobile CPU's compute power.

Apple ARM CPUs are hopeless overpriced junk as far as Desktop is concerned. The small cores are useless as hell for a desktop user's work flow. I will laugh my ass off watching all these professed MBP loving content creators try to encode videos on these.

And that's fine if you get to laugh, but I wonder where that hate and Schadenfreude comes from and why you need to invest so much time in it...
But to each their own. I rather spend time with joyous stuff (like getting open source software to work on the DTK).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't get that hate either. I use for web development related work stuff. And sometimes I like to get into retro gaming. I used to be a pro simracer, might even go back one day but not sure.

I have to say, not going with AMD does make sense. The whole “base my release schedule on yours” problem would still exist, and AMD is going to be making a lot more console APUs in the next five to seven years than anything else. Apple would just be a third wheel asking for things, instead of the exclusive ask they want.

FWIW, I sometimes use my 2017 iPad Pro to edit photos in Lightroom CC and edit videos in LumaFusion, and performance in both is impressive. In fact, I have never seen Lightroom Classic or Lightroom CC this fast on any desktop. I apply an edit and the picture gets rendered instantly in full screen resolution (which is rather high on the iPad Pro), whereas on most desktops it gets gradually updated in 100x100 pixel blocks 😀

Yes, when I need to export a bunch of photos, it's faster to do this on my 6-core Intel Mac mini, but considering that the CPU inside my iPad is based on a 2016 mobile phone CPU, I can't complain.

Oh, and it also runs Civilization 5 and 6 very well.

I have a pen and I used my 2nd gen iPad Pro to design one website and a few logos professionally. I have to say, I can do my work mostly from there. Just give me access to a cloud server and I could perfectly develop an entire site out from my iPad Pro. The tools for that are there: Vectornator X, Pixelmator, Lightroom, Coda 2 for iOS, Prompt 2, Inspect (for inspecting websites code). I just don't do that already because my work does not have a server for development, we have to develop it locally and then push to a git repo. If only the iSH app which is basically a stripped down Arch Linux environment had MySQL support, then I could do it locally from there. (Actually with UTM I could still do that. I have an Ubuntu 16.04 VM which I could boot to the terminal and set up a local web development environment to work exclusively on my iPad Pro).

With Adobe porting their CC apps to ARM Macs, it's only a matter of time to see Adobe X.D prototyping tools working on my iPad Pro so I can do all my UI/UX work from there.

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-06-27, 23:12:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-06-27, 23:06:

I think Apple customers who do high end processing in video editing value there time. So the less time they spend editing and rendering a video is most important for them. If they can do it with a 32-core AMD CPU and dual graphics cards for half the cost of a NEW Base model Mac Pro and in 1/2 the time they would rather select that path.

Lol.

Having worked in a company that had clients in broadcast and video production, I can tell you with a very high degree of confidence that while individual freelancers might as well go this route, production houses would never touch anything that isn't supported by a major vendor.

Agreed, but I also know media production houses are very sensitive to cost. If an IHV can support the requisite software platforms and deliver more cost efficiency, they have a persuasive case for being selected.

It all boils down to how much new ARM platform would suck or shine as production tool.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/30/ap … macos-on-iphone

Now, if Apple is really working on something similar to Dex, great things are coming...

I think the whole GP2X push from a decade and a half ago has already prepared enough hobbyist developers for ARM (word-of-mouth RasPi gaming hype certainly benefited from older GP2X software), so I don't think there will be anything significantly lossy, except when it's Apple's shifting policies and acts of "courage" for developers doing more damage than architecture changes... I already have enough impossible pressure to satisfy Catalina users

GP2x is old32-bit ARM, 64-bit ARM (aarch64) is practically a completely different CPU with a new instruction set and registers. Not like x86_64 where they just bolted extra stuff onto regular x86.

I've been using a Raspberry Pi 3 512MiB for a year as a replacement for our/my old main PC w/ 7 when Win X became the one and only Windows..
Beginning with Raspberry 4 4GiB, I can say that these are real little computers.
The new 8 GiB version even more so.
Personally, for me, the x86 times are pretty much over.
I'm still feeling nostalgic for good old x86, though.
That's why I keep a few old laptops where Win XP-7 still can run.
And old emulators. 😉

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-06-30, 22:50:

It all boils down to how much new ARM platform would suck or shine as production tool.

ARM is currently not a viable production tool on any platform. It won't be on Apple either. We have been reading stories about ARM catching up with x86 for half a decade now. It was a fairy tale back then, it is a fairy tale now.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-01, 06:37:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-06-30, 22:50:

It all boils down to how much new ARM platform would suck or shine as production tool.

ARM is currently not a viable production tool on any platform. It won't be on Apple either.

Mobile phones need a keyboard!
Tablets are nice but a niche product!

"Currently" is not always a good measurement for how Apple's products will fare...

Dominus wrote on 2020-07-01, 06:43:

Mobile phones need a keyboard! Tablets are nice but a niche product! […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-01, 06:37:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-06-30, 22:50:

It all boils down to how much new ARM platform would suck or shine as production tool.

ARM is currently not a viable production tool on any platform. It won't be on Apple either.

Mobile phones need a keyboard!
Tablets are nice but a niche product!

"Currently" is not always a good measurement for how Apple's products will fare...

You may think I am rabid with Apple hate. Fine. I hate Apple (And I don't hate them baselessly - I hate them because I am part of their ecosystem by corporate decree), but I actually rather like ARM, when it is deployed in platforms that suit it. I use ARM in a lot of devices, some mobile, some SBC. I know the inherent advantages and handicaps of the architecture. It can not be an x86 desktop/workstation/server replacement. It's not even close.

ARM on Macs sounds about as futile and dumb as Intel going with Big/Small in Alder Lake. Now, think about it. Intel supplied Apple and they have nothing in their product stack to supply them now. So they both go ahead and go with the only things they possibly can go with, which are dumb ideas but the only ones they can go with unless they throw in the towel. Using ARM is Alder Lake levels of desperation because both companies are stuck in a corner. They will be equally laughable and equally stupid moves in the end.

*bookmarks

!remindme 2years

https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1276589588308357120?s=19

"Who is this Steven Sinofsky guy?"

I largely agree with him. Personally, though, I'll stick with my ryzen rig for a long long time to come. Ain't going back to mac.