The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Apple is moving to arm. I wonder will they take all their software on an iOS based platform and make them larger for macbook? touchscreens in the works? hmmmm. Interesting.
Nah it wouldn't. Two different devices. Lightweight portable ipad pro, or larger notebook 2 in 1 Macbook. No different than surfsce pro and surfsce book
Two thoughts, first I can understand why they would do this as they are the leading designers in ARM (for now). The alleged 12 core ARM chip that is being developed based on the A12Z used in the Ipad Pro will be monstrous. Assuming no uplift in efficiency or IPC you're looking at roughly double the performance since they are moving from 4/4 to 8/4.
A12X gives a Geekbench5 score of 1110 / 4700 on 4H/4L
A14X should give Geekbench5 scores at minimum around: 1200 / 10000 8H/4L (rough math)
Ryzen 3900 gives a Geekbench5 score of: 1286 / 12037 12H/0L
Potentially we're looking at a chip that can go toe-to-toe with a 2nd Gen Ryzen and certainly Cometlake... which is pretty incredible in it's own right and ought to be pretty popular.
Second thought: Is this an indication that Microsoft intends to vastly improve their ARM emulation for Windows 10X? That's the only way I can see this taking off and not causing a massive backlash against Apple power users like myself who are moving back to windows (already had in anticipation of this).
Perhaps the Arm will have an x86 emulator mode (although CPU emulation in the past has been lack-luster).
If there is not an x86 emulation mode for the new chip, and Windows remain an x86 architecture, then what will happen to native Bootcamp? I also wonder for those that use apps like Oracle Virtual Box or VMWare Fusion vendors will have massive re-writes to emulate x86_64 CPUs?
Windows on x86 is going nowhere. It's here and huge. Windows on arm will improve in the next couple of years as long as they can get new arm chips developed.
AFAIK, I haven't seen a Windows ARM SKU as an install, ISO or otherwise download available from Microsoft. The only reason we know it exists is because Surface X (or whatever the edition) runs an ARM version of Windows. However, that doesn't mean that MS would even make it work on these new arch'ed Macs.
That's exactly my point. Losing Bootcamp would be a big issue in some corners of the world. For example, of the developers I know who use Macbooks, they rely on it in one way or another.
Moving to ARM would further isolate Apple from the rest of the PC world as nothing desktop grade is currently written for ARM. Microsoft tried this a while back with the Surface and Windows 8 RT. Apple's CPU design has been very robust and it works very well for iphone and ipads. As a dev in the Microsoft environment, I can tell you there is some kind of push coming to move to .NET Core which is "universal" supposedly and run on any platform. I don't think it will be prime time ready immediately, but probably within the next 2-5 years you can expect to see Apple-ARM designed CPUs and GPUs in their computers.
However, it would totally suck for anybody that uses a macbook for windows development (though, I really wouldn't understand why somebody would do that to start with). Bootcamp would essentially be dead.
That is exactly what they are going for IMO. A fully closed system. iPad iPhone and MacBook with no interference from outside operating systems. If users don't like it, they can move on. That's how I see that one. I think that is where apple is going.
Exactly! Like it or hate it, for most developers, it's a Windows world. Most of the dev folks I know who use them, love their Macbooks for dev use, but they do spend a majority of the time in Visual Studio for Mac, Fusion with Win VMs, and sometimes the occasional Bootcamp boot for other reasons. By removing that, the Macbook is a less attractive offering.
Alienating those folks might cost Apple a bit of a market segment, but perhaps those numbers are too small to matter to them.
The market share is so small for apple they would not notice. Now if it were ios that's a different story. That's apple's gravy train and they know it. I would not be surprised if they just make the Mac run ios.
It's in certain aspects harder/slower for MS/PC community to make drastic software/hardware changes (ie like the registry, removal of 32bit support etc) unlike Apple on the computing side because the MS dependent side has a significantly larger enterprise base and they also have to deal with the baggage of a lot compatibility issues especially with a large number of companies still using certain older hardware or software. If it was just regular end users they would have been a bit more nimble and force changes.
Apple with its relatively small market share on laptops/computers can afford to shed compatibility in quicker fashion and even if they lose some users as it's a small loss as the computer business is a relatively small portion of their revenue and not as much of a core component as it used to be with the company now pretty mobile heavy. At the same time they do have a lot more customers now than in the PowerPC/Intel transition days and as some have mentioned the draw for devs due to bootcamp could be gone if ARM transition happens too quickly and without proper x86 emulation. Assuming there aren't major architectural differences between Apple's custom implementation of ARM CPUs and those on the MS/PC ARM side, there might be dual boot ability but x86 compatibility loss would be a big loss for enterprise. I'm not sure if good x86 emulation would be possible in the transition period.
The core of Win10 has improvements but bugged by lack of testing and the stupid over reliance on part time testers over more dedicated internal testing compared to the past. Even MacOS is buggy as hell right now lol. I fell like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Ubuntu/Mint seem much more stable for daily use, but with a third party software shortage.
Yeah its definately hard for people to switch to something totally different, not to mention lack of commonly used third party software compatibility and only reletively recently have distros started focusing more and more on new/novice users, in terms of driver updates and software installs.
That's where I think they are going as well. My prediction for awhile has been that Apple will go fully arm over the next few years and that will spur on third party developers like Adobe to create "full" functionality versions of the software for arm. Once that happens windows on arm will become a much more viable as a lot of the big software will already be working with arm thanks to Devs following where Apple leads.
I would very much like to see iPad apps available on macOS arm, but given how Apple seems to have been trying hard to keep the two systems separate, I don't see that happening. The best I can hope for is it makes it easier for developers to port the iPad or iPhone apps to macOS for arm.
Honestly I think that is more of a function of iPads not being long for this world. The moment OLED burn-in is fixed and flexible displays are more durable I can see Apple canning this product line completely with an iPhone that morphs into a Pad OS when the screen is extended.
You think so? That's something that hasn't even occurred to me. Given the amount of development in iPadOS trying to make it more like a laptop, all of the smart keyboards and mouse support et cetera they have been adding in I can't see them killing iPads any time soon. There is a huge market for education with the iPad, not just personal devices but institutions buying them en masse to give to students. Doesn't seem likely to me that they are going anywhere.
There's also a massive market for Chromebooks as well within Education. It's not like the things they are doing to PadOS are going to be scrapped; look at what Samsung is doing with Dex. They can kill physical iPads, merge iOS into one build and move on. Despite the animosity it's not like they don't work together routinely for product advancement. I just don't see how iPads can co-exist alongside Chromebook like Macbook non-pros and foldable iPhones with docking capabilities.
I Know exactly what you mean. I have long held the belief that a lot of things could be achieved and set ups could be powered simply by a phone with a Samsung Dex style interface and connection. The cynic inside of me thinks that Apple will hold off on making anything like that as long as possible because at the moment they can sell people three devices for three different tasks instead of one that technically could achieve all three if they set up the software to do so. I personally use Apple because I require the accessibility features, if I didn't I would almost certainly have a Samsung dex capable Mobile phone and a couple of docking stations and monitors. I think it's a fantastic concept but while companies can get away with selling people are three devices for £2000 instead of one device for £750 that's what they are going to do.
If one another accessory maker reverse engineers this...
...NexDock to be neutral and open to accommodating to different mobile OSes...
All the talks on which OS is supreme will be useless.
Look at the maturity state of OSes now.
Can the smart phones use external keyboards for text inputs?
Yes. But not on economical ones where the OS are not "full".
Can the smart phones use external pointing device such as mouse?
Yes. Again, not with economical ones where the OS lack of such generic drivers.
With the 2 above, plus the ability to screen cast(for non USB-C devices), all the product designer needs to come out, is a keyboard+display panel "no OS mirroring accessory" that's neutral to all OSes out there. They need not to concern whether their "no OS display-book" will be limited by the license or rights restriction that's limited to certain mobile phone makes...
That answers that. Since the emulation will be running inside OS X, there will be no more Bootcamp. I'm sure some of my dev colleagues will be disappointed to hear it.
"Rosetta 2 lacks support for x86 virtualization, Boot Camp not an Apple Silicon option"
- While [...] Rosetta 2... can translate "most" Intel-based apps, it is unable to do the same for virtual machine apps that handle x86_64 computer platforms. Popular x86_64 virtualization apps include products from Parallels and VMWare that virtualize Windows environments.
- In addition to Rosetta's x86 restrictions, Boot Camp will no longer be available for use on Macs powered by Apple silicon.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...apps-boot-camp-not-an-option-on-apple-silicon We had already guessed Bootcamp was going bye-bye. But I wasn't expecting a lack of virtualization. Unless this changes, there goes that segment of the market for software developers looking at the new ARM Macbooks for development. No Fusion or Parallels? That's not going to go over well with the software coder brethren that like to code on Macbooks. Oh well. At least they can maybe purchase one or two more models before x86 is phased out completely.
The comments in that article are definitely revealing.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
