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Apple WWDC 2020
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In highly technical forums, there is a discussion of how far Apple will use their ARM chipset. Currently, they are angling it to replace smaller and mobile Mac – Mac mini and laptops. The question is, can they scale it to the desktop level of a Mac Pro. Desktop CPU is where it is tough to compete with AMD and Intel. It explains their time frame that the transition to ARM will take years AND they will continue to release OSX that supports x86 Intel CPUs.
The news is exciting for portable Macs. But I’ll wait for the desktop version of the CPU.
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A surprisingly positive take from Linus
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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I haven’t had time to watch any of these videos, but has anyone answered the question of what this means for BootCamp? Will people still be able to run Windows natively on a Mac, or even via emulation (e.g., Parallels or VMWare Fusion)?
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[Brad Hurley] “but has anyone answered the question of what this means for BootCamp?”
Based on reading between the lines of what Federighi has said, it seems like virtualization is tied to OSs that already can run on Arm-based processors. These are used in some data centers. That’s why Linux shows up. It doesn’t rule out Windows yet. But he does seem to imply that booting an Arm-based Mac into another OS won’t be possible (i.e. no Boot Camp). Obviously this could change between now and the final release of 11.0, but that’s how it seems to stack up at this point.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Dom Silverio] “The question is, can they scale it to the desktop level of a Mac Pro. “
This is of course the question, and I think that Apple has used a number of methods to tell us the answer, “It will take years.”
I am struck that the system that they’re seeding with developers is a Mac Mini with 16GB RAM, using the same chip that’s in the iPad Pro.
This already tells you exactly what you need to know. Of COURSE it does some things well, but it’s also an utter non-starter with others. That’s not a negative, or in any way a criticism. For the vast majority of the process of building a bridge, it doesn’t even LOOK like a bridge. It doesn’t even start to function as a bridge for the people BUILDING the bridge until it’s almost done.
That’s exactly why Apple says that they’re going to be supporting Intel Macs for years. I’m sure that they have an end date targeted on an internal roadmap, even if it’s just written on a post-it note on a whiteboard, but there’s no real point in getting ahead of ourselves here.
Five years? Ten years? I haven’t seen anyone anywhere speculate anything remotely plausible yet, at least partly because I think there’s no way to know. But when Apple says “years to come” for Intel, there’s every reason to believe them.
When Apple talks about new processing platforms at WWDC, they usually include a slide or two with benchmarks. Not this time. Benchmarks aren’t the point. There is NO performance gain to be had here. NONE. iPads are awesome, and in many obvious ways, the ultimate fulfillment of the 1984-era vision of Mac that Steve had from the get-go.
For that matter, an iPad Pro is exponentially more powerful than that first Mac was LOL (and in color no less!), but it’s not even vaguely useful for building a COMPUTING PLATFORM on any time soon. Apple knows this, which is why is why they’re not talking about it for actual computing. For now, it’s a DEV platform, and for that, will be a gas. Those people are in for a fantastic ride. To the extent that I still have fond memories of my life as a developer (eg, mild to moderate LOL), I envy them.
So what IS Apple saying about ARM? As usual The Verge’s coverage of all this is blowing everyone else out of the water. From this article, this jumped screaming out of the page at me:
The company’s press release says very specifically that Apple’s new chips will “give the Mac industry-leading performance per watt,” and that’s a very deliberate turn of phrase. Apple’s arguing that by building the most efficient kind of chips it can — “the highest performance with the lowest power consumption” — it can achieve more raw performance by tipping the scales of that performance-per-watt formula toward more watts.
Look, I’m glad Apple is thinking about efficiency. Everybody should. But that’s not the biggest problem that most of us have solve.
Where it gets interesting for mobile, and for mobile ONLY, is that ARM allows more efficient integration of GPU functions into a single chip with the CPU. That’s cool, but one of the things we’re learning is that dedicated GPUs are actually WORTH something. So even after Apple has transitioned CPUs for all machines, including the priciest towers over to ARM, there may still be room for somebody’s third party GPUs. Maybe Intel and AMD, maybe somebody else — again, no way to know.
Here’s what we DO know. Microsoft has been running Windows on ARM for 10 years. This is absolutely nothing new.
In fact, I feel like one of the core messages of this WWDC is, “You know what? Everybody else is right. Microsoft has been going hard on ARM for a decade, and it’s about time for us to get serious about this too. And all that stuff we’ve been either mocking or ignoring on Android? Well, it’s time to take that seriously too.”
(Seriously, take a look at any “what’s new and exciting about iOS 14” article at a Mac site, then go look at a “here’s what Apple has learned from Android” article on an Android site, and they’ve never been more identical. Or I can save you the steps and point you to this article at The Verge that combines both into one handy place. “Some of the best new iOS features might look familiar”
And sure, we can play the “Everybody steals from everybody” game, and it’s always true, but it has never been MORE true that Apple is taking more of its moves from other people this time than anybody on the other side ever has from Apple. I mean, it really is stupefying, if also gratifying as somebody who’s been yapping for years that I bailed on Apple years ago for all this stupid stuff that they weren’t doing, or were doing more poorly than everyone else, only to discover Apple saying, “Yep, you’re right.” I KNOW lol)
So where has, and hasn’t, Microsoft been working with ARM. Surface is ARM, for sure. It’s like a Chromebook on steroids, which isn’t saying much. LOL Okay, and maybe more compelling than an iPad Pro (albeit less so since iPad Pro has taken so many moves from the Surface) or a low-end Macbook, but really not enough to build a future-facing platform on.
You know what’s not been happening in any huge way on ARM processors? 64-bit processing. Apple won’t be willing to live with that long term, and you can bet that this is going to be a big thrust for developer conversations in the breakout rooms.
MSFT’s approach to ARM is similar to their approach to everything, which is to say, “We’re going to dictate less rather than dictate more.” They support old stuff for a very, very long time. This is an impediment to progress, but continuity and reliability are values worth aspiring to, too. So they have explicitly said that they DON’T see a sunset for Intel yet, at least partly because they don’t need to.
But for the foreseeable future, there’s enough stuff that ARM isn’t good enough at, that’s at the bedrock of high-performance Wintel boxes for things like servers and science and such, that MSFT has NEEDED to support a multivalent environment. There are too many people doing too many different things to assume that one platform within the platform to be enough. It isn’t.
And this may remain the case for Apple, even in the post-transition world. Maybe some classes of software will always need some kind of emulator. Another great observation from another great Verge article, here:
Without getting too deep into the weeds, there are lots of different ways Apple could go. It could limit ARM Mac to iPad-like Catalyst apps. It could try to offer emulation for any app that expects an Intel processor. It could offer a relatively easy transition for developers using existing APIs. It could sunset some APIs while beefing up newer ones like Swift.
(“What Windows can teach the Mac about the switch to ARM processors”)
The same article includes the tail end of a massive Twitter thread from an Apple developer who also works with ARM in the Windows world:
I mean, there’s understandably an undercurrent of enthusiasm here for Apple’s own apps, but the top developer of sofware used on Macs isn’t Apple, it’s Microsoft. Even inside the creative space, I’d be willing to bet that it’s Adobe.
That’s one of the things that excited ME in the WWDC keynote. Mentions of software from Microsoft and Adobe running in ARM Macs. When Apple is talking about its own stuff, that’s fine, they should…but when they’re talking about other people’s stuff, you know that it’s actually important. LOL
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Some more thoughts.
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2020/06/26/apple-pivots-wwdc-2020/
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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I think this is a good explanation:
https://youtu.be/Tfg38JJA3oEA rather cheesy intro but it gets better as it goes. 🙂
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