Apple is an existential threat to the PC

[Entropy]

stick more cores, a fan and intel & amd will be seriously shitting themselves.

Not really. Apple prefers to keep their chippery proprietary, so they aren’t competing for any customers (outside Apple itself of course.)

If this rumour pans out, the resultant computational power will remarkable though. 8 high performance cores, which individually have the highest single thread performance around ensures a solid base, but Apple has done intriguing additions to the ISA as well as included respectable ML processing capabilities.

Also, unaccounted for in the Bloomberg rumours is the memory subsystem. In the formfactor described, one could assume that it would use basically an iPad main memory setup, which in this time frame would imply 128-bit LPDDR5. That in itself would be roughly twice as fast as current desktop systems (outside 4-channel HEDT). An alternative could be HBM, which would extend the memory advantage further.
But even the baseline assumption would be a significant advancement over current systems.

A somewhat odd detail in the rumour, that kind of lends it some credibility is USB-4 being mentioned. I can almost believe that this rumour is based in some kind of reality.

 

[zed]

Not really. Apple prefers to keep their chippery proprietary, so they aren’t competing for any customers (outside Apple itself of course.)

I agree they will only keep the chips themselves, so they can market their PCs as the most powerful, like they used back with the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G5 (which I used to have, IIRC it weighed a ton)
but if they are using their own chips then they are not using intels. (I dont think they use AMD now?)

Plus this competition will force other makers to look at ARM chips for their PC's (faster and longer battery life)

 

[Entropy]

I agree they will only keep the chips themselves, so they can market their PCs as the most powerful, like they used back with the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G5 (which I used to have, IIRC it weighed a ton)
but if they are using their own chips then they are not using intels. (I dont think they use AMD now?)

The G5 was a floating point and bandwidth monster in its day. I really liked it.
AMD is "only" used in graphics/computation. All CPUs and the underlying platform is Intel.

Plus this competition will force other makers to look at ARM chips for their PC's (faster and longer battery life)

You undeniably have a point here, but I don't think that other hardware makers are the ones that get pushed to look harder at ARM. Rather, the ball is with Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn't get its act together, the hardware makers don't have much of a market for ARM hardware designs.

 

[MfA]

Plus this competition will force other makers to look at ARM chips for their PC's (faster and longer battery life)

x86 is really not so bad an instruction set for superscalar processors. I'm not sure there is any big advantage to switching to ARM (other than license/patent concerns, which aren't relevant to AMD and Intel).

 

[Entropy]

[

x86 is really not so bad an instruction set for superscalar processors. I'm not sure there is any big advantage to switching to ARM (other than license/patent concerns, which aren't relevant to AMD and Intel).

Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
What performance, at what price and at what power requirement is possible for manufacturers to actually build their devices around?
But while that is interesting from an a formal point of view, that is only a small part of the story here. Using Intel for MacOS has been extremely restrictive for Apple compared to their ARM driven devices, in spite of them having sufficient leverage to make Intel deliver special solutions for them. But that doesn't help with support of different memory types, weird restrictions in amount of memory supported, graphics limitations, having a desktop platform that has been standing still for years except for speed bumps bought by increasing power draw, which is a terrible fit for iMacs, lack of supplementary processing, .....
What's in it for Apple is bleeding obvious.
But even the broader Windows market could benefit from being able to do the same things - imagine bespoke chips where they can not only choose number and kind of CPUs, but also what graphics capabilities, what memory subsystems, what supplementary processing elements for video/ML/whatever that a manufacturer like Lenovo/HP/Dell/Acer/Asus wants to include to make their offerings stand out. This, again, requires Microsoft to get serious.
The academic computer science angle of "what is the x86 penalty when it comes to extracting maximum performance" is ultimately a very narrow angle of view. The reasons mobile processors aren't all Intel in spite of them spending outrageously to even gain a foothold, are actually valid in other areas of computing, and particularly so in personal computing.
x86 has one thing going for it, and that is legacy compatibility. And that is a very, very strong argument. But for markets where that isn't such a critical feature, opening up the hardware eco-system has the potential to rejuvenate the PC segment, in ways that the current paradigm doesn't support. Not that I believe it will happen. Rather, I'd imagine that the Wintel PC standard will keep hanging around, in a slow downward spiral in terms of volume.

 

[MfA]

Many ARM licensees doing their own implementation failed to keep up with ARM pretty badly ... ARM itself fails to keep up with Apple pretty badly.

Even if that weren't the case, the rest of the Windows market doesn't have the volume and margins of Apple. As I said, Apple taking their money away from x86 and PC GPUs is an existential threat to the entire PC ecosystem (combined with windows failing to just werk).

Apple is going to eat everyone's lunch.

 

[Entropy]

Many ARM licensees doing their own implementation failed to keep up with ARM pretty badly ... ARM itself fails to keep up with Apple pretty badly.

I didn’t want to imply that anyone really needed to do their own core designs. They don’t even need to do their own SoC designs, look at the wide range offered in mobile space. The strongest could roll their own modifications though, such as Google seems to be doing now with their image processing. No reason the stronger players in PC space couldn’t do similar things.

Even if that weren't the case, the rest of the Windows market doesn't have the volume and margins of Apple. As I said, Apple taking their money away from x86 and PC GPUs is an existential threat to the entire PC ecosystem (combined with windows failing to just werk).
Apple is going to eat everyone's lunch.

Nah. Apple is just reinforcing it’s grip on the higher end of the market. Yes, Intel will loose some revenue, but it is not as if the situation of the PC market is due to Intel lacking funds.

 

[eastmen]

Many ARM licensees doing their own implementation failed to keep up with ARM pretty badly ... ARM itself fails to keep up with Apple pretty badly.

Even if that weren't the case, the rest of the Windows market doesn't have the volume and margins of Apple. As I said, Apple taking their money away from x86 and PC GPUs is an existential threat to the entire PC ecosystem (combined with windows failing to just werk).

Apple is going to eat everyone's lunch.

The windows market is still quite large and has already had its major down turn at the beginning of last decade. We can start to see the same thing happen with tablets . Super popular for a hot minute and now the majority of makers are no longer in that market and even apple is slow with updates to its hardware. Then you have cell phones that have peaked in terms of pricing and most likely sales in the majority of the world . Even apple had to introduce a budget phone to keep momentum going. If macs switch over to arm your going to have a lot of compatibility issues.

https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-go-2-core-m3-benchmarks

Look at how bad the arm cpu's are at emulating x86 code.

We will have to see what happens but I think with AMD rising up intel will finally create a new x86 chip that isn't based off the 20 year old Pentium pro and we could see huge improvements there and of course amd continues to advance x86 performance

 

[MfA]

I don't think they will even allow emulation.

Apple's first party software will show large performance advantages and any third developer who doesn't tow the line is going to get trashed by the faithful for not supporting the superior platform.

 

[eastmen]

I don't think they will even allow emulation.

Apple's first party software will show large performance advantages and any third developer who doesn't tow the line is going to get trashed by the faithful for not supporting the superior platform.

apparently just disabling 32bit support for mac users has caused a lot of trouble. I know a few tech support people at apple stores and they get in a lot of people with old programs no longer working. One of the biggest is older office products like office 2011 or so. Having customers have to go out and rebuy again will likely cause issues.

Also if you check out my link the SQ1 from MS is still slower than the i5u models of surface pro. Even with apples chips being faster than the SQ1 there are still faster intel ultra portable chips so the difference may not be as vast as your thinking. It may not even be much of a performance increase switching to arm for apple.

Now I surely think it will be a cost savings for apple. But I dunno if apple is the type of company to pass it on to the customer. They postion macs as premium systems and they sell $600 wheels for them

 

[Malo]

Having customers have to go out and rebuy again will likely cause issues.

Issues like what? They'll get angry and buy a Windows PC instead? Do you really think Apple cares? If they really want to stay with Apple they'll go out and spend the exorbitant amount of money again and Apple know that.

 

[eastmen]

Issues like what? They'll get angry and buy a Windows PC instead? Do you really think Apple cares? If they really want to stay with Apple they'll go out and spend the exorbitant amount of money again and Apple know that.

If you start turning more people away then you bring in your market share dwindles which drives more people away. Quality of other companies devices have continued to go up and are just as good or have surpassed apple.

But hey its what it is

 

[Pressure]

If you start turning more people away then you bring in your market share dwindles which drives more people away. Quality of other companies devices have continued to go up and are just as good or have surpassed apple.

But hey its what it is

So what devices are just as good or have surpassed Apple in your opinion?

 

[eastmen]

So what devices are just as good or have surpassed Apple in your opinion?

Lenovo think pads , Microsoft surface line up , msi has a nice line of pcs.

 

[Davros]

hey sell $600 wheels

That's not hyperbole btw....

 

[zed]

So what devices are just as good or have surpassed Apple in your opinion?

???! excluding software (which angers me when using apple, bad design), just hardware I dont think any but the most fervent apple fans are saying their phone hardware is the best
the only aspect they are best in is their CPU speed, which true for a PC/game console is important but for a phone the vast majority of ppl dont give a monkeys about, they care about photo quality, battery life, screen etc (battery life / photos are good with apple but noone *excluding the devoted seriously claims they are the best)

 

[Pressure]

???! excluding software (which angers me when using apple, bad design), just hardware I dont think any but the most fervent apple fans are saying their phone hardware is the best
the only aspect they are best in is their CPU speed, which true for a PC/game console is important but for a phone the vast majority of ppl dont give a monkeys about, they care about photo quality, battery life, screen etc (battery life / photos are good with apple but noone *excluding the devoted seriously claims they are the best)

That's slightly sidestepping the question though, isn't it. Can you name a specific device that checks all those points?

There is no higher rated screens in the industry that comes, out of the box, so color accurate that it is "visually indistinguishable from perfect" and "providing considerably better display performance than other competing smartphones". At least that's what DisplayMate says about the screen on the latest model. Andrei (AT) even calls the battery life "a magnitude shift" and only a single phone has better battery life (ASUS ROG Phone II, 6000mAh battery versus the 3969mAh battery in the iPhone).

Could you be more specific, what issues are you having with the software? Is it just different than what you are used to?

 

[zed]

Could you be more specific, what issues are you having with the software? Is it just different than what you are used to?

Im very used to IOS and apple OS's eg heres a link to one of my published games from years ago (bottom of page), today I use IOS more than android, even though android is 'just better' (tm)
http://www.iosapps8.com/showpost/3804/Today_s_Best_Apps_WordZAbout_Bee_Story_The_Great_Race_And_More

OK software issues, so many examples I could choose, but here am I trying to hilight some of your text on my ipad so I can delete it

steps
1. select a word
2. drag out the blue nubs to cover the text block
3. delete text

as you see in the above video I couldnt complete step 2. normally what happens is I either go to the end and delete backwards word by word (slow and doesnt work if what you want to do is delete the stuff in the middle) or just do it on android (where selecting block of text just works)

 

[zed]

That's slightly sidestepping the question though, isn't it. Can you name a specific device that checks all those points?

There is no higher rated screens in the industry that comes, out of the box, so color accurate that it is "visually indistinguishable from perfect" and "providing considerably better display performance than other competing smartphones". At least that's what DisplayMate says about the screen on the latest model. Andrei (AT) even calls the battery life "a magnitude shift" and only a single phone has better battery life (ASUS ROG Phone II, 6000mAh battery versus the 3969mAh battery in the iPhone).

from a quick google
display mate ( they dont tend to rate many devices, though this one was after the apple one thus I assume they rate it higher)

Conclusion Summary
Based on our extensive Lab Tests and Measurements the Galaxy S20 Ultra has a Very Impressive Excellent Top Tier World Class Smartphone Display with close to Text Book Perfect Calibration Accuracy and Performance that is Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect. Based on our objective Lab Tests and Measurements the Galaxy S20 Ultra receives a DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Award earning DisplayMate’s highest ever Display Performance Grade of A+ and setting or matching 12 Smartphone Display Performance Records.

battery
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/smartphones-best-battery-life,review-2857.html

Best phone battery life at a glance (hours:minutes)

1. Moto G Power: 16:10
2. Moto G7 Power: 15:35
3. Asus ZenFone 6: 15:01
4. Samsung Galaxy A20: 13:46
5. LG V60 ThinQ 5G: 12:46
6. Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus: 12:35
7. Moto G Stylus: 12:13
8. Google Pixel 3a: 11:59
9. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: 11:58
10. iPhone 11 Pro Max: 11:54

Though if you compare time vs battery life, apple 11 max wins, then again the s20 has a higher resolution, even though its physically smaller (though only just ~1%) and lighter
https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/galaxy-s20-ultra-vs-iphone-11-pro-max-battle-of-the-giant-phones

BTW Im not a samsung champion at all, I would never buy one, mainly due to their software layering ontop of android

 

[Pressure]

from a quick google
display mate ( they dont tend to rate many devices, though this one was after the apple one thus I assume they rate it higher)

battery
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/smartphones-best-battery-life,review-2857.html

Though if you compare time vs battery life, apple 11 max wins, then again the s20 has a higher resolution, even though its physically smaller (though only just ~1%) and lighter
https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/galaxy-s20-ultra-vs-iphone-11-pro-max-battle-of-the-giant-phones

BTW Im not a samsung champion at all, I would never buy one, mainly due to their software layering ontop of android

I can see they use different test terminology (LTE / 5G versus Wi-Fi). I'm not surprised the 5000mAh battery wins over the 3969mAh battery. That's a massive 25+% difference to make up for.

Good to see others are also pushing for better screens. That is one bright display on that Samsung! It's a bit annoying you can't easily compare the individual results with other devices on DisplayMate but matching and surpassing every other measured screens in 12 tests is great.