Apple is an existential threat to the PC

[Deleted member 13524]

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

Newer ones are pretty much out-of-the-way, though. On my S10+ I can even fully disable bixby and repurpose the bixby button into e.g. dedicated camera button.

I wouldn't buy a S20 due to them killing off the audio jack, though.

 

[iMacmatician]

Bloomberg now expects Apple to announce an ARM Mac transition as early as WWDC 2020 later this month.

The new processors will be based on the same technology used in Apple-designed iPhone and iPad chips. However, future Macs will still run the macOS operating system rather than the iOS software on mobile devices from the company.

the company plans to eventually transition the entire Mac lineup to its Arm-based processors, including the priciest desktop computers

Apple’s chip-development group, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel’s annual chip performance gains slowed. Apple engineers worried that sticking to Intel’s road map would delay or derail some future Macs, according to people familiar with the effort.

Inside Apple, tests of new Macs with the Arm-based chips have shown sizable improvements over Intel-powered versions, specifically in graphics performance and apps using artificial intelligence, the people said. Apple’s processors are also more power-efficient than Intel’s, which may mean thinner and lighter Mac laptops in the future.

In addition to the main central processing unit, there will be a graphics processing unit and a Neural Engine for handling machine learning

 

[Laurent06]

This somewhat comes with a date this time: next WWDC, end of this month. So we won't have long to wait and know whether that's true

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Bloomberg now expects Apple to announce an ARM Mac transition as early as WWDC 2020 later this month.

That would be so suddenly out of the blue. We've all known the transition to ARM was coming at some point, with various theories about rollout across the Mac lineup.

As the owner of a fresh 2020 iPad Pro 12.9", the performance on it is utterly insane so I have no qualms about running an ARM-powered Mac. My iPad Pro already benchmarks better than my 2020 non-butterfly Air and my 2017 4Ghz i7 iMac. But I am anxious about the transition to ARM and Apple's support for Windows under Bootcamp as I still use Bootcamp/Windows for some games.

Apple could easily offer an x86 compatibility layer and I expect this for future macOS on ARM (just as Apple did for 680x0 and PowerPC transitions), but I just don't know if it's a big enough thing for Apple to support in Bootcamp. If Bootcamp us deprecated for ARM Macs, the question becomes, do I want refresh my desktop with an iMac/iMac Pro with the latest 80x86 for a few Windows games. Hmmm.. I'm not sure I do.

 

[pascal]

...

I thought Valve had a chance to do this for gaming, but I doubted they would ever fully commit ... and they didn't and they're giving up now. But still, if there is to be a future for the PC the time to act is now. Ubuntu despite how it flounders is probably the best bet for an independent party creating something similar to Chromebooks, but without the datamining and without turning it into a completely closed garden. Their present certification and QA program is a joke compared to Chromebooks though ... they need a lot of work and a lot of money to create something which Just Werks on the same level.

It is time for innovation!
My guess the future is Linux-like improved and with better QA.

Intel has to make a bold move.
Maybe something like a New architecture, cleaning some old stuff and making it faster.
Move some old things to exception handling or software emulation.
Better support to virtualization and security are importante too.

Nvidia is going well but could be better.
Maybe try some small and fast GPUs with low TDP and high power.
Something like RTX 2060 using TSMC 7nm process.
Max-Q was a good idea but earlier access to new fab process is important.

But what if Nvidia decide to be truly bold?
I have a few ideas...

 

[MfA]

NVIDIA would have limited benefit from pushing open standard PCs with an open source OS, also being a hardware manufacturer would predispose competition against it.

 

[JoeJ]

Apple could easily offer an x86 compatibility layer and I expect this for future macOS on ARM

But they didn't with the transitions from Motorola -> PowerPC -> Intel. Doubt they would this time.

I always hoped ARM would replace x86 at some time. Doing some ARM assembly optimizations felt so modern and convenient.
So if this shows to work, i expect this to happen on Windows / Linux too finally. Changing architecture once in a century should be acceptable although it causes lots of short timed issues.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But they didn't with the transitions from Motorola -> PowerPC -> Intel. Doubt they would this time.

They did both times. A 12" PowerBook G4 was my first Mac so I experienced the PowerPC/Intel transition and it was painless.

 

[Pressure]

Rosetta worked fine as I recall the transition from PowerPC to Intel.

 

[MfA]

I expect warnings on startup if something is running emulated and emulated programs getting second rank treatment in the app store as well. Once they transition, the update on current software will be fast.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I expect warnings on startup if something is running emulated and emulated programs getting second rank treatment in the app store as well. Once they transition, the update on current software will be fast.

I recall during the Intel transition that Activity Monitor (and System Report) both showed the CPU architecture (PowerPC or Intel) and similarly when Apple were deprecating 32-bit apps running up to Catalina, both showed 32-bit/64-bit app builds as well - and you can sort those to find them all quickly.

Along with occasional reminder upon running apps that they are 'not optimised' or would stop working in future. It will be interested if apps go the fat binary (Universal app in Apple parlance) route for a period or if they'll emulate or re-compile code in realtime (or offline as part of the App Store).

They now have a lot of options.

 

[PSman1700]

So how fast is the newest A13 soc compared to the snapdragon 865/exynos 990? My s20 is faster then my sisters 11 pro in day to day use, even games seem to perform better on the samsung.

 

[Laurent06]

So how fast is the newest A13 soc compared to the snapdragon 865/exynos 990? My s20 is faster then my sisters 11 pro in day to day use, even games seem to perform better on the samsung.

Perception of speed depends on many factors beyond pure performance of CPU

For CPU performance, AnandTech runs SPECCPU 2006 on latest smartphones.

On that benchmark A13 is about 50% faster than S865 for integer, and about 30% faster on floating-point.

Also note how A13 is close to AMD 3950X and Intel 9900K.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1560...xynos-snapdragon-review-megalomania-devices/6

​

 

[JoeJ]

They did both times. A 12" PowerBook G4 was my first Mac so I experienced the PowerPC/Intel transition and it was painless.

Maybe i remember it wrong, but for us it did not really work and had to update all software both times.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Maybe i remember it wrong, but for us it did not really work and had to update all software both times.

Could be. For the PowerPC/Intel transition, there was a transparent layer called Rosetta that ran PowerPC code seamlessly. I wasn't around for 680x0/PowerPC transition. I went C64 to Amiga to Windows 98/2K to Mac.

 

[iMacmatician]

Apple has announced that the WWDC 2020 keynote will take place on June 22 at 10 AM PDT.

 

[pcchen]

But they didn't with the transitions from Motorola -> PowerPC -> Intel. Doubt they would this time.

I always hoped ARM would replace x86 at some time. Doing some ARM assembly optimizations felt so modern and convenient.
So if this shows to work, i expect this to happen on Windows / Linux too finally. Changing architecture once in a century should be acceptable although it causes lots of short timed issues.

When I was in college we often joked about something like "can you imagine x86 still be there 20 years later?" At that time, there are many interesting ISA around, such as MIPS, PowerPC, PA-RISC, SPARC, and Alpha.
It's 20 years later now and x86 (although a much updated version) is still the dominant architecture, and most of the competing architectures are already gone. Interestingly, ARM was seen as an architecture mainly for embedded systems, like a glorified micro-controller. Yet it's now the most likely candidate to replace x86, in both consumer and server space.
To be fair, x86-64 is a lot cleaner than x86 (the 32 bits version is also a lot cleaner than the original 8086 architecture). ARM is quite the same story, too. AArch64 is much more cleaner than the original ARM architecture.

 

[pascal]

But I think that the x86 32 bits and the original 8086 code still run in the new chips.
Windows 10 doing nothing use 3.7 GB of memory!
I think Xubuntu 20.04 LTS use only 350MB.

Sincerelly we need a full hardware and software cleanup and optimization.

 

[pascal]

NVIDIA would have limited benefit from pushing open standard PCs with an open source OS, also being a hardware manufacturer would predispose competition against it.

A mix of proprietary and open standards may work.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

Maybe a bit OT, but Intel just released its answer to ARM/RISC processors.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1584...fications-64-execution-units-up-to-30-ghz-7-w