Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

Re:Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Repla... by klodolph on Monday April 02, 2018 @03:49PM (#16738569)

My memory is that the PPC -> x86 jump was due to PPC supply issues and the fact that the PowerPC 970 / G5 was too power hungry for laptops. I could be wrong, but I administered labs of mixed x86 / PPC Macs during the transition and the performance jump seemed just like the normal difference between successive generations.

Keep in mind that while you don’t see much 68k outside embedded these days, you still see POWER in supercomputer rankings, and it also appeared in game consoles.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Repla... by pvg on Monday April 02, 2018 @04:18PM (#16738874)

They were a lot faster, especially the laptops. And that was really the consumer proposition in both cases - you put up with our switch in exchange for a faster, better, stronger computer.

If Apple ends up doing it, the proposition would almost certainly be different and it seems very unlikely it would involve things like running your x86_64 macOS apps on your brand new Mac except three times slower. Thinking about this in terms of previous changes (or in terms of PPC history details) just seems obviously wrongheaded to me.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Repla... by cptskippy on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @02:30PM (#16757534)

People assume that everyone who uses a Mac is running Photoshop or developing advanced AI but they're not. There are a lot of professionals using Apple products but they avoid the low end like the plague. Apple is a lifestyle brand these days and much of the user base has no demand for anything beyond the core Apple Apps.

The Macbook Core i3 is barely enough to run Safari or iTunes and Apple could probably replace the CPU without many of those users ever noticing.

[ Parent | on HN ]