Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops

Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by endorphone on Friday August 17, 2018 @10:47AM (#17783196)

Apple's software and hardware teams are absolute monsters compared to when they made the transition from PowerPC to x86. The toolset and maturity for cross-platform compilation is dramatically more advanced and mature. They could absolutely do this, and it seems eminently likely that they will in the near future.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by matwood on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:51AM (#17783677)

I would also bet the already have full macOS running on ARM internally. I think we are seeing the proof of this in the new libraries being released to support the iOS like apps (News and Stocks) on the Mojave.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by mavhc on Friday August 17, 2018 @05:54PM (#17785753)

Why do you think they rewrote from scratch all the applications they acquired from 3rd parties like Final Cut, Logic?

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by burnte on Friday August 17, 2018 @07:39PM (#17786112)

You don't need to rewrite them from scratch. They've had those companies for years and it's a good bet that they've done work to make it more portable. It was already available back when Macs were using PPC, so the code is obviously somewhat portable.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by mavhc on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:33AM (#17787862)

Perhaps they didn't need to, but they did anyway

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by pducks32 on Friday August 17, 2018 @12:37PM (#17784061)

When they transitioned to Intel they even said they had internal Macs running on Intel for years waiting for this day.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by gsnedders on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:47PM (#17784919)

AFAIK, they essentially "just" maintained the x86 port of NeXTSTEP throughout the entire migration from NeXTSTEP to Mac OS X.

I wouldn't be amazed if they supported big-endian PPC still for the sake of maintaining portability, though I feel that's less likely than little-endian ARM.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by stiGGG on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:19PM (#17784722)

Did somebody here get one of these back in the days? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-development-trans...

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by thought_alarm on Friday August 17, 2018 @12:26PM (#17783950)

AppKit is now very old, and maintaining backward compatibility through annual release cycles is extremely complicated and challenging. And that complexity doubles when you add a new platform in the mix.

Porting AppKit to ARM is easy. It's another thing entirely to commit to supporting parallel versions of AppKit for the next 8+ years.

It would be a colossal waste of Apple's software engineering resources, which many people believe are already stretched too thin. And for what, a little better battery life? It's just not realistic.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by endorphone on Friday August 17, 2018 @01:47PM (#17784533)

And for what, a little better battery life? It's just not realistic.

Having entire vertical control, with the flexibility and profitability that entails. Apple is paying hundreds to thousands per processor to Intel, and worse (for Apple) they are beholden to Intel for their product map. This is the antithesis of what Apple is about.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by mixmastamyk on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:58AM (#17783719)

Perhaps, but these are the same folks (for political reasons) who can no longer build a workstation tower or laptop for "professionals." If it wasn't for the iPhone rocketship business they'd be dead.

Imagine if Dell didn't have a competitive workstation/pro laptop in the lineup for five years.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by nutjob2 on Friday August 17, 2018 @12:32PM (#17784005)

You've got it the wrong way around. Apple is neglecting their Mac line becuase it's paltry compared to their phone business. It's just as much, if not more, work with a fraction of the profits. They would be negligent to do otherwise.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by mixmastamyk on Friday August 17, 2018 @12:36PM (#17784050)

Wouldn't be very smart reasoning on their part, but let's assume true. Supports the up-thread assertion that they are not able to do it for political reasons however.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by nutjob2 on Friday August 17, 2018 @01:43PM (#17784505)

So given two jobs, you'll focus on the one that pays you the least per hour? Apple isn't just being smart, it has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns.

I'm not sure what you mean by "political reasons" but it does still make billions from Macs, and the Macs contribute in indirect ways to the phones and the overall brand. Maybe that's what you mean.

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Re:Arm Announces Client CPU Roadmap For Laptops by mixmastamyk on Friday August 17, 2018 @04:01PM (#17785292)

Does Apple have three employees? Of course not, so please stop with the false dichotomy.

Either support a product fully or end it, one of Jobs’ most important lessons.

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