News Apple confirms switch to Arm-based architecture

This is the beginning of the end for Apple.

 

the vast majority of users will probably never notice as the ecosystem is mostly app driven, where people would care is in the markets apple abandoned years ago (professional non art related type things like engineering and server stuff)

 

On second thoughts, you're right. They're experts in it now.

 

Will the switch remove the existing flock from the Cult of Apple?
No.

However the marketshare of MacOS will be in the single digits just like that of OS X due to most 3rd party software still being unavailable on Macs.

 

I guess one concern would be if the remaining holdouts of 'Mac-only creative apps' will look at the choice between porting their software from OSX-on-x86 to OSX-on-ARM, or to Windows-on-x86, and decide "well, Windows has the larger market share so we'll go with that instead".

 

Honestly, I'm glad this is happening.
Not because I think it is the right business move, or because I am affected in any way(the only Apple product I own is a 68K-based laptop). But it means Apple isn't just making overpriced IBM clones anymore. They are making their own personal computer architecture again.

 

Which is probably why they are doing it, then they can reduce costs and maximize profits.

 

The different type of people who buy macs:

- Those who want a laptop to do standard ms office & web based stuff
- Those who have owned a couple of terribly underpowered PCs full of bloatware, crashing drivers and gawd-awful track pads
- Those who need a Mac for Mac specific software (EG they are a developer who targets iPhones)
- Those who don't want to run a hackintosh for their MacOS specific needs
- Those who are after a premium experience (In their opinion) and they get drawn to the biggest player in the room
- Those who have had an iPhone for years and feel locked into the ecosystem so tightly they even buy an Apple laptop.

I don't think there's many people around who are into the 'cult of apple'. I rock a google Pixel as my phone, a Ryzen built workstation / VR workhorse as a desktop but my go-to machine is my 2012 MacBook pro as it's still a great machine (Quad core i7@3.4Ghz), it works just fine and runs everything I need. All three play nice together so that's not an issue.

If it was to die, I'd buy a PC laptop as I don't need to run Xcode these days. Microsoft have come a long way from crappy trackpads, poor battery life and OEM installed bloatware.

 

Microsoft has nothing to do with preinstalled bloatware or crappy trackpads

 

No but they do have lovely pre-installed spyware and tracking for you instead.

 

I know about ARM and its architecture for all sorts of low power systems, phones, tablets etc; but is there a ready to go and sufficiently powerful X86 replacement chip system?
I wasn't aware of any ARM setups with that much grunt.

 

Nope, nothing powerful enough out of the box.

But the ARM license does allow them to modify the design (like for example get around the power / thermal constraints of the mobile designs, raise clocks etc).
Of course Apple like everyone who isn't Intel is bound by whatever TSMC is capable of manufacturing, so there are still plenty of hard limits.

 

Thanks GH, you have quoted 2 sufficiently convincing use cases there, I'll believe you

“Arm processors have emerged as an exciting and mainstream alternative to x86 processors for a wide variety of existing and emerging workloads,” said David Brown, VP of Amazon EC2

'nuff said I guess, unless mainstream Mac computing is that different to Cloud computing.

 

I think a lot of that is overblown, and to be fair if you look at what apple has bundled in OSX its 5 pages of just crapware as well but its not as in your face crapware

my response was to the history, if one is going to compare a 2012 macbook its fair to compare that to 2012 microsoft, which afaik wasnt making pc hardware at that time and windows 7 was a pretty clean install off the disk (this all changes with windows 8 and no one complained until 10)

 

ok