The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is working on three of its own Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. The first of these will be much faster than the processors in the iPhone and iPad, the people said.
Apple is preparing to release at least one Mac with its own chip next year, according to the people. But the initiative to develop multiple chips, codenamed Kalamata, suggests the company will transition more of its Mac lineup away from current supplier Intel Corp.
I wonder just how locked-down these ARM Macs will be. Will it be App Store-only? Can you change default applications on ARM macOS? Can you install a browser engine other than WebKit? Do you have access to the file system? Will it ship with a terminal?
I’m not so sure macOS users should be excited about ARM Macs.
Thom Holwerda,
Many of us expected this for a long time. My guess is it’s going to be a mac by name only and it’s going to have the DNA of IOS.
None of us really know, but here’s some arguments to the contrary:
* Their investment in the new (overpriced) Mac Pro shows that Apple still cares about pro customers and since the ‘trashcan’ have remembered what a Mac is supposed to be.
* There’s no point in a Mac if it has the restrictions Thom mentions. There would be an almighty backlash that would make the Mac untenable and cause major damage to their brand.
* If they ultimately want everyone to run “iOS Pro”, they would be better to leave the Mac on Intel CPUs while making bigger, faster and better iPad Pros and let people make their own decision.
The fact that they’ve sorted out their Mac line-up, made properly-pro machines again and are investing in changing architecture are all positive signs for me. Apple still “gets” the Mac. I may be wrong. I may be running Linux in 2 years time, but only time will tell.
Cymro,
I agree that they will keep selling ludicrously priced x86 mac pros and studios will continue to buy them, but apple’s goal for normal consumers (including “pros” like myself) is probably to have them migrate to the new ARM hardware with stricter restrictions. I’m with others in hoping this prediction is wrong, but I have a feeling apple is going to intentionally price it’s x86 macs out of the consumer market while simultaneously introducing affordable ARM macs that “coincidentally” have walled garden restrictions. But you’re right we’ll have to wait and see which predictions come out ahead. I’m as curious as everyone else here.
I agree with this too, but I’ll point out that letting people make their own decisions may not be what’s in apple’s best financial interests.
Hopefully owners will be able to run linux on the ARM macbooks. I’ll be disappointed, but not very surprised, if they do what microsoft did: explicitly prohibit and block owners from installing alt-os on ARM devices that originally shipped with windows.
“Ludicrously priced”?
I fail to see that. Anywhere. The Mac mini is on par with other micro desktops in that range. From HP, from Falcon, etc. All in the $700-$1200 range.
The iMac? Placed up to matched all-in-one machines is fairly on par. In that $1400-$2500 range.
The iMac Pro? A bit pricey but you’re getting the 5k display. Where do all-in-one systems at 2k and 4K line up? Add a 5k screen to your desktop and you’re much more expensive than entry to the iMac Pro.
And the new Mac Pro is exactly in line +/- $1K-$3K at each level.
Most people who say Mac is overpriced are looking at BYO. Most people /buying/ Macs are not! Line up each Apple offering tit-for-tat to other PC main brands and they are generally competitive spec to spec in pricing. Apple gives you a far more consistent OS that isn’t constantly changing without permission. Now that Microsoft dumped the superior Edge for chrome (little c) Mac offers the best browser and web interface out of the box.
Unlike Windows the majority Of the software is consistent In look and feel.
As for ARM? I was surprised when they went to x86 in the first place given the advantages in the RISC department.
However given the quality of AMD64 right now Switching to ARM on the desktop environment Would be a step backwards. I’d rather see them switch to Ryzen myself. More powerful processors than the current intel crop at a much lower cost.
That said I don’t see Apple dumping the 86 system any time soon, even if they do push a low end iMac or Mac Mini on the iXos.
lostinlodos,
How about looking at the full quote:
“I agree that they will keep selling ludicrously priced x86 mac pros”
Those other devices don’t perform as well as a high end gaming/work station. Apple often compromises performance for aesthetics and noise reduction. It’s ok for small burst loads, it’s not for heavy sustained loads. And Even if it did perform, I would personally avoid integrated computer/monitors because “simple” upgrades for things like ram become a huge pain (not even officially supported by apple), and it is much costlier to fix/replace than if you have discrete components.
I’m sure the monitor is nice, but where the hell’s the HDMI input? It’s kind of boneheaded that you can’t upgrade the imac pro, and if you do buy a more powerful computer down the line you’ll have to buy a new monitor as well. Being able to reuse working components is a huge cost saver in the long run. It just costs a lot more when you need to replace everything at the same time. To top it all off the imacpro is a downgrade from what I currently have for cheaper.
So no, imacpro and macmini are lower mid-range options, and neither is as flexible as a tower PC, which brings us to macpro…
I’ve said this in the past, macpros are competitive with enterprise kit, and in this context it looks pretty nice. If that’s what you need, great, apple’s macpro looks like enterprise quality machine. The stainless steel frame looks much nicer than mine, hands down. But if you’re just a typical professional looking for a high performance workstation to do work on, you can do much better on price, or for the same price you can get better specs. The entry level macpro has pathetic specs. Apple ought to be embarrassed! It doesn’t even have as much storage as the entry level imacpro and a significantly worse graphics card. Nobody who knows what they’re doing would buy the entry level macpro. At least you have good upgrades, but that adds thousands more on top of the already high price….So I fail to see how you fail to see my point about it being ludicrously priced!
There’s nothing wrong with using enterprise components to build a workstation, it’s just expensive. If not for price it looks like an nice machine, though still not perfect. I’ve heard the SSDs are vendor-locked to apple, which is stupid. It doesn’t come with disk mounts that you’d normally expect to be builtin (large raid arrays are still useful additions to SSD and sometimes you can use SSD as a cache for a HDD). Also the macpro only offers intel CPUs, yet AMD is more competitive for both performance and cost these days for high core CPUs.
So while I still think big studios will continue to buy macpro as a cost of doing business, I think there are people who were previously been in the macpro camp (and liked macos software as you pointed out) who are being priced out by the latest product and won’t be getting one. Realistically they don’t have much of an upgrade path with the imacpro and the entry level macpro isn’t very compelling.
We’ll have to see what happens with ARM.
Two years ago it was time for me to upgrade my work laptop.
Apple had abandoned all reason, and was introducing models with the touch-bar and terrible keyboards at the time rather than better performance.
Dell was shipping decently designed models with decent keyboards, good enough graphics chips, faster CPUs, more ram, etc. etc. for half the cost.
I switched from OS X back to a Linux desktop.
The pain was immediate. I had forgotten just how broken the Linux GUI ecosystem is. Pile on top of that the rift between Wayland / X11, and at the time, it was like you got to pick between two poorly implemented desktop solutions. Getting the freakin’ GPU to kick in when necessary / kick off when not was a trial.
The ease of how everything just works on MacOS was gone. I missed it. Badly. For several weeks.
After about 6 weeks, I’d lowered my expectations enough. I’d altered my behavior sufficiently. I wasn’t constantly stubbing my toes on sub-par UX. I just … managed to avoid the rough spots.
It’s still like that. My wife has my old MacBook Pro. When I use it from time to time I still get that feeling like I had using BeOS compared to RedHat in like 1999. The difference is subtle at first, then very striking, then you just hate the inferior one for a while, then you accept the pain.
My point here is this: If you think in 2 years Linux will be anywhere as comfortable as MacOS is day to day now, or was 5 years ago, you’re crazy. It’s been the year of the linux desktop for 20 freakin’ years, and they still haven’t hit parity.
@Alfman
“Many of us expected this for a long time. My guess is it’s going to be a mac by name only and it’s going to have the DNA of IOS.”
The DNA of IOS scares me. But from a HW perspective, My guess is that these machines will NOT have FRU parts, as in the DNA of IOS. Also, will the buyer be bound to a “rental” agreement such as Crapplecare? This would definitely slow things down for the Enterorise as in Animation Studios(Their target Commercial Usecase). In my opinion, this is nothing new. They took the SUN approach. What’s next, Paid support model? No Thank you! Oh wait.. That’s Crapplecare! LOL
@Alfman
Sorry: can’t find a way to directly reply to he reply
I completely agree that Apple is pricing out the lower end. I was just pointing out that comparing the iMac to a tower is not a just comparison.
It’s worth looking at it vs the HP EliteOne or the Dell inspiron System. My point of the quote: I fail to see overpricing in comparing like systems.
More from the development side, I’m worried about ARM. I simply don’t see the architecture being able to do what an Apple user currently does with the Mac line.
I’m hoping this is a way for them to create an entry level system.
I’ve never hidden the fact that I’d love a fully customisable Mac.
While the best option for computing in general would be for Apple to sell MacOS on the open market; it would destroy their guarded equipment marketplace. That’s a matter I believe we’d both agree on. And yes, steep is a term I’d use to describe their pricing. But many Mac users equate the Apple brand to the Win counterparts in the boutique marketplace. Not to the average tower PCs. Ludicrous is a bit extreme when properly comparing systems.
If I could install MacOS on a custom hand built system I’d be in ice cream heaven!
lostinlodos,
You guessed correctly, I do think it would be a popular option, however I highly doubt apple would ever entertain selling macos on the open market exactly for the reasons you describe.
Yeah, perhaps I’m just cheap. Perhaps the idea of ludicrous pricing is relative to how wealthy one is, haha. If I made $100k per year I suppose $6000 would be quite affordable, but for me it’s a huge chunk of disposable income that would mean sacrificing on other things. Honestly if you’re willing to spend $6000k it’s not hard to get better specs. Given my finances though, assuming I had $6000k in my pocket to spend, given the choice of a low end macpro or a high generic PC with high end CPU and dual GPUs etc, I’d personally opt for the later. I guess the conclusion should be that different people value different things for different reasons.
While I don’t pretend to be representative in any way, shape, or form, I do understand your sentiment. Macos can provide you with the unique experience you seek, but you really don’t care what hardware it runs on. If you don’t care about vanity, the desktop experience is far more important to you than the branding of the box sitting under your desk!
Well all of those questions have everything to do with the OS and not the CPU. Nothing prevents Apple producing a locked down x64 version of macOS, so I don’t understand why you think it is relevant to ARM
Because on OSAlert, Apple Bad.
Exactly.
Because when Microsoft did this with Windows RT on ARM, wasn’t it Windows store only?
Right, but that had nothing to do with it being an ARM device, but a decision MS made. My point is that Thom is conflating ARM is being more restrictive. There is no reason to assume that just from the architecture. Maybe Apple will lock down their ARM systems, but it will be a business decision.
jockm,
You’re right, but I don’t think anyone was claiming otherwise. Bill Shooter of Bul and the rest of us know that it’s a business decision and not a technical limitation.
@Alfman But Thom speculated that the ARM Macbooks would be more locked down… because they are arm. That is the point I was addressing. Bill brought up Windows RT as an example of what Thom was talking about; and I said that was a business move not an architecture move.
Thom doesn’t seem to miss an opportunity to dig at Google, Apple, etc and I was just tying to say that if ARM macOS is locked down it has nothing to do with architecture and thus his comment didn’t make a lot of sense
jockm,
Well, I’m sure Thom Holwerda also realizes what apple does or doesn’t do will come down to apple’s business decisions rather than technical ones. We’re all speculating what apple will do with ARM macs. There’s no way for any of us to know whether we’re right or not until we see what they do, however I maintain that if it is apple’s intention to start adding walled garden restrictions to macos, apple has much better optics doing it during an architectural switchover to mask the cause of incompatibilities. Apple can come out ahead if it can say the incompatibilities are due to the architectural shift rather than because they added new restrictions.
In other words, assuming that apple is in fact interested in adding walled garden restrictions to macos to follow the success of IOS, this migration to ARM is apple’s best opportunity to do so. Again, it has nothing to do with the architecture of ARM CPUs, but rather breaking the expectations of compatibility.
And regarding Bill’s point, if apple does lock down ARM, that will ALSO be “a business move not an architecture move”. Microsoft’s restrictions had absolutely nothing to do with architecture, and neither will apple’s if they decide to do it.
The reasoning is here: as all vendors will have to rerelase their product it is the best moment to force them to abide the App store restriction and this create a critical mass for it from the get go.. This way Apple solves the chicken and egg adoption problem. Even if they only intended to do that in the distant future they won’t get a better moment than this and therefore might opt for it even if it’s considered premature by the majority of their customers and analysts.
It’ll be exactly like the macOS we have now. If they wanted to make macOS locked down like iOS, they wouldn’t need to wait for a CPU architecture change to do it, they could do it right now.
They could theoretically claim they’re locking it down as a tie-in to some hardware-based system integrity check or some such, and the faithful would probably swallow it. But I agree with you (and hope and pray) that Apple won’t do that, because the open nature of macOS is pretty much its killer app as compared to iOS and one of the keys to its longevity, especially in developer circles.
What I fully expect to be even more locked down, though, is the hardware. Not only that everything will be soldered to the board, that’s already the case – but I fully expect zero support for alternative OSes. It took Apple quite a while to come up with Boot Camp back in the day, and considering the state of Windows-on-ARM there will be even less motivation to try to support that. Last I heard Linux on ARM is poorly supported on most Windows/ARM laptops. With Apple I fully expect the situation to be at least as bad, if not much worse – they might lock it down and prohibit alternative OSes completely.
As a rule, I tend to disregard any criticism I read about Apple on the Internet, not because they’re above reproach or somehow perfect, they’re very not, but because I simply don’t trust critics to be honest. Most people generate their opinions by picking the side they like better, and then making shit up against everything else. So, when someone says “Apple might lock down the Mac”, I think “I have no idea what Apple is going to do, but this person can’t be trusted, so ignore him”.
3 only months. It took three months between the release of the first Intel Mac (January 2006) and the release of Bootcamp (April 2006).
Is T2 cracked ?
It was in beta that whole time, the stable release didn’t happen until 1.5 years later with the release of Leopard in October 2007.
But they had already come up with it 3 months after the release of the first Intel Mac (and quite obviously before they even released the Intel Mac). It’s not like the beta version (which will essentially be feature complete) didn’t work.
TheRealKMan,
You’re not thinking about the implications of blocking preexisting applications that are technically compatible with the underlying CPU, mac users would be up in ARMs (no pun intended). On x86, apple has no plausible way to stop backwards compatibility without looking like the bad buy in this scenario. Regardless of what they’d say it would be self evident that they’re doing it to control users. So no, I disagree with you.
However with a new architecture apple has options! They can set new expectations and make a clean break from preexisting software. They’ll tell users that developers need to update their software to take advantage of the new mac, which is not a lie. They can turn up the PR hype on all the benefits of the new mac platform and how it makes everyone’s lives better. Meanwhile they’ll put the onus on software developers to distribute software for the new mac through the centralized app store where they can begin collecting billions in fees per year. Their PR teams can spin it as a positive for developers by framing it as an opportunity for developers to earn billions per year rather than as a new tax for the mac software industry.
If this is apple’s plan, we can expect some resistance by developers, but I think apple has a clever way to pull it off. They can keep x86 as the PRO line and charge a premium (similar to the latest $6000-$30,000 macpros) and steer normal consumers to the more affordable ARM computers and so developers are going to find an increasing number of users are on the ARM side. Although many developers recognize that centrally controlled app stores have harmed the the IOS app industry in the long run, in the short term there’s likely to be a short lived gold-rush creating large profits for those who join in first. Apple may be able to exploit short term greed to build up the new ARM mac app store.
Is this speculation? Sure, but it’s plausible and with so much future profit at stake, I do believe that apple is going to take advantage of the architecture shift to increase it’s control like it has done in IOS.
Um…. Apple has phased out backwards compatibility with x86 apps and only supports x64 now. The OS can absolutely enforce this kind of restriction on the Intel architecture
jockm,
This is not a discussion on whether apple can technically enforce restrictions on x86 architecture, it’s a matter of how apple can position themselves in order to sell it to consumers. It’s much easier for apple to change permissions on a new architecture because there are no preexisting ARM applications to break.
If my 2019 mac runs my applications and my 2021 mac doesn’t, apple needs to be able to explain why. Switching architectures x86->ARM is a reasonable explanation. x86->x86 is not. Even 32bit->64bit isn’t because both intel and amd processors are backwards compatible with 32bit. What operating systems did (including macos IIRC) is to have a transitional period to support both 32bit and 64bit at the same time.
So this goes back to my point, it’s very difficult for apple to add new restrictions on x86 without making itself look bad, but with a new ARM mac platform running new applications, they won’t have the same level of criticism over breaking things that used to work on x86 because there isn’t an expectation that x86 apps will run anyways.
I’m surprised I had to scroll down this far to find this response. You’re absolutely right and can’t understand why people aren’t following you. It’s the logical path for Apple and it wouldn’t surprise me.
Under-phil,
You know I half expected someone to say something along the lines of “I understand what you are saying, but I don’t believe apple intends to do that (because some reason)” and to be fair I am not privy what goes on at apple, we just have to wait and see. But I didn’t expect pushback on the point that it would be best for apple that any new restrictions coincide with an architecture migration. It’s absolutely clear to me that if apple wants to add owner restrictions to macos, this migration to ARM is going to be their best opportunity to do it.
It would be interesting to make predictions even further into the future and debate the reaction hypothetically if apple were to remake macos into IOS. Would it set a trend, or would it fizzle out like it did for microsoft with windowsRT? These are scenarios I contemplate now and again because I’m always concerned about who will control our technology. It worries me that people don’t sufficiently appreciate openness until it’s gone.
I’m hoping this really hits just the most lightweight Macs to begin with, as is speculated in the article, because I’m still holding out for my dream replacement laptop next year, a Magic Keyboard-equipped 14″ MacBook Pro with 11th-gen Intel CPU and Xe graphics (or equivalently powerful AMD offering).
I think Apple have confused Vertical Thinking with Vertical Integration, it seems inevitable on this path that if it ain’t Apple branded it’s out! It’s a 1960s ideology re-born!
I think at it’s peak Apple(with Jobs) were kings of lateral thinking, they gave users some many useful ways to solve a problem that it made products more useful and attractive to a wider audience. Quite the opposite of vertical integration which is the thousand drones approach.
cpcf,
IMHO macos started loosing it’s luster before Jobs left. It got stale while apple became the IOS company.
Apple’s trend to lock users into their ecosystem is progressing, and I speak as someone who just bought a new MacBook Pro.
I used Macbook Pros in my offices for the last 6 years or so, growing to love the work-horse ability of the laptops to just get stuff done. So much so that when the new i9 MacBooks came out, I got in line.
What a finicky, temperamental beast. The port change has made it almost as brittle as a Windows machine. Fan sounds like a jet engine from a trivial amount of work. Backups no longer work. All the dongles. The ridiculous and gimicky touchbar. At least I have an escape key again.
I’ve wrestled with iOS since 2010, finally becoming so frustrated at its artificial limitations and locks that I switched to programming Android. Seriously.
I’m not dumping on Apple because “Apple == bad”, I’m dumping on them because they don’t care about what’s good for users any more. The fact that it took them 5 years to fix the butterfly keyboards, and resisted fixing them for such a long time demonstrates that.
They’re going for their own chips because it’ll make them money. I expect they’ll try to lock down MacOS like they have iOS simply because they can, not because it’ll help the customer in any meaningful way.
History repeats itself.
35 years ago, Steve got kicked out of Apple. The apple went bad after that, with the sugar water salesman churning out bland and boring beige box after beige box, losing market share and making worse and worse products.
Steve came back, completely reinvented Apple, and built up a great company making great products, with fantastic designs. He built it into the biggest company in the world, and they made quality, easy-to-use products.
Then Steve passed away, and the design guru left. Now we’re in another post-Steve era. We have Dongle Hell, shit keyboards, high-end laptops that perform worse than their base-model brethren due to thermal throttling, and oh so many other issues. Apple needs it’s next Steve and Jony, and by god Tim Cook isn’t it.
The123king,
What’s wrong with “boring beige boxes”? They outsold things like imacs by a huge margin so there’s no denying the demand was there. I get that it’s not for everyone, and some people want computers to look different, but not everyone cares about surface appearances. My newest mid tower computer is in the same form factor as the computer I had 25 years ago and my next one will probably be as well. They have changed colors over the years, not that I really care. One was purple – I didn’t buy it because it was purple, I bought it because I found a good deal and didn’t care. These days it’s becoming harder to avoid the unwanted flashy RGB kit that has become associated with higher end gear….ugh. I just disable it.
Meh, I think Job’s biggest asset for apple was his reality distortion field actually. Seriously, he had a small yet extremely loyal group who loved to idolize him (and still do). But from the outside jobs’s apple mostly spewed of ego over substance. To be fair some products were nice, but they were nowhere near as exceptional as his cult following would have everyone think. His management style strongly resembles that of another extremely devicive figure: trump. He’s a one man show who doesn’t want to share the spotlight or credit with anyone else. Both trump and jobs instill a “them versus us” mentality. I’m not enamored by steve jobs or others like him and it’s beyond me why some people go absolutely nuts for grandiose self-promoters and buy into their almost religious infallibility. I’ll tell you who I do admire though: Wozniak. He wasn’t pretentious, he wasn’t a showman, he didn’t have to boast or exaggerate his work to earn the respect of peers. IMHO Wozniak sets a better example of what people should strive for. But whether I like it or not, I have to concede that people like that don’t tend to win popularity contests.
I disagree about Jony Ive. I feel he’d gone from being their biggest asset to their biggest problem. By the end all he could offer was ‘thinner’, ‘lighter’. That led to the MacBooks’ butterfly keyboard and heat problems. The user-hostile removal of the headphone jack also happened in his time. When Apple tried to show design flair, we got the bin-shaped Mac Pro.
With Ive gone, Apple have started excellent MacBooks again, iPhones with decent battery life, a proper Mac Pro (at a stupid price sadly…), new Mac Minis with lots of ports and so on. And some of these products were allowed to be a millimetre thicker than the old ones – shock!
2 or 3 years ago, I was tearing my hair out at what had become of the Mac line-up but it’s light years ahead of where it was.
This could be a good move for ARM laptops and desktops.
Surprisingly, a lot of Apple’s Macs are actually bootcamped and run windows 10. I don’t think Apple is going to be too quick to remove the Windows compatibility from their laptop range, given that more sales = more profit. A solid, high quality ARM laptop, with full Windows 10 support could be a blessing for ARM.
Apple also have quite a lot of might when it comes to changing the status quo. After all, it was the company that first axed the floppy disk, and one of the first to give us machines with only USB3 ports (yaaay… /s). It isn’t inconceivable that an ARM Mac might be significant enough to warrant more investment into the ARM ecosystem by other manufacturers.
Microsoft will be over the moon with this too, as an ARM Macbook compatible with Windows would give them significant in-roads into the ARM laptop market. I don’t think Apple will be to against this idea either, given that the Mac product line makes money mostly through hardware sales, and a significant portion of Mac sales end up being turned into Windows machines anyway.
I wonder if it will have an x86 coprocessor for backwards compatibility…
Dream on. The main reason to run Bootcamp is games, and these laptops at least initially won’t be high-powered enough for that to be a significant consideration. Most people these days buy Macs not only for the hardware but also because macOS is a lot less hassle than Windows. The last time I saw someone running Windows as their primary OS on a Mac was about 10 years ago. There are bound to be plenty of bellyachers but real demand will not be especially high IMHO, and the complaining will die down fast enough. Microsoft will actually be fine with the decision, because at this point in history they want to sell their own hardware and they prefer to push touchscreens, which I’m guessing the new Macs still won’t have.
Not only that, but the technical hurdles of getting all of Apple’s custom hardware working on Windows – it’s an undertaking potentially equivalent to the initial Bootcamp release.
Finally, I think Apple will be all too happy to use the excuse to drop Bootcamp support – a resource sink that ultimately helps users be less tied into Apple’s ecosystem and more tied into Microsoft’s.
(I won’t even go into arguing about that x86 co-processor idea… You do realize the whole point of ARM is to be more compact and energy efficient right?)
Your reply is just bunch of anecdotal stuff that you think applies to everyone. My anecdotal evidence paints a very different picture
Fair enough. But I still stand by the argument that the technical hurdles are not to be underestimated.
Moochman,
I used linux on a mac about 4 years ago, does that count?
I agree, bootcamp for ARM doesn’t make as much sense for apple to implement because windows just doesn’t have a large software ecosystem on ARM. However it would be nice to be able to run linux,
I guess you’re talking about windows specifically. But on x86 it’s possible to install other operating systems even though apple/bootcamp doesn’t support them. In the same way I’m pretty confident that people will try and succeed in getting linux to run on apple’s ARM PCs without apple’s help. But this assumes that apple doesn’t intentionally lock them out – hardware restrictions would put a damper on owner’s ability to dual boot linux.
At that point I’d say the “owner” ceases to be the end user and become Apple themselves. If I am prohibited from installing anything but Apple-sanctioned OSes, I don’t actually own the device.
I hold this opinion for other companies too, of course. Android phone OEMs who don’t allow the bootloader to be unlocked even on a carrier-unlocked device have permanent places on my naughty list.
Morgan,
Sad face because, well this is 1984 coming to life. Technology is shifting from serving us to controlling us.
I can’t wait for the “thinnest ever!” MacBook that’s just two iPads stuck together with a $500 hinge.
Galaxy Book S is thinner than the thinnest Macbook.
It is faster, doesn’t overheat and has twice the battery life.
I can’t wait for ARM Macbook. Or even better – for ARM MacMini.
They could call it an Apple Pi.
tidux,
That’s funny.
How about Apple Slice?
Speaking as a game developer, I suspect compiling code on an ARM cpu is going to be pretty slow.
I’m not sure how good the A14 chip will be, but (on any other ARM) compiling something like the UE4 engine’s source is probably going to be a full day’s task (compared to my 7 years old i7 that takes 1.5 hours to complete)
What are you talking about?
Check GB5 compilation subtest
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1896122?baseline=1916311
Clang:
1251 9.75 Klines/sec – i9-9900 @ 5Ghz
1406 11.0 Klines/sec – iPhone 11 Pro @2.66Ghz
A13 can overtake Intel in a lot of subtests where memory parallelism matter (html/raytracing/nav)
Laptop ARM CPUs are said to be much faster than smartphone versions.
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!
viton,
Since I misread it the first time, I’ll point out those geekbench scores you linked to is from the i9-9900 with a base frequency of 3.10ghz/5.00ghz boost and not the i9-9900k with 3.60ghz base/5.00ghz boost or the i9-9900ks with 4.00ghz base/5.00ghz boost.
Also, this is entirely on geekbench, but they omitted the DDR4 ram speed that was used, which changes the scores completely. If you spot check recently submitted geekbench scores you see that there’s (unsurprisingly) an extremely high correlation between ram speed and benchmark score,
For example:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1907134
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1909709
We see 20-50% difference in scores using the same CPU depending on the ram you use. This highlights why it’s so crucial that the ram speed be listed. As illustrated above, it’s almost meaningless to use geekbench scores to compare CPU performance if you ignore RAM speed.
And of course the scores from your link:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1896122?baseline=1916311
I’d agree the iphone score is competitive for the single threaded tests,but it falls far behind for the multithreaded tests. In terms of compilation speed for a large project compiling in parallel, the geekbech scores suggest the i9-9900k using 2300mhz ram should be much faster than the iphone 11 pro. A 1.5hour build would turn into 5.1hours on the iphone 11 pro. To be fair the iphone has 2 fewer cores, but even if we extrapolate how the iphone might perform with 2 additional cores, we still get a 3.8hour build. This is assuming neither CPU thermal throttles during a long build operation (I would expect the iphone to throttle because it doesn’t have cooling like a PC).
The numbers you quoted for single threaded compilation don’t paint a full picture and geekbench’s omission of memory speed is quite problematic.
All that said though, I do think the iphone’s CPU is impressive especially considering it is running on a mobile device.
this is entirely on geekbench, but they omitted the DDR4 ram speed that was used, which changes the scores completely.
I don’t know how they read memory config but it just plain wrong.
Anyway RAM speed is irrelevant for GB scenario.
The CPU itself works in boost mode, they do pauses to keep it cool.
We see 20-50% difference in scores using the same CPU depending on the ram you use.
It is not the same CPU. The second result is an OVERCLOCKED cpu..
To read actual frequency, just add .gb5 (or .gb4) to the URL.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1907134.gb5
4600 MHz
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1909709.gb5
5200 MHZ
That’s all.
To be fair the iphone has 2 fewer cores
No, iPhone has 2 fast cores, vs 8 cores on i9-9900.
4 low-perf cores are not even as fast as 1 high-perf.
viton,
I can’t really speak to the accuracy of their data, but regardless memory speed likely explains part of the known variance in scores for the same CPU.
You say that, but you haven’t convinced me. We cannot make strong conclusions about the performance of a single component like a CPU when there are other variables that are shown to effect the score as well.
Put it this way, say we measure the latency time it takes for a mouse click to produce an on screen reaction between two different computers. Using high speed video analysis we compute a latency for both computers, the first measures in at 15ms and the second measures 12ms latency (fictitious numbers). Now you want to make an assertion that the GPU for the second computer is faster than the first, but the data doesn’t actually prove that since the measurement is a composite measurement of all the components used (ie mouse, mainboard, GPU, OS, CPU, monitor etc). So what would we have to do to isolate the GPU so that the score did in fact represent only the differences in GPUs? We would need to eliminate the other components as factors by using the same mouse/mainboard/OS/CPU/monitor/etc or otherwise factoring in their variance such that the GPU is the only remaining variable. Then and only then does the score represent GPU performance by itself. The main point to take away is that we cannot ignore the different components and then use the score to make assertions about the performance of a single component.
Does geekbench do pauses? It did not do pauses on my computer, but maybe it does it on the iphone? I don’t know, but assuming it does (ie to counteract thermal throttling on mobile devices), then the resulting score is biased; you don’t normally get to stop the clock and cool down in production workloads. I did not find any information about geekbench pausing and IMHO it would be sneaky if they do.
By “pause” did you mean CPU throttling itself? Yes, it might do that, but if you’re trying to predict how well the CPU will work under a sustained load then you actually want the CPU to heat up as much as it would under a real workload to replicate real working conditions.
Ah you’re right. Damn it geekbench should have reported this info up front! Anyways, that’s a cool tip, thank you! Here’s another one that’s not overclocked and shows variance for the same CPU.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1962661
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/apple-a13-bionic-3936887
This probably explains why it did so well in single core tests and so poorly in multicore tests.