Tim Cook admits Apple may further converge iOS & OS X, Macs could run on ARM CPUs

Tim Cook admits Apple may further converge iOS & OS X, Macs could run on ARM CPUs

While he didn't hint at any definitive future plans, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook did admit that all options are on the table for the future of the Mac operating system, including further converging iOS and OS X, as well as potentially running Macs on ARM processors like are found in the iPhone and iPad, or switching iOS to Intel.

Click to expand...

Read more

iOS won't come to Intel - that's just plain daft unless they're putting it on computers. OS X on ARM? I would have said no previous to WOA but now, who knows. Unlike MS however, Apple has a compelling mobile platform and doesn't have to apply one OS to two very different markets.

I will not buy a Mac with an ARM CPU. Full stop.

robduckyworth said:

I will not buy a Mac with an ARM CPU. Full stop.

Click to expand...

Agreed completely. Same here.

A close friend of mine just offered me a brand new i7 PC and the display of my choice for my iMac and Macbook. Dennis Tosses coin!

robduckyworth said:

I will not buy a Mac with an ARM CPU. Full stop.

Click to expand...

That's like saying "640KB is all the memory anyone could ever need!". ARM will be competitive with x86 in terms of processing power and performance per watt sometime within the next few years. I also firmly believe that x86 will hit a brick wall at some point. I wouldn't be too quick to categorically dismiss ARM as a mainstream CPU.

I'm a bit apprehensive of having my desktop Unix running a phone interface on ARM. ARM doesn't yet pull like x86, which doesn't pull like PPC. I see this as a possible step backwards as we move everything back to a dumb terminal architecture as we had in the 1990's and earlier.

XJ-linux said:

I see this as a possible step backwards as we move everything back to a dumb terminal architecture as we had in the 1990's and earlier.

Click to expand...

Well, the industry over all will be moving to a lighter, and thinner, client based mode. Lets face it, the vast majority of users ONLY consume tings, they aren't producers. So for the vast majority of the users out there, an iPad is getting close to what they actually need day to day.

robduckyworth said:

I will not buy a Mac with an ARM CPU. Full stop.

Click to expand...

Why not ?

As soon as ARM reaches the computing power on an Intel, then what is the difference ?

I can understand people getting concerned with changes in the OS foundation, but hardware .... that's the hidden stuff that shifts bits around in the background.
I don't really care if that is done by a blue , green or yellow chip.

Cheers ... McBie

Dysfunction said:

Well, the industry over all will be moving to a lighter, and thinner, client based mode. Lets face it, the vast majority of users ONLY consume tings, they aren't producers. So for the vast majority of the users out there, an iPad is getting close to what they actually need day to day.

Click to expand...

True. Remember when Apple was the choice for producers doing heavy lifting like video, images and audio? I wonder how all that will fare on ARM and iOS. Maybe very well, who knows?

In my opinion, it's way too early to start claiming whether or not you will support the movement of Apple Macs to ARM setups. ARM processing is relatively new in the tech world. I don't doubt one bit that we could one day see them outperforming the average computer.I've also been reading on how next gen computers will be highly dependent on multi-micro cores as opposed to a couple larger processors. As long as graphics power can be maintained and/or increased, I won't start the early hating on ARM's potential of coming to any next gen Mac.

cwa107 said:

That's like saying "640KB is all the memory anyone could ever need!". ARM will be competitive with x86 in terms of processing power and performance per watt sometime within the next few years. I also firmly believe that x86 will hit a brick wall at some point. I wouldn't be too quick to categorically dismiss ARM as a mainstream CPU.

Click to expand...

Unless they surpass Intel in speed, power consumption and price, which I doubt we will see. I think ARM are still a long way off yet. X86 is years ahead, and i think the trend will continue to increase. We wont see a brick wall till rendering, video encoding, file transfers and compressions all take less than a second to complete - which is still gonna be a while yet. Thats what I do most with a computer - and ARM just cant hold its own weight in that department yet.

That being said, i would LOVE to run OSX on a phone. Im all for the control of an x86 OS in a mobile ARM based platform. That would be a fantastic move.

robduckyworth said:

Unless they surpass Intel in speed, power consumption and price, which I doubt we will see. I think ARM are still a long way off yet. X86 is years ahead, and i think the trend will continue to increase. We wont see a brick wall till rendering, video encoding, file transfers and compressions all take less than a second to complete - which is still gonna be a while yet. Thats what I do most with a computer - and ARM just cant hold its own weight in that department yet.

Click to expand...

Not yet, but it's coming.

Right now, you're seeing Intel trying to scale down to match ARM for performance-per-watt, while ARM is scaling up. Looking back over the course of the last 5 years, ARM has been growing in performance exponentially, while Intel has been relatively stagnant.

Intel pretty much hit a brick wall already with clock speed and thermal issues, so they have branched out to multiprocessing. I suspect they will continue to tweak and refine CPUs, but they're not making the kind of broad leaps that ARM is.

It's only a matter of time before ARM has a competitive desktop-class CPU.

iggibar said:

ARM processing is relatively new in the tech world. I don't doubt one bit that we could one day see them outperforming the average computer.

Click to expand...

If anything is going to make this possible, it will be WOA (Windows on ARM). If Microsoft can push WOA onto multiple devices and make ARM machines a reality for everyday computing, it's possible that ARM can situate itself as a legitimate competitor to x86. Unfortunately, unlike x86, every ARM developer does things slightly differently. The success of ARM depends on Microsoft's success at building a compelling and consistent ARM ecosystem. If they don't, and ARM remains fractured, it will be hard to gain ground against the x86 ecosystem. A good read here is this Ars Technica article.

cwa107 said:

Right now, you're seeing Intel trying to scale down to match ARM for performance-per-watt, while ARM is scaling up. Looking back over the course of the last 5 years, ARM has been growing in performance exponentially, while Intel has been relatively stagnant.

Click to expand...

I read an article recently arguing much the same thing - Intel has learned that using less power can have great benefits for performance. However, like I alluded to above, ARM is only going to succeed if manufacturers adopt consistent standards. As I understand it, the ARM ecosystem is like the Linux one - they all have the same basic principles but they're all different enough to cause problems. This would be why MS is so adamant about standards for the licensing of WOA to manufacturers.

vansmith said:

I read an article recently arguing much the same thing - Intel has learned that using less power can have great benefits for performance. However, like I alluded to above, ARM is only going to succeed if manufacturers adopt consistent standards. As I understand it, the ARM ecosystem is like the Linux one - they all have the same basic principles but they're all different enough to cause problems. This would be why MS is so adamant about standards for the licensing of WOA to manufacturers.

Click to expand...

In this case, that parallel development of the same underlying core has greatly benefited the platform. Although this is somewhat of a weakness for Linux, in that case, the user is presented with overwhelming variety. It's a little different in terms of CPUs, since they're fairly transparent to the ordinary user.

There's a lot of big guns working on ARM, including Apple. This is going to be an interesting race to watch.

One thing that will determine the ARM’s success is how businesses will incorporate it. Most businesses slowly replace the oldest hardware with new hardware, in an on going , never ending trickle style upgrades.
The software used on an x86 will also have to run on the ARM. If the ARM can utilize an x86 emulator, that will help somewhat, but that starts to get murky when you have streaming applications, Citrix environments, VM ware, etc.
I guess my questions for the future of it all, is how well will it play with the older x86 environment? The ARM may be relegated to laptop, tablets and other mobile devices for quite some time.

Soylentgreen said:

One thing that will determine the ARM’s success is how businesses will incorporate it. Most businesses slowly replace the oldest hardware with new hardware, in an on going , never ending trickle style upgrades.
The software used on an x86 will also have to run on the ARM. If the ARM can utilize an x86 emulator, that will help somewhat, but that starts to get murky when you have streaming applications, Citrix environments, VM ware, etc.
I guess my questions for the future of it all, is how well will it play with the older x86 environment? The ARM may be relegated to laptop, tablets and other mobile devices for quite some time.

Click to expand...

That is the $64K question

But with Apple's track record of breaking bonds with backwards compatibility, it would not surprise me in the least to see them abandon x86 at some point. They did it with 68K and again with the PPC. If Apple feels at some point as though they can in-source CPU design across platforms and take advantage of synergies with iOS and their mobile devices, I could see them making a jump before the rest of the industry.

That's not to say that x86 is going anywhere, anytime soon in the WinTel world.

cwa107 said:

In this case, that parallel development of the same underlying core has greatly benefited the platform. Although this is somewhat of a weakness for Linux, in that case, the user is presented with overwhelming variety. It's a little different in terms of CPUs, since they're fairly transparent to the ordinary user.

There's a lot of big guns working on ARM, including Apple. This is going to be an interesting race to watch.

Click to expand...

What's interesting here (not to belabour the Linux comparison) is that Linux has huge levels of corporate support as well.

From where I sit, the reason ARM has succeeded relative to Linux is due to Google's (Android) and Microsoft's (WOA) insistence on consistency in platform hardware. As I understand it, Android and WOA only support a specific subset of all ARM hardware which helps to pare down the potentially crippling diverse hardware implementations.

Soylentgreen said:

The software used on an x86 will also have to run on the ARM. If the ARM can utilize an x86 emulator, that will help somewhat, but that starts to get murky when you have streaming applications, Citrix environments, VM ware, etc.
I guess my questions for the future of it all, is how well will it play with the older x86 environment? The ARM may be relegated to laptop, tablets and other mobile devices for quite some time.

Click to expand...

It's not going to end up that way though with WOA at least. To quote Ars Technica:

But though it looks the same as the traditional desktop, it has one major difference: it won't run any old application. Microsoft has long said that WOA will not include an x86 emulator, so legacy applications would never run directly on the platform, but there was always the possibility that existing desktop applications could be recompiled. That option is now unambiguously eliminated, with Microsoft saying "WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps." Office is a special, unique case. All third-party applications for WOA will be Metro applications delivered via the Windows Store, and must meet the restrictions imposed on those applications.

Click to expand...

WOA's success will depend entirely on a new ecosystem of applications so you can bet that corporate environments will either adopt new ARM versions of applications or just won't buy into it.

vansmith said:

What's interesting here (not to belabour the Linux comparison) is that Linux has huge levels of corporate support as well.

From where I sit, the reason ARM has succeeded relative to Linux is due to Google's (Android) and Microsoft's (WOA) insistence on consistency in platform hardware. As I understand it, Android and WOA only support a specific subset of all ARM hardware which helps to pare down the potentially crippling diversity.

It's not going to end up that way though with WOA at least. To quote Ars Technica:WOA's success will depend entirely on a new ecosystem of applications so you can bet that corporate environments will either adopt new ARM versions of applications or just won't buy into it.

Click to expand...

And that, I think, may be the reason that Windows 8 tablets are essentially going to be DOA.

Think of it from the ordinary consumer's standpoint....

Windows 8 comes to the market. It's flashy, you can get it in a variety of form factors, and they all run Windows! So, in my mind, that means that not only can I buy a Windows 8 tablet and run these cool new touch-enabled apps, but hey, I can run my old Windows apps too! Hey wait.... what's that you say? So, it's Windows 8 and it looks just like what I see on my PC, but I can only run some apps and not others? Well, what the heck is the point?

Don't underestimate the power of consumer confusion. It can (and will) sink a product if there are too many gotchas.

Absolutely. Unless Microsoft is somehow able to articulate with perfect clarity the implications for using WOA, they're going to hit a lot of roadblocks. The reasoning is simple - 90% of consumers don't care what's under the hood. If MS can't make the movement between the two seamless, WOA's going to have difficulty gaining traction. I do think however that this problem is obviated somewhat by the use of the Windows Store on both the ARM and x86 version. However, the ability to use any application on x86 versions makes ARM versions a difficult choice to justify unless the price is right. The fact that Office will be preinstalled with WOA might help though (source).

All that said, it doesn't really seem like MS knows how it's going to inform end-users of the differences (here):

The company said that it will in some way make it very clear to consumers that Windows on ARM is not identical to the x86/x64 version, to avoid the possibility of confused users trying to use x86 software on ARM machines. It stopped short of explaining how it would do this.

Click to expand...

That's not to mention the, in some cases, drastic relearning required for UI interaction (once again, I refer to an Ars article).

vansmith said:

Absolutely. Unless Microsoft is somehow able to articulate with perfect clarity the implications for using WOA, they're going to hit a lot of roadblocks. The reasoning is simple - 90% of consumers don't care what's under the hood. If MS can't make the movement between the two seamless, WOA's going to have difficulty gaining traction. I do think however that this problem is obviated somewhat by the use of the Windows Store on both the ARM and x86 version. However, the ability to use any application on x86 versions makes ARM versions a difficult choice to justify unless the price is right. The fact that Office will be preinstalled with WOA might help though (source).

All that said, it doesn't really seem like MS knows how it's going to inform end-users of the differences (here):

That's not to mention the, in some cases, drastic relearning required for UI interaction (once again, I refer to an Ars article).

Click to expand...

Even with a stunningly brilliant marketing campaign (the possibility of which I find dubious, given Microsoft's recent track record), I would be really surprised if they could effectively convey that message to the consumer market.

I might be overly cynical, but given the number of people I run into on a regular basis who can't tell the difference between Windows and Office (they think that they are one and the same product, just because they're both made by Microsoft), I can't see Microsoft articulating the difference between WOA and x86 Windows 8.