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Apple plans first ARM-powered Macs in 2021

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Apple is preparing to move some of its laptop and desktop PCs away from Intel chips, according to Bloomberg. The company is reportedly planning three Mac processors that are based on the A14, a yet-to-be-confirmed chip that is expected to power the n...

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chscag

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Moved here for you folks who do not subscribe to the RSS news feed.

Interesting reading. Seems like we have been through this before.

Especially take note of the statement that the newer ARM chips are not as powerful as those of Intel, and that Apple may not phase in all its hardware at once.
 
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chscag

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This could be the beginning of the end of BootCamp for Mac OS!?

Maybe not. Microsoft has been working on a Windows version that will run on ARM computers. They already have one experiment that works somewhat.

It's also rumored that Apple is working with Microsoft to develop apps that work on ARM. Let's not forget that Microsoft Office for the Mac is a cash cow for MS. They are not about to lose those $$$.
 
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This could be the beginning of the end of BootCamp for Mac OS!?

It's too early to be alarmist about such things. I'm sure that Apple wouldn't make the move unless all of their bases were covered.

There have been excellent Intel emulators for ARM around for many years now, so using one of those in conjunction with a program like Bootcamp isn't at all a stretch to imagine.
 

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Mac old timers will of course remember that Apple has already gone through a transition that is at least conceptually similar. Remember Rosetta? Intel Macs running PowerPC software. I was skeptical at first but it worked really well.

Besides, if my iMac holds up as long as my other Macs have, any Arm-related issues will be resolved one way or the other by the time I need a new machine. Now, if one of you wants to gift me a new Mac for my birthday that's another matter. :)

You've got a few months before the big day and if it's a little late I won't complain.

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Well I am still waiting for my replacement 2020 13” MBP to arrive this Thursday and BAM! Apple announces a move to ARM processors. If I had heard this a month ago I would have kept my 2017. It was a bit underpowered for what I wanted but I could have made do until the ARM processors came out.

I need a laptop that can run at least Mojave as that is what our business app Quickbooks requires. Right not I have all our records on my MP at work. That is not working out but I am managing for now.

I will be using Parallel to run Windows 10 and hopefully Tim Cook keeps his promise to support Intel processors for several years - which could mean 2 to 3 years?

I do hope the ARM processors work out for Apple. I am sure they have been working on them for sometime. I get the feeling they are moving to having all components in their devices developed and made in house thus eliminating issues with external vendors.

Lisa
 

chscag

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I will be using Parallel to run Windows 10 and hopefully Tim Cook keeps his promise to support Intel processors for several years - which could mean 2 to 3 years?

That will mean keeping an Intel machine around as long as you need to run Parallels. Apple has already announced that Rosetta 2 on an ARM does not support virtual software (Parallels, VMWare, VirtualBox). As far as any time line guess goes, we can look back at what Apple did when going from PPC to Intel. Within 3 years from the changeover, Apple no longer supported PPC machines and Rosetta died when Lion was announced.
 
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Within 3 years from the changeover, Apple no longer supported PPC machines and Rosetta died when Lion was announced.
What is this time frame you are referring to?

Apple began using Intel in 2006, and Lion was released in 2011. Also, Snow Leopard was still supported for a few more years after Lion was released.
 

chscag

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Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and that ended PPC support. So the 3 years is correct. Don't know what time line you mean but we can expect the same for the changeover to ARM.

When Lion was released in 2011, it did not include Rosetta.
 
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Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and that ended PPC support.

One has to define what "support" means. Snow Leopard didn't run on PPC Macs. But I have a Mac running Snow Leopard right here next to me. It does support PPC applications. Apple didn't suddenly deprecate all things PPC. And the release of Snow Leopard didn't mean that Apple stopped putting out security updates for PPC Macs running older versions of the Mac OS. Nor did Apple stop taking in PPC Macs for repair contemporaneously, nor did they stop selling parts for PPC Macs at that time. Third parties mostly made all of their software so that it would work on both PPC and Intel for at least 5 years.

Tim Cook doesn't have to "promise" to support Intel Macs for "several" years, in many places in the U.S. the law actually REQUIRES that they support their old models for a minimum of 5 years. If you purchase an Intel Macintosh right now, it won't become a brick in three years.
 
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In terms of security patch support it looks like Apple supported PPC for five years after the transition started to Intel based notebooks, at least as per Wikipedia. That to me is a decent support cycle, though with Apple having some really good success with Intel based machines l am hoping for a year or two longer.

As for virtualization, I just don't see this being a problem. Virtualization for ARM already exist on other platforms (Linux), this does not mean an easy port but does mean that people have already successfully got this working. Also, once virtualization has been ported to Mac everything else is irrelevant. You can run x86_64 Windows, Linux and BSD operating systems in virtualization on ARM, this is because virtual computers do not care about the bare metal architecture.

Personally I think this is really cool, I am a huge fan of ARM.
 

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