SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
CNet:
Apple will start selling Macs that use in-house processors in 2021, based on ones in upcoming iPhones and iPad Pros, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The company is apparently working on three of its own chips, suggesting a transition away from traditional supplier Intel.
The initial batch of custom chips won't be on the same level as the Intel ones used in high-end Apple computers, so they're likely to debut in a new type of laptop, the report noted. These processors could have eight high-performance cores and at least four energy-efficient cores, respectively codenamed Firestorm and Icestorm.
Just another brick in the wall[ed garden]?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Apple Will Reportedly Sell a New Mac Laptop With its Own Chips Next Year
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 26 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 24 2020, @01:43PM (1 child)
That depends on the slant of your fanboi fedora. I inherited my dad's cast-off PowerPC MacMini in 2005, and it quickly turned into a paperweight while the 2006 Intel based MacMinis are still relatively useful today. I suppose if your perspective is: "I always upgrade to the latest hardware within 12 months after Apple releases it" then, sure, that transition was painless.
I do applaud the move to low power ARM based PCs. I put it in the "it's about time" category - web browsers, word processors, spreadsheets and powerpoints don't really need more than ARM compute power and the electrical power savings are very significant and appropriate in the mobile form factors, including laptops.
Intel chips continue to have more compute power, but the percentage of Mac (and PC) users who need that power more than a cool running, long lasting, small battery in their mobile device is probably lower than the percentage of people who are going to die of COVID-19. If you're among the heavy compute load minority, sure: buy your $5000 lap-burners if that's what you're into. Personally, I offload my heavy compute tasks to an i7 desktop box and use lightweight laptops and NUCs for the majority of my actual human-computer interface work.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @07:53PM
Well relative does mean relative, after all. Besides, the transition worked much better than some cold swap. They released Intel computers in 2005 but still released updates for PPC OSX into 2009, and their official software after that. You could take a single installer or package and have it work on both systems, more or less transparently. A five year transition period like that is pretty good for a change so fundamental to the operation of the ecosystem.