[thought_alarm]

Always a year away.

I remain deeply sceptical that Apple will move the Mac to ARM, and given their bungling of the MacBook lineup over the last 5 years I have doubts they understand what their users need from a laptop. I don't think they could pull it off without a great deal of pain for their users and developers. I don't think their OS engineers need the burden.

[gumby]

Not clear that Apple “bungled” the laptops as their sales have been declining roughly in proportion to the sagging of the overall PC market. In other words the flimsy keyboards may have increased their service costs and pissed of a small part of a key constituency but basically may not have itself risen above the noise floor.

For every person who complains about the laptops there’s someone like me who is happy with the direction (doesn’t make either of us wrong). I’m a software developer and miss the portability of my 12” MacBook. I enable telemetry so they know I almost never plug anything into my machine. An iPad just doesn’t cut it.

If this ARM speculation is even substantive it will likely mean a light super-portable machine for me and continued investment in the 16” MBP for you.

[chongli]

given their bungling of the MacBook lineup over the last 5 years

Wouldn't this stand as a reason to not be skeptical of the big move? Switching to ARM (badly) and breaking everything seems like it'd be exactly in line with all of this bungling.

I ordered a new MacBook Air just over a week ago, right when it was announced. If it turns out to be the last Intel-based MBA before years of pain and suffering with the ARM transition then I expect to be hanging on to it for a long time.

Having said all that, Apple is well known for having successfully navigated multiple CPU architecture transitions over the life of their operating system (s). If anyone can do it again successfully, I would expect Apple to do so.

[specialist]

I timed my purchase of my last PowerBook G4 (the last PowerPC-based model) based on similar thinking.

IIRC, It took a while for all the "pro" tools I used to get refreshed for x86.

[ttul]

They’ll do it on a select model or two. By passing on some of the cost savings to purchasers, they will drag the market along with them as they gradually replace Intel. I would guess that they target the MacBook Air first, because there are likely large power-performance benefits in that form factor. They will build multiple processor targeting into the default build process in Xcode and will invest a great deal of effort and time into ensuring that app developers are well supported with the targeting of ARM.

They did this before with the move to Intel from PPC. And back then, Apple was a great deal smaller.

[ghaff]

Or the (currently discontinued) MacBook. The evidence (and logic) suggests that Apple is on a path to reconverge their tablet and at least a portion of their laptop line. Which would be interesting to me if the merged device didn't have too many compromises given that I typically travel with an iPad and some sort of laptop (whether MacBook Pro or Chromebook).

[clairity]

yes, and in addition, the ipad pro is being developed into a viable low- to mid-tier option that's even more mobile (for video, AR/VR, and whatnot). a perusal of geekbench shows that ARM is performance/efficiency competitive already.

but the transition will likely be more gradual (for instance, replacement times for computers are longer now), so x86 macs should stay around for a long while i think.

[jmnicolas]

> By passing on some of the cost savings to purchasers

We're talking about Apple here. I expect the new machines to have less perf but be as expensive as before.

[crazygringo]

> I have doubts they understand what their users need from a laptop

Better battery life and less heat, no? Isn't that the point of ARM?

They've done processor transitions multiple times before.

And whatever "bungling" you're talking about, I don't see what that has to do with it. It's not like people have stopped buying MacBooks and Apple has serious remedial stuff to work on first. Besides, whether or not your MacBook has a touchbar or whatever its key travel is has literally nothing to do with what it's doing with processors.

[oefrha]

> Always a year away.

Citation needed. We’re not talking about Year of the Linux Desktop here.

I’ve been hearing rumblings and speculations about ARM Macs since at least five years ago, but IFAICR never heard a concrete timeline attached to it, let alone “a year away”. And 2021 would be fairly consistent with speculations.

[ken]

e.g., "Intel reportedly expects Apple to start the Mac’s transition to ARM next year" -- Feb 2019

https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/21/mac-marzipan-arm-next-year-ma...

[p_l]

Are you sure? It seemed to be consistent theme of Apple rumours since I think ~2012, until grumbling about shit quality overtook it from 2015 onwards, but it never disappeared. The timeline was not so stated, but it usually boiled to "it will be the one more thing and next WWDC".

[flippydidoodada]

Kou wouldn't be able to use data from the supply chain to know what software is running on future hardware. If Apple is releasing ARM based desktops its more likely they'll be iOS derived devices to meet new niches. Something that competes with the large Wacoms would need to be more easel like than the current iMacs.