Dave2D found the air to be on par with the Pro, at least for tasks that took under ~8.5 minutes. It only really throttled after that point, according to him.
The crazy thing is that both M1 MacBooks still had 91% battery left after the compile, vs 61% on the 16-inch Pro and 24% on the 13-inch Intel Pro.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... -> "Compiling WebKit"
But I would also be a little wary, because ARM systems are way more locked down than x86 systems today.
Intel dying would free up resources for development by other companies.
With only a completely new/different architecture getting those advances back?
Most OSes are still pretty well situated to handle this. Java remains, and is easily cross platform. I can run Java-based proprietary games like Minecraft on my POWER9 desktop, despite no-one involved probably ever considering ppc64le a valid target.
The CLR on Windows is also pretty easily cross-platform, although it won't help legacy x86 PE executables. Apple has solved this for ages on the tooling side, encouraging production of "fat" binaries with many arches since OS X was NeXT, and your .app packages needed to run on x86 + m68k + SPARC + PA-RISC.
Emulators like Rosetta (and qemu's usermode emulation) can fill the gap of legacy executables, while these other technologies can make the end-user experience good. Of course, that's only if a) someone writes your platform's equivalent of Rosetta, and b) developers write crossplatform apps.
So, the answer depends on how cynical or optimistic you are :-)
You fail to realize that this isn't like 3D printing, or other low volume manufacturing. You can't just setup a 100nm Si lithography lab in your spare room and churn out RISC-V chips.
In 5 years - realistically we will have a few high performance(non-mobile) ARM chips manufactured at economic scale. Any other type of disruption would require Intel and AMD to fail and relinquish the supply side capacity... or China investing billions into new chipmaking facilities now.(it takes a few years to build that capacity)
So I think that we will have a four way competition between Intel, AMD, Apple, and Chinese RISC-V chips.
That being said, I don't see x86 dying, I think AMD and eventually Intel when they wake up will be competitive.
China cannot be competitive at the razor's edge if its semiconductor companies depend on promptly copying/stealing technology that European, Taiwanese, and American companies bring to market.
SMIC has already produced some 7nm chips without EUV.
As for EUV for the further future, there has been quite a bit of research in that domain for many years in pre-emption of this, and while I think they will be a node or a node and a half behind for a while, they will almost certainly have one ready eventually. Of course, that will be accelerated by stealing data on EUV machines, or maybe buying a used EUV machine from someone and reverse-engineering it.
The lithography companies actually have to talk about the measures they take to stop China from stealing their IP on their earnings calls.
China is a manufacturing hub, but its (often government backed) chip companies run low-margin businesses that don't make enough money to invest heavily in R&D. Go look at Apple or Qualcomm's gross margins and compare them to Huawei or Xiaomi.
Instead, they should set up two groups: one to generate new architectures for desktop and server, and another to take the best features of those architectures and make them thermally efficient for use in laptops. The development of these two products should be unconstrained by time, because as we have seen, impossible deadlines delay the possible.
In the past 10 years, most of the chips that amaze me have simply done what was already possible, just with enough thermal efficiency that they can be placed in mobile devices.
Intel dying would be horrible for the world. They have so much institutional knowledge...
Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
The story is this: a friend of mine is a well respected illustrator and he has been a long time Mac user (at least since I remember)
Few days ago he asked me advices about a new laptop and he asked for a PC because "new Mac OS will not work with my Photoshop version"
He owns a license for Photoshop 6, payed for it and has no need to uograde, especially to the new subscription based licensing
MacOS Sierra doesn't even work with Photoshop CS6
The only option he had to keep using something he owned was to switch platform (Adobe allows platform change upon request)
End of story.
Backwards compatibility has no value until you need it.
Just like an ambulance or a pacemaker.
It launches on Mojave as well, so I'm pretty sure it works, but I haven't personally used it for any length of time. Catalina is what killed it.
IMO, backwards compatibility in OSX/macOS was perfectly decent for a long time. Most software compiled for Intel that wasn't doing something weird continued to chug on, frequently with significant glitches but not to the point where the software was unusable. Then in Catalina Apple just gave up or something.
> MacOS Sierra doesn't even work with Photoshop CS6
I'm not sure where they got that impression, but it definitely works!
> Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7. Adobe Creative Suite 3, 4, 5, CS5.5, and CS6 applications support Mac OS X v10.8 or v10.9 when installed on Intel-based system
They work, maybe, they are not supported though
It means that if it doesn't work, Adobe won't provide any support
CS6 works officially from XP SP3 (2008) to the end of Windows 8 (2015)
It works unofficially on XP pre SP3 (2001) and on windows 10, almost 20 years later and it's guaranteed to work on the LTSC for another 8 years (last LTSC is from 2018)
CS6 on Mac is supported on systems that span from 2011 (OS X 10.6.8) to 2014 (when Yosemite came out)
On May 2020 Adobe updated the release notes on CS6 saying that "If you are running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Photoshop will run in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. However, Adobe does not officially support the 64-bit edition and you may run into problems."
So they are still supporting it on Windows XP on their official channels.
Most of the problems with old applications in Windows come from installers using ancient techniques to detect the OS version
Most of recent Adobe software theoretically could also run on older windows versions (8 or 7 for example), but are not supporting old platforms anymore with the new subscription versions and recebtly dropped support for the LTSC versions of Windows 10, so probably keeping the old versions around is a smart move if they work well enough for you
People who bought licenses for old versions should be in their right to use them as long as they can
Which simply is for longer on Windows than on MacOS
Uh, I'm guessing you mean CS6 rather than Photoshop 6, the program that came out in 2000.
In any case, Adobe's help page[1] currently reads, "As Creative Suite 6 is no longer sold or supported, platform or language exchanges are not available for it." Since they're certainly not selling or supporting versions older than CS6, it's unlikely your friend is going be able to keep Photoshop CS6 by buying a new PC laptop. (And he sure as hell ain't gonna be able to get a copy of Photoshop 6 to run on Windows 10.)
> Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
That's not wrong, but s/Apple/Adobe and the sentiment is still true. I suppose he'll save money if he gets a cheaper-than-Apple PC laptop, but I don't think he's gonna avoid paying for Creative Cloud.
[1] https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/exchange-...
That's why I said "MacOS Sierra can't even run CS6"
Technically in Italy if you bought a license and the manufacturer won't support it anymore, you can use it on another platform even downloading an illegal copy.
As long as you have the original license.
That's the same reason why you can listen to mp3s if you own the original record, you have the right to keep a copy and the right to use it even if the manufacturer stop supporting it, because you bought it in perpetuity when you bought the product
That's why I stay away from the new licenses that give you none of those rights
And that's why backwards compatibility sometimes is what drives people choices
Sounds like the friend has a need to upgrade, and that upgrade is going to require new software. I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
He draws by hand on paper and the final preparation on Photoshop is for printing
After almost 10 years he needed a new laptop (things wear out with time and he could not install more RAM) but not a new Photoshop version with a different and more costly license
The need to upgrade software is an artificial one and it's only needed because some platforms don't have a good backwards compatibility
Windows does
For many people the OS doesn't make any difference, as long as they can keep using the tools they already know
There is a limit on the improvements a new software will provide if your workflow is already good as it is and you already paid for the version that works for you
I know many small businesses that still use Office 2003
They can install it on new hardware on new Windows versions, it's simply not possible to do the same on Mac
It's not better or worse, backwards compatibility it's a feature and as any other feature some people value it a lot, some don't care at all
Old stuff stops working due to deliberate design choices made on both Apple and Adobe's parts. Apple deliberately stripped Rosetta and 32-bit support from macOS, and Adobe is deliberately making it nearly impossible to use older versions of the CS suite on their end.
Meanwhile, I can run Photoshop 6 on Windows or WINE, and I can still run binaries that were statically compiled for Linux 20 years ago today.
I appreciate backwards compatibility, but I'm not convinced drawing lines in the sand every once so often is a terrible idea. Revisiting old software is fun for nostalgic reasons and, sure, there are sometimes edge cases where you have to use something that hasn't been updated in years, but in general I'd rather be using software that exhibits at least minimal signs of being an ongoing concern.
I'll take your word for it, but it kind of changes the picture here. Photoshop 6 was released in 2000. That version wasn't released for OS X. In fact, Photoshop 6 was still compiled for PowerPC CPUs. The thing wasn't even fully "carbonized" until version 7, so it would have had to run in the "Classic" environment -- which hasn't been supported on Macs since OS X 10.4.
Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system they haven't shipped a new version in 18 years for a CPU they haven't shipped in a computer for 15 years. I'm not sure I agree.
> Technically in Italy if you bought a license and the manufacturer won't support it anymore, you can use it on another platform even downloading an illegal copy.
The legality isn't the issue, the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue. :) It may be possible to run the Windows version on Windows 10, but I can almost guarantee there will be strange, quirky issues that neither Microsoft nor Adobe will be interested in helping with.
It's the license that counts.
> Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system
No, I don't think that.
Apple doesn't have good backward compatibility, especially compared to Windows.
That is my point.
But of course they are free to not support what they think it's not worth it.
It's not a something against Apple.
> the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue
True, but why is it a problem?
Does the software need to be new to work?
I think that if something still works after 20 years the authors did a great job.
We need to start thinking of software like infrastructure.
We don't rebuild a bridge after 6 months because a new material or technique has been invented.
Or at least as tools, considering them something that lasts, potentially forever.
Most of the problem we'll be facing in the future will be about digital rot, we'll deal with data that we cannot read in any way.
Apple, Adobe, and their idea of disposable working tools are helping it, nor prevent it.
Of course one cannot support everything forever, Windows lost the ability to run DOS binaries years ago and virtualization can help, the problem is companies like Adobe not selling their licenses anymore.
Recently I had to work on a SOAP client after almost 15 years from the last one.
I remembered there was a good XML editor at the time, that did a good job.
One caveat is that it is Windows only and I run Linux, so I checked on WineHQ and found out that the version 2003 works perfectly.
I go to the software's web site, there is a "download older versions" button, I think "great!" and proceed to the download.
The software installs perfectly on Wine but when I launch it there is no option to start it in trial mode, you have to either use a pre-existing license or ask for a trial one.
I clicked the second and soon after an email warns me that that product is not supported anymore and even if I had a regular license, the servers that check the licenses are not online anymore.
So why put a download button there then?
These are the kind of things that software should avoid at any cost, in my opinion.
They've lost a customer, I would have bought an old license at the price of a new one if I could chck that everything that I needed to do worked as intended, instead I downloaded SopaUI which is inferior, but free and functioning.
In this case, the solution could have been virtualization, but you have to pay for a Windows license as well, which was not necessary in the first place.
In the case of macOS virtualization is not even an option, because you can't legally run it on a VM outside of Apple HW.
For some people, that is a big problem, not because they think Apple is bad, but because they don't care who supplies the infrastructure as long as it works.
There are people installing XP on new HW to keep using their old software.
It is doable, but on macOS you can't count on it, every time they change architecture something gets lost forever.
As I said before, nobody value backward compatibility until they need it.
And when you need it and it works it's much more satisfying than when you need it and you are asked to upgrade or be on your own.
The more charitable view is that by not being wedded to backwards compatibility they can make their ecosystem stronger, faster.
See https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/apples-relentless-stra... for some discussion of those tradeoffs.
I used to work at intel, and no one I knew there thought ISA mattered at all. That’s just a few people though, so I’m curious if people think there’s something better or worse about the different ISAs as a technology in their own right, or if it’s more about the business interests behind them that matters.
This is not the difference between x86 and ARM -- it's the difference between Intel's team and Apple's (also AMD's). You don't see Qualcomm being competitive even though they also use ARM.
But in practice the whole decoder stage is basically a rounding error because cores got so big.
Basically, laptop chips that should be around 35% faster and use less power.
It's worth noting that cross-compiling is definitely harder in many ways, because you can't always evaluate constant expressions easily at compile-time in the same way your runtime code will, etc, too, and have to jump through hoops.
jar% time x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 0.97s user 0.02s system 99% cpu 0.992 total
jar% time x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 0.93s user 0.03s system 99% cpu 0.965 total
jar% time x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 0.94s user 0.01s system 99% cpu 0.947 total
jar% time x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 0.92s user 0.04s system 99% cpu 0.955 total
jar% time arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 1.43s user 0.03s system 99% cpu 1.458 total
jar% time arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 1.46s user 0.03s system 99% cpu 1.486 total
jar% time arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 1.55s user 0.04s system 99% cpu 1.587 total
jar% time arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I ../../shared/api
arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc --std=c99 -O3 -c insgps14state.c -I inc -I 1.44s user 0.03s system 99% cpu 1.471 totalTwice as fast, using 1/10th the battery life.... and that’s for a part that costs Apple $70 instead of, what, $400?
- active cooling
- lack of a touchbar
But seriously, I share your opinion on laptop keyboards: regular function keys please.
But 8-9 minutes of full 100% CPU is a relatively rare occurrence for the vast majority of users. Developers might occasionally do that, but it will be very language and project dependent.
In a cool room it can last few minutes before throttling, while outside on a warm day it throttles almost instantly.
Also, a thermal budget is shared with GPU, so once you plug-in the external display, or start Sidecar, you run out of thermal headspace pretty much instantly.
I'd love to see these two factors tested.
Based on the data I've seen so far, I'm not sure why they even did a with fan Pro variant. Even if the market for an 11-12" model is smaller I'm not sure why they didn't do that instead. I was sure that was going to be the reason they didn't refresh their 12" Intel system.
The ‘pro’ variant released was the low-end 13, aka the 2 port, formerly the ‘macbook escape’. The 13” line has been bifurcated since 2016, with this one firmly lower-spec’d and powered.
It’s very likely that the ‘4 port’, or high-end 13” pro will make more use of the active cooling, so it was likely worth it to develop the new laptop with it.
But like you said, likely would eat into the iPad market - on the other side, as long as they don't make it a 2-in-1, the iPad should still have more than enough reason to exist.
This model of Air is obviously a transition product with new guts in an old shell. I suspect that as Apple introduce fully redesigned, second generation Apple Silicon products, you might see something that is closer to the 12” MacBook.
It'd be amazing if they managed to squeeze a 13" screen into the old 12" form factor - you'd still get great battery life thanks to the M1.
However the interesting part would be what are they gonna do with their iPad Pro line at this point I don't see a reason for it not to run Big Sur or the Bigger Sur they'll release next year and compete directly with the surface.
What I see Apple doing is the following:
iPhone/iPad non-pro continuing to use A series SoCs and run iOS
iPad Pro migrate to M series SoCs and become what is essentially Apple's Surface Pro
Macbook Air 13" and 11" (possibly drop to a single 12" model) with M series SoCs this essentially will be the Surface Laptop/Book competitor
Macbook Pro's will continue as they are 13" and 16" models, if Apple goes for 11" and 13" MBAs they might move the MBP to 14" and 16".
Without discrete GPUs and essentially no way to "upgrade" the CPU to a higher model I don't really see the MBP 13" being viable in the long term tbh, I think they'll need a model that will differentiate it much more from the MBA and unless Apple starts binning their future M series SoCs much more in line with Intel and AMD I don't see them having too much of a range here for upgrades.
So alternatively I also see them dropping the 13" MBP altogether and having only a 15" or 16" on whilst the Air will occupy the smaller form factors.
But it's hard not to see some sort of convergence between mobile, laptops, and desktops over time.
I had the 12” MacBook for a couple years and the form factor was amazing. I backpacked around the world with it. But it was so underpowered, it was barely useful. I found myself using my phone more and more because it was less frustrating. I would love to see what an M1-powered 12” MacBook could be like!
Tbh, the only reason I didn't even think of buying a pro is because I don't want the touch bar. I might still buy an air if there's no touch bar on the pro, but the decision will be a lot harder.