Apple Silicon and why I am excited

[ItHadToComeToThis]

I just finished watching the November event and damnnnn am I excited. They have literally just d****d all over intels pudding.

The best part is that given all apps in the Mac OS eco system will now run on any Mac device and if LL get their act in order...the SL viewer should run no issue on an iPad or iPhone once it has been migrated over to the new architecture. XCode even had tools built in to help make this process as painless as possible. Then again it’s LL we are talking about so expect that in around “soon” years.

But for real though check out the specs on their first processor. Their integrated graphics can edit 4K/6k video smoothly, play graphically intensive games and the lowest power consumption to date.

between AMD 5 Series and Apple Silicon...intel just became obsolete 😅

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by ItHadToComeToThis

[Nova Convair]

15 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

between AMD 5 Series and Apple Silicon...intel just became obsolete 😅

And all SL viewers are obsolete too. Nobody knows if there will be a new viewer and the x64-emulation won't make anyone happy I assume.
However, even as a non Apple user I like that there is something different on the market.

[Ansariel Hiller]

I'm waiting for how long people are exciting once the Macs are also completely locked inside Apple's walled garden... 😂

Imagine LL having to submit the viewer to Apple for approval for their app store and Apple rejecting it because of being a Fortnite 2.0 case with bypassing in-app payments... 😂

Edited November 11, 2020 by Ansariel Hiller

[Love Zhaoying]

Ooh! Shiny new things!

[Ardy Lay]

No way am I going to pay Apple to cage and disappoint me again.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Apple taking steps backwards once again.  didnt they learn from last time.   so whom's gonna come back to bail them out once they tank again?  Sculley ?

[Madelaine McMasters]

32 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Apple taking steps backwards once again.  didnt they learn from last time.   so whom's gonna come back to bail them out once they tank again?  Sculley ?

I believe Apple has learned a lot from the last two processor transitions (68K->PPC and PPC->Intel). I expect this to be the most seamless they've done and the last they'll do. My new iPad Air benchmarks considerably faster than my four year old i7 quad-core MacBook Pro and feels more responsive running Pixelmator Pro. It can go days between charges, while my laptop can't get me from breakfast to lunch without plugging in.

I can understand that you might not care for Apple's massive profitability, but it's pretty bizarre to suggest they got to be the world's largest company (by market cap) by heading in the wrong direction.

To your credit, that kind of thinking seems to be all the rage these days!

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

My new iPad Air benchmarks considerably faster than my four year old i7 quad-core MacBook Pro and feels more responsive running Pixelmator Pro. It can go days between charges, while my laptop can't get me from breakfast to lunch without plugging in.

How's the iPad Air at running Second Life? Sorry, I'll see myself out. 
 

[Madelaine McMasters]

19 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

How's the iPad Air at running Second Life? Sorry, I'll see myself out.

Do you think Apple cares?

ETA: I think the responsibility for making SL run well on Macs rests with LL, who's financial fortunes are more tied to success on Apple than Apple's are on success with SL.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Lyssa Greymoon]

How hard is it to compile the viewer on a Mac? I'm more interested in seeing an M1 native viewer than seeing it ported to the iPad.

[Tom00062]

I agree Lyssa lets hope LL get their act together and provide an M1 viewer for the new range of apple computers.

[Madelaine McMasters]

For applications that spend a lot of time in OS functions, a recompile isn't crucial, the OS calls run M1 native. That's how Apple can make the claim that some x86 apps run faster under M1 Rosetta than on x86 hardware.

SL viewers probably make very little use of MacOS, so I don't expect zippy performance under Rosetta. How quickly a port can be done will depend on the toolchain used by LL and the nature of the code libraries they use. If they're using XCode/Objective C/Cocoa and third party x86 native libraries, it could be a tough slog. If they're using Catalyst and Swift, it'll go pretty quickly.

I expect Mac market share to rise as a result of shedding x86 and focusing on seamless movement of users between iOS and MacOS experiences. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for learning six ways to do the same thing. I'll be perfectly happy living inside Apple's walled garden so long as I can eat the plants.

I don't think LL can afford to ignore Apple.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Ansariel Hiller]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I can understand that you might not care for Apple's massive profitability, but it's pretty bizarre to suggest they got to be the world's largest company (by market cap) by heading in the wrong direction.

I wonder if that has something to do with sheep willing to pay astronomical prices for earthly products and the professionals that are forced to do the same for overpriced hardware upgrades. It also wouldn't be the first time a huge company almost went bankrupt because of a wrong business decision.

45 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Do you think Apple cares?

ETA: I think the responsibility for making SL run well on Macs rests with LL, who's financial fortunes are more tied to success on Apple than Apple's are on success with SL.

With roughly 6% of the SL users on Mac OSX, I wouldn't move an OSX version in the range of financial fortunes. But there is more to the decision than just a different CPU with different instruction set: Due to Apple's shameless way of trying to hide their incompetence in providing a proper OpenGL implementation for years by declaring it as old, deprecated technology, LL is also facing the problem of switching to a different rendering engine if they want to continue providing OSX support in the future. The currently most-viable solution - switching to Vulkan - resulted in about 30% of the users not having hardware supporting it, based on a recent hardware survey. So you also have to decide if by the time they come up with the switch more users wouldn't be able to login due to Vulkan or because of no OSX support. Although given the fact the Lab are hardcore Apple users, we might see a decision based on personal preference rather than what would be best for business. 😏

2 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

For applications that spend a lot of time in OS functions, a recompile isn't crucial, the OS calls run M1 native. That's how Apple can make the claim that some x86 apps run faster under M1 Rosetta than on x86 hardware.

SL viewers probably make very little use of MacOS, so I don't expect zippy performance under Rosetta. How quickly a port can be done will depend on the toolchain used by LL and the nature of the code libraries they use. If they're using XCode/Objective C/Cocoa and third party x86 native libraries, it could be a tough slog. If they're using Catalyst and Swift, it'll go pretty quickly.

I allow myself to quote myself from another thread:

Quote

Also the question was if the viewer will run on Apple's new CPUs - which is doubtful since I already explained the viewer uses the SSE2 instruction set and nobody knows if and how Rosetta 2 is able to emulate/translate this. If not, the viewer will - once again - need hardware-specific floating point/vector operations, just as it did in the early days.

And what do you think the viewer is using? Hint: It's not Catalyst and it's not Swift! 😉

[Solar Legion]

Point Blank: Apple - like Microsoft - needs to grow up and stop trying to force the use of their proprietary APIs.

Oh wait - that'd cut into their profit margins and they can't have that ....

Edited November 11, 2020 by Solar Legion

[bigmoe Whitfield]

3 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Point Blank: Apple - like Microsoft - needs to grow up and stop trying to force the use of their proprietary APIs.

Oh wait - that'd cut into their profit margins and they can't have  that ....

It really astounds me, they would go back to a closed platform,  like they were when they were using the ppc model,  when they moved to intel it opened up all the doors, now they closed it.   they will need help again at some point.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

It really astounds me, they would go back to a closed platform,  like they were when they were using the ppc model,  when they moved to intel it opened up all the doors, now they closed it.   they will need help again at some point.

The ARM architecture is far more open than x86, and far more popular. Your confusion appears to be growing.

https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/26/exiting-x86-apple-microsoft-embracing-arm-based-pc/

Edited November 12, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Lyssa Greymoon]

PowerPC wasn’t closed, and Apple moved away from it because of performance and thermal issues. Especially with laptops where PowerPC had hit a brick wall.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

The ARM architecture is far more open than x86, and far more popular. Your confusion appears to be growing.

https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/26/exiting-x86-apple-microsoft-embracing-arm-based-pc/

Nope, No confusion, zero reasons for apple to lock normal people out of their products, I'm not switching to arm based computers, the phones are the only option for them,   it's going to hurt apple in the long run, it will have very little support and apple puts it's self back in it's own wall garden again.   Apple needs to wise up and stop trying to be "different"  stay with what works, intel,nvidia, amd.   stay with what can be normal, instead of this, this is bad, this is not going to work out well for any one,  except the loyalist, but it's been like that since the 90's.  I know I used to be a pure apple diehard, but I saw the light in the early 2000's,  thankfully I did or I would not be half of where I am today with my company.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Just now, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Nope, No confusion, zero reasons for apple to lock normal people out of their products, I'm not switching to arm based computers, the phones are the only option for them,   it's going to hurt apple in the long run, it will have very little support and apple puts it's self back in it's own wall garden again.   Apple needs to wise up and stop trying to be "different"  stay with what works, intel,nvidia, amd.   stay with what can be normal, instead of this, this is bad, this is not going to work out well for any one,  except the loyalist, but it's been like that since the 90's.  I know I used to be a pure apple diehard, but I saw the light in the early 2000's,  thankfully I did or I would not be half of where I am today with my company.

 

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

The ARM architecture is far more open than x86, and far more popular. Your confusion appears to be growing.

https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/26/exiting-x86-apple-microsoft-embracing-arm-based-pc/

Also Microsoft is only toying with the idea, "embracing" is far fetched.

[Ansariel Hiller]

3 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

and apple puts it's self back in it's own wall garden again.

That's the whole idea behind every Apple business decision - well... to lock the user inside their walled garden so they can milk them even more. For some strange reason, there are (still) lots of people that like being treated like that.

[Nick0678]

16 minutes ago, Ansariel Hiller said:

That's the whole idea behind every Apple business decision - well... to lock the user inside their walled garden so they can milk them even more. For some strange reason, there are (still) lots of people that like being treated like that.

Well only 1 out of 10 people uses macOS globally, so realistically speaking means nothing or sets any standards for the rest of us. Let them enjoy whatever they think it's important for them.

[Tom00062]

Arm is the way forward. Apple will continue to eat into the laptop / PC market as they have done over the last decade. The majority of people are only concerned with power and performance and if apple can demonstrate that their arm architecture provide that and they get the price right people will move. Apple have demonstrated that they are kings of marketing and first class customer service and customers will respond to that no question.

[Mollymews]

51 minutes ago, Tom00062 said:

Arm is the way forward. Apple will continue to eat into the laptop / PC market as they have done over the last decade. The majority of people are only concerned with power and performance and if apple can demonstrate that their arm architecture provide that and they get the price right people will move. Apple have demonstrated that they are kings of marketing and first class customer service and customers will respond to that no question.

for the personal consumer market where discretionary spend is not a major concern then possibly true

but... most people go with Microsoft for two main reasons. One is cheaper.  And two there are millions more MS work computers than there are Apple. For most people computer is computer is computer, what works at work, works for them at home

for Microsoft the at-home market has always been secondary to the at-work market. The at-work market drives the at-home market for office workers. The big bucks for Microsoft is in their add-on software like Microsoft Office

is why Microsoft is the No.1 in total desktop installs

[Nick0678]

34 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

is why Microsoft is the No.1 in total desktop installs

By far... No hate towards MacOS, after all Linux is my personal favorite OS at the moment and don't really care that much in regards to MS WIn vs MacOS comparisons but since i 've been earlier in my life an MCP and later MCSA i 'll just say that what Microsoft has done from their early Windows for workgroups up to nowadays Windows 10 is simply amazing by far. Became the industry standard in the desktop/laptop market and a new processor from Apple isn't going to change that. Now in regards to Intel i am sure they will be fine, has been a colossus for ages and their competitor is AMD which (unlike Cyrix) managed to become a very popular CPU choice over the years by having amazing benchmarks without sacrificing stability.

The Apple products hardcore fan's were always fan's regardless if their computer had a Motorola68000 or Intelx86 or now will have an M1Arm64.  Won't make much of a difference.

 

(Personally i am satisfied with my Intel based Hewlett Packard 18-inch laptop, triple booting Ubuntu and Windows7/10 so i am not a potential customer for the Apple 13-inch  MacBook Pro  priced at $1,299+... actually my only Apple purchase was an Iphone5S years ago bought second hand out of curiosity, always preferred Android's.)

[Lyssa Greymoon]

Does it run my stuff? Does it run it better than the last model? If the answer to both of those is yes, then no, it doesn't really make much difference to me what's under the hood. Not sure I'm getting the locked into the walled garden thing. It's not like the App Store is the only place anyone can get stuff for a Mac.