Apple Event - 30th October - 2pm - "There's more in the making"

[LiE]

Question isn't whether MacOS lives or dies is it?

I thought it was about whether it will transition to ARM or stay x86, given the power of Apple's CPUs these days and the rapid development they are seeing on that front

There's a few different conversions going on.

MacOS would be threatened if iOS gained a file system and a mouse input. This would shift a considerable amount of casual users away from Macs, giving Apple less drive to continue to invest in their PCs.

 

[Broken Hope]

Will the chips be designed to run a desktop OS? Wouldn't they be built to purely concentrate on iOS? I must admit I don't really know much about how CPUs work with different systems etc.

Chips don’t work like that, if macOS was compiled for ARM it would work fine on A series chips.

 

[Minstadave]

Chips don’t work like that, if macOS was compiled for ARM it would work fine on A series chips.

The entire software base would need either rewriting for ARM though which would be a major pain or baked in x86 emulation would be needed which I understand is getting better but is still inefficient and going to be a ballache.

 

[MagicBoy]

Chips don’t work like that, if macOS was compiled for ARM it would work fine on A series chips.

Issue would be the Apps, which would need recompiling at the very least for good performance. You'd lose optimisations related to Intel specific instructions like SSE, AVX etc.

Apple have been through a processor migration twice previously : 68K -> PowerPC on classic Mac OS and PowerPC -> x86 on OS X. Classic Mac OS ran a 68k emulation, OS X used Rosetta which dynamically translated binaries as they executed.

x86 offered better performance generally which made up for overheads of the translation and loss of Altivec. This isn't likely to be true of ARM, the x86 emulation/translation would be costly.

 

[MagicBoy]

This is the proper compare.

https://ark.intel.com/compare/129939,126686

Not convinced, those are a standard LGA chip designed for a socket. Apple will be using BGA chips as they have for years in the Mac mini.

Edit : Intel happily make Apple custom SKUs, look at the CPUs in the iMac Pro. Plus the renders of the Mac mini show BGA CPUs. Only the B series fits.

If you've got a better confirmed source, prove me wrong...

Oh look. Confirmed as the 8700B.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/02/first-mac-mini-benchmark-surfaces/

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Wow that i7-8700B is a BEAST!
https://ark.intel.com/products/134905/Intel-Core-i7-8700B-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4-60-GHz-

The prices though, are utterly insane. Mac mini with above i7, 16GB and 512GB is £1600, vs latest Gen8 NUC NUC8I5BEH (which has an extremely respectable i5-8259U), 16GB and 512GB NVMe totals £626. So essentially almost triple the price for the Apple equivalent. I really would like to get a mini, but I just can't afford those prices! And I'd like to know who can?! It's almost like Apple is saying "eff you" to all those who've been protesting over the past few years that they've abandoned the Mac platform, and now they're saying "we dare you to buy a new Mac, didn't you say you wanted one?".

 

[Destination]

Wonder does it throttle?

 

[Minstadave]

At that price it better not!

 

[Deleted member 138126]

It's meant to have a revised cooling system, with one presumes a bigger fan.

 

[Somnambulist]

The new Mini comes with a guide that has a picture of a display that doesn't exist (yet). Here's hoping for that 5K Apple display...

 

[b0rn2sk8]

It could just be an example image so Apple isn’t promoting another brand in one of its manuals, makes sense.

Who ever wrote it could just be a massive troll to get the hype machine going.

 

[Phemo]

Quite tempted to go for an 11" iPad Pro when they're out. Not preordered or anything yet so I'm curious about what the stock situation is going to be like this year. Going by the fact that every possible option of iPad on o2's contract is already 4+ weeks lead time I'd say it's probably going to be tight. I'll probably try my luck with an Apple store on Wednesday unless I talk myself out of it.

 

[RedvGreen]

So who is having dirty thoughts about the 1TB iPad Pro 12.9" (with 6GB RAM, instead of 4GB like the others)?

 

[MagicBoy]

What's the use case for 1TB storage on an iPad Pro?

 

[haszek]

So who is having dirty thoughts about the 1TB iPad Pro 12.9" (with 6GB RAM, instead of 4GB like the others)?

6gb is still a roumor or confirmed?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I can't see the iPad being supply constrained for the holiday season so I would wait until a few places have them in their hands.

 

[RedvGreen]

6gb is still a roumor or confirmed?

Still not 100% confirmed, according to MacRumours.

 

[Squink]

6gb is still a roumor or confirmed?

I’ve got no idea why they’d want to keep it secret if it were true. (It may well be true, but that doesn’t make it any easier to understand)

 

[MagicBoy]

Apple don't release memory amounts in the spec sheet for iOS devices.

 

[RedvGreen]

I’ve got no idea why they’d want to keep it secret if it were true. (It may well be true, but that doesn’t make it any easier to understand)

Customers would kick off as to why their device had less spec than another when the specs all intimate that they're the same, less the storage capacity.