Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
I think a new ARM-based Mac Mini gets unveiled at WWDC, and is pitched as a testbed for developers. If it's going to be really close to a 'one-click to recompile apps' (followed by a couple months of tweaking...  ) it makes no sense to wait. This is different from the PowerPC or Intel transitions, all the major apps' codebases are relatively new. There's no need for a six-month wait to see an ARM machine. |
Maybe.
I kind of only see ARM-based Macs on the low end for now — the MacBook Air, for example. (Maybe the reintroduction of a smaller Air.)
The Intel transition came at a time when PowerPC CPUs, particular in mobile, were significantly slower than what Intel Core had to offer, in part because Intel Core offered two cores, even on laptops (with the exception of the oddball Mac mini Core Solo), whereas on PowerPC, a multi-core setup had only been feasible on the Power Mac tower. That meant for the iMac and MacBook Pro that were first released that even at emulation, apps still felt reasonably usable.
We are unlikely to see this kind of leap again. Apple's ARM CPUs offer Apple more control, and they also seem to do a better job offering high single-core performance at low power draw than Intel has been doing. But I've seen no evidence that, at higher TDPs, Apple would far significantly better at Intel. People seem to extrapolate this, but there's simply little basis.
That means that:
- ARM isn't — for now — very compelling for the higher-end Macs in terms of performance. It's unlikely to do much better than Comet Lake-H. It's very unlikely to do much better than Cascade Lake-W.
- assuming there even is emulation at all: on those higher ends, where performance-critical apps matter more, and are likely not to be compiled for ARM, an ARM-based Mac would actually be a significantly worse product than its predecessor
But on the low end? Those apps matter less, and the power advantage matters more. So if ARM Macs happen at all, I'd say the first one will be a MacBook Air. As for Pro models, I'm not sure that will ever happen. It's a solution in search of a problem.