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OT - Apple might announce finally ARM macs on WWDC
I hope they port Logic then finally to ARM, this is mainly all i´missing.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/09/apple-arm-mac-starts-wwdc/
Comments
I’m hoping my next portable is a hybrid MacBook iPad TBH, something I can both draw on with a pencil and also do proper animation work with 3d and editing, maybe some aum on the side 😁
Lol, great, of course... I just ordered a 2020 13inch MacBook Pro 😂😂😂. I don’t feel that bad since they won’t come out till 2021 and I REALLY needed an upgrade from my 2011 MBP 🤷🏽♂️
Interesting. I'd have thought there would be a performance hit on desktop from ARM chips. They've always been slower in the past.
I think it's about a decade of ARM processors being just around the corner, so I generally take these with a grain of salt as I've seen them every 6 months or so. Maybe it will be announced this time, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I wonder how many audio plugins and applications will be ported to ARM...
New iMacs too, which I’m excited about. Mine is over a decade old.
Yep, that's the general consensus. Plus I'd skip the first few generations as there's bound to be teething troubles.
I've only just got this MBP a month and a half ago. Same one as @MonzoPro but the 1TB i9 one instead.
With all I've read about Apple's ARM processors, and from seeing the performance of the chips in the iPhone 11, I'm quite optimistic about the performance of an ARM Mac.
The hard bit will be waiting for all the third party developers to update to ARM. Especially the audio developers.
It might (probably will) take a very long time, a lot of them are rightly going to wait until there's enough market share of ARM Macs to make the transition even remotely worthwhile.
I'd be happy to have a first gen ARM MacBook. My first intel Mac was the first white MacBook and it has been a fantastic computer. It was the entry level model and has worked flawlessly for over 10 years (and only the battery stopped it being useful still for the odd CD/DVD rip). I gigged it for years and it never missed a beat.
My current (2016) MacBook Pro is a bit of a lemon and I'm not confident it will last much longer (I get terrible screen glitching which is getting worse. Also I quite like having a space bar that types a space every time I press it...) so I may be in the market for a work laptop soon... Hopefully it will last long enough to make having a choice of an ARM Mac a possibility.
But I'd be looking at a fairly entry level machine for a first ARM Mac. A Mac with a space bar would be an upgrade... :-/
I put off getting an iMac last year because of the ARM chat, but the general consensus was that it'll be a long way off, and to expect a lot of hiccups along the way - software, hardware, and OS related. They've been talking about it for years.
I'm happy with this one, as long as I can get a few years work use out of it via OS updates, then when they stop support I'll retire it like my 2012 one, freeze it for personal mucking about, and then probably get an ARM iMac for work. Pretty chuffed with this laptop to be honest.
I dread buying a new mac but I know the time will come eventually. Until then, I’m trying to make my uad apollo x8 take as much plugin load as I can- about to get a channel strip in the sale this month. My 2012 mbp already would have some features missing on catalina if I dared to upgrade, but things are running well on mojave...
2012 was a good year for MBP’s it seems, mine is still going strong, though I’m booting from an external SSD to speed things up.
The current MBP’s get good reviews, so I’m hoping to keep mine going for as long as my old one!
Yeah, I have 2 ssd’s in mine, one for OS, one for audio. It’s plenty fast in everyday use, but some better plugins tax out pretty quickly. I am undortunately having to do some video editing and davinci resolve brings it to its knees quickly (although now I figured out how to optimize media while working). But that’s not my main thing so i won’t be replacing it so I can edit video.
When my 2012 died last November, it got replaced with another 2012.
More oil for the fire.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/apple-plans-to-announce-arm-transition-for-all-macs-at-wwdc-2020/?amp=1
I think everybody is referring to the same Gurman (Bloomberg) article.
Here’s Gruber’s take (he’s usually right when it comes to all things Apple)
https://daringfireball.net/2020/06/on_apple_announcing_the_mac_arm_transition_at_wwdc
Don't Apple have some technology (Caterpillar, Custard or something) that can repurpose code when it is submitted to the app store? Don't think I dreamed that.
Also, could be pretty cool if they start putting their AI chip inside a MacBook for developers to play with.
Will that be the death knell for Hackintosh? That’ll be a downer.
Almost certainly, though I think that was on the cards anyway. Apple are increasingly locking down everything on the platform. I'm finding the new release to be a pain, as the security stuff is making installing plugins hard, and a couple of programs I've used for a while don't seem to be working. Do kind of wonder whether Apple can maintain it's preeminence in audio/video circles if it maintains its trajectory.
I've been surprised at how good Linux has been for music recently. I still use the mac just because I have one, and it works well with my ipad, but my linux box is stable, fast and seems to run all the windows VSTs I can throw at it without any serious problems. Reaper Linux seems much like Reaper Windows. I have been surprised that more companies aren't releasing Linux VSTs, as if they're using JUCE (or WDL2) it's very straightforward.
Another thought about this. It's going to give Apple tighter control over their hardware. You will not be able to buy these processors from third parties (unless you find a gray market source outside the factory gates...). And this could give them a huge advantage in the laptop world, as currently you can't buy high performance ARM chips. That might change if ARM (or soembody else) sees a market for it, but given that Windows would struggle to make the transition to ARM, that might take a while.
I would probably switch to Linux in a heartbeat if more companies ported to it. I personally think it’s becoming too bloated. I did like Mountain Lion the most, with an ssd booted up real quick,10 seconds probably. Nearly a minute on Catalina. Just had to update for Ableton 10. Should probably of stayed on High Sierra I think.
I don’t know what Windows is like now but I hated it when I last used it.
Windows is pretty bad.
Bad in a general sense or certain specific things?
What I hated was constant updates, really got on my nerves. That was a revelation when I got my Hackintosh. Then audio situation got on my nerves a bit. I couldn’t afford a good interface so I got a cheap behringer interface which was fine but further down the line I picked up another interface cheap but I couldn’t effectively use both at the same time. That was another revelation, aggregate audio.
The audio stuff just always seemed really fragile and unreliable, the computer would break in unpredictable ways. The computer slows down over time for mysterious reasons. Installing new software can break things in ways that are utterly mysterious. A lot of the computers power seemed to be used up on things I didn't need. Hate, hate, hate the interface.
I used it for a long time, and while I've always preferred Unix, Windows 8 was the point at which I just decided I'd had enough. Demanded a Mac for work, and at home moved to Linux. Things have been much better.
Interesting. I used linux exclusively for music about 9 years ago and it was not a good experience. That led me to get my first used macbook. Now that I’m using uad I couldn’t go to Linux if I wanted, but if that ever became viable again and apple continues to go in the direction they are going to make stuff that cant be upgraded much or repaired, could be an option. Is JACK still something that you have to use or did that finally, mercifully, go away? I cant tell you how many live recording sessions JACK crashes brought to a grinding halt. Very frustrating!
I don't know I've ever had any problems with JACK. I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone make the transition, unless they had a reason to. If you're the kind of person who likes tinkering with your tools, and has a million Reaper scripts, then it's probably worth a shot (use a dedicated audio distribution). Or if you have some old hardware. Reaper on an old Linux laptop works just fine for recording and light mixing work.
Linux could definitely be made to work as a very nice, no frills, reasonably priced audio workstation. But it would take some investment I think.
Maybe the iOS developers becoming then the new famous mac audio app developers.
Desktop developers which already have ARM/iOS ports might benefit as well.
I see more problems with really complex things with tons of old code like Kontakt f.e.
But i personally would go more with an ARM based macbook or go back to full iOS instead of going into the windows hell.
Again, mainly all i would need right now would be an ARM Logic version and some more better sample libraries (especially solo instruments with good legato). Maybe SWAM comes in here soon?
Then give me just things like Pianoteq and i am there.
Oh, but i also need some better things for mixing and especially good spatialization does not exist in iOS yet.
Whatever they do, i see my music creation future def. in one of those mysterious ARM macbooks or go back full iOS/iPad if things mature a bit more and missing software will be delivered in coming 1-2 years.
One thing for sure, X-86 only developers are out for me in the near future and might miss out the next generation.
So maybe all great news for iOS developers and those which have already ports on it running.
It already influence my decision to what to buy. I avoid only mac/windows developers already (beside a few i really adore, which would be just 2 at the moment).
I already dream of what an active cooled multi-core A15X whatever chip could do in a macbook pro 16". In theory it could run circles around an i9 and on top apps might be much better optimized as well.
Best example miRack. Its so much better optimized compared to other tools which have to run in all OS, hosts and whatever. And yet it still perform better on my phone but i think mainly because (like VCV) is seems extreme demanding on GPU while iOS GUI runs much better. My mac get hot like lava.
So short said i think we could see much better performing and optimized music apps in general, especially from developers which focus on one architecture maybe.
Anyway it looks i have to go with Apple the one or the other way. What a trap
Why do people think it will be such a huge issue for software to be ported to ARM, Apple will probably just put some kind of emulated refactoring in to their compiler, so with minimal effort it will recompile as universal.
As for Windows being hell etc etc, absolute nonsense, and Windows ran on ARM years ago.
The OS wars are over, they are pretty much all horrible in one way or another, and they will continue to get more horrible with each release until they are so dumbed down that they will be near invisible and all OS level functionality as we see it now will be implemented per app.
The amount of work needed to get hardware and software up to scratch is immense. With companies struggling to survive already due to the impact of the virus, I can't see this working in a satisfactory fashion anytime soon.
Seems like it's inevitable to me. There’s a fascinating and deeply nerdy thread over on macrumors talking about die size, power per watt, number of cores, clock speed, and it all leads to the conclusion that designing its own silicon will give Apple a huge advantage - significantly more powerful computers with lower power consumption (which means longer battery life). They’ve done this twice before, when they weren’t a 1.5 trillion dollar company.
Depends how quickly software companies can adapt their products to work on it though. Native Instruments for example cut a load of staff last year, and that was before the virus crisis. Will they be able to quickly recode all their software to work with the new hardware and operating system? Can they even afford to do it? Inevitable, maybe, but my guess is there could be a load of people with fancy new computers and not much software to run on them.
Sure they're a '1.5 trillion dollar company' now, but they're not infallable. Look at all the problems people had with keyboards and other issues with the previous generation of MacBook Pro's. My mate spent 5k on a top spec model and it was virtually unusable, so he had to sell it at a massive loss.
Personally I'd wait a few years while they iron the bugs out, and for developers to play catch up.