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Is OSX86 doomed?

theconnactic
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unixb0y
unixb0y
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I agree with Apple that Intel isn't doing much progress lately, but we can see from the Hackintosh community that OSX runs well on AMD CPUs and their progress has been great in the last years! It would make more sense to switch to AMD than to create their own CPUs from scratch. Regarding the T1 / T2 chips, iirc there were new Macs in 2019 without it, so until those are out of the update loop (at least 5 years - Catalina supports 8 year old HW!), we will still get macOS updates that don't require this chip and after that, we might be able to emulate it or something like that, we'll see ^^

My opinion: OSX86 isn't doomed at all for now.

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unixb0y
unixb0y
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On 5/31/2020 at 1:16 PM, Hervé said:

ARM CPUs are not created "from scratch". They're manufactured under licences, the design being made by ARM who sell Intellectual Property. It's not as if Apple were new to this given that all iPod, iPhone and other iPad devices are based on ARM CPUs. And let's not forget that Apple were founding members of ARM Ltd back in 1990, i.e. 30 years ago.

 

Yeah, I know, but custom chips are still a lot of work compared to just buying something off-the-shelf. Of course, they do bring new custom chips for the mobile devices every year, which is really impressive. Especially since there are no "lower tier" and "higher tier" chips that you can select from like when buying OTS CPUs, where all the chips that don't work at the specified clock are just clocked down and sold as a "Core i5", "Core i3" etc. Apple can't do that so either they're super efficient with their processes or they have a lot of waste.

 

But I digress :-) 

 

As said before, they seem to support their hardware for up to 8 years, so we'll probably have Hackintosh until 8 years from the launch of the day that all their Macs in the lineup will have switched to ARM. As we all know, it's very well possible that e.g. they release ARM MacBooks but still launch new iMacs or Mac Pros with Intel (or AMD) chips for a few more years. It's usually not the case that all machines are updated "in sync" and big changes like this often take years to be implemented in each and every product of their lineup. So from the day that the first ARM Mac is released, we'll still have like 10 years to figure stuff out. And ARM Macs are not even announced yet whatsoever so I'm calling 10+ more years from now :D

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unixb0y
unixb0y
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Posted (edited)
17 minutes ago, melvyn2 said:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/apple-plans-to-announce-arm-transition-for-all-macs-at-wwdc-2020/

It's official.

 

Yeah, see, if they announce it in 2 weeks, it will probably take a year or so for the first ARM Mac to be in store. Then another year or more until every single Mac of the lineup has transitioned to ARM, like, everything from MacBook Air to Mac Pro, and then, from that date, expect 7-8 years of updates for Intel based Macs, since that's around how long they usually support their Mac hardware. And after that, we can still use the last Intel-supporting OS (like I'm currently  still on Mojave, no biggie at all).

 

But thanks for the article and the update!

Edited by unixb0y
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ameris_cyning
ameris_cyning
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8 hours ago, Snerler said:

The Surface Pro X already ships with an ARM processor. If the market is headed that way I'm sure there will be a lot of ARM computers that can run future versions of Mac OS.

 

AX chips are based on ARM. Doesn't mean that they are exactly the same. Plus these devices will have T2 chips inside. It isnt a given. Its a possibility, but not a given 

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iWin32
iWin32
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On 4/27/2020 at 12:47 PM, eSaF said:

 

I don't know but I will go by the thinking that anything Man Made is breakable, Apple's OS was emulated way back from Tiger if my memory serves me well so I don't think or would like to think that a change from using Intel chips to their own in an attempt to lock down their OS is going to stop some clever bugger from breaking it down just as before, so I am not worried on the premise that our Hacks are doomed. 

ARM-based Mac emulation will eventually happen, no doubt.  That being said, depending on your application, I doubt you'd get a full-fledged macOS experience once Apple ships an OS that's just supported on ARM-based Macs.  If any app you wish to run requires any sort of graphic acceleration (i.e., Final Cut Pro X, Photoshop), I guarantee you that in the current state of things, you'd be SOL.  Anything outside of running macOS natively on x86 hardware, you can't run ANY version of macOS with QE/CI support (unless you use some sort of KVM on Linux or ESXI that supports passing through an internal graphics card to the guest operating system).  This was true even in the early PearPC days, and I have my doubt that anything would have been different running old Classic Mac OS emulators from before OS X.  At most, you'd be able to get macOS to boot up and run basic applications and maybe even XCode, but anything requiring graphics acceleration would require a real Mac going forward, barring some sort of miracle...

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ameris_cyning
ameris_cyning
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@iWin32

 

If Apple continues to offer Thunderbolt 3 (or USB4 when it comes out) on their Macs graphics acceleration will be a non-issue

 

I am more concerned with the differences between the AX series and other ARM processors. Those will be the pain in the ass things to work out.

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Alex HQuest
Alex HQuest
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"OSX86 is doomed..."

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/15/16-inch-macbook-pro-5600m-graphics/

 

Except the same "old" hardware is not only still being sold, it is getting upgrades today.

 

We might see a few units, perhaps, running ARM, but there is a long way until ARM can take over x86 architecture. It makes sense for ultra portable, very long battery life units (read: iPad Pro), but for real world workhorses such as MBPs, iMacs, Mac Pros and even the Mac mini, the x86 platform should last for quite a while.

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unixb0y
unixb0y
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3 hours ago, C.Frio said:

Hi...

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/21/21298607/first-arm-mac-macbook-pro-imac-ming-chi-kuo-wwdc-2020

C.frio

 

Well, they also said they have more Intel Macs that will be announced soon (probably September) and will support those for "years to come" (so probably 8yrs or so like Catalina which supports 2012 MBP) which means we'll get updates for 8 more years as well.

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fantomas
fantomas
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Like Tim Cook said, for 'years to come' but what that really means... 2-3 years? 5-6 years? Only time will say. But there will surely come a time when we could no longer install macOS on the Intel CPU based machines. Unless some devs build a FakeARM.kext or something similar.

 

For now, the kext injection is broken and it is the most difficult part for our devs. Just remind that in the past, it was the same, but this time the difficulty is at a higher level.

 

I think it's a new challenge from Tim Cook for us because everyone knows that he likes challenges and personally I also think he still keeps an eye on the hackintosh community progressing, since there too it is about the development, in a sense.  ^_^

 

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unixb0y
unixb0y
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To be honest, it would be a huge {censored} move from Apple if 'years to come' means just 2 or 3 years and they launch 10th Gen Intel Macs end of the year. This would mean that you give them thousands of dollars and they support your brand spanking new machine for just over 2 years. I can't imagine that, since normally they provide OS updates for well over 5 years. If we look at Catalina, the oldest supported Mac is from 2012, so 8 years of OS updates.

Sure, in the past, when they switched architectures, they didn't support PPC for 8 years, but more like 3 or so years, but that's like 20 years ago. Lots of stuff changed, obviously, not to mention Moore's law has slowed down a lot, so it makes total sense that 8 year old laptop hardware is physically capable of running the latest OS, while 20 years ago that wouldn't have been possible.

We can even see in the ~10 years that we have iPhones now, how devices are supported for longer periods of time right now than in the beginning.

So I personally still think / expect Apple to continue supporting Intel CPUs for up to 8 years, but I'm also really looking forward to hackintoshing ARM and finding ways to circumvent the new stones that Apple is lying in our way.. :D

I'm quite certain that in the course of the next few years, other manufacturers will also start developing ARM chips for laptops and Desktops and I'm excited to see if we as a community will manage to get ARM versions of macOS 11.x running on systems that are physically based on ARM chips as well.

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macinsane
macinsane
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Absolutely. I don‘t know what people are expecting, but Apple has a history of quickly abandoning stuff. Of course they‘re telling us now that they‘re gonna support Intel for the next years, so that they could sell computers. Another thing: OS support is useless, if pro app support Is dropped well sooner. That happened after the Intel transition and it most likely will happen now. In short: I‘m not going to buy an Intel Mac in 2020/21 ;)

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sandokan71
sandokan71
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On 7/3/2020 at 12:44 PM, unixb0y said:

...

So I personally still think / expect Apple to continue supporting Intel CPUs for up to 8 years, but I'm also really looking forward to hackintoshing ARM and finding ways to circumvent the new stones that Apple is lying in our way.. :D

I'm quite certain that in the course of the next few years, other manufacturers will also start developing ARM chips for laptops and Desktops and I'm excited to see if we as a community will manage to get ARM versions of macOS 11.x running on systems that are physically based on ARM chips as well.

 

I think most will depends on what Microsoft will do in the next few years. Windows 10 is already fully available for ARM64 ( you can download ISO images built together with the intel versions ) If the PC market will grow in that direction ( not happening for now... ) I'm sure that someone will find a way to run macOS ARM on PC as well.  But this is the real problem: Will PC Market abandon intel architecture?  I'm not so sure...

 

 

 

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macattackjack
macattackjack
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For what it's worth,

I've been trying to find a Motherboard/CPU combo to upgrade to for over a year. I currently use an E5-2697 12 core at 2.7 GHZ with an Asus X79 Sabertooth, and an i7-3820 4 core at 3.6 GHZ with a X79 Rampage 4 Gene. I use both in a studio setting. What I discovered a while back, that while the 12 was overall a faster cpu, the programs I used only used one core, and that the 4 core 3820 had a higher single core rating and actually worked better with the audio programs

What became painfully obvious as I looked at the various CPUs is that it seems Intel is just shuffling it's speed around in different configurations. So you can get an 20 core cpu, but it's running at 1.8 GHZ, or you can get a 4 core cpu but that's running at 4.0 GHZ, but you can never get a 28 core running at 4.0 GHZ (I am making these numbers just to to generalize, and am basing this on stock running speeds.) It seems they've reached their speed limit.

However, making a ARM chip that compares with the AMD CPU speeds. That would take a lot of R&D.

However:

As I sit here and type this, the little window ad with the tech news lady said Apple is the first company to be worth 2 TRILLION dollars.

Intel is worth a measly 240 Billion. (such losers, right?)

Apple could by Intel and not break a sweat.

So they could go full ARM if they wanted.

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Zoolook
Zoolook
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Interesting how well some comments aged! Hindsight is 20-20 eh?

 

I was drawn to this thread because I just finished setting up another Hackintosh but I've been interested in the evolution of CPUs are decades and wanted to pick up on some language being used in this thread.

 

Apple isn't going to "ARM Chips" they're moving to Apple Silicon. Someone above (a mod I think) mentioned that Apple licenses the chip design from ARM and then does some tinkering around the edges, and has done so since the 90's (or words to that effect). However this is not true. Apple used and licensed reference designs until the A6, when they produced their own silicon for the first tme. Ever since the A7, Apple Silicon has really looked nothing like other ARM reference designs at all, because it's completely custom. The only thing Apple licenses from ARM is the instruction set (basically the lowest level language the chip can understand - add, subtract, multiply etc).

 

OK why is it important to be that pedantic? Well because Apple's silicon will ONLY ever be used in Apple products and rather than designing fast chips and letting software catch up, they will be designed for the needs of future software ideas. But that's what makes Apple Apple. Regardless, it's likely to mean that new features Apple introduces won't work on other ARM reference designs and would have to be emulated - and so long as they still use the reference instruction set, things will still work, albeit slowly.

 

x86 Hackintoshes probably have a decent lifespan ahead of them, I would expect macOS to be compiled for x86 for maybe another 6 or 7 years and then of course even after the last OS release supporting Intel, you have at least another 3 or 4 years of still being useful.

 

2 caveats:

 

1 is anything new from Intel and AMD after 2020 won't be supported in macOS, simply because Apple won't have any hardware with that feature - so pretty much whatever you have built in 2020 is about as good as it gets.

 

2 is that I would think that future releases to macOS will start to be tied to other custom Apple hardware (like the T2 chip) and it might not be long before that's a requirement - maybe 3 years after Big Sur? Perhaps the community can work around it, but I suspect this will be an obstacle before x86 is no longer supported.

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Tinet
Tinet
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Apple has a story of adop fastly new CPU technologies. It's obvious that in a short period of time (shorten than we expected) Apple deprecated all x86 architecture.

If ypu are happy with the Hack you've got, will be okey for a while. But remember: the technology goes fast in the time we're living today, and Apple Silicon CPUs won't be the last stop...

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unixb0y
unixb0y
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So, all the M1 chips basically have the same performance right? Like, an M1 iMac isn't as fast as a specced-out iMac Pro, or am I wrong?

What about Mac Pro? Do you think Apple will be able to create a chip that can challenge the Mac Pro? 

And will Apple be able to throw Mac Pro buyers who spent 20K+ on a computer under the bus 2 years down the line? 

Really curious to see how things will pan out.

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