Arm based Macs (platform support)

[dayjob]

"Whether they do or not, there will again be a transition period before they eventually come over, and there will be a transition period as Apple switches over to ARM, though this time it is likely to be longer. It's unlikely that Tim Cook will be able, or want to, emulate Steve Jobs's announcement that all Macs would be using Intel processors within two years. He'll surely not be able to match how Apple actually made that move within 18 months.

That was exactly the statement Apple made yesterday. All Macs will be using Arm processors in 2 years.

apple also said they have more "exciting intel based machines in development for release" between now and then and will support intel OS for a long time.

[david.beholder]

i agree w/that sentiment. let rosetta2 handle the bridge year(s) and let Z3 emerge for us in the meantime.

Let PC handle your Z3 instead. Rosetta on arm wouldn't handle real time operations with proper latency.

apple also said they have more "exciting intel based machines in development for release" between now and then and will support intel OS for a long time.

In case you're looking in direction of proper laptops i mean x86 windows based

[dayjob]

i agree w/that sentiment. let rosetta2 handle the bridge year(s) and let Z3 emerge for us in the meantime.

Let PC handle your Z3 instead. Rosetta on arm wouldn't handle real time operations with proper latency.

i don't own a PC...

how did you test latency already on rosetta2 w/Z3?

[david.beholder]

i don't own a PC...
how did you test latency already on rosetta2 w/Z3?

Good time to get one.

Because I work in CS/IT. Emulations are slow except when instruction set and virtualization tools are available on processor level. That's why ARM/MIPS on x86 are tens-hundreds times slower than x86 on x86.
Z3 would require more clock on slower core (ARM cores are WAY slower than x86) and if it would work at all it would require way higher latency to compensate cpu consumption.

Also Intel is very protective for their IP especially x86 instruction set. They may sue Apple for using it in Rosetta. But that's legal aspect I know nothing about it just thinking.

[dayjob]

i don't own a PC...
how did you test latency already on rosetta2 w/Z3?

Because I work in CS/IT. Emulations are slow except when instruction set and virtualization tools are available on processor level. That's why ARM/MIPS on x86 are tens-hundreds times slower than x86 on x86.
Z3 would require more clock on slower core (ARM cores are WAY slower than x86) due to following and if it would work at all it would require way higher latency to compensate cpu consumption.

BTW Intel is very protective for their IP and they may sue Apple for using their instruction set in Rosetta. But that's legal aspect I know nothing about.

seems fine since i won't have an ARM based mac in my life for at least several years... and i stand by my original comment of letting ARM wait and deliver Z3 for mac/win x86 people in the meantime.

i only recently got a used 2018 macbook pro and retired my 2011 Mac book pro. also still using the 2010 12 core cheesegrater that i also bought used long ago. i'm doing just fine w/these set ups.

I'll be making music and eating popcorn and not worrying about ARM macs for quite a while.

[pdxindy]

i only recently got a used 2018 macbook pro and retired my 2011 Mac book pro. also still using the 2010 12 core cheesegrater that i also bought used long ago. i'm doing just fine w/these set ups.

I'll be making music and eating popcorn and not worrying about ARM macs for quite a while.

Same... my MBP is only 1 year old and I expect to be using it for years. There are all sorts of dramatic declarations being made by users, but nothing is actually going to change in the short term.

I might buy an ARM Mac when they come out just for the fun of it. I'll consider it at the time. It would be disappointing if Zebra gets delayed due to this, but on the other hand, I can at least imagine u-he plugins someday being available on iOS. A multitouch Bazille on my iPad Pro (or a future model) would be sweet!

[Burillo]

at first i thought that this would be a disaster, but really, in most cases, a cross platform codebase is already abstracted enough to ease the transition to ARM, and ARM does have SIMD instructions that are roughly equivalent to SSE/AVX instructions on x86, so performance should be there for natively compiled software, and it should be relatively straightforward to port even code full of intrinsics. Apple chips are a generation ahead as far as anything ARM goes, so despite me wanting Apple to crash and burn with this, i don't think it'll happen

[Urs]

it should be relatively straightforward to port even code full of intrinsics

That's what we hope for.

[Garzita]

I was around Mac OS 9 (Classic) to OS X, from PowerPC to Intel, and 32 to 64 bit architecture and believe me, we lost some good apps and plugins that did not get ported.
but not U-He, we were not left out to dry

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I was around Mac OS 9 (Classic) to OS X, from PowerPC to Intel, and 32 to 64 bit architecture and believe me, we lost some good apps and plugins that did not get ported.
but not U-He, we were not left out to dry

It would be unfortunate if this ends up being a clusterf*ck for developers, and those with a larger product line like U-he end up losing another 6 months or a year updating their product line to work on Apple products, yet again.

In U-he's case, I really hope this comes after Z3. Seems like there's always something else that comes up and pushes back work on Z3, and once that thing is done, there's always something else afterwards. If updating the U-he line to work on ARM/Mac is anything more than a relatively minor effort (and they always start out looking small then being huge in the end), I say let that work wait the two years for Apple to be fully ARM. Users who will be buying those early ARM Mac's should understand what they're getting into in terms of being on the bleeding edge of technology. If you're doing audio work and buy one of those first ARM Mac's, you're kind of asking for things not to work for a while and shouldn't be surprised when that happens. I feel like a lot of audio tools aren't going to be working on Mac's for a while as developers take their time updating.

[Dombaeb]

I was around Mac OS 9 (Classic) to OS X, from PowerPC to Intel, and 32 to 64 bit architecture and believe me, we lost some good apps and plugins that did not get ported.
but not U-He, we were not left out to dry

It would be unfortunate if this ends up being a clusterf*ck for developers, and those with a larger product line like U-he end up losing another 6 months or a year updating their product line to work on Apple products, yet again.

In U-he's case, I really hope this comes after Z3. Seems like there's always something else that comes up and pushes back work on Z3, and once that thing is done, there's always something else afterwards. If updating the U-he line to work on ARM/Mac is anything more than a relatively minor effort (and they always start out looking small then being huge in the end), I say let that work wait the two years for Apple to be fully ARM. Users who will be buying those early ARM Mac's should understand what they're getting into in terms of being on the bleeding edge of technology. If you're doing audio work and buy one of those first ARM Mac's, you're kind of asking for things not to work for a while and shouldn't be surprised when that happens. I feel like a lot of audio tools aren't going to be working on Mac's for a while as developers take their time updating.

+1000. I'm planning to buy a new MacBook during the next 2 months and it won't be ARM for sure so I gonna stuck on Intel for the next 4 years minimum (my current MacBook serves me well from 2013).

[Urs]

The part of the team that's gonna deal with the ARM transition doesn't overlap much with the part that does Z3. I'll be busy for a week or two but that's all, as far as I expect.

Much worse for all of is that our student developer has finished his stuff and now decided to take up another offer. That'll cost a month or two of Z3 development :-/

(any student developers from Berlin around?)

[machinesworking]

Urs will have Arm versions, Z3 will eventually come out. Yes, as someone whose owned Zebra since it's first .0 beta I want Z3, but it will come. U-He are the least worry plug in wise, look to NI for long port times.

The developer I'm going to be waiting on is Vienna Instruments, when VEP goes Arm, then I can go Arm. I'm not getting rid of the Max Pro running Mojave so it can easily be a VEP server, thus rendering any concerns about Arm compatibility moot for me.

The real test is can I wait the 2+ years it will take for a truly impressive 2nd generation MacBook pro running Arm chips comes out, or will I be a dumb ass and buy first generation because the 2010 MacBook pro here is killing me?

[MrBauer]

Do devs actually have to buy new Apple hardware or is there some kind of emulator/virtual machine available?

[dayjob]

Do devs actually have to buy new Apple hardware or is there some kind of emulator/virtual machine available?

theres a dev kit. they announced it at the WWDC. mac mini already on ARM chips. devs have to buy it but i have no idea how much it is. seems like it'd be cheap.