ProVideoCoalition on Puget Systems using 12th Gen Intel Processors
I still prefer Mac, and the new M1 Max certainly seems to have some serious speed improvements, but a 12 Gen Intel i9 with an NVIDIA would seriously crank for Premiere.
MacRumors on Intel Alder Lake Chips faster than M1 Max, but more power hungry
MacRumors is reporting on the first geekbench reports of the 12th Generation Alder Lake Core i8-12900K 16 core chips, which score 18500 on geekbench vs 12500 for the M1 Pro and M1 Max, though at a much higher power draw.
So about 1.5 times as fast, which means a high Intel would whip the Apple Silicon on Multi-Core performance, though I doubt it’s built in GPU would be faster, though a discrete GPU certainly would.
AppleInsider reports that Thunderbolt 4 details were accidentally leaked by an Intel Exec’s photo on Twitter
So pretty exciting, especially since it keeps the USB C form factor and doubles it’s speed from 40Gbps to 80Gbps.
Already I love being able to use Thunderbolt 4 hubs on my Mac, and hopefully the new Mac Pro will use Thunderbolt 5 for impressive speeds from it’s ports.
9to5Mac reporting on a new intel Mac Pro
Not only would this give a nice boost to the Intel Mac Pro line, it would make up for the fact that they made a modular machine that could be easily upgraded and never bothered releasing a single upgrade for it. And as the article says they are also working on the Apple Silicon version of the MacPro, which will likely be a smaller version of the MacPro, more like a Cube, and it will likely not be upgrade-able, so it would be smart for Apple to release one more upgrade-able machine before they dump the idea of upgrade ability all together.
It seems likely that the Apple Silicon based MacPro will be like every other Apple Silicon with soldered Memory, and fixed gpu on the motherboard, and without the ability to run an external GPU. Now hopefully that also ends up being shown in the price which should be allot less than a fully loaded Intel MacPro, but I doubt it will still be considered inexpensive.
MacRumors reporting several macOS Monterey features unavailable on Intel-Based Macs, doesn’t bode well for continued Intel Support
Joe Rossignol at MacRumors has a report on several features that are only available to M1 macs.
None seem like deal breakers, and the Portrait Mode blurred background could be something with the cameras, which would mean not supported on M1 Mac Mini.
Apple has said they will continue to support Intel Macs for some time, but slowly removing features from Intel doesn’t really seem like full support, and gives doubt to rumors of a final Mac Pro with newer Intel Processor.
AppleInsider is reporting that a new iMac Pro is going to come out in 2021 with M1 Hardware
So AppleInsider is saying that a component manufacturer is saying there will be a new iMac Pro in 2021, which is good news. As the article says the iMac Pro could easily have been a stopgap machine while they waited for the new MacPro, but having one I can say I am happy there will be a new one.
It is a powerful machine, and it will answer the question of if Apple is going to have external GPU’s or rely on their on chip M1 Graphics for their Pro machines.
Of course I am on the side of wanting support for PCI based GPU’s, as Apple has does not have any experience making high end pro graphics cards, and I would be much happier having that than a ramped up iPad chip, unless they really ramp it up significantly. I also would like to see video RAM instead of the M1’s shared RAM, which sure is fast, but straight video ram is going to be faster, and better for high end.
Just check out Bare Feats tests on DaVinci Resolve 17.1 Beta 4 (For M1 Macs) that is blown out of the water by an IMac Pro and even more so by a 2019 Mac Pro.
Apple updated the iMac today and made the lowest iMac Pro 10 core, are these the last Intel Macs?
Apple upgraded the iMac today with new processors, all SSD (say goodbye to Fusion drives), up to 10 core 10th generation intel processors, AMD 5000 series graphics cards, and the option to have a matte finish for $500. They also got rid of the 8 core iMac Pro, making the bottom model 10 cores, to match the cores of the new top 5K. Still look the same, a new look will wait for Apple Silicon.
Tim Cook mentioned that they still had Intel machines in the works. Is this the last Intel machine before Apple Silicon arrives? It seems likely unless there is one more laptop processor upgrade, but it seems unlikely.
Jean-Louis Gassée on Apple Silicon and the passing of Wintel
Jean-Louis Gassee formerly of Apple and also fo BeOS has an article on the new Apple Silicon and how it could be the death knell for Wintel, the powerful combination of Intel hardware and Windows.
His take is that since ARM is in fact a more efficient processor and if Apple manages to push the hardware and software to be faster than Wintel (which is could be since it is RISC instead of CISC) it will push Microsoft to really get behind it’s ARM version of Windows that it has been playing with and releasing, but without enough support. And that will push Intel to have to get back into ARM processor development or break the WINTEL partnerdship.
Let’s hope Apple Silicon is eventually that much more powerful and faster and more efficient than anything Intel comes out with, because with Apple writing the software it will mean a sea chance, and for once it would be awesome for Apple to be faster than WINTEL, but pushing Microsoft to ARM I hadn’t even thought about as the fact that Microsoft haven’t even made versions of all their software for their arm hardware, and yet they are working on it for Apple Silicon.
Apple’s move to ARM from Intel Processors will only take 2 years
At Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, the WWDC yesterday Apple announced that they will be moving all of their processors from Intel to Apple Silicon ARM processors in 2 years.
Rumors of this switch have been going on for years now, since Apple has been creating it’s own ARM processors for iPhones and iPads for the last 20 years. And it makes sense for their laptops for sure, since they use less power, and have better graphics than Intel’s low and mid range processors. It will mean more speed and more battery life for most laptops.
And they have brought back Rosetta which was used in the Power PC to Intel transition and showed it using Maya in their keynote. And Universal 2 will allow developers to compile versions for both Intel and Apple Silicon in a single binary. And they said Adobe is working on the transition already, so some software will certainly work, but what about other pro software, like AVID and DaVinci and all the plug ins.
My question has always been what will it mean for the high end pro market. And their are currently no high end ARM processors that match Xeon processors. And can they even support PCI cards? Hell the Dev box they are letting developers buy doesn’t even have Thunderbolt, which is an Intel technology and that all pros have moved to including me. Will none of my hard drives work on new Mac hardware ever again? That will be a huge fuck you to Pros. Was the new MacPro a hoodwink to bring pros back and then it is the last truly pro machine that Apple every releases? And all it’s vaunted upgradeability is useless because Apple will never release any new hardware for it. If so what a fucking waste. It does look like Intel is open sourcing Thunderbolt, but not having it on the first hardware is scary.
Sure it is possible that Apple plans a MacPro with Apple Silicon, but it seems unlikely, especially since they never mentioned it when they could have. Sure it would stop or slow down current sales, but it would give some assurance.
I mean it took AVID this long to get a version that works for Catalina, and it is basically a re-write that breaks all compatibility with past versions. Hopefully this switch won’t be as drastic, but who the fuck knows?
Will all plug ins need to be re-written, that is very likely, which means years for Apple to catch up again with where it is, and a huge expense as you know most will involve a cost to the end user.
And so if it turns out the high end can’t compete with Intel, and not even AMD graphics cards, Pros will be done with Apple for good. And maybe iPad’s with Keyboards will end up as the high end of macs, as it is likely that more high end software will be more easily ported since it will be on the same silicon.
So once again I come away from a WWDC more scared for Apple’s future than I was before it. Maybe Apple has solutions or maybe they will just be going for the low end portable market and dropping the high end, but that is a question I would love answered.
Sure Intel will remain supported for years, but not forever.