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Apple Intern Spent 12 Weeks Porting Mac OS X To ARM
An anonymous reader writes "Apple hasn't released a Mac OS X device running on ARM yet, but a recently discovered thesis from a former Apple intern going by the name of Tristan Schapp details a 12-week project carried out in 2010 to port the OS to the ARMv5 architecture. The port got as far as booting to a multi-user prompt, but then hit hurdles to do with drivers and cache. The good news is that same intern now works for Apple as part of the CoreOS team. With rumors last year that a MacBook Air running on ARM could appear by 2013, could he be part of a team making that happen? If he is, I bet it will use the new ARMv8 architecture announced late last year."
As how meany big apps will want to change architecture on apple yet again?
This may brake Photoshop plugins as well
Dropping X86 will take away windows dual boot as well.
Steam games and other games may also die on the mac
Assumption is its for the new mac book.
Would be funny if it turns out to be the much rumored apple tv.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's no secret that one of the reasons Intel is subsidizing manufacturers over $100M for the Ultrabook project is to keep ARM at bay. This is compounded by Microsoft offering a ARM version of Windows. Apple putting out a really nice A8 MacBook Air could really shake things up.
However, the real issue Apple is going to have is MacOS or iOS. There's a lot of compelling reasons to move to iOS for Apple, but ultimately the closed nature of iOS would likely alienate the large programmer base they have built up.
Apparently you don't understand that the 30% is essentially the cost of running the store. Apple makes only a little bit of profit on the App Store.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
And not only that, this is in NeXTStep's DNA. That OS was made for portability, and ran on at least (if this link is accurate) four different processor families. Apple also had a concurrent build of OS X on Intel while they sold PowerPC machines. Fat Binaries also would allow Apple, if they felt like it, to make the CPU all but invisible to the user for properly recompiled programs, letting them have multiple processors in their lineup (this does, however, leave anything older or not recompiled out in the cold; that doesn't seem to matter much to Apple, however).
This is just smart business; something goes wrong with Intel, they're ready. A new, decent competitor pops up? port it, and if it proves to be better, run with it. To not to have these projects going would seem to be a mistake.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
If Nvidia is working on it, it seems quite likely that ARM, as in the instruction set, won't; but ARM, in the same sense that "x86" can also describe a computer built around a specific CPU, quite possibly will.
Given Nvidia's (comparatively mature) GPU compute ambitions, and their displeasure at the fact that Intel has been shoving them out of all but the fat-'n-bulky laptop designs and discrete GPU desktop/workstation designs, it seems very likely indeed that Nvidia wants two things from ARM:
1. An ARM fast enough to, when combined with an Nvidia GPU, produce a tablet/laptop that people won't laugh at in comparison to a ULV i3/5/7 + Intel GMA.
2. An ARM fast enough(and with enough PCIe lanes and memory controller ability) to do boot, housekeeping, and care and feeding, for a big stack of 'Tesla' compute silicon.
Neither really requires(nor would it be obviously sensible) ARM to go up against high-wattage and relatively low thread-count x86 parts(in which struggle Intel is a very, very, dangerous adversary, and AMD a dogged and inexpensive one); but they likely would want something that can provide an adequate user experience compared to the intel power-constrained stuff, and something that can allow them to sell all-Nvidia Tesla compute stacks.
If you really like freedom a little bit, you need to be on your guard lest all manufacturers of computing devices priced for home users collude to design their products to take away the computing freedom of home users. This already happened decades ago in the video game industry.
Due to a wonderful concept called "free markets" this will almost certainly not happen. That is, unless perhaps the government decides that "free computing" is dangerous, and mandates that all PCs are locked down. The government, in particular the current US idiocracy, is the main enemy of free markets. In fact, the PS3 tried to make one if its distinguishing characteristics that it was a general-purpose device, but apparently rethought that for various reasons. Since video consoles are essentially fixed-function devices I guess it made sense to Sony, besides Sony's approach was always half-hearted.
Until then, someone will always offer "unlocked" computers due to market demand. Macs are in this category, along with virtually all desktops/laptops in the world. One of the more interesting developments in the area of "cheap, general purpose computing" lately is the sub $50 Raspberry Pi. Now there's a hacker platform if I've ever seen one! =:-D
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Mr. Otellini. Thank you for meeting with us to discuss the Intel hardware performance-per-watt roadmap. It certainly looks like you have top engineers working very hard on this issue.
We have to head back to Cupertino in just a few moments, but before we conclude, I want to introduce you to young Tristan Schapp. He's an intern with us this semester and we've really enjoyed having him around the office. Now Tristan, can you show these nice gentlemen what it was you were able to cobble together in your cubicle over the summer?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!