6 ms·

It is quite astonishing how seamless Apple has managed to make the Intel to ARM transition, there are some seriously smart minds behind Rosetta. I honestly don'

by dynjo 4y ago

It is quite astonishing how seamless Apple has managed to make the Intel to ARM transition, there are some seriously smart minds behind Rosetta. I honestly don't think I had a single software issue during the transition!

wombat-man 4y ago
There's an annoying dwarf fortress bug but other than that, same
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
If that blows your mind, you should see how Microsoft did the emulation of the PowerPC based Xeon chip to X86 so you can play Xbox 360 games on Xbox One. There's an old pdf from Microsoft researchers with the details but I can't seem to find it right now.
- RedShift1 4y ago
  Any good videos on that?
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  They also bought a boat load of PPC Macs for much of the early Xbox dev work.
poulpy123 4y ago
having total control on the hardware and the software didn't hurt for sure
- manv1 4y ago
  Qualcomm (and Broadcomm) has total control on the hardware and software side of a lot of stuff and their stuff is shit. It's not about control, it's about good engineering.
  - porcc 4y ago
    So many parts across the stack need to work well for this to go well. Early support for popular software is a good example. This goes from partnerships all the way down to hardware designers. I'd argue it's not about engineering more than it is about good organizational structure.
    - iamstupidsimple 4y ago
      And having execs who design the organizational structure around those goals is part of what makes good engineering :)
  - stevefan1999 4y ago
    It's about both control and engineering in Apple's case.
  - zeusk 4y ago
    That's really not the case, if you're in Microsoft or Linux's position you can't really change the OS architecture or driver models for any particular vendor. That generality and general knowledge separation between different stacks leaves quite a lot of efficiency on the table.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
It isn't their first rodeo: 68k->PPC->x86_64->ARM.
- esskay 4y ago
  Rosetta 1 and the PPC -> x86 move wasn't anywhere near as smooth, I recall countless problems with that switch. Rosetta 2 is a totally different experience, and so much better in every way.
- toast0 4y ago
  nitpick, they did PPC -> x86 (32), the x86_64 bit transition was later (no translation layer though). They actually had 64-bit PPC systems on the G5 when they switched to Intel 32-bit, but Rosetta only does 32-bit PPC -> 32-bit x86; it would have been rare to have released 64-bit PPC only software.
  - EricE 4y ago
    They had 64 bit Carbon translation layer, but spiked it to force Adobe and some other large publishers to go native Intel. There was a furious uproar at the time, but it turned out to be the right decision.
- darzu 4y ago
  You gotta think there's been a lot of churn and lost knowledge at the company between PPC->x86_64 (2006) and now though.
- kevincox 4y ago
  But they've been on x84_64 for a long time. How much of that knowledge is still around? Probably some traces of it have been institutionalized but it isn't the same as if they just grabbed the same team and made them do it again a year after the least transition.
chrchang523 4y ago
I finally started seriously using a M1 work laptop yesterday, and I'm impressed. More than twice as fast on a compute-intensive job as my personal 2015 MBP, with a binary compiled for x86 and with hand-coded SIMD instructions.
- dexterdog 4y ago
  It helps that there were almost 2 years between the release and your adoption. I had a very early M1 and it was not too bad, but there were issues. I knew that going in.
  - EricE 4y ago
    I had an M1 Air early on and I didn't run into any issues. Even the issues with apps like Homebrew were resolved within 3-4 months of the M1 debut. It's amazing just how seamless such a major architectural transition it was and continues to be!
- robohoe 4y ago
  Are you me lol? I'm on my third day on M1 Pro. Battery life is nuts. I can be on video calls and still do dev work without worrying about charging. And the thing runs cool!
xxpor 4y ago
They've almost made it too good. I have to run software that ships an x86 version of CPython, and it just deeply offends me on a personal level, even though I can't actually detect any slowdown (probably because lol python in the first place)
radicaldreamer 4y ago
Since this is the company's third big arch transition, cross-compilation and compatibility is probably considered a core competency for Apple to maintain internally.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  And Next was multi-platform as well.
esskay 4y ago
It has been extremely smooth sailing. I moved my own mac over to it about a year ago, swapping a beefed up MPB for a budget friendly M1 Air (which has massively smashed it out the park performance wise, far better than I was expecting). Didn't have a single issue. My work mac was upgraded to a MBP M1 Pro and again, very smooth. I had one minor issue with a docker container not being happy (it was an x86 instance) but one minor tweak to the docker compose file and I was done. It does still amaze me how good these new machines are. Its almost enough to redeem apple for the total pile of overheating, underperforming crap that came directly before the transition (aka any mac with a touchbar).
js2 4y ago
I have a single counter-example. Mailplane, a Gmail SSB. It's Intel including its JS engine, making the Gmail UI too sluggish to use. I've fallen back to using Fluid, an ancient and also Intel-specific SSB, but its web content runs in a separate WebKit ARM process so it's plenty fast. I've emailed the Mailplane author but they wont release an Universal version of the app since they've EOL'd Mailplane. I have yet to find a Gmail SSB that I'm happy with under ARM. Fluid is a barely workable solution.
- cmg 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I use Mailplane on an M1 MacBook Air (8GB) with 2 Gmail tabs and a calendar tab without noticeable issues. Unfortunately the developers weren't able to get Google to work with them on a policy change that impacted the app [0] [1] and so gave up and have moved on to a new and completely different customer support service. [0] https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/guidance-for-our-effort-to-block-less-secure-browser-and-apps.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/guidance-for-our-e... [1] https://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/mailplane_stopped_selling_licenses.html https://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/mailplane_stopped_sellin... So unfortunately
  - js2 4y ago
    I wonder what's different about my setup. I've tried deleting and re-installing Mailplane and tried it on two different M1s (my personal MBA and my work 16" MBP). On both, there is significant lag in the UI. Just using the j/k keys to move up/down the message list it takes like 500 ms for the selected row to change. I use non-default Gmail UI settings. I'm still using the classic theme, dense settings, etc. I'll try again, because I'd really like to use Mailplane as long as it will survive. I'm aware why Mailplane has been EOL'd. But the developer also claims he's trying to keep it alive as long as possible and he's released at least one version since that blog post, so I'd hoped he would be willing to release a universal build. I don't know anything about the internals of Mailplane but I guess it's a non-trivial amount of work to do so.
perardi 4y ago
I think the end of support for 32-bit applications in 2019 helped, slightly, with the run-up. Assuming you weren’t already shipping 64-bit applications…which would be weird…updating the application probably required getting everything into a contemporary version of Xcode, cleaning out the cruft, and getting it compiling nice and cleanly. After that, the ARM transition was kind of a “it just works” scenario. Now, I’m sure Adobe and other high-performance application developers had to do some architecture-specific tweaks, but, gotta think Apple clued them in ahead of time as to what was coming.

by dynjo 4y ago

wombat-man 4y ago

There's an annoying dwarf fortress bug but other than that, same

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

If that blows your mind, you should see how Microsoft did the emulation of the PowerPC based Xeon chip to X86 so you can play Xbox 360 games on Xbox One. There's an old pdf from Microsoft researchers with the details but I can't seem to find it right now.

RedShift1 4y ago
Any good videos on that?
dev_tty01 4y ago
They also bought a boat load of PPC Macs for much of the early Xbox dev work.

poulpy123 4y ago

having total control on the hardware and the software didn't hurt for sure

manv1 4y ago
Qualcomm (and Broadcomm) has total control on the hardware and software side of a lot of stuff and their stuff is shit. It's not about control, it's about good engineering.
- porcc 4y ago
  So many parts across the stack need to work well for this to go well. Early support for popular software is a good example. This goes from partnerships all the way down to hardware designers. I'd argue it's not about engineering more than it is about good organizational structure.
  - iamstupidsimple 4y ago
    And having execs who design the organizational structure around those goals is part of what makes good engineering :)
- stevefan1999 4y ago
  It's about both control and engineering in Apple's case.
- zeusk 4y ago
  That's really not the case, if you're in Microsoft or Linux's position you can't really change the OS architecture or driver models for any particular vendor. That generality and general knowledge separation between different stacks leaves quite a lot of efficiency on the table.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

It isn't their first rodeo: 68k->PPC->x86_64->ARM.

esskay 4y ago
Rosetta 1 and the PPC -> x86 move wasn't anywhere near as smooth, I recall countless problems with that switch. Rosetta 2 is a totally different experience, and so much better in every way.
toast0 4y ago
nitpick, they did PPC -> x86 (32), the x86_64 bit transition was later (no translation layer though). They actually had 64-bit PPC systems on the G5 when they switched to Intel 32-bit, but Rosetta only does 32-bit PPC -> 32-bit x86; it would have been rare to have released 64-bit PPC only software.
- EricE 4y ago
  They had 64 bit Carbon translation layer, but spiked it to force Adobe and some other large publishers to go native Intel. There was a furious uproar at the time, but it turned out to be the right decision.
darzu 4y ago
You gotta think there's been a lot of churn and lost knowledge at the company between PPC->x86_64 (2006) and now though.
kevincox 4y ago
But they've been on x84_64 for a long time. How much of that knowledge is still around? Probably some traces of it have been institutionalized but it isn't the same as if they just grabbed the same team and made them do it again a year after the least transition.

chrchang523 4y ago

I finally started seriously using a M1 work laptop yesterday, and I'm impressed. More than twice as fast on a compute-intensive job as my personal 2015 MBP, with a binary compiled for x86 and with hand-coded SIMD instructions.

dexterdog 4y ago
It helps that there were almost 2 years between the release and your adoption. I had a very early M1 and it was not too bad, but there were issues. I knew that going in.
- EricE 4y ago
  I had an M1 Air early on and I didn't run into any issues. Even the issues with apps like Homebrew were resolved within 3-4 months of the M1 debut. It's amazing just how seamless such a major architectural transition it was and continues to be!
robohoe 4y ago
Are you me lol? I'm on my third day on M1 Pro. Battery life is nuts. I can be on video calls and still do dev work without worrying about charging. And the thing runs cool!

xxpor 4y ago

They've almost made it too good. I have to run software that ships an x86 version of CPython, and it just deeply offends me on a personal level, even though I can't actually detect any slowdown (probably because lol python in the first place)

radicaldreamer 4y ago

Since this is the company's third big arch transition, cross-compilation and compatibility is probably considered a core competency for Apple to maintain internally.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
And Next was multi-platform as well.

esskay 4y ago

It has been extremely smooth sailing. I moved my own mac over to it about a year ago, swapping a beefed up MPB for a budget friendly M1 Air (which has massively smashed it out the park performance wise, far better than I was expecting). Didn't have a single issue. My work mac was upgraded to a MBP M1 Pro and again, very smooth. I had one minor issue with a docker container not being happy (it was an x86 instance) but one minor tweak to the docker compose file and I was done. It does still amaze me how good these new machines are. Its almost enough to redeem apple for the total pile of overheating, underperforming crap that came directly before the transition (aka any mac with a touchbar).

js2 4y ago

I have a single counter-example. Mailplane, a Gmail SSB. It's Intel including its JS engine, making the Gmail UI too sluggish to use. I've fallen back to using Fluid, an ancient and also Intel-specific SSB, but its web content runs in a separate WebKit ARM process so it's plenty fast. I've emailed the Mailplane author but they wont release an Universal version of the app since they've EOL'd Mailplane. I have yet to find a Gmail SSB that I'm happy with under ARM. Fluid is a barely workable solution.

cmg 4y ago
For what it's worth, I use Mailplane on an M1 MacBook Air (8GB) with 2 Gmail tabs and a calendar tab without noticeable issues. Unfortunately the developers weren't able to get Google to work with them on a policy change that impacted the app [0] [1] and so gave up and have moved on to a new and completely different customer support service. [0] https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/guidance-for-our-effort-to-block-less-secure-browser-and-apps.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/guidance-for-our-e... [1] https://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/mailplane_stopped_selling_licenses.html https://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/mailplane_stopped_sellin... So unfortunately
- js2 4y ago
  I wonder what's different about my setup. I've tried deleting and re-installing Mailplane and tried it on two different M1s (my personal MBA and my work 16" MBP). On both, there is significant lag in the UI. Just using the j/k keys to move up/down the message list it takes like 500 ms for the selected row to change. I use non-default Gmail UI settings. I'm still using the classic theme, dense settings, etc. I'll try again, because I'd really like to use Mailplane as long as it will survive. I'm aware why Mailplane has been EOL'd. But the developer also claims he's trying to keep it alive as long as possible and he's released at least one version since that blog post, so I'd hoped he would be willing to release a universal build. I don't know anything about the internals of Mailplane but I guess it's a non-trivial amount of work to do so.

perardi 4y ago

I think the end of support for 32-bit applications in 2019 helped, slightly, with the run-up. Assuming you weren’t already shipping 64-bit applications…which would be weird…updating the application probably required getting everything into a contemporary version of Xcode, cleaning out the cruft, and getting it compiling nice and cleanly. After that, the ARM transition was kind of a “it just works” scenario. Now, I’m sure Adobe and other high-performance application developers had to do some architecture-specific tweaks, but, gotta think Apple clued them in ahead of time as to what was coming.