Apple MacOS Arm64 will only support Apple Metal GPUs

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't really see it that way TBH, Apple have made plenty of x86 stuff which is not upgradable so it's not like they need an excuse. And upgradable ARM systems exist too: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15733...64-workstation

It's just that we haven't see much ARM stuff on the desktop in recent years.

That movement towards solderd X86 laptops accelerated when everyone realised they could get away with it in expensive tablets. One little,improperly cooled voltage regulator can go on newer MacBooks,which causes a massive voltage spike which fries the CPU. Looks pretty but cheaply made and poorly designed.

Also that AT article is a server motherboard in a desktop case. If you look at almost all companies which shift products to ARM based products everything is soldered on and disposable,and unrepairable. Lots of companies go on about the environment for electronics,cars,etc but the lifespans of the newer products is getting worse and worse,and they are getting more difficult to repair. They is zero technical reason all these ARM based consumer products have to have everything soldered in place.

They use it as some excuse to employ built in obsolescence,and most laptops you buy tend to use SODIMMs and SATA/M2 slots,and only a certain subset of laptops go the full soldered way. Do you see a single of the larger ARM based laptops,etc having any real sort of upgradeability?? Even having SD card slots on certain premium models,is considered "too much" expansion,so they can force you to use cloud services.

Also,at least with standardised parts,companies can actually source bits and resolder replacement parts on,but with all these companies using their own proprietry bits,I suspect most of the ARM based Macs will be not last more than 5 years in terms of parts,support,etc as they will only make the newer parts. They have no need to make certain chips for more than a few years(AMD and Intel actually keep production of parts for years due to industrial contracts) past the 12/24 month warranty and make them uneconomic to repair. Plus even if they do last,they will do what they do with phones,and force software obsolescence.

The whole phone/tablet model is a con - people slag off Windows,but look at how long the support lasts for the whole ecosystem. Look at how many old secondhand laptops and desktops are in use still? This is why companies which adopt smartphone/tablet models are doing well - cheap to make,low lifespan hardware sold at a high markup,with poor repairability. So the whole thing gets thown away if it does not work.If they want to solder everything on,they should be forced to stock sufficient parts for a few years after the model is sold,etc.

The Llano system I won on here still works 8 years later...how many of these smartphones and tablets actually are of any use,after 8 years?? This is all about forcing shorter product lifecycles. Apple,etc need to be forced to start paying towards clearing up the massive amounts of E-Waste they are producing which is polluting poorer countries,and the same goes with the rest of them. As China is getting stricter on waste,it's being pushed onto other poor countries in Asia,Africa,etc.

[3dcandy]

I was talking about sockets for other stuff like RAM. If you look at the last desktop Acorn,ie,the Acorn Phoebe 2,you had expansion slots,and slots for extra RAM,etc. The RiscPC had slot in CPU cards:
https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm...PC-processors/

This is not much different from some of the Pentium systems when you had slot in CPU cards.

Even those 1980s systems had expansion slots. Compare that with the modern ARM systems which have everything soldered onboard. They use ARM as an excuse,to make sure the systems are not upgradeable in anyway,when clearly this is not really required. There is zero reason why a a desktop ARM system,can't have PCI/PCI-E expansion slots,extra slots for DIMMs or SODIMMs,etc.

Dev kits for ARM have all of those and more just the market as such for ARM with expansion doesn't really exist. There are plenty of ARM based single board computers with expansion just not into the desktop type some crave. To hit the price points people would actually pay you need to save money else you just tread onto cheap AMD and Intel processors and a normal x86 board and people just don't purchase them

[3dcandy]

That movement towards solderd X86 laptops accelerated when everyone realised they could get away with it in expensive tablets. One little,improperly cooled voltage regulator can go on newer MacBooks,which causes a massive voltage spike which fries the CPU. Looks pretty but cheaply made and poorly designed.

Also that AT article is a server motherboard in a desktop case. If you look at almost all companies which shift products to ARM based products everything is soldered on and disposable,and unrepairable. Lots of companies go on about the environment for electronics,cars,etc but the lifespans of the newer products is getting worse and worse,and they are getting more difficult to repair. They is zero technical reason all these ARM based consumer products have to have everything soldered in place.

They use it as some excuse to employ built in obsolescence,and most laptops you buy tend to use SODIMMs and SATA/M2 slots,and only a certain subset of laptops go the full soldered way. Do you see a single of the larger ARM based laptops,etc having any real sort of upgradeability?? Even having SD card slots on certain premium models,is considered "too much" expansion,so they can force you to use cloud services.

Also,at least with standardised parts,companies can actually source bits and resolder replacement parts on,but with all these companies using their own proprietry bits,I suspect most of the ARM based Macs will be not last more than 5 years in terms of parts,support,etc as they will only make the newer parts. They have no need to make certain chips for more than a few years(AMD and Intel actually keep production of parts for years due to industrial contracts) past the 12/24 month warranty and make them uneconomic to repair. Plus even if they do last,they will do what they do with phones,and force software obsolescence.

The whole phone/tablet model is a con - people slag off Windows,but look at how long the support lasts for the whole ecosystem. Look at how many old secondhand laptops and desktops are in use still? This is why companies which adopt smartphone/tablet models are doing well - cheap to make,low lifespan hardware sold at a high markup,with poor repairability. So the whole thing gets thown away if it does not work.If they want to solder everything on,they should be forced to stock sufficient parts for a few years after the model is sold,etc.

The Llano system I won on here still works 8 years later...how many of these smartphones and tablets actually are of any use,after 8 years?? This is all about forcing shorter product lifecycles. Apple,etc need to be forced to start paying towards clearing up the massive amounts of E-Waste they are producing which is polluting poorer countries,and the same goes with the rest of them. As China is getting stricter on waste,it's being pushed onto other poor countries in Asia,Africa,etc.

Apple and sub standard components has gone on for years. Try talking to them about faults they are the worst company I have ever dealt with for recognising they screwed up

[DanceswithUnix]

The Llano system I won on here still works 8 years later...

I don't think it is as simple as that. My Llano systen started randomly resetting itself after a couple of years (felt like a VRM fault to me), and already by then you couldn't get the replacement boards so that was that. A short socket life is as good as no socket for repairability. But then throwing away the mainboard and replacing it isn't really helping e-waste, it would need to be repaired. That would probably mean sending the board and CPU back to gigabyte as a non warranty repair, and I don't know anyone who has ever done that with a motherboard. So in the end, the mainboard and cpu get junked and a new ITX board put in place.

We would need a system in place where companies like Gigabyte in my case would offer easy access to pcb layout and circuit details for all products on release so that a competent electronics engineer (so probably about £75/hour) could diagnose and fix it. More likely they need a way to return items for repair, but it still isn't going to be cheap and in that situation now I would rather put the money towards a new £130 B550 board than look backwards to Llano.

The likes of Dell who make entire systems where motherboards and power supplies are non standard and can't be replaced annoy me far more.

My monitor here has an annoying flicker when you turn it on. I did at one point start trying to get Benq to repair it, but they kept asking me to try different video cables, video cards etc and something came up so I never got the end of their script to find out whether a £450 monitor can be repaired out of warranty. I should give that another go.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Dev kits for ARM have all of those and more just the market as such for ARM with expansion doesn't really exist. There are plenty of ARM based single board computers with expansion just not into the desktop type some crave. To hit the price points people would actually pay you need to save money else you just tread onto cheap AMD and Intel processors and a normal x86 board and people just don't purchase them

Apple and sub standard components has gone on for years. Try talking to them about faults they are the worst company I have ever dealt with for recognising they screwed up

But a lot of these tablets/laptops have similar price-points to laptops,etc so it's all about increasing margins. Stuff such as RAM and SSDs should be at least upgradeable.

I don't think it is as simple as that. My Llano systen started randomly resetting itself after a couple of years (felt like a VRM fault to me), and already by then you couldn't get the replacement boards so that was that. A short socket life is as good as no socket for repairability. But then throwing away the mainboard and replacing it isn't really helping e-waste, it would need to be repaired. That would probably mean sending the board and CPU back to gigabyte as a non warranty repair, and I don't know anyone who has ever done that with a motherboard. So in the end, the mainboard and cpu get junked and a new ITX board put in place.

We would need a system in place where companies like Gigabyte in my case would offer easy access to pcb layout and circuit details for all products on release so that a competent electronics engineer (so probably about £75/hour) could diagnose and fix it. More likely they need a way to return items for repair, but it still isn't going to be cheap and in that situation now I would rather put the money towards a new £130 B550 board than look backwards to Llano.

The likes of Dell who make entire systems where motherboards and power supplies are non standard and can't be replaced annoy me far more.

My monitor here has an annoying flicker when you turn it on. I did at one point start trying to get Benq to repair it, but they kept asking me to try different video cables, video cards etc and something came up so I never got the end of their script to find out whether a £450 monitor can be repaired out of warranty. I should give that another go.

My view is still there needs to be better repairability of computer parts,but PCs used to be quite modular in nature,ie,you could replace one part and not throw the whole computer away. Companies such as Apple now are moving the whole industry backwards. When they do it and make a lot of money,other companies started copying them. This is why they need to be forced to clean up after them selves. Apple is so penny pinching is that with their latest Apple laptops,they stopped soldering on the data access port for their SSDs. In fact they seem to restrict replacement parts on purpose(like Tesla do),so they can push repairs through their Genius Bars,who then push you to buy a replacement product.

With the more open PC infrastructure,you can still get lots of the replacement parts everywhere.

My last monitor got to nearly 10 years old,before I replaced it as there was some image retention issues,but it's still in use on the Llano system so its now coming to 15 years old. This Dell is over 4 years old,has one or two minor issues,but I suspect it can be fixed,as usually its the capacitors which go first. A lot of my non-techy mates tend to use monitors until they go kaput,or get something larger,and monitors last for years - I suspect a lot of these gaming monitors don't have proper QC/QA and are pushed out quicker. Just go to a charity shop and see how many old monitors are there - it tells me they get used for years.

You can still get parts for Dells,etc and the ones me and my mates had(the laptops) have lasted between 5~10 years. I have also rebuilt laptops for friends. I have built working laptops from the parts of broken ones,etc.Basically most of the PC stuff is repairable and gets decommisioned due to being simply too old.

FM1 motherboards were available for years after the socket ended,and the same as FM2 motherboards,etc. To put in context,my mate had a few FM2 systems and a few built for others,and not a single of those motherboards went kaput,and most of them are still in use apparently. So that is longer than any of these ARM based tablets/laptops or smartphones.

There is zero reason they can't last as long,but companies are looking at a move to ARM based hardware,to push built in obsolescence on purpose. I can see that with lots of people,ie,they will have a laptop or desktop which lasts for yonks,but they replace their smartphones/tablets many more times.


My socket 1155 mini-ITX motherboard went kaput just at the tail end of Haswell,ie,the motherboard lasted nearly 4 years which is still longer than the lifespan of many of these phones. Even that was down to a corrupted BIOS,so I really should have resoldered a replacement on,but got lazy and got a new one. But the replacement motherboards could be still sourced,and the replacement is now nearly 6 years old. I still use the motherboard.On the AM3 sockets,the 870 and 970 motherboards,have lasted between 8~10 years,some are still fine,but many have been retired now. Only in one or two instances have the motherboards gone after 3~5 years,but you could still get replacement motherboards,as the other parts still work.

Also its not only the hardware longevity,but also the fact Windows and Linux could be still used on these systems right now. Compare that to many smartphones/tablets where support is sketchy even after 4~ 5 years,and a number of companies lock out bootloaders to stop you re-using the hardware. So even if the hardware is fine,the software locks it out. That should be made illegal.

This is what Apple is doing,solder everything,and eventually make sure you have a paperweight after 5 years. If they force an app store on ARM OS X after a few years,wait and see how long those "Macs" work for,when if you don't have the latest OS version,you get locked out of the store,and will have to chuck the device away.

If governments are serious about the environment they should mandate,that parts are available for X amount of years for phones/smartphones and that there needs to be a certain degree of repairability. If a device has a broken screen for example,it needs to be repairable and not glued and soldered together,ie,throw the whole system away. In fact the EU is moving slowly towards this and also towards forcing standardisation of ports. Apple keeps finding new ways to sell more accessories(and everyone else copied them),so now there is lots of functioning accessories which probably have been chucked away. Having a headphone socket is such a hard thing apparently!

Software updates should be mandated for X amount of years by law. If MS can give you software updates for 10 years for Windows there is no excuse for Google/Apple not to do updates for 5~10 years.