If you are a RISC-V fan.. this is affordable.   I will get a gen2 when they have a separate GPU.

https://beagleboard.org/beaglev

Was moving around some boxes today today so drug them out..            Overkill? Can you tell i'm a fan?   :)

All 64bit arm : 4 - RK3399s 2  - 4G Jetson Nanos, A Jetson NX  and a Jetson TX1

2 of the RKs used to be my servers. One has a 2TB m.2 and was my main file serer, the other was running 'services' like openvpn, tor, citadel, guacamole, etc.   Great little boxes. 

The loose board on top, a RockPI 4c  must be one of the worst designed dev boards i have ever seen.  CPU is on the bottom, ( thus the huge heat sink ) making it really tough to stuck a fan on it. .and the m.2 slot points OUTWARDS from the side.. so your ssd sticks out the side of the thing unless you use some sort of adapter with a cable to wrap it back under the board. Sure its a a 'dev board' but makes it really hard to use it in a product, or even in a safe manner. Does have replaceable emmc, and thought it was going to be a less costly alternative for the other RKs back when they were still servers. But no, due to the stupid design and needing extra parts, no dice. 

Of course my Pinebook pro is a RK3399, really fond of that chip. Even if it does a run a bit warm. 

And ya that is the Rocinante sitting there, begging to be painted...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/2/22364543/google-pixel-6-custom-in-house-processor-gs101-whitechapel-arm-report

oops, that really should have been in hardware i guess.   still techie, but it is chips im talking about.

Won't that just cause a situation where few developers are willing to code for the custom, restricted-use proprietary extensions? 

I mean, we've already seen what happens with this, with Facetime. Sure - Apple has a lot of momentum and people stick with iPhone because of Facetime and the ease of connecting to their Apple contacts. 

But cross-platform open alternatives like WhatsApp have eroded Facetime's dominance - because they'll allow the same things between Samsung, and Google, and LG and Apple users. Facetime loses market share *because* of their walled garden. The Apple guys see all the Android guys doing the same thing, with EVERYONE, on EVERY phone and they go, "Oh... wait... that is actually better. Now I can include my non iPhone friends on my video, VoIP and chat calls..."

But beyond that - It is kind of like car manufacturers having their own engines instead of just all using Ford engines. Maybe someone does come up with something better - on the other hand - if all the manufacturers used a series of stock engines from just a few manufacturers - that would assumedly cut costs as there would be a lot of R&D and manufacturing overhead cut out from the car makers. Isn't that actually the reason why a lot of smaller shops USE engines (and even entire cars) from other manufacturers? I don't know where I'm going with this particular line of thought - two directions at once. I see benefits and liabilities to each.  

Sun Apr 04 2021 07:44:23 EDT from Nurb432

Great. Even more vendor lock-in on the horizon.

Soon everyone will have t heir own custom chips, with their restricted-use proprietary extensions. Fracture the hardware market, remove options for developers and consumers: "which walled garden do you want to live in". I remember when this was the norm, and that was one thing that IBM accidentally brought to the table, a 'generic' platform that everyone could 'use'. And why it blossomed. Compatibility enabled and shaped the market for decades. We are on the verge of losing this. Killing the golden goose, so to speak.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/2/22364543/google-pixel-6-custom-in-house-processor-gs101-whitechapel-arm-report

If *everyone* does it. Wont have much of a choice if you want to push your 'product'.  Sure, right now you can still get generic appliance machines, but with how its going, and the cost barrier vanishing,  may even see it happening in the commodity PC market. Wont be tomorow and still have options for the foreseeable future, but the momentum is growing. First app stores, now this. 30 years ago, who would have thought this would even be a topic?

Related, i think that with all the good things it brings, RISC-V will be instrumental in making that happen.  With no one to stop them, everyone will make their own 'version' with far less risk than in the ARM world. 

And as a future prediction I think apple is going to prove that yes, people will, with their M1 chip  Last i heard, there may never be Linux for it ( or any other OSS operating system ). As its going to take reverse engineering for it to work, and if that happens, you risk lawsuits.  Doubt you see native windows either, like you can for the Intel based Apple devices. Even when windows runs fully on ARM  ( its close ) without drivers and permission, its not going to happen.

Wed Apr 07 2021 11:01:09 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Won't that just cause a situation where few developers are willing to code for the custom, restricted-use proprietary extensions? 

 

I think Apple's magic has diminished - much the same way that BMWs has. All it takes is the media to stop guzzling Apple's juice. 

I read things now about how the modern M series don't have the soul, don't have the connection, the feedback, that classic BMW Ms have - that they don't stand alone - that in fact, there are other cars, even domestic muscle cars, that challenge or exceed the experience of a BMW M now. That absolutely affects the cachet of a brand when in the past they were universally dominant as top ranked as the "ultimate driver's machine." 

And Apple has increasingly had the same buzz increasing about their brand. Openly critical *fans* of the brand saying that they've strayed from iconic things that made the brand head-and-shoulders above any of the competition. 

The M1 chip is divisive - and these huge limitations that further wall the garden are going to make it a tougher sell. Some people, for simply practical purposes, are going to have to either abandon Apple or carry an Apple to do some things and something else to do OTHER things. That last option will eventually lead to those people figuring out how to do OTHER things on the OTHER machine - and at some point, they'll go to turn the Apple on, and it will be dead because they haven't used it in so long. 

I think the M1 chip and the move away from Intel is Apple's Windows 8. I was wrong about the iPad - sort of... but this is a much bolder and riskier move at a time when a Post-Jobs Apple already has lost some of its spell over people. 

Wed Apr 07 2021 14:04:29 EDT from Nurb432

If *everyone* does it. Wont have much of a choice if you want to push your 'product'.  Sure, right now you can still get generic appliance machines, but with how its going, and the cost barrier vanishing,  may even see it happening in the commodity PC market. Wont be tomorow and still have options for the foreseeable future, but the momentum is growing. First app stores, now this. 30 years ago, who would have thought this would even be a topic?

Related, i think that with all the good things it brings, RISC-V will be instrumental in making that happen.  With no one to stop them, everyone will make their own 'version' with far less risk than in the ARM world. 

 

And as a future prediction I think apple is going to prove that yes, people will, with their M1 chip  Last i heard, there may never be Linux for it ( or any other OSS operating system ). As its going to take reverse engineering for it to work, and if that happens, you risk lawsuits.  Doubt you see native windows either, like you can for the Intel based Apple devices. Even when windows runs fully on ARM  ( its close ) without drivers and permission, its not going to happen.

 

Wed Apr 07 2021 11:01:09 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Won't that just cause a situation where few developers are willing to code for the custom, restricted-use proprietary extensions? 

 

 

Didn't mean it would not happen eventually, just that they did do it. And it was by accident, as if corporate really understood what was going on down there it woudl have been killed off.

Fri Apr 09 2021 09:17:43 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

one thing that IBM accidentally brought to the table, a 'generic'
platform that everyone could 'use'. And why it blossomed.

It would have happened, with or without IBM. The "MSX" standard was an attempt to do so, and it had a lot of success in Asian markets. It would have started to penetrate the US market too, but the ascent of the IBM PC stopped it. Before that, CP/M was the standard.

It might be argued that CP/M did it better; you wrote to the OS layer because you couldn't count on the hardware being standard. MS-DOS (being a copy of CP/M) was supposed to be the same way, but developers discovered that they could make programs run faster by bypassing the OS and writing straight to the hardware.

I'm not going to worry about standard computing going away. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.

Many said that when they dropped PPC.. 'this is the end of apple" and even i thought it was a bad move, dropping a much technological superior architecture and alienating their current app base..   After a few bumps along the way, and years past, hardly anyone even remembers the transition... For a company thinking long term that has the cash to weather the change, a couple of years of headache = nothing.          ( i did not feel the same when they went from 68x to PPC, not much choice if they wanted to still compete. Painful, but necessary )

I still feel ARM is the future of the desktop, just like it is now for mobile.. Wont be an easy transition for many, but Apple will have a head start.. 

( and i really hate giving modern Apple any credit )

Fri Apr 09 2021 11:19:10 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I think the M1 chip and the move away from Intel is Apple's Windows 8.

They abandoned Windows/RT but not ARM.  Win10 ( not WinIoT but the real one ) runs on some ARM machines now.   RPI being one of them.    Lenovo is making a Win10 ARM laptop too.  ( and someone else too, i forget who at the moment )

Fri Apr 09 2021 16:10:00 EDT from LoanShark

I still feel ARM is the future of the desktop, just like it is now
for mobile.. Wont be an easy transition for many, but Apple will have
a head start.. 

eh, did MS abandon the ARM-based Surface?

Meh. The move to PPC from Motorola made sense - and they had solid backwards support with OS X universal throughout the process. This is a much more jarring, sudden switch when a lot more rides on the cross compatibility. 

I think they are superficially similar - but the nuts and bolts are far different. They're counting on the idea that most business is web based, and that Microsoft is going to lose dominance - that the OS won't matter. 

I think they're premature. A lot of critical applications run locally - and there are huge trust issues with having particular apps running on someone else's computer - that are probably only going to grow. 

They don't have Steve Job's crystal ball. He was prescient in understanding how to be where the game was going to be, and that created difficulty for Apple - and even with Jobs, they weren't always right. For example - Firewire. They were too far ahead on that - and by the time it really became something meaningful, not only had they been forced to adopt USB and other methods they resisted - but, it wasn't at all what they had seen for its future. 


But this is WAY more important than an i/o interface standard and in this case, it is a far more radical departure than the last time they did something similar... 

And their execution on evolutionary changes to their standard product line has sucked a dick for a while - and their users are increasingly upset about it. This is a far bigger change than a butterfly keyboard. 

I don't have faith in them to be able to successfully do it - and a lot of the initial feedback outside of those MOST hanging on Google's jock - has been pessimistic at best. 

Fri Apr 09 2021 14:41:02 EDT from Nurb432

Many said that when they dropped PPC.. 'this is the end of apple" and even i thought it was a bad move, dropping a much technological superior architecture and alienating their current app base..   After a few bumps along the way, and years past, hardly anyone even remembers the transition... For a company thinking long term that has the cash to weather the change, a couple of years of headache = nothing.          ( i did not feel the same when they went from 68x to PPC, not much choice if they wanted to still compete. Painful, but necessary )

I still feel ARM is the future of the desktop, just like it is now for mobile.. Wont be an easy transition for many, but Apple will have a head start.. 

 

( and i really hate giving modern Apple any credit )

Fri Apr 09 2021 11:19:10 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I think the M1 chip and the move away from Intel is Apple's Windows 8.

 

Or something out of left field, like commodore or Atari ( i doubt apple could have done it. they are mostly followers, not leaders. sure they most often improve on things and 'commoditize' them for the masses but they dont drive the boat normally. Even this ARM thing, others did it first.. )..   All it would take is the marketing power of one of those 2, the right timing, and an open enough system to have been 'it'.

But alas, it happened as it did. so its all conjecture at this point.

( and yes, i was a cp/m fan )

Sat Apr 10 2021 13:22:36 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

But if that had happened, some other standard would have emerged, and we'd end up in largely the same place we are today. It might have been MSX, or more likely it would have been further convergence onto CP/M and eventually some sort of Unix running on the same hardware.

Here is the thing. 

Apple's hold on graphic arts has slipped tremendously in the last several years - in part because they didn't refresh their systems with current GPUs... and that the Surface actually gained significant traction in this market with their pen, which made the Surface an inexpensive and very decent graphic workstation compared to Macs and the Wacom Cintiq. A lot of artists who were dedicated Mac users have jumped ship because of this. My daughter and I are both currently pursuing general art degrees. The instructors, the students, and professional artists all consider Apple to have seriously dropped the ball. The move to ARM concerns them even more. They do not have the unquestioned lock in with graphic artists and they lost the 3D art market a long time ago. 

The ARM thing is responsible, as you note - for limited uptake. We all know the issues with Apple on ARM - including not being able to run *any* alternate OS on it, not least of all Linux. 

It is actually really their 4th or 5th transition. From the Apple II to the IIgs to the Lisa to the Mac 68k to the Mac PPC to the Mac Intel and now to ARM. 

It will be interesting to see if this sets their personal computing initiatives straight - or if the Mac line is headed toward being nothing more than a glorified Chromebook - just another device to get you onto the web to actually do things. 

 I knew the iPhone was going to be big when a guy at work got one and brought in Super Monkey Ball. At the time, it was like the first time you sat down with a Wii and played bowling. After you were done, you wanted to go out and buy the Wii, or the iPhone, to be able to play that at your leisure. The killer pack-in - Jobs understood it. And he delivered it with the Mac too. 

I don't know if they have a compelling value add that will make the Mac on ARM be something that people *want* to go out and get. The sluggish and critical initial response to it makes me think that... no - at this point... they don't have the momentum they had with Jobs and this is a risky change. But, Apple may not care about desktop PCs and laptops at this point any more than Intel. Maybe they both know something. 

Sat Apr 10 2021 13:27:04 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

At this point it's pretty clear that Apple can build Macs with whatever hardware they want to. This will be their third transition to an incompatible architecture.
They know how to make the transition, and they know that their developers and users will follow along.

Who cares? People buy Apple hardware to run Apple software. It makes no difference anywhere else. That's why Apple can get away with it but Microsoft can't. Windows on ARM continues to have limited uptake. Consumers are aware that if you can't run the existing library of Wintel software, you might as well be on a Mac or Linux or Android or whatever.

That doesn't mean they won't ever change it. What it does mean is that it doesn't make that much of a difference anymore.

And I'm ok with that. Linux is the fabric of standard computing and it runs on everything.

I donno, if THEY did, but the idea did .. 

Mon Apr 12 2021 09:07:58 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

They know what we all know: desktop computing is in decline. Netscape won.