New Apple Arm Chip worth waiting for?

[passionmax]

Hi,
I have a macbook pro 2018 6core i9 chip, 32gram. This MacBook model has Thermal throttle issues. when I load a bunch of omnishperes or Divas and my room gets warm. I get Kernal Error in my activity monitor thats say 2500 CPU and Ableton CPU maxes out or spikes. Unusable at this point. If it is cool it works fine if that really is the issue. So I wanted to buy a new computer. The new iMac 2020 10core or MacBook 16" are my choices but Apple has the new Arm chip. Since I work 12-18hours days professionally in Ableton for TV. Should I wait for this new arm chip from apple instead of the intel. I don't want to buy a new computer if you guys are going to make Ableton way more CPU efficient with this new chip. Or is it a long time away before it is worth it. Thanks so much for your help.
Jack

[TLW]

It seems Apple Silicon is not going to be an ARM chip but something developed by Apple that may or may not use some functions which ARM developed. Which models will get it and when remains to be seen. The Minis that have been made available to developers seem to be based around the iPad Pro technology, though as I’m not a developer I’m open to be corrected on that.

I’ve no complaints about my 2020 27” iMac with the 8 core i9, 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe SSD. For an idea of its performance see viewtopic.php?f=1&t=239381&start=30#p1780418 - or to save you the bother of reading it, I couldn’t quite get a stable 512 tracks, though having since tried using an options.txt file to reduce Live’s frame-rate I suspect I probably can now.

I needed a new computer, wasn’t in a position to sit around indefinitely waiting to see what Apple come up with and since the early 90s there’s never been the ideal time to buy a computer because something newer, faster or in some other way better is always just a few months away. If I get 5 or 6 years out of the iMac I’ll be happy. If you need or want to use boot camp to put a Windows installation on a Mac, whether that will be possible with Apple Silicon remains to be seen. I assume the virtualisation software providers like VMWare could probably make a virtual PC work on Apple Silicon, but that’s an assumption. For all I know Apple will include virtualisation capable of pretending to be an Intel chip in the operating system. Or not.

[passionmax]

Thanks for the advise. I am using mostly 99% Virtual instruments in Ableton. Mostly Kontakt and Omnisphere. I was going to get a Mac Pro 12 core. I do TV work with some orchestral but never sessions with insane track amounts. I'm more concerned with say using 10 Omnispheres and 10 Kontakt and plugin FXs. With Ozone 9 on the master bus. What would you suggest that would work. I would like to save money but I want to buy what works for my usage. will your 2020 hold up with out overheating and thermal throttling. Thanks

[Tuur]

It seems Apple Silicon is not going to be an ARM chip but something developed by Apple that may or may not use some functions which ARM developed. Which models will get it and when remains to be seen. The Minis that have been made available to developers seem to be based around the iPad Pro technology, though as I’m not a developer I’m open to be corrected on that.

It's going to be an Apple designed chip based on the ARM architecture. Just like the other chips Apple designs right now. It will have a lot in common with the iPad SOCs, but with tailored specs (CPU/GPU cores, cache, bus, etc) for the Macs.

I am using mostly 99% Virtual instruments in Ableton. Mostly Kontakt and Omnisphere. I was going to get a Mac Pro 12 core. I do TV work with some orchestral but never sessions with insane track amounts. I'm more concerned with say using 10 Omnispheres and 10 Kontakt and plugin FXs. With Ozone 9 on the master bus. What would you suggest that would work. I would like to save money but I want to buy what works for my usage. will your 2020 hold up with out overheating and thermal throttling. Thanks

Waiting for it is tricky. I'm pretty sure that optimized software will perform great on these machines, but if or when (for example) Live, Kontakt and Omnisphere will get updated is the real question. Although early signs are promising (also looking at running current non-optimized software) you can be sure there will be early-adapter issues.

Also, it looks like the model you are after (a higher end machine) won't be out for at least 6 - 12 months, most likely even more.

In your case I would say the iMac is the better option because of cooling. Rumor has it there will be a new Apple Silicon iMac out this year, but even if that's the case I wouldn't be surprised when the developers need at least 6-12 months to make their software work great on the new hardware.

Apple will support current Macs for years to come, so in my opinion a good iMac is the safest bet for you. Or wait and see...

[passionmax]

Thanks so much. I order my 10 core iMac today. I hope it does not over heat like my 2018 MacBook Pro