Apple ditched Intel, and it paid off
Apple's decision to ditch Intel paid off this year.
The pivot allowed Apple to completely rethink the Mac, which had started to grow stale with an aging design and iterative annual upgrades. Following the divorce from Intel, Apple has launched far more exciting computers which, paired with an ongoing pandemic that has forced people to work and learn from home, have sent Apple's Mac business soaring.
It wasn't always a given. When Apple announced its move away from Intel in 2020, it was fair to question just how well Apple could power laptops and desktop computers. Apple has used in-house chips for iPhones and iPads but had been selling Intel-powered computers for 15 years. It wasn't clear how well its macOS desktop software would work with apps designed to run on Intel chips, or whether its processors would offer any consumer benefits and keep up with intensive tasks that people turned to MacBooks to run.
[...] In April 2021, CEO Tim Cook said during the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings call that the M1 chip helped fuel the 70.1% growth in Apple's Mac revenue, which hit $9.1 billion during that quarter. The growth continued in fiscal Q3, when Mac revenue was up 16% year over year. [...] There was a slowdown in fiscal Q4, when Mac revenue grew just 1.6%, as Apple, like all manufacturers, saw a slowdown from the burst of sales driven by the start of the pandemic and dealt with supply chain woes. But fiscal Q4 sales didn't include revenue from its most exciting new computer of the year.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:42AM (13 children)
I wouldn't know anymore. They drove away the professional users by offering less and less substance in favor of anorexic style.
Their shit stopped being useful, so they lost a customer. Between the keyboard denial for years, dongle hell (USB C is an awful plug design, and a symmetrical microusb would've been far superior but not anorexic enough for Apple), and a general lack of developer/end user accessibility to what's allegedly my machine have made it an unfit platform for anything but meaningless consumerist bling.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday December 30 2021, @08:23AM
Apple isn't the only laptop maker producing 'very thin' devices.
Some people really like the UI, the form factor AND the 'safe' nature of their dealings with the company - buying a new apple device is predictable and easy. They do look nice on a desk or cafe table.. and, for 99% of users, a chromebook for 1/10th the price would have worked just as well - but it wouldn't have looked as good, or been 'apple' enough.
Now Apple has the 'work from home middle-aged' as well as the 'hip teen' market groups, they really don't care if the hard-core programmers and other geeky types don't buy apple - face, most don't buy new devices anyway, so no lost sales there.
EU directives on USBC no doubt played a part in the ditching of the mag-safe port.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:48AM (3 children)
There are symmetrical micro-B cables being made, but they're not as important now that everyone is switching to USB-C.
But USB-C is a very good connector. Probably the best one in common use today after the good old RJ-45. HDMI falls out of the socket. Displayport doesn't fall out, but its latch release is blocked by the device half the time, and it looks exactly like HDMI, which it's usually right next to. USB-A, mini-B, and micro-B all have only two possible orientations, both of them wrong, somehow. Full size B manages to have four possible orientations, although that's still an improvement over the perfectly round PS/2 and ADB connectors. Mini-B doesn't just fall out, it seems to be magnetically repelled from its socket. Micro-B cables wear out in a couple of months. Thunderbolt sockets are too easy to damage, and they are physically the same as mini Displayport, which they are only occasionally compatible with.
Really, USB-C is not that bad.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:31AM
HDMI isn't so terrible but when connecting a specific laptop to a TV I'll get the connection turning off/on semi-randomly sometimes, either because the cable was jostled or for no apparent reason.
Micro-USB is the truly awful one, and it's still being sold (e.g. Fire TV Stick 4K Max).
Thunderbolt has been merged into USB and is using the USB-C connector now. DisplayPort over USB-C seems to be fairly common, and HDMI over USB-C is possible but I haven't seen it implemented.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:18AM
USB C ports acquire dust and fail to seat far too easily. I have to buy port covers for all my devices. Never had to do that for micro USB.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:39PM
I got my first Apple device last year since my old iPod Classic (2005?), and I really like the lightning connector. Pins are wide, and it’s got a “one piece” simple design that seems like it’ll last a lot longer than USB-*. Micro and mini USB always has the shell on the connector with a thin pcb in the middle which looks incredibly delicate, not to mention a speck of dirt completely covering one of the tiny tracks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 30 2021, @12:46PM (7 children)
Exciting?
If paying hundreds of dollars per gig of storage is exciting, yeah, they're exciting.
If paying hundreds more per gig of memory is exciting, yeah, that's exciting too.
Oh yeah, you can't upgrade any of that after the purchase any longer. Everything is soldered to the board since ~2016. You pay the Apple tax up front, or you do without.
Check out the prices - the most anorexic 13" starts at $1300, 14" starts at $1999, a 16" can be had for $2499, while a maxed out 16" costs $6,099. (That's a 10/32/16 core CPU, 64 G memory, and 8 TB pcie NVME storage)
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/ [apple.com]
From what I'm reading, most people who have paid for the Apple silicone are happy with it. There is no more discrete GPU, but the Apple chips seem to do everything that AMD or Nvidia ever did, as well or better.
I've even read and/or watched reviews that suggest that the mid-range CPUs are overkill for many people. The top end CPUs are overkill for all but dedicated professionals. So, it seems the anorexia is over, but you'll pay big time for the new performance.
For those who think they might want a decent used Apple laptop, the 2019 15" i9, 1TB and 16GB MacBook Pro can be had at prices starting around $1000 to $1200, and up because the real Apple Phanbois are selling them to get Apple silicone. For Apple branded stuff, that's a pretty good bargain. Lesser machines can be had for less, if that's what you need/want.
I was excited to get a used near-top-end Intel MacBook Pro for cheap. Now I'm excited to learn all the limitations of a Mac product. That T2 security chip is a major pain for multi-booting.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:01PM (5 children)
Uh, you know M1s can be had for less than $1000 brand new right?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:13PM
I was going to mention the Mac Mini. That's as low as $550 [slickdeals.net], you provide your own display.
I recall early reports that the 8 GiB base version was not enough memory and it would hurt the SSD's longevity due to excessive writes.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/02/23/questions-raised-about-m1-mac-ssd-longevity-based-on-incomplete-data [appleinsider.com]
It's only a theoretical risk, and may have been addressed by updates by now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:56PM (3 children)
Fair enough - I never even considered a Mac mini. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/16-inch-space-gray-10-core-cpu-16-core-gpu-1tb# [apple.com]
$699 will get the base model, 8gig of memory, and 256 gig of storage. You get the M1 cpu with 8/8/16 cores. That CPU is probably adequate for most people. But, seriously, 256 gig of storage just isn't going to cut it, IMO. And, 8 gig of memory seems just "adequate" these days. As time goes by, everything wants more memory, and 8 gig will be inadequate before the last of these things are retired. A more reasonably specced Mac Mini has the same CPU, but 16 gig of memory, and 1 TB of SSD storage for $1299. Add a second TB of storage for $400, and you're at $1699.
To me, the Mac Mini seems to be inverted on the scale of things. Sure, it's a mini, but it seems to me that you want more computing power on a desktop, than you want on a laptop. They should be offering their monster CPU in the Mini, and more storage as well as memory.
To each his own, I guess. I see little value in the Mini, but people with different needs seem to be buying them.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:11PM (1 child)
8 GiB is theoretically fine, except for the longevity concern I mentioned. 256 GB storage is certainly doable if you aren't storing games (which this is considered a bad platform for) or video, which should probably be on an external drive.
You are paying extra to lob yourself into the Apple ecosystem equivalent of an office PC, but that's your choice.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 01 2022, @06:07PM
There are many places where 8GB is really, really not enough if you go and look at what used to be Apple's core audience; media production.
A classic example is music producers using large orchestral libraries for live rendition. Of course, in offline rendering it wouldn't matter, but when you have the really big fancy libraries with all sorts of articulations those eat up RAM like crazy, to say nothing of all the software and plugins surrounding them.
Of course, given their problems with audio glitching, it's not as if they're really pretending to care about audio production any more anyway ...
(Score: 2) by helel on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:03PM
For most users the computing power of the Mac mini / MacBook Air is more than enough, although that's been true of almost any new computer for a decade or more now. Assuming you want to pay the apple tax I think there are two advantages the mini has: First, you aren't paying for a screen and battery you don't plan to use and second, it fits in spaces a laptop might not. Why have a closed Air taking up desk space when you can have a mini mounted to the bottom of your desk?
Also allot of people get low speced minis as home servers. It's not the cost effective solution but a raspberry pi won't look as nice next to your router XD
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @04:41PM
I'm happy Apple is making their own chips because it's going to push Intel and AMD to innovate, and to push their own prices lower. But I'm with you, Apple laptops and desktops are crazy expensive.
I agree with you that 8GB of RAM for a Mac Mini or entry level Macbook isn't future-proof enough, not by a long shot. It should be, though. I am really excited to see interest in programming languages like Swift, Rust, Zig, Vlang, Terra, and Odin. For-profit software companies only care about time-to-market, so they're going to keep the march to consume all available computing resources growing. FOSS projects have the freedom to focus on efficiency, I'm excited to see where things go.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:42AM
you can see them when you're driving, you just run them over that's what you do. Fuckin' CIA niggers!" -- King Terry A. Davis
They had to take him out with a TRAIN.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @08:29AM
I ditched Apple, and it paid off. Sorta. Not really as I haven't actually replaced it with anything and I am just writing nonesense for publicity.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday December 30 2021, @08:35AM
I am not sure if they are genuinely surprised or not. They only sold Intel machines for about 15 years. But they have been around since '77. They swapped CPU family a few times by now; 6502 -> 68k -> PPC -> Intel -> their own stuff M1. So what is it that makes Intel so special that somehow the market thinks we or the company can't live without it? I have never been a Intel fan so perhaps its bias talking but I sort of look forward to the next time I get to pick a new laptop and their new machines is an option. I wont buy one for my own money as apple hardware is overpriced and generally not worth it but I'll try one for free.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:30AM (3 children)
Of course there was a short term improvement, because they are two full process nodes ahead of what they were getting from Intel. But AMD will launch Zen 4 on 5nm, the same process Apple is using, and it seems like Intel has righted the ship, though they still have some catching up to do.
The M1 isn't faster than what AMD and Intel are doing, it's just better performance per watt. This is a clear sign of process node superiority. But Apple doesn't have their own fab. Basically they just replaced one outsourced fab with another, and changed their CPU architecture as a side effect.
But Apple might still be happy even if AMD outdoes them with Zen 4. After all, they were using Intel, not AMD, and Intel is still going to be behind on process for a while. And Apple really likes to control as much of their technology as they can. It's probably worth it to them to design their own chips, even if they aren't better, just because they want to. And if Qualcomm gets ahead of them (they probably won't buy CPUs from Samsung because they are a competitor) they can always switch without having to do a whole architectural change, since they're still ARM.
Other stuff like the camera doesn't have much to do with the CPU. Apple was just using bad cameras.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:40AM
I hope that AMD takes the "APU" seriously as it moves to Zen 4/5. Apple showed up to the party with discrete-level graphics in the M1 Pro/Max, even if it's ultra-expensive and gaming performance is gimped on their OS. Intel will include 320 graphics execution units on a mobile processor within a couple of generations (Arrow Lake-P) instead of the 96 EU maximum it has now. Rembrandt is a good start as it should slightly more than double the graphics performance of Cezanne.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 30 2021, @12:50PM (1 child)
The reviews suggest that Apple is still using the same cameras. 720p cameras on $6000 machines? Kinda lame.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:34PM
Yeah, they’re still using “bad cameras” but the M1 chip is loaded with hardware acceleration for neural computing that can make them look good in real time. If your idea of “good” happens to be the visual equivalent of auto-tune. But, hey, it’s only there for video conferencing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:51AM (4 children)
I think the true reason is to prevent the Hackentosh people from running mac os and Apple (tm) app on PC bypassing the Apple tax. I have no doubt the next version of their os will only run on this cpu, rendering all Intel Macs obsolete.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:18AM
2022 Mac Pro Rumored to Use Intel's Ice Lake Xeon W-3300 Chips [macrumors.com]
Macs With Intel Processors Still Coming Amid Transition to Apple Silicon [macrumors.com]
Probably, but not quite yet. First comment: "This is good news for those of us with Intel Macs, because then Apple will keep new releases of macOS Intel-compatible for much longer."
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:31AM (1 child)
I'm sure the Hackintosh people will come up with a way to emulate the Apple hardware. You can already emulate a PC with QEMU.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:26PM
Except all current Macs - including Intel - (since the 2020 Intel iMac, I think) have a proprietary Apple chip handling (amongst other things) key storage and encryption. So once the older Intel Macs pass out of support, MacOS will be free to use strong, hardware encryption to identify kosher Apple hardware and emulation won’t cut it. Even if Apple don’t care enough about Hackintosh (which I doubt) to do this deliberately it will probably be a natural side effect of “desirable” security features like disk encryption and kernel signing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:12PM
While Apple won’t be crying into their West Coast IPA over the demise of Hackintosh, to suggest that as a major reason for dumping Intel is heading for crazy conspiracy theory territory. It’s just not that big a deal (for Apple).
The community have done a stand-up job of making it easy to do, but it’s still complex enough to put off the typical consumer and any “lost sales” are a drop in the ocean. For 15 years, Apple have made no effort to beef up DRM in MacOS to stamp it out - which would be a lot easier than moving to a whole new processor.
Anyway, the writing was on the wall for Hackintosh years ago when Apple started using the T1/T2 chips for most motherboard functions in Intel Macs (like SSD control & encryption) instead of generic PC chips. This is great for security but also means that, just as soon as the remaining non-T1 Macs have been off the market for the requisite number of years, pre-T1 support will vanish from MacOS and the door will close on Hackintosh.
Anyway, that sounds like I’m defending apple, but while typing this I noticed that iOS 15 is now auto-suggesting emojis as I type and threw up in my mouth a little. A pox on Apple! (Or “a podcast on Apple” which is what autocorrupt thought l wanted to type….)
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday December 30 2021, @12:50PM (1 child)
Looking at real data I observe Mac Q4 sales are still marginal:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY21_Q4_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf [apple.com]
"Net sales by category"
Tim Cook probably has a good reason for hiding actual M1 Mac sales in this noise.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:14PM
They're not helping things by closing down their stores in the biggest US city to signal their virtue.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:34PM
So I've been told.
I just never cared for Apple's users more than anything about the product. The iPhone was revolutionary, but it was also the logical next step with cell phones, blackberries, palm pilots, mp3 players, digital cameras, and 802.11 networks.
Those early Gen1 /2 iPhone customers were insufferable to work with.
YMMV
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:45PM
I didn't grok how giving up Intel made them a whole bunch of money. They were presented as two separate facts, but I didn't pick up on the link between the two. (I will admit that I gave it the intense level of scrutiny that is expected of posted article summaries)