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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: 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.