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> I fully expect any reduction in costs for Apple will get sent to their shareholders, not the consumers. Apple's margins are consistent, if their costs go dow

> I fully expect any reduction in costs for Apple will get sent to their shareholders, not the consumers. Apple's margins are consistent, if their costs go down significantly, pricing comes down or features increase. The iPad is a perfect example, for years it was $500 and they just kept increasing the feature-set until eventually they could deliver the base product for significantly less. Shareholders benefit from increased market share just as much as they do from increasing margins, arguably more. The base iPad and the iPhone SE both "cannibalize" their higher end products, but significantly expand their base. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a $800 MacBook enter their lineup shipping with the same CPU as the iPad.

mortenjorck 6y ago
Considering they're selling a device with a 10.5" touchscreen and an A12 SoC for $500 today, I think they can go even lower than $800 for a device with only a slightly larger LCD and no digitizer. While they won't be competing with Chromebooks for general education use cases, I could very well see Apple trying to upsell schools on a $599 alternative that happens to run GarageBand, iMovie, and even XCode.
- eugeniub 6y ago
  Eh I don't see Apple selling their cheapest education MacBook for $600 instead of $900 simply because one of many components suddenly got significantly cheaper.
  - Despegar 6y ago
    I can see them doing that for big volume buys for education. I don't see why they wouldn't just pass on the entire Intel margin to them, getting students using Apple products young has value.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      Chromebooks are doing well in education at the moment. If Apple launched a product in that space, they could easily claw half of that back overnight. The ability to run real software is huge, especially for subjects like graphic arts and engineering.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Considering they're selling a device with a 10.5" touchscreen and an A12 SoC for $500 today, I think they can go even lower than $800 for a device with only a slightly larger LCD and no digitizer. While there is no digitizer, there is a keyboard and a touchpad. Also, I expect Apple is going to try to keep a gap between the base Mac and the iPad price-wise so they would add to the base storage and maybe RAM. Then again, considering the pricing on the base iPad, maybe they will bring it down to $600.
  - martin_bech 6y ago
    They actually demoed the performance of an arm mac with a low amount of ram
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      It didn't have stock iPad RAM, it had 16GB of RAM. More details on it here: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/22/apple-developer-transition-kits-for-apple-silicon-house-a12z-in-a-mac-mini https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/22/apple-developer-t...
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  Maybe if they take a bet on (or force) the App Store to be the primary method of obtaining software. I’d expect Apple forecasts some amount of yearly revenue per iPhone/iPad and a lower amount per MacBook.
- ReticentVole 6y ago
  Why do we need to buy so many devices anyway? Why can't I just plug my iPad or iPhone into a dumb dock with a laptop screen and its own storage and battery, and use the CPU and GPU from the phone/ipad?
  - m_mueller 6y ago
    So far: different architectures. But with this announcement it would make running macOS on a future (or even current) iPad quite feasible, so your kind of dock might become true soon. Apple's new magic iPad keyboards use a lot of weight to balance the heavy screen - might as well make that a battery.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    I don't need VSCode, Docker, or node.js on my phone. I don't want all the clones of the various repositories I'm working on on my phone. Even the best phones lack the RAM, high capacity drives, and video card my computer has. Nor does it have a keyboard or trackpad. If your phone is good enough to take care of your day to day computing, you can probably get by with an inexpensive all-in-one computer and save the headache of docking.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      The dock can have the extra storage. (And the GPU, and maybe even more RAM etc).
      - SlackingOff123 6y ago
        You'll need something to connect all those dock components together so you don't have to run several cables to the phone. Something like a motherboard. So you'll have a full computer sans a cpu.
        int_19h 6y ago
        More like a Thunderbolt dock with a screen.
easytiger 6y ago
> Apple's margins are consistent, if their costs go down significantly, pricing comes down or features increase. Kool aid swallowed
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Apple's financials are public knowledge. You might consider reading them before making trite comments based on blind emotions.
  - ianai 6y ago
    Indeed, apples G4 cube debuted at 1800 base in 2000. That’s the same ballpark as their iMac now and their Mac mini starts at about half that. Meanwhile inflation would have made that G4 ~2700 today.
    - jussij 6y ago
      > Meanwhile inflation would have made that G4 ~2700 today. Which of the inputs going into making that device would have applied any inflationary pressure? Most if not all the parts would have probably got cheaper over that time and wage pressure is always low only because of where these devices are made.
      - ianai 6y ago
        Silvers gone up. Golds gone up. Probably various fixed costs had to be further invested in the form of contracts with fabs or new fabs built. Etc. But really the Mac mini is more of a modern likeness to the G4 cube which retails now for a 800$ start, less than half the g4 cubes starting price. Edit-they also went from being a company with around 8500 employees in 2000 to 137000 today. Surely every part of their organization chart has contributed toward pressures to otherwise push up their prices to maintain revenue.
        jussij 6y ago
        Since Silver and Gold are priced in $USD their price is influenced by the actions of the US government. One of those driving forces is the current US monetary policies (i.e. an growing budget deficit). Another factor is perceived risk. Since the markets are always worrying about the current US China trade talks, that uncertainty helps gold and silver as they are seen as safe havens.
m463 6y ago
Have you looked at the price of non-apple laptops over the years?
- ctdonath 6y ago
  “Sure you can get a hamburger for $1 ... but then you’d have to eat it.” - favorite ad
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    Unfortunately for high priced premium products, the increase in quality of basic products forces premium products to be better or fail. Related to your example - $1 burgers are increasingly better, than you would expect. The difference between McDonald's midrange line and, say, a burger at a restaurant for $18 is negligible in flavor. I can no longer justify going to a restaurant and pay $18+tip for a burger.
    - ryguytilidie 6y ago
      >The difference between McDonald's midrange line and, say, a burger at a restaurant for $18 is negligible in flavor. Oh come on. I get that you're trying to make a point but this is ridiculous.
      - jerkstate 6y ago
        Both provide expected caloric and nutritional value, let’s say that. *Even at a flavor baseline
        thetinguy 6y ago
        Spoken like a true bean counter.
        ctdonath 6y ago
        If that’s my goal, I’ll have a Soylent drink or GreenBelly bar. https://Soylent.com https://Soylent.com https://GreenBelly.co https://GreenBelly.co I’ll eat a $18 hamburger because it tastes really good - yes, about 18x better than a $1 burger.
hderms 6y ago
They have to pay back the investments in R+D first though, no?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  This is the big gotcha. A lot of people see the incremental cost of the CPU as the cost, but the actual cost is: `(development cost + (units sold * incremental cost) ) / units sold` But a lot of Macs have higher end Intel CPUs so the per/ unit cost of Intel CPUs is pretty damned high.
- sjwright 6y ago
  90% of these Mac silicon investments would directly benefit their iPhone cash cow—perhaps not this cycle, but certainly in the chips they'll put in future iPhones. And the remaining 10% would indirectly benefit benefit their iPhone cash cow in the form of keeping people inside the ecosystem.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    You have this backwards. The Mac silicon is inheriting the investments Apple made in the iPhone CPUs. This will continue. The bits which Apple invests to make their existing hardware scale to desktop and high end laptops won't benefit the iPhone much at all. On future generation chips, Apple will spread the development costs over a few more units, but since iPhone + iPad ship several times more units than the Mac, the bulk of the costs will be born by them.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
If you look at their increasing focus on services then it makes sense to pass on cost savings.

mortenjorck 6y ago

Considering they're selling a device with a 10.5" touchscreen and an A12 SoC for $500 today, I think they can go even lower than $800 for a device with only a slightly larger LCD and no digitizer. While they won't be competing with Chromebooks for general education use cases, I could very well see Apple trying to upsell schools on a $599 alternative that happens to run GarageBand, iMovie, and even XCode.

eugeniub 6y ago
Eh I don't see Apple selling their cheapest education MacBook for $600 instead of $900 simply because one of many components suddenly got significantly cheaper.
- Despegar 6y ago
  I can see them doing that for big volume buys for education. I don't see why they wouldn't just pass on the entire Intel margin to them, getting students using Apple products young has value.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    Chromebooks are doing well in education at the moment. If Apple launched a product in that space, they could easily claw half of that back overnight. The ability to run real software is huge, especially for subjects like graphic arts and engineering.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Considering they're selling a device with a 10.5" touchscreen and an A12 SoC for $500 today, I think they can go even lower than $800 for a device with only a slightly larger LCD and no digitizer. While there is no digitizer, there is a keyboard and a touchpad. Also, I expect Apple is going to try to keep a gap between the base Mac and the iPad price-wise so they would add to the base storage and maybe RAM. Then again, considering the pricing on the base iPad, maybe they will bring it down to $600.
- martin_bech 6y ago
  They actually demoed the performance of an arm mac with a low amount of ram
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    It didn't have stock iPad RAM, it had 16GB of RAM. More details on it here: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/22/apple-developer-transition-kits-for-apple-silicon-house-a12z-in-a-mac-mini https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/22/apple-developer-t...
ViViDboarder 6y ago
Maybe if they take a bet on (or force) the App Store to be the primary method of obtaining software. I’d expect Apple forecasts some amount of yearly revenue per iPhone/iPad and a lower amount per MacBook.
ReticentVole 6y ago
Why do we need to buy so many devices anyway? Why can't I just plug my iPad or iPhone into a dumb dock with a laptop screen and its own storage and battery, and use the CPU and GPU from the phone/ipad?
- m_mueller 6y ago
  So far: different architectures. But with this announcement it would make running macOS on a future (or even current) iPad quite feasible, so your kind of dock might become true soon. Apple's new magic iPad keyboards use a lot of weight to balance the heavy screen - might as well make that a battery.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  I don't need VSCode, Docker, or node.js on my phone. I don't want all the clones of the various repositories I'm working on on my phone. Even the best phones lack the RAM, high capacity drives, and video card my computer has. Nor does it have a keyboard or trackpad. If your phone is good enough to take care of your day to day computing, you can probably get by with an inexpensive all-in-one computer and save the headache of docking.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    The dock can have the extra storage. (And the GPU, and maybe even more RAM etc).
    - SlackingOff123 6y ago
      You'll need something to connect all those dock components together so you don't have to run several cables to the phone. Something like a motherboard. So you'll have a full computer sans a cpu.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        More like a Thunderbolt dock with a screen.

easytiger 6y ago

> Apple's margins are consistent, if their costs go down significantly, pricing comes down or features increase. Kool aid swallowed

ogre_codes 6y ago
Apple's financials are public knowledge. You might consider reading them before making trite comments based on blind emotions.
- ianai 6y ago
  Indeed, apples G4 cube debuted at 1800 base in 2000. That’s the same ballpark as their iMac now and their Mac mini starts at about half that. Meanwhile inflation would have made that G4 ~2700 today.
  - jussij 6y ago
    > Meanwhile inflation would have made that G4 ~2700 today. Which of the inputs going into making that device would have applied any inflationary pressure? Most if not all the parts would have probably got cheaper over that time and wage pressure is always low only because of where these devices are made.
    - ianai 6y ago
      Silvers gone up. Golds gone up. Probably various fixed costs had to be further invested in the form of contracts with fabs or new fabs built. Etc. But really the Mac mini is more of a modern likeness to the G4 cube which retails now for a 800$ start, less than half the g4 cubes starting price. Edit-they also went from being a company with around 8500 employees in 2000 to 137000 today. Surely every part of their organization chart has contributed toward pressures to otherwise push up their prices to maintain revenue.
      - jussij 6y ago
        Since Silver and Gold are priced in $USD their price is influenced by the actions of the US government. One of those driving forces is the current US monetary policies (i.e. an growing budget deficit). Another factor is perceived risk. Since the markets are always worrying about the current US China trade talks, that uncertainty helps gold and silver as they are seen as safe havens.

m463 6y ago

Have you looked at the price of non-apple laptops over the years?

ctdonath 6y ago
“Sure you can get a hamburger for $1 ... but then you’d have to eat it.” - favorite ad
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  Unfortunately for high priced premium products, the increase in quality of basic products forces premium products to be better or fail. Related to your example - $1 burgers are increasingly better, than you would expect. The difference between McDonald's midrange line and, say, a burger at a restaurant for $18 is negligible in flavor. I can no longer justify going to a restaurant and pay $18+tip for a burger.
  - ryguytilidie 6y ago
    >The difference between McDonald's midrange line and, say, a burger at a restaurant for $18 is negligible in flavor. Oh come on. I get that you're trying to make a point but this is ridiculous.
    - jerkstate 6y ago
      Both provide expected caloric and nutritional value, let’s say that. *Even at a flavor baseline
      - thetinguy 6y ago
        Spoken like a true bean counter.
      - ctdonath 6y ago
        If that’s my goal, I’ll have a Soylent drink or GreenBelly bar. https://Soylent.com https://Soylent.com https://GreenBelly.co https://GreenBelly.co I’ll eat a $18 hamburger because it tastes really good - yes, about 18x better than a $1 burger.

hderms 6y ago

They have to pay back the investments in R+D first though, no?

ogre_codes 6y ago
This is the big gotcha. A lot of people see the incremental cost of the CPU as the cost, but the actual cost is: `(development cost + (units sold * incremental cost) ) / units sold` But a lot of Macs have higher end Intel CPUs so the per/ unit cost of Intel CPUs is pretty damned high.
sjwright 6y ago
90% of these Mac silicon investments would directly benefit their iPhone cash cow—perhaps not this cycle, but certainly in the chips they'll put in future iPhones. And the remaining 10% would indirectly benefit benefit their iPhone cash cow in the form of keeping people inside the ecosystem.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  You have this backwards. The Mac silicon is inheriting the investments Apple made in the iPhone CPUs. This will continue. The bits which Apple invests to make their existing hardware scale to desktop and high end laptops won't benefit the iPhone much at all. On future generation chips, Apple will spread the development costs over a few more units, but since iPhone + iPad ship several times more units than the Mac, the bulk of the costs will be born by them.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

If you look at their increasing focus on services then it makes sense to pass on cost savings.