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Silicon MacBook could launch on 27 October and cost $800
- adammunich 6y agoCan they really trademark the name of an element? That seems absurd.
- contingencies 6y agoYou can trademark ~anything but it might not stand up in court. Then again, who is going to take Apple to court? For them it's just cheap insurance.
- dcewcrrec 6y agoYou have to have the trademark approved, and they don't really care how big your company is, they will not approve a trademark for the word silicon. See: clothing brand Supreme's attempt to trademark their Supreme logo on a red background. If apple combines the word with a unique logo or combines it with some other word, they can get the trademark, but you can't get it for the word silicon by itself.
- jedberg 6y agoApple has a trademark on the word Apple in the computer space.
- CraftThatBlock 6y agoYes, but silicon is a common word in tech.
- JimDabell 6y ago"Windows" was a common word in tech, but Microsoft managed to get a trademark on that.
- lucd 6y agoWhat's next? A fruit name?
- jedberg 6y agoYou can trademark "Apple Silicon" (both words together with caps)
- duskwuff 6y agoI don't see any real suggestion that they'd do so. Apple has referred to their hardware in developer documentation as "Apple Silicon" -- possibly to avoid trademark issues with ARM? -- but I expect them to use the same naming scheme they use for their iOS application processors (like "Apple A16X") once they have a product ready for market. MacWorld's use of phrases like "Apple's Silicon processor" is likely to just represent confusion on the part of the journalist. As an aside, I have a very hard time believing that Apple would reenter the networking industry. Consumer wireless access points are a commodity product at this point -- it'd be difficult for Apple to present a compelling premium option, especially when many consumers are satisfied with the one that came built into their cable modem.
- jedberg 6y agoThere is still one area of networking that isn't well solved, and that's captive wifi. A device that I can plug into the wall in a hotel or airport and magically have all my apple devices on the internet would be handy. If they made an airport express that did that, I'd probably get it (once we can travel again).
- gruturo 6y agoI bought a cheap travel router from GL.INET which creates the same SSID as my home, and automatically establishes a VPN with my home. It can get its connectivity from an upstream WiFi, from an Ethernet port or from whatever (4g stick, mobile phone with usb tethering ability) you plug in its USB port. It was all of 19 bucks IIRC.
- walterbell 6y agoWhich home device/software is running the VPN server?
- gruturo 6y agoThe endpoint is a Ubiquiti Edgerouter. I also have a pi behind it which acts as openvpn endpoint, with a port forward on the edgerouter
- robin_reala 6y agoYes: https://www.iridium.com/ https://www.iridium.com/
- ytch 6y agohttps://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/... Apple already trademarked "Carbon", and some others like: Aqua, Bonjour, Cocoa, Instruments, Logic, Metal, New York
- occamschainsaw 6y agoThey already trademarked a fruit.
- kasabali 6y agoThis trend of using "silicon" as a phrase for computing hardware is silly anyway. I was super annoyed by it since I've read this marbleous piece of work in Windows Blog [0] years ago. > Silicon innovation > silicon partners > silicon features > silicon supported virtualization > with a focus on Windows and silicon and wait for it > deep integration between silicon, platform, and hardware At least nobody would be able to use it anymore without infringing if Apple has trademarked it. [0] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/15/windows-10-embracing-silicon-innovation/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/15/windo...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- appleflaxen 6y agoa trademark is much different than a copyright or patent. It is only a brand name, and there are no requirements regarding the substantialness of the underlying thing to which it refers. Copyright has an extremely low bar, as well, but it has a bar. You could trademark the wheel if you wanted to, or your brand of the holy bible.
- dbbk 6y agoI don't think they are going to call it just "Silicon", this article headline is the first time I've seen that used. It will be Apple Silicon, or something new entirely.
- mgh2 6y agoIt is exciting as a new technology, but from a business standpoint... I suspect specs will be in par with the failed 12inch macbook, with this being a price corrected product, a 1st prototype, and as a strategy improvement parallel to Microsoft’s failed ARM launch.
- skohan 6y agoI would think a better point of reference is the iPad pro. The 12" macbook was fairly anemic by comparison.
- monadic2 6y agoA) the first device of any product line is not the one to watch for consumer reactions. It's for developers and early adopters. I would not expect this to be a commercial success. B) the 12 inch macbook is probably my favorite device, though I really hope they keep the top line of keys. It's so thin, the battery lasts forever, and somehow it performs better than my xps 13 running linux (in interaction latency, not computational throughput).
- _ph_ 6y agoWith the Apple Silicon, it should last even longer and perform much better.
- riffraff 6y agobut the first intel macbook was a hit, wasn't it? The 13" sold for 1000$ and worked like a charm, which was surprising.
- monadic2 6y agoThe 13” was a great laptop too. The 12” I have has a single usb-c port and a headphone port, which I suspect is a big reason it didn’t take off. It’s soooo light though, I still love it. Finally, I think the risks here are far more clear than a new laptop form factor.
- watersb 6y agoA MacBook carved out of a single, atomically perfect crystal of silicon. Heavy as fsck but oh so pretty. Just don’t drop it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- freetime2 6y agoI also found it to be really strange that this article dropped the “Apple” in “Apple Silicon”. As if having chips made from silicon is the defining characteristic of these new laptops. Or maybe the whole thing is just a solid block of silicon. I also find it impressive that Apple managed to get us all saying “Apple Silicon” instead of “processor” or “CPU” in the first place. It does have a much hipper ring to it.
- Veedrac 6y agoI prefer ‘silicon’ to ‘CPU’ because it makes it clearer Apple intends to compete on the GPU front too.
- zymhan 6y agoThat's why we call them Systems-on-a-Chip, or SoCs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sjwright 6y agoIt'll be interesting to see if capital-s Silicon becomes synonymous with Apple SOCs. After all, Chrome did it to user interfaces and nobody bats an eyelid about that any more.
- mistersquid 6y ago> I also find it impressive that Apple managed to get us all saying “Apple Silicon” instead of “processor” or “CPU” in the first place. It does have a much hipper ring to it. Credit where it is due, Apple knows how to name. Many technology pundits fail to understand (or perhaps more to the point believe) Apple's naming choices, with "iPad" being a notable recent-ish example. [0] Even many who "get" Apple's product naming can misjudge. I personally was unmoved by the name "iMac" when it was announced in 1998. However, that leading lowercase "i" was a stroke of marketing genius so broad that it is only just now diminishing some twenty years later. [0] https://www.cultofmac.com/310020/ipad-haters-5th-anniversary/ https://www.cultofmac.com/310020/ipad-haters-5th-anniversary...
- OrangeKnucles 6y agoI want to buy the 14" MBP with Apple Silicon. With the edge to edge screen.
- mindfulhack 6y agoApple Silicon feels like the most exciting 'Apple computer' news since the launch of the Macintosh. Typing this from a 16-inch MacBook Pro that cost me $5k, I know Apple loves to make money via raw sale price of premium hardware. Imagine what power they'll be able to pack into such a price once they apply Apple Silicon to the MBP. I'm thinking 128 or even 256 GB RAM, extraordinary processing speed options that are orders or magnitude faster than any other laptop (or even desktop), it's major major news. The big question mark hanging over it is ability to run native Linux. I'm a Linux user, increasingly. We'll have to watch this space.
- opportune 6y agoIf Apple actually sells it at $800 this will be huge. I assume it will ship with some virtualization software and the real question for me is how well that will work. Even if that doesn't work, at $800 it's definitely going to be a better deal than chromebooks or surface laptops assuming it can do things other than surf the web and email.
- ant6n 6y agoMy fanless 12" ARM Chromebook does have a terminal and linux builtin, as well as a retina-like screen resolution. It also costs only 400$. At twice the cost, an ARM Macbook should allow me to do dev work and brew etc.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoThey talked a bit about Rosetta 2 in the presentation a few weeks ago, it’s an emulator rather than virtualisation. Their main trick was that it does most of the translation at install time instead of runtime, though I guess it’ll depend on app specifics how useful that optimisation is. I’m guessing a browser won’t be improved much for example while a native office package would be. Pretty decent write up here: https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-rosetta-2-emulation-app-converter-explainer https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-rosetta-2-em...
- vbezhenar 6y agoThis is just a rumor posted from some random twitter account. Take it with a grain of salt.
- jeppesen-io 6y agoThe MacBook 12 is my favorite laptop of all time. If Apple comes out with same form factor with a little better performance, I'll get it in a heartbeat
- mrweasel 6y agoThe possibility of new AirPort gear is just as exciting as new ARM based laptops, I could use an update to my old AirPort Express units. The last few Apple laptop I’ve had for work has been annoying at best, so for home use I wasn’t going to replace my old 2013 Macbook Pro with a new Mac, but I am tempted to try an ARM based Macbook.
- Wandfarbe 6y agoWhy? You are running a 2013 Macbook Pro; there is no clear benefit for you buying a Macbook from 2020 with or without ARM at all. Its absolutly unreasonable, if you are already running your Macbook from 2013, that the ARM will give YOU anything relevant extra as the general upgrade from a 7 year old device.
- mrweasel 6y agoYou don’t think the ARM Macbook of 2020 will be faster than the 2013 Intel based Macbook Pro? Working on my hobby AppleTV app is doable on the 2013 laptop, it’s just annoyingly slow. I would hope that the ARM perform better.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoI believe they were saying that the difference between ARM 2020 and <anything else> 2020 would be marginal, compared to the difference of <anything> 2013 to <anything> 2020.
- bserge 6y agoCould you elaborate, in what way(s) is it slow? Please don't downvote, I'm just curious.
- coldtea 6y agoThe professors bound for the 2020 Macbook (actually the one's already in the iPhones - the Macbook one's would be an even later model) are already faster than the 2013 Macbook Pro. Plus all the other niceties, like USB-3, modern bluetooth, better integrated graphics, a faster and bigger SSD, more RAM, and so on. Oh, and the ability to run future-proof on the ARM version of Big Sur (and run iOS apps, and other things). It's not even comparable...
- dbcooper 6y agoThe $999 MacBook Air comes with a core i3. Where is the purported $200 cost saving coming from? Edit: According to the WSJ $75 to $150 per Mac could be saved. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/apple-is-the-newest-chip-giant-in-town-11592910000 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/apple-... >The new Mac processors will shave $75 to $150 off the cost of building a computer, estimate analysts, who say Apple can pass those savings on to customers and shareholders.
- rimjongun 6y agoApple silicon.
- dbcooper 6y agoHow much is an i3? Surely well under $200.
- manicdee 6y agoAn i3 laptop has more Intel silicon in it than just the i3. It also requires more energy, which means larger batteries, which means more dollars.
- dbcooper 6y agohttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/apple-is-the-newest-chip-giant-in-town-11592910000 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/apple-... >The new Mac processors will shave $75 to $150 off the cost of building a computer, estimate analysts, who say Apple can pass those savings on to customers and shareholders.
- duskwuff 6y ago$200-300. Intel's site doesn't list a price for the exact part that's in the current Air, but a similar part is $281. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196588/intel-core-i3-1005g1-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196588/...
- nakazl 6y agoAwesome. But I want a laptop that costs $2500, has a 4:3 Flexview screen, the old IBM keyboard and does not look like an ugly fashion accessory. And I don't like LED backlight: https://ledstrain.org/d/680-eyestrain-in-macbook-pro-2018 https://ledstrain.org/d/680-eyestrain-in-macbook-pro-2018
- _ph_ 6y agoBringing the 12" MacBook back with Apple Silicon for $800 could be huge. First of all, the 12" MacBook was the dream portable machine, especially being fanless. However, the processors where really to slow and the price to high. I guess, the 12" MacBook was designed on a promise of Intel of delivering processors, they never could deliver due to the issues with their 10nm process. This is where an ARM based design around the iPad processor would be an instant win performance wise. But it is also great news, if Apple really uses the costs saved by going with their own CPUs to offer the machine at a lower price. Suddenly, it can compete with a lot of branded laptops on the price alone. With the additional speed from the processors, it should be quite a good general purpose laptop. And we know how nice the 12" MacBook was from a design perspective. For the consumer market, the ability to run iOS apps becomes an additional huge benefit. For more and more people, the smartphone is the default computing platform, especially for younger people, the smartphone might be the device they get into computing at all. So when bying a laptop to go along with your smartphone, the Mac running Apple Silicon has a huge benefit, as it integrates more seamless than ever with your smartphone. I would expect the Mac market share to get quite a boost as a consequence. While the MacBook is the obvious machine to equip with Apple Silicon for the reasons listed above, I would also expect Apple to hit the market with a true developer machine just so that developers can not only test their software on Apple Silicon, but that it becomes the development platform right from the start.
- skohan 6y ago> For the consumer market, the ability to run iOS apps becomes an additional huge benefit. I see it more as a stepping stone. It's difficult to imagine how a UI designed for iOS would ever not feel strange on a laptop. But SwiftUI seems like a great tool for sharing large amounts of code between platforms, with some branching to cater properly to each platform. However given the current dominance of web interfaces for desktop software it's hard to imagine iOS apps becoming relevant on mac anytime soon aside from a few special cases.
- murukesh_s 6y ago>It's difficult to imagine how a UI designed for iOS would ever not feel strange on a laptop. What is Apple offers a touch screen? Then it becomes essentially an iPad with a keyboard..
- wayanon 6y agoWould a device like this be more powerful than my early 2015 MBP?
- Joeri 6y agoYes. The A12Z in the ipad pro is already 25% faster is in single core and 50% faster in multicore than the highest end i7 in the 2015 macbook pro according to geekbench 5. Given that the chip in macbooks will be a lot faster than the A12Z, it could very well offer twice the multicore performance.
- bitL 6y ago> geekbench 5 Now try some math workload on A12Z, i.e. real-world stuff and weep. Most of the die space on x64 CPUs is spent on caches and SSE, so if you cut them out to be more power-friendly, you lose performance in high-end applications.
- jki275 6y agoWhat makes you believe Apple doesn’t know this or has removed them?
- bitL 6y agoA12Z is still using ARM 8.3 instruction set, therefore no 2048-bit SVE2 for math. Their L1 cache is also 2x smaller than on Zen 2 - that gives them a massive power advantage. I'd wait out this generation of ARM-based notebooks and go with their next CPU that should have SVE2 implemented. It's not like anything faster than Pentium J is needed for Office, browsing or even front-end development, so in that segment their first gen should be good enough and maybe even better than i3/i5.
- floatboth 6y agoSVE is a niche HPC thing just like AVX512. For most applications NEON (aka AdvSIMD) is more than enough.
- klelatti 6y agoA price point of $800 needs to be compared with that of the base iPad pro - currently $799. So if no change to the iPad pricing that's (at least) a keyboard and bigger screen for $1. Seems to me that one of these values will need to change.
- viraptor 6y agoAn alternative speculation: after saying effectively that iPad pro can be your laptop, the next iPad pro will be a laptop.
- sjwright 6y agoI think it's an even money that Apple Silicon will mark the introduction of touch to macOS. In fact with Apple planning to make a big deal out of Silicon Macs natively supporting iOS apps, I'll be surprised if these Macs don't have multi-touch screens. Apple has always been big on forcing app developers to rewrite UIs to the device, like they did with the iPhone-to-iPad transition. Without touch on Mac, many iOS apps are going to be janky as hell; an incredibly un-Apple thing indeed.
- klelatti 6y agoAlternatively 12.9 inch iPad Pro with 256GB is already $100 more expensive than the MacBook Air so who knows?
- ksec 6y agoWell the Screen is much different. You dont get Pro Motion on Mac yet, and you wont ever get it at this price point on the Mac Lineup.
- jasonlfunk 6y agoWho knows if these pricing rumors are real, but what’s interesting is that if everyone keeps talking about how these machines are going to be quite a bit cheaper, Apple might be forced to actually make them cheaper than they would have otherwise. If they come out with more expensive ones, it’ll be a bad look.
- bluedino 6y agoIt better have more than one port. Remember why people didn’t buy the 12” MacBook?
- _ph_ 6y agoOne main advantage of going to their own silicon is, that Apple is no longer dependant on the decisions of Intel, what kind and number of ports the machine should have. Then designing USB-C/Thunderbolt support, they can add as many ports as they want to the chipset. For the MacBook, 2 ports would be nice, as we have today on the MB Air. However I don't think the ports were the biggest reason that people didn't buy the 12" MB. The Intel CPUs were just too constrained when running in a machine without a fan, the Apple Silicon should improve upon this a lot. The butterfly keyboard didn't help things either.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoI don't think Intel is the reason for the few ports though... No other intel laptop has such few ports. It's Apple's own minimalism (and their extremely lucrative dongle business)
- _ph_ 6y agoYes and no. The problem is, the chipsets limit the number of thunderbolt ports you can offer without adding separate interface chips. That is why many other laptops come with one or two thunderbolt ports too. What Apple could have done, is offering plain USB ports etc., which the chipset would support. But as Apple wants all ports to have the same capabilities, they were quite limited by the maximum amount of thunderbolt ports supported. While I think it would have been very convenient to add at least one USB-A style port and perhaps a dedicated HDMI port to their machines, I quite agree how nice it is, that all USB-C style ports do have the same capabilities.
- dbbk 6y agoI don't think that was the reason people didn't buy it. It was perfect as a travel companion laptop, but I think the market for people buying multiple laptops is extremely small.
- klelatti 6y agoIt will be interesting to see if the MacBooks are first Apple products to use the TSMC 5nm process. Might make sense given the lower volume when compared to iPhones.
- Jemm 6y agoI really hope the name Silicon is not used officially.
- lukevp 6y agoApple Silicon is the official name for their ARM processors, it was used heavily in the reveal at WWDC by Apple.
- gre 6y agoI want a touchscreen too.
- captaincrowbar 6y agoApple are usually careful not to announce new hardware until it's just about ready to ship (with the occasional exception coughAirPowercough), but in this case (assuming the report is correct) I suspect they'll be making an exception. Four months between announcing Apple Silicon and the first hardware hitting retail seems far too short for developers to properly prepare. So I'm guessing that this will be an announcement well in advance of hardware shipping, maybe early next year, to give developers a clear target to aim for (both a hardware target and a calendar target).
- sjwright 6y agoI strongly disagree. Apple needs real hardware in stores in order to get Apple Silicon into the hands of the long tail of Mac developer community and to light a fire under developers to get their stuff released. As for most "normal" customers, these first Apple Silicon devices are going to be perfectly usable on day one—whether they're spending 99% of their time in a web browser or running some outdated finance software through Rosetta. And natively compiled software is going to come thick and fast over the next few months. As for timing, with the pandemic flattening demand for semiconductors, Apple will have no trouble getting their supply chains running. I'll be shocked if we don't see Apple Silicon Macs in stores by December.
- valuearb 6y agoApple is happy to preannounce entirely new product lines, like AirPower. It never pre-announces new versions of current products, see: Osborne disaster. And developers already have Apple Silicon development machines, see WWDC announcements.
- plorkyeran 6y agoThe devkit is already pretty close to something I'd consider acceptable as a primary machine without any work from non-apple developers at all. Firefox and Chrome really need native builds, but the emulation is good enough for most programs even with the devkit having a CPU that's two generations behind what's expected to ship in the real thing.
- tedk-42 6y agoI've tried to look for resources around doing any real local development with an ipad pro (a device that's already using apple silicon) and the best advice I've found is basically hacks to get a VM running in digital ocean to do your 'compute'. Not a huge fan of this. I'm hoping you it's not like the ARM ecosystem with Windows where things are heavily nerfed (Surface Pro X) to the point where you can't do anything that resembles proper development. Proper MacOS, full full system access, ability to run docker and run golang builds, node runtime, python etc natively and locally on the device are a must. Native terminal app (obviously) is a must with the option of running something like iTerm2 etc. I had a chromebook before with crostini and that was a shitty experience for a fanless dev machine. I hope apple can do it right. side nitpick: i don't align with the apple haters out there who wanna pick at things like the use of the word 'silicon' by apple.
- saagarjha 6y ago> Proper MacOS, full full system access, ability to run docker and run golang builds, node runtime, python etc natively and locally on the device are a must. You’ll get all of that, don’t worry.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- skc 6y agoThis would be an absolute game changer. Everyone aspires to own a Macbook but either flat out can't afford one or can't justify the price. (I'm in the second camp) This changes all of that.
- pault 6y agoThis sounds like a bubble effect. None of my friends have ever expressed interest in trading their windows laptops in for a Mac. Some of them actively avoid Apple products with well reasoned justification.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoLol $800. This is Apple we're talking about. Just the logo on the front will cost $800 (just joking). But really, this is way below Apple's normal pricing. It would cannibalise the iPad Pro very much too, considering the price of those + keyboard stand is much higher. Unless they deliberately give up some of their huge margins in order to get these in circulation ASAP, I don't see this happening. The first ARM will be a premium product for them. I don't think it will carry a budget price. No MacBook has been this cheap since the MB Air 11" which was a really underpowered 1.4Ghz / 2GB RAM model.
- valuearb 6y agoApples Mac margins are in the 15-30% range. They will price to maintain those margins, so if they can build a viable $800 MacBook at those margins they will take the additional market share. The iPad Air was a $500+ tablet until they were able to build a $299 model at same margins.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoBut 15-30% is huge in the computer market. 10% is normal to consumers and much less to enterprise customers that demand deep discounts. I doubt they'd keep the same margin if they really offer it at $800. I don't think they'd save that much by cutting intel out, especially if you factor in R&D. Pretty sure they're cutting into their margins at that price, but it would be good for them to get ARM in the hands of consumers so that developers have a reason to work on it.
- valuearb 6y agoIt’s huger than you think, the rest of the PC makers are stuck between 1-4% net profit margins. But their pricing isn’t going to be greatly influenced by R&D costs, it’s going to be driven by hardware costs. Those R&D costs are ongoing expenses, Apple is always working on new technologies. A rough rule of thumb is retail is twice hardware costs. Most Intel CPUs cost between $200 and $300 each, while Ax processors in iPads and iPhones cost less than $100 each. And another big factor is the SOCs for Apple Silicon will integrate lots of capabilities that require separate cards or coprocessors on current Macs, including high performance GPUs, the T2 security chip, etc. So it’s reasonable to think Apple will be saving $100 to $200 in hardware costs for the Apple Silicon “equivalents” of their current lineup (Equivalents in positioning, but faster, slimmer and longer battery life versions). That directly translates $200-$400 lower retail prices, which Apple will use to drive higher sales volumes. That will spread R&D, Design, Marketing, Sales, Admin, and Support over more units, supporting spending more to promote and sell them and more on design and R&D in the future.
- staycoolboy 6y agoThere's a reason why Apple hired hundreds of chip designers away from Portland's Intel site and set up a chip designer center in Portland.