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I am still of the view that the real issue here one that Apple has never overcome. Software. This was also very obvious during the recent presentation, very few

I am still of the view that the real issue here one that Apple has never overcome. Software. This was also very obvious during the recent presentation, very few companies highlighted and of those how many did you recognize? For current Mac users we still have no means by which to look at our installed software and know if Rosetta will handle it or in many cases if the developer is even planning on supporting it in the future. Catalina did a good job of punting a lot of old software to the side and decimated gaming on the Mac. I know I am in a minority here but for me I want only one desktop/laptop type machine for both productivity and games. As above, Catalina decimated the gaming environment on Mac and frankly the iOS game environment isn't comparable. So, yes in some limited cases Intel sounds a bit like Palm but the difference is in phones it was a wide open environment to exploit and the current desktop/laptop market is heavily entrenched with established 3rd party software that must go along for the ride and that condition did not exist for phones, though now it does. Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market.

tambourine_man 6y ago
> highlighted and of those how many did you recognize? Are you kidding? All of them. I mean, Adobe, Microsoft? > we still have no means by which to look at our installed software and know if Rosetta will handle it or in many cases It will, the cases were Rosetta 2 won’t work are extremely rare, hand tuned vector instructions from high performance software that is probably well supported anyway. As for games, yes, if you care about them at all, don’t buy a Mac. At least not until Apple changes its attitude towards it. > Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market. Yes, one can dream.
vkazanov 6y ago
> Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market. That would be catastrophic
- gumby 6y ago
  How so?
gumby 6y ago
> during the recent presentation, very few [Software ] companies highlighted and of those how many did you recognize? I don't know if I'm an outlier but I recognized many of them. I have no idea if they (apart from some real biggies like MS or Adobe) have any Windows presence, and I know there are big Windows companies I don't know exist.
gumby 6y ago
> ...the difference is in phones it was a wide open environment to exploit and the current desktop/laptop market is heavily entrenched...Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market. These observations of yours actually go together. The phone business was highly entrenched in 2007 with carriers having all the control (especially in North America) over a highly sclerotic system that sucked almost all the value out of any third party apps. Apple truly disrupted them all: phone mfrs, carriers, and the app environment. Apple has an opportunity to do the same with the cloud business. They have three lines of attack, ones they've used before. 1 - a lot of cloud code is platform agnostic (in Python or js etc) so for that the switching cost will be lower 2 - they have an edge in privacy protection and, on a cost basis, their NN chips vs Nvidia who has been lucky enough to enjoy a quasi-monopoly. People will pay for this, especially when/if privacy rules start to have teeth. 3 - Since they are vertically quite integrated and build their own chips, Apple can build web hardware optimized for high performance networking, lots of NNs, etc with kernels to go with. Their cost structure is potentially a lot lower even compared to open connect folks because they already have everything set up to build lots of machines so they can be quite profitable while undercutting the Amazons of the world. Local server machines? Not a chance. And will they do the cloud? It seems likely they will be driven to it, but given their decades of poor execution on anything but hardware it seems better than even odds that they would flub it despite putting great people on it.
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  Every single major cloud providers builds their own chips and most have gone even further with custom ASICs for ML. I don't see any reason to believe that Apple has the organizational or technical ability to enter the cloud business successfully. I don't think they even see data center ops as a core competency and you can't go into the cloud business without expertise there. AFAIK they primarily rely on public clouds.

tambourine_man 6y ago

> highlighted and of those how many did you recognize? Are you kidding? All of them. I mean, Adobe, Microsoft? > we still have no means by which to look at our installed software and know if Rosetta will handle it or in many cases It will, the cases were Rosetta 2 won’t work are extremely rare, hand tuned vector instructions from high performance software that is probably well supported anyway. As for games, yes, if you care about them at all, don’t buy a Mac. At least not until Apple changes its attitude towards it. > Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market. Yes, one can dream.

vkazanov 6y ago

> Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market. That would be catastrophic

gumby 6y ago
How so?

gumby 6y ago

> during the recent presentation, very few [Software ] companies highlighted and of those how many did you recognize? I don't know if I'm an outlier but I recognized many of them. I have no idea if they (apart from some real biggies like MS or Adobe) have any Windows presence, and I know there are big Windows companies I don't know exist.

gumby 6y ago

> ...the difference is in phones it was a wide open environment to exploit and the current desktop/laptop market is heavily entrenched...Now if Apple could find inroads into the server market. These observations of yours actually go together. The phone business was highly entrenched in 2007 with carriers having all the control (especially in North America) over a highly sclerotic system that sucked almost all the value out of any third party apps. Apple truly disrupted them all: phone mfrs, carriers, and the app environment. Apple has an opportunity to do the same with the cloud business. They have three lines of attack, ones they've used before. 1 - a lot of cloud code is platform agnostic (in Python or js etc) so for that the switching cost will be lower 2 - they have an edge in privacy protection and, on a cost basis, their NN chips vs Nvidia who has been lucky enough to enjoy a quasi-monopoly. People will pay for this, especially when/if privacy rules start to have teeth. 3 - Since they are vertically quite integrated and build their own chips, Apple can build web hardware optimized for high performance networking, lots of NNs, etc with kernels to go with. Their cost structure is potentially a lot lower even compared to open connect folks because they already have everything set up to build lots of machines so they can be quite profitable while undercutting the Amazons of the world. Local server machines? Not a chance. And will they do the cloud? It seems likely they will be driven to it, but given their decades of poor execution on anything but hardware it seems better than even odds that they would flub it despite putting great people on it.

solidasparagus 6y ago
Every single major cloud providers builds their own chips and most have gone even further with custom ASICs for ML. I don't see any reason to believe that Apple has the organizational or technical ability to enter the cloud business successfully. I don't think they even see data center ops as a core competency and you can't go into the cloud business without expertise there. AFAIK they primarily rely on public clouds.