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On the other hand, without Apple pushing this innovation there was next to no chance we’d ever see anything like the M1 come from another company. Think of the
by sxg 6y ago
On the other hand, without Apple pushing this innovation there was next to no chance we’d ever see anything like the M1 come from another company. Think of the standard laptop display from 10 years ago. They nearly all came with extremely low resolution screens until Apple expanded high res displays from the iPhone and iPad to its own laptops in 2012. Shortly after, all other brands followed suit. I anticipate competitors will do the same and roll out Arm-based laptops in the next few years.
- josephg 6y agoThe problem is there isn’t a CPU available for competitors to use in their laptops. Apple doesn’t sell their chips to 3rd parties, and no other ARM chip on the market has competitive performance. Microsoft is trying - but their Qualcomm based laptops are extremely slow compared to offerings from intel / amd.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago> there isn’t a CPU available for competitors to use in their laptops Zen3 looks pretty on par with the Apple stuff, maybe it's finally time for OEMs to adopt AMD in a serious way so they can invest into R&D even more.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- EricE 6y agoWhat Zen3 in a laptop can compete with the M1?
- cercatrova 6y agoLooks like the 5900HX is looking like it could, although we don't have all the details yet. Note that Zen 3 is still on 7 nm while M1 is 5 nm, so there's an inherent performance disadvantage.
- EricE 6y agoSo a chip that's not out yet may match it in performance. Also at the end of the day performance oriented people aren't going to care so much about process node idiosyncrasies. Does it perform or not?
- cercatrova 6y agoI expected this response, but you did ask for something that could perform, not one that does currently. Looks like no on that front then.
- EricE 6y agoI asked what laptop can - no could in there. Not that I would be mad if AMD meets or heck even bests Apple. Competition is good for all of us :)
- hjnilsson 6y agoThere were no LCD screen for laptops either in 2010. But market created it to fit demand, and now there are a lot of options. It is extremely likely other companies will step up with new offerings. But it will take 2-3 years (where Apple will reap the benefit of being early).
- theandrewbailey 6y ago> There were no LCD screen for laptops either in 2010. I remember using laptops with LCD screens in 2010, and even before. They weren't even Apple laptops.
- wang_li 6y agoI’m quite certain that the earliest laptops largely relied on LCD screens in the ‘80s. I’ve no idea what that commenter means.
- ameen 6y agoI wonder if they meant IPS LCD screens, because most laptop screens used TN Panels.
- dTal 6y agoIt's still untrue; I don't know when the first IPS screens were but I picked up a Thinkpad X61T with an IPS screen on ebay; that was released in 2007.
- dTal 6y agoI can't make any sense of this? Laptops have been around since the early 90s and have always used LCD screens - what else? Anything with a CRT wouldn't fit on your lap. Jeff Goldblum even used one to repel an alien invasion in 1996.
- hjnilsson 6y agoSorry. I meant high resolution screens. There were hardly any “retina” laptops (and no desktop screens) when apple started introducing theirs in 2012.
- bredren 6y agoThis. When Steve Jobs announced iPhone on stage in 2008 he said it was a “revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone," That was saying the quiet thing out loud and Apple is playing it much cooler on PR around competition these days. But Apple Silicon combined with Apple software is very likely at least 5 years ahead of the competition, because there is not currently an assembly of organizations that can integrate to offer anything like what Apple is doing _now_. What makes this article particularly interesting is it points at beating NVIDIA and AMD in graphics and reducing the size of the enclosure by half. I find it interesting that Apple just redesigned the Mac Pro only to have to redesign it again for Apple Silicon. Oddly, the failed trash can Mac Pro may have actually worked for Apple Silicon designs. I suspect that Apple will provide web services to Apple developers that breaks pricing for Intel / NVIDIA based cloud compute and further burnishes the value of building for Apple platforms. Apple can fab at max scale if it can consume its own chips in its own data centers that can flex between serving Apple or AWS or Azure customers. It’s going to be a rough go for the PC market because not everyone is going to make it through this—-at least not as the companies they are today.
- fomine3 6y agoI believe trashcan's main issue is expandability. Performance (and heat) is second.
- madeofpalk 6y agoStupid question but, Apple "just" got good and made this themselves. Why can't others just "get better" and make their own chips that actually compete?
- ben-schaaf 6y agoFor one Apple hasn't just gotten good, they've been working towards this for over 10 years. Secondly AMD is doing pretty well competing with Apple on performance.
- danaris 6y agoApple has made several strategic acquisitions over the last decade that put them in this position, and has a fairly unique advantage in their relationship with shareholders—basically, that they can take what would be massive risks to other companies, rather than chasing short-term quarterly profit increases, and not suffer massive backlash for it. Also note that Apple didn't just come out with the M1 out of nowhere: it's the result of iterative improvements on the A-series chips for over a decade. That's not to say it would be impossible for another company to try to get themselves to where Apple is today—but it would be far from trivial.
- spacedcowboy 6y agoIt's kind of weird that one of the most valuable companies in the world has this "we're doing our own thing and we're gonna do it well, invest if you want, or don't" attitude, but that same attitude is decried by pretty much anyone else. It's not like they're an example or anything... I mean, it obviously doesn't work for every market, but I just see it as kind of strange that someone hasn't taken a page from Apple's playbook over the years when it would suit them.
- danaris 6y agoI think the reason it works is because except for their brief—and very obviously catastrophic—period in the '90s under traditional suits, Apple's management made it clear from the start that that's how they would operate. When Steve Jobs came back as "iCEO" in the late '90s, Apple stock was roughly $8/share (pre-splits). They weren't a total nobody, but they certainly weren't interesting enough to any big fish that there was any push to put pressure on them to act like a more "traditional" company. And Jobs kept doing things his way for the next 15 years, until his medical retirement and untimely death, and those things increased Apple's stock price fairly steadily. Until the iPhone came out, of course, at which point it increased dramatically. But by then, people were already used to the idea that Apple would do things Apple's way. (And some people were so used to the idea that Apple was Doomed that they still preach it every time there's any new Apple news.) And it's so utterly clear that Apple doing things Apple's way works—for Apple. Any other company trying to do things Apple's way—or even its own unique way, rather than the way the markets want—would be fighting an incredibly strong current.
- jmnicolas 6y ago> but their Qualcomm based laptops are extremely slow compared to offerings from intel / amd. But who's fault is it? I would tend to think that it's Windows Arm port that sucks since Qualcomm chips offer good perfs for Android phones.
- jeswin 6y agoMy 2011 $1k laptop (which I still use at times) had a full hd screen and 4 RAM slots. PCs have always offered a full range of specs, but most people just go for cheaper options. Even a couple of years back, most laptops were shipping low res screens.
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- robertoandred 6y ago1080p isn't high res compared to the MBP retina screens.
- jeswin 6y agoWhen I bought it though, Macs were shipping with lower resolutions than 1080p. And not long after the Macbooks went retina, I bought a laptop with a 4k screen - which again the Macbooks don't match. My point is that PCs have offered high end specs at affordable (but above average) price points even before Macs had them. And the fact that many PC laptops still offer low res screens point to price being the deciding factor which moves the PC industry forward, not Apple.
- rthille 6y agoMy 2010 MBP 17" has a higher than 1080p resolution (1920x1200), and the "Early 2009" did too: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-2.93-aluminum-17-early-2009-unibody-specs.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook...
- jeswin 6y agoThanks for the correction. I was looking at 13/14/15" laptops at that point - which maxed out at 1440 by 900 on the 15" I believe.
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- ndiddy 6y agoMy 2006 Thinkpad had a 1600x1200 IPS display. It’s more that Apple cares more about the high-end than the PC market does, so of course more Macs have high-end features than Windows devices.
- robertoandred 6y ago1600x1200 at 133ppi isn't exactly hi-res...
- orangecat 6y agoWell, it was 2006. There was a period of several years after that where displays actually got worse as "HD" took over, which meant going from 4:3 and 16:10 aspect ratios to 16:9, and being stuck with awful 1366x768 resolutions.
- EricE 6y agoOr on desktops - how common are 5K displays? Yet with the iMac you get a gorgeous 5K display and the computer is almost free. I still wish Apple would release a reasonably priced stand alone display. The Pro Display is amazing but I could never justify it :/