7 ms·

>Roughly 40% of their revenue is consumer chips where, apart from some games optimisation, they are no longer standing out from the crowd, and the leader is arg

• parasubvert 6y ago
  I think you are vastly underestimating the revolution of what the M1 represents to the PC industry.
  • tw04 6y ago
    I think you are vastly overestimating the "revolution" of what the M1 represents to the industry. Apple isn't selling it to any other PC makers, and corporations aren't pivoting away from Microsoft for a CPU. Every single ARM chip that's been targeted at the Windows world has produced yawn-inducing performance.
  • icedchai 6y ago
    M1 is amazing. I think people are also underestimating how fast Intel can catch up.
  • fxtentacle 6y ago
    I think you are vastly underestimating how hard IT departments will kick you if you request or bring a device that cannot properly execute the company-critical legacy Windows x64 software. Like SAP, for example. (SAP is the largest non-American software company by revenue and does business management, workflow automation, and bookkeeping) My prediction is that outside of hipster startups, M1 will have no effect on business laptop sales.
    • KptMarchewa 6y ago
      Isn't sap a database? Why would you want users to run db on laptop, especially on windows?
      • fxtentacle 6y ago
        No, SAP is more like an Operating System for your factories. It contains EVERYTHING, from payroll to inventory management. Think of it more like an Exchange server plus all Microsoft office apps combined. To connect to the Exchange server and get all features, you need Outlook. It's the same with the SAP database and SAP client GUIs. The official GUI is C++ and Windows only. They do have a Java port for other OSes, and some 3rd party GUIs, but none of that is feature-complete or even halfway there.
      • jaywalk 6y ago
        SAP is so many things that their Products page has search functionality and is broken down by first letter: https://www.sap.com/products-a-z.html https://www.sap.com/products-a-z.html So no, SAP is not a database and has many client applications that would run on a laptop.
      • ido 6y ago
        SAP is lots of enterprise software stuff, not just a DB.
    • cyxxon 6y ago
      But then again, the current version of SAP is S/4 HANA, and unless you are a developer or admin for that, you will be using their Fiori based web clients, so a normal browser is enough. I am a developer in an S/4 rollout project in a Windows-only shop, but for our future system landscape I could see the normal people using the SAP systems using any kind of laptop or tablet. Even we are testing iPads and laptops at least.
    • mschuster91 6y ago
      > I think you are vastly underestimating how hard IT departments will kick you if you request or bring a device that cannot properly execute the company-critical legacy Windows x64 software. Like SAP, for example. Many companies have long ago set up some beefy Citrix servers for those application.
• klelatti 6y ago
  Not sure of the source of your 15% but I'm willing to bet that by value it's more - no Celerons in Apple's line up. Plus Apple wouldn't be going down this route if it didn't expect to grow market share - and although people don't care if it's M1 or i5 they do care if the experience is better. Then Apple's success with the M1 will spur others - I would not be surprised if Microsoft follow them down the same route.
  • toyg 6y ago
    > Apple wouldn't be going down this route if it didn't expect to grow market share Marketshare is not what Apple is about. Apple is about profitability and control. Their move to own silicon is driven by improvements in the reliability of their build pipeline (no more waiting for tic-tocs and whatnot) and tighter control / integration of their whole stack (same arch on phones and pc). That these chips happen to perform so well that they are potential market-growers, is a welcome coincidence.
    • klelatti 6y ago
      Growing marketshare but profitably and without impairing the brand is what Apple is about. That's why we have the iPhone SE. The M series lets them do that with the Mac now. And more Macs implies more Apple services sales. It's certainly partly defensive - they were frustrated with Intel - but Apple would only make a move of this scale if it thought it created business opportunities for them.
• terafo 6y ago
  >it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends Gargantuan battery life isn't a selling point? For laptop? In what universe?
  • tw04 6y ago
    For who? My mom uses her laptop at home 99% of the time, if the battery gets low she plugs it in. She needs a battery that will last 1-2 hours for the 3 times a year she flies. You can find a place to plug in at basically any coffee shop or library you go to. My mom isn't spending 10 hours in a datacenter, so it doesn't really matter to her if the battery life is 3 hours or 12. For the average consumer, battery life has just been another stat on the spec sheet for years now.
    • hollerith 6y ago
      Even if your mom doesn't care about battery life, she will probably buy a product that is also sold to buyers who do care about battery life, and if the product can meet those buyer's needs with a smaller battery, then your mom's laptop will be lighter. So, does your mom also not care about the weight of her laptop?
      • tw04 6y ago
        The Macbook air with intel CPU weighs 2.75 lbs, the Macbook air with M1 weighs 2.8 lbs. The macbook pro is 3.0 vs 3.1 lbs. The weight is a non-factor. Quite frankly until you start cracking 5lbs nobody even cares in my experience. Apple's maniacal focus on making laptops skinnier and lighter has done a disservice to the entire product line, which they seemingly acknowledged with the 16" Pro.
        • hollerith 6y ago
          Apple had the option of making the M1 Air lighter (by choosing a smaller battery) but decided instead to greatly increase battery life. The point remains that Apple has choices that vendors of laptops reliant on Intel CPUs do not have, which might end up eating into Intel's market share.
• yowlingcat 6y ago
  > it isn't a selling point to my mom or her friends Really? That's surprising to me. I'd imagine that for the demographic of her and her friends, quality of life increases for their phones are far more material than for their computers.
  • neogodless 6y ago
    It sounds like you're agreeing with your parent comment. > phones are far more material Thus they don't really care about laptop battery life.
    • yowlingcat 6y ago
      That's not what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is that to say that "even if Apple goes 100% M1, there's the other 85% of the market that Intel is likely far more concerned about." is somewhat far-fetched. Apple can make their own desktop chips because it's an easier problem than making a phone chip (performance/thermal efficiency), but Intel can't make because they've sacrificed thermal efficiency time and time again -- not just this time but a decade ago. Remember Prescott? I think that is why Intel should be (and probably is) worried about Apple. They will make Intel redundant by having solved a harder problem which their own problem becomes a subset of.
• danpalmer 6y ago
  I get your point, but I think the M1 is more significant as proof of what is possible than because I think everyone will buy a Mac. I can absolutely see Qualcomm offering laptop chips off the back of the M1's success. They may not be as good, but they might be much cheaper. I can also see Microsoft pushing Windows on ARM harder, and rolling out their own chips at some point. Also once the market gets "used to" multi-architecture software (again), I think we'll see a renaissance of chip design as many more players crop up, because of the lower barrier to entry.
  • Leherenn 6y ago
    Maybe. Apple has solved the chicken and egg problem regarding software compatibility by forcing everyone to move on to ARM in the near future. Microsoft will not abandon x64 though, so there are far less incentives to port things. Also Microsoft cares far more about compatibility (e.g. 32-bit software). That means means a lot of things will run under a Rosetta 2 like system (probably less efficient if you need to support 32-bit as well). If you add the fact that Qualcomm is unlikely to match Apple in performance, the resulting product might not be very appealing compared to a classic x64 system.
    • totalZero 6y ago
      An ARM transition isn't a fait accompli just because Apple introduced M1 at the lower end of the Mac lineup. There's a huge lump of inertia there.
      • carlmr 6y ago
        I'm not so sure, since a lot of software is somewhat cross-platform now anyway. You need to port the JVM, .NET, and Chromium (for electron), and you've effectively ported a large part of the desktop application space already. Web applications are portable if you have a browser Many modern languages that compile to native, like Rust, trivially recompile for multiple target architectures. Others are dynamic and don't need recompilation. Of course some major software is written in non-portable C and C++. But the question is whether some emulation isn't acceptable here.
• vasco 6y ago
  You misunderstand the point of the M1 out of Apple, and for that matter the graviton2 instances out of AWS. What was demonstrated in the marketplace is that the biggest tech companies are now able to develop in-house processors that are more cost efficient and more performant. These processors are based on ARM and have minimal overhead licensing costs, as compared to buying Intel or AMD chips for their vast fleets / products. If AWS and Apple can do it, soon other very large companies will, but in a few years, even OEMs will be able to develop their own chips. The market for high end gaming is unlikely to be touched, but the vast consumer market is going to be eaten by custom made ARM-based chips. So in a world where processor design becomes a commodity, what does that mean for Intel and AMD? And what does that mean for the overall datacenter, consumer markets?
  • theevilsharpie 6y ago
    > So in a world where processor design becomes a commodity, what does that mean for Intel and AMD? And what does that mean for the overall datacenter, consumer markets? Processor design is already a commodity, and has been for many years. Any company with the cash can buy a license to the ARM64 instruction set and the reference core design, and have someone like TSMC or Samsung manufacture it. These designs haven't taken over desktop market from x86 yet because those designs simply weren't performance-competitive with what AMD and Intel are pumping out, and it's not clear that that'll change anytime in the foreseeable future. Apple knocked it out of the park with the M1, but they've been kicking ass for years, including their competition in the ARM processor space. Just because Apple's processors happened to use an ARM instruction set, doesn't imply that an ARM revolution is upon us.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Apple isn't using a reference core, though. They are using entirely custom cores.
• kevinmchugh 6y ago
  My mom would love to be able to use the same apps on her phone and her computer. I've been thinking about suggesting her next computer be an apple one since she got her first iphone and this makes it easier. Your Mom May Vary.