6 ms·

Azure is still growing like crazy. I really hope Apple stays in their lane and doesn't start making forays into "enterprise" to spur growth.

thefourthchime 5y ago
I just can't see it. If they do "step out of their lane". I bet it's more in search. They've been slowly trying to ungoogle the Apple experience for a while and I wouldn't be shocked if they eventually do a search engine.
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  I am surprised they haven’t done that yet. With all their feistiness against Google in last few years, this seems like a very logical next step.
  - exhilaration 5y ago
    Google pays Apple $15 billion for that privilege. That's a lot of money for even Apple to give up. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-15-billion-to-remain-default-safari-search-engine-in-2021/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
- jandrese 5y ago
  One could imagine Apple starting a datacenter that is populated entirely with their M-series chips and their stupendous power efficiency. Current Apple isn't the kind of company that would do this, but it's not that hard to imagine. Ultimately Apple still prefers to be a hardware company, even their software or services efforts are mostly to encourage people to buy their hardware.
throwaway4good 5y ago
I always thought that Apple in the server or cloud business has a lot of potential. Imagine a data center version of the m1 chip.
- Thaxll 5y ago
  Right now it's slower than chip that are 2/3x less expensive but use more W. We don't know if their CPU scale with power usage.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  Cloud is not about the underlying hardware (ok maybe some things are) but about services. Even with the M1 Apple are 15 years behind Amazon and Microsoft in terms of building out "cloud" infrastructure. And that's ok. If there was a specific type of service a cloud provider saw that would benefit from the M1 then I'm sure Apple would happily sell it to them.
- guiriduro 5y ago
  You don't have to: https://www.scaleway.com/en/hello-m1/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/hello-m1/
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    I was thinking they could make something like the Amazon graviton just with m1 cores instead of arm. And then put into a suitable box for a data center.
MangoCoffee 5y ago
>doesn't start making forays into "enterprise" to spur growth Apple can make one enterprise foray. Apple can design an "m1" chip for datacenter/server. AWS already doing it for their own servers. Apple shown us they are capable of design a good chip based on ARM. Apple can take their chip design to the enterprise market.
- Bayart 5y ago
  The bulk of the work wouldn't be bringing the chips over, it would be having the sales and support structure around it. See how hard it was for AMD to get a foothold.
  - infinitone 5y ago
    Exactly... most technical folk have no idea the kind of deep expertise MSFT has in selling software. Its why they are catching up to AWS. Its why they killed slack within a year. MSFT and Salesforce have the best biz ops and sales people to sell software and that itself is a huge overlooked moat that would probably take a decade to fully disrupt.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    And all the certifications for both hardware and software. And what OS are they going to run? MacOS would be a big hurdle on servers--to say nothing of the fact they already tried that. Their own chips may go into servers but probably just for in-house use/services delivered to customers.
    - Bayart 5y ago
      > And what OS are they going to run? Considering MacOS seems to be an aging spaghetti-BSD under the hood, there's no doubt any serious attempt at the server business would come with Apple submitting patches and documentation to major kernels like any other chip company. AFAIK the M1 architecture can be targeted by Clang and GCC and some people have reversed engineered support for the Linux kernel[1]. > Their own chips may go into servers but probably just for in-house use/services delivered to customers. Hetzner is already renting Apple M1s[2] ! It was on HN not too long ago. Although it seems aimed at devs who need to test against that environment. [1]: https://asahilinux.org https://asahilinux.org [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple

thefourthchime 5y ago

I just can't see it. If they do "step out of their lane". I bet it's more in search. They've been slowly trying to ungoogle the Apple experience for a while and I wouldn't be shocked if they eventually do a search engine.

gigglesupstairs 5y ago
I am surprised they haven’t done that yet. With all their feistiness against Google in last few years, this seems like a very logical next step.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  Google pays Apple $15 billion for that privilege. That's a lot of money for even Apple to give up. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-15-billion-to-remain-default-safari-search-engine-in-2021/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
jandrese 5y ago
One could imagine Apple starting a datacenter that is populated entirely with their M-series chips and their stupendous power efficiency. Current Apple isn't the kind of company that would do this, but it's not that hard to imagine. Ultimately Apple still prefers to be a hardware company, even their software or services efforts are mostly to encourage people to buy their hardware.

throwaway4good 5y ago

I always thought that Apple in the server or cloud business has a lot of potential. Imagine a data center version of the m1 chip.

Thaxll 5y ago
Right now it's slower than chip that are 2/3x less expensive but use more W. We don't know if their CPU scale with power usage.
teh_klev 5y ago
Cloud is not about the underlying hardware (ok maybe some things are) but about services. Even with the M1 Apple are 15 years behind Amazon and Microsoft in terms of building out "cloud" infrastructure. And that's ok. If there was a specific type of service a cloud provider saw that would benefit from the M1 then I'm sure Apple would happily sell it to them.
guiriduro 5y ago
You don't have to: https://www.scaleway.com/en/hello-m1/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/hello-m1/
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  I was thinking they could make something like the Amazon graviton just with m1 cores instead of arm. And then put into a suitable box for a data center.

MangoCoffee 5y ago

>doesn't start making forays into "enterprise" to spur growth Apple can make one enterprise foray. Apple can design an "m1" chip for datacenter/server. AWS already doing it for their own servers. Apple shown us they are capable of design a good chip based on ARM. Apple can take their chip design to the enterprise market.

Bayart 5y ago
The bulk of the work wouldn't be bringing the chips over, it would be having the sales and support structure around it. See how hard it was for AMD to get a foothold.
- infinitone 5y ago
  Exactly... most technical folk have no idea the kind of deep expertise MSFT has in selling software. Its why they are catching up to AWS. Its why they killed slack within a year. MSFT and Salesforce have the best biz ops and sales people to sell software and that itself is a huge overlooked moat that would probably take a decade to fully disrupt.
- ghaff 5y ago
  And all the certifications for both hardware and software. And what OS are they going to run? MacOS would be a big hurdle on servers--to say nothing of the fact they already tried that. Their own chips may go into servers but probably just for in-house use/services delivered to customers.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    > And what OS are they going to run? Considering MacOS seems to be an aging spaghetti-BSD under the hood, there's no doubt any serious attempt at the server business would come with Apple submitting patches and documentation to major kernels like any other chip company. AFAIK the M1 architecture can be targeted by Clang and GCC and some people have reversed engineered support for the Linux kernel[1]. > Their own chips may go into servers but probably just for in-house use/services delivered to customers. Hetzner is already renting Apple M1s[2] ! It was on HN not too long ago. Although it seems aimed at devs who need to test against that environment. [1]: https://asahilinux.org https://asahilinux.org [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple