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So Apple is the best regardless of which product is better?

reaperducer 5y ago
I think he's saying that Apple processors are best for Apple. It's no longer beholden to outsiders for its processors. There is value in freedom that, for Apple, is greater than mere numbers can convey.
CharlesW 5y ago
I think it depends on one's definition of "better". There will likely always be performance-at-any-cost choices that will beat Apple since that's not what they're solving for.
jimbob45 5y ago
I think that’s what he’s trying to say? It doesn’t make sense though because having your own architecture isn’t that useful if no one else wants to use it. The goal is to 10X your profits by licensing out your designs. Designing your own architecture is a 1X move if only you use it and that’s not counting the cost of maintenance and marketing. Counterpoint: Apple has sunk an incredible amount of money into an architecture that provides very few tangible benefits to the consumer. It looks unlikely that they’ll ever recoup costs. They could have put that money toward their own fab and received infinite US government money instead.
- dasil003 5y ago
  What you are saying is antithetical to the entire Apple strategy, which is to create the best vertically integrated hardware and software and charge a premium for it. The strategy you're suggesting is to commoditize yourself, which they already tried (do you remember the Mac clone era), and is also the same reason IBM lost the PC market to Microsoft and none of the resulting hardware OEMs have even a fraction of Apple's market cap. Also, to suggest that Apple Silicon has very few tangible benefits is laughable. The power / performance are incredible, and the deep integration provides tons of optimizations that no other manufacturer can match. This ranges from seemingly simple things like M1 Macs waking up faster than you can open the lid, to long-term strategic advantages such as cross-compiling single binaries to both Mac OS and iOS, or adding custom silicon to cover software features with unprecedented efficiency with a guarantee that every single machine running it will have access to that hardware (over time).
nerbert 5y ago
Said like that it sounds ridiculous. That being said, if Apple silicon has the same rate of improvement as iPhone processors, Intel's victory is very temporary.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Apple A SoCs were catching up Intel CPU's performance and finally caught up at around A12-A13. I don't expect they can improve it forever at same rate.

I think he's saying that Apple processors are best for Apple. It's no longer beholden to outsiders for its processors. There is value in freedom that, for Apple, is greater than mere numbers can convey.

CharlesW 5y ago

I think it depends on one's definition of "better". There will likely always be performance-at-any-cost choices that will beat Apple since that's not what they're solving for.

jimbob45 5y ago

I think that’s what he’s trying to say? It doesn’t make sense though because having your own architecture isn’t that useful if no one else wants to use it. The goal is to 10X your profits by licensing out your designs. Designing your own architecture is a 1X move if only you use it and that’s not counting the cost of maintenance and marketing. Counterpoint: Apple has sunk an incredible amount of money into an architecture that provides very few tangible benefits to the consumer. It looks unlikely that they’ll ever recoup costs. They could have put that money toward their own fab and received infinite US government money instead.

dasil003 5y ago
What you are saying is antithetical to the entire Apple strategy, which is to create the best vertically integrated hardware and software and charge a premium for it. The strategy you're suggesting is to commoditize yourself, which they already tried (do you remember the Mac clone era), and is also the same reason IBM lost the PC market to Microsoft and none of the resulting hardware OEMs have even a fraction of Apple's market cap. Also, to suggest that Apple Silicon has very few tangible benefits is laughable. The power / performance are incredible, and the deep integration provides tons of optimizations that no other manufacturer can match. This ranges from seemingly simple things like M1 Macs waking up faster than you can open the lid, to long-term strategic advantages such as cross-compiling single binaries to both Mac OS and iOS, or adding custom silicon to cover software features with unprecedented efficiency with a guarantee that every single machine running it will have access to that hardware (over time).

nerbert 5y ago

Said like that it sounds ridiculous. That being said, if Apple silicon has the same rate of improvement as iPhone processors, Intel's victory is very temporary.

fomine3 5y ago
Apple A SoCs were catching up Intel CPU's performance and finally caught up at around A12-A13. I don't expect they can improve it forever at same rate.