3 ms·

I love it. I just got the M1 Pro and it screams. Designing your own chip is a ballsy thing to do. I think it might be one of the most underrated innovations Ap

I love it. I just got the M1 Pro and it screams. Designing your own chip is a ballsy thing to do. I think it might be one of the most underrated innovations Apple has ever done. Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs. But he's still delivering on innovation where it's typically stalled.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
They bought a dev team with heritage on the Alpha and StrongARM and assigned them a new task. Not that ballsy.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  An expensive and risky move that large businesses are loathe to do. This is the definition of ballsy.
  - motoboi 4y ago
    Apple has too many cash on their hands. God knows how many hyper well funded projects they have. Not my definition of balsy project. Balsy would be risking the business level of funding. This is peanuts money level of risk. They didn’t told anyone about it either, so no reputation risk also (how many failed projects at this point on apple we don’t even hear about?). So, in my humble opinion, not risky nor balsy. But a smart and rewarding move? FUCK YES!
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      You interesting take, thank you for sharing.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Yeah, but how many companies have you seen buy a brilliant team like that and then do nothing with it?
- scarface74 4y ago
  Apple was also one of the original founders of ARM…
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Ballsy? They are the richest company on the planet, and the biggest risk to their business is stagnation. They have enough cash on hand to buy the international space station 3 times over. Investors are roasting them for being entirely dependant on iPhone sales for revenue. Where else are they going to invest this money? Having your own components is the most obvious way to strengthen their moat. If they took a step outside consumer electronics and invested into a new market, or invented something never seen before, which they can do 3 times over, then yeah, that would be ballsy.
- Closi 4y ago
  > Ballsy? They are the richest company on the planet, and the biggest risk to their business is stagnation. They have enough cash on hand to buy the international space station 3 times over. Investors are roasting them for being entirely dependant on iPhone sales for revenue. It’s absolutely ballsy when you look at what happened with PowerPC (where they made the opposite decision to great effect), and the failure of competing attempts to do this such as Windows on ARM. They effectively bet a full generation of laptop sales on the premise it would be a success despite their largest competitor attempting and failing to make the migration.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > They effectively bet a full generation of laptop sales on the premise it would be a success They didn't - they obviously had tested performance of these CPUs and knew it was excellent before deciding to switch to them. They were only risking whatever amount they invested. PowerPC was unpopular and dying. ARM was the most popular instruction set on the planet before Apple developed M1. Apple has tight control over software on their platform, they say jump, everyone asks 'how high. Apple dropped 32 bit support overnight and everyone has to deal with it. Microsoft still has support for 16 bit software in Windows 10. Open Process manager on Windows, Discord, Steam and much of other software is still 32 bit. No-one is compiling for Windows for ARM, Noone is using their Store. Some corportaes are still on windows 7, the world took 15 years to get off windows XP and I have seen some ATMs still running on it. Very different market.
  - 4y ago

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

They bought a dev team with heritage on the Alpha and StrongARM and assigned them a new task. Not that ballsy.

imwillofficial 4y ago
An expensive and risky move that large businesses are loathe to do. This is the definition of ballsy.
- motoboi 4y ago
  Apple has too many cash on their hands. God knows how many hyper well funded projects they have. Not my definition of balsy project. Balsy would be risking the business level of funding. This is peanuts money level of risk. They didn’t told anyone about it either, so no reputation risk also (how many failed projects at this point on apple we don’t even hear about?). So, in my humble opinion, not risky nor balsy. But a smart and rewarding move? FUCK YES!
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    You interesting take, thank you for sharing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nicoburns 4y ago
Yeah, but how many companies have you seen buy a brilliant team like that and then do nothing with it?
scarface74 4y ago
Apple was also one of the original founders of ARM…

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Ballsy? They are the richest company on the planet, and the biggest risk to their business is stagnation. They have enough cash on hand to buy the international space station 3 times over. Investors are roasting them for being entirely dependant on iPhone sales for revenue. Where else are they going to invest this money? Having your own components is the most obvious way to strengthen their moat. If they took a step outside consumer electronics and invested into a new market, or invented something never seen before, which they can do 3 times over, then yeah, that would be ballsy.

Closi 4y ago
> Ballsy? They are the richest company on the planet, and the biggest risk to their business is stagnation. They have enough cash on hand to buy the international space station 3 times over. Investors are roasting them for being entirely dependant on iPhone sales for revenue. It’s absolutely ballsy when you look at what happened with PowerPC (where they made the opposite decision to great effect), and the failure of competing attempts to do this such as Windows on ARM. They effectively bet a full generation of laptop sales on the premise it would be a success despite their largest competitor attempting and failing to make the migration.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > They effectively bet a full generation of laptop sales on the premise it would be a success They didn't - they obviously had tested performance of these CPUs and knew it was excellent before deciding to switch to them. They were only risking whatever amount they invested. PowerPC was unpopular and dying. ARM was the most popular instruction set on the planet before Apple developed M1. Apple has tight control over software on their platform, they say jump, everyone asks 'how high. Apple dropped 32 bit support overnight and everyone has to deal with it. Microsoft still has support for 16 bit software in Windows 10. Open Process manager on Windows, Discord, Steam and much of other software is still 32 bit. No-one is compiling for Windows for ARM, Noone is using their Store. Some corportaes are still on windows 7, the world took 15 years to get off windows XP and I have seen some ATMs still running on it. Very different market.
- 4y ago