4 ms·

Yep, and all parts that can be bough separately should be sold too (so at a chip level, not just "mainboard", "screen assembly", "case", etc.). Same with cars

Yep, and all parts that can be bough separately should be sold too (so at a chip level, not just "mainboard", "screen assembly", "case", etc.). Same with cars and other devices... with a car, you can get in a minor crash and even without labour, you can get up to a new car price in parts very fast.

amelius 3y ago
But then people would build competing phones with M2 chips in them.
- Xelynega 3y ago
  Oh no, the whole point of the free market...
  - senttoschool 3y ago
    Free market also implies that companies can create and protect moats. This means companies have the freedom to NOT provide compatibility or emphasize repairability.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      > Free market also implies that companies can create and protect moats it implies no such thing Free market it does not even imply that the concept of intellectual property exists at all.
      - senttoschool 3y ago
        Free market implies that a company can create any service and product they want. It's up the customer to decide if they want to pay for it or not. This means a company like Apple does not have to provide access to its proprietary M2 SoC to anyone who asks. That makes no business sense. What's the point of investing billions to design and mass manufacture SoCs if "free market" says you must give it away?
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > This means a company like Apple does not have to provide access to its proprietary M2 SoC to anyone who asks. This also means that a disgrunted employee that knows how to build M2 SOC can leave and starts their own production. But currently goverment would send armed goons with guns, at taxpayer expense. And US government seizes my private property, if I post to myself earbuds from China that look too much luke airpods under the pretence of 'Counterfeit goods'. You are advocating hypocracy, free market for me but not for thee. I am all onboard for the real free market, where government does not interfere to protect Apple at my expense.
    - zamnos 3y ago
      It's anarchy that says companies can do whatever they want including create and protect moats, sign exclusivity agreements, and do all sorts of anti-competitive things. (Eg: Microsoft licensing deals in the 80's and 90's) In order to have a free market that's actually guided by an invisible hand, it must have competition. A market with monopolists is an unfree market.
      - senttoschool 3y ago
        How is the M2 SoC a monopoly and that Apple must give PC makers access to M2 SoC?
        MagnumOpus 3y ago
        It is a concept called "bundling" in antitrust where the valuable M2 is only sold in concert with a less exceptional tablet in order to be able to charge triple markup for the tablet and storage upgrades... Unbundling is a heavily pro-consumer move and enlightened governments are pushing towards forcing companies to do it (and penalising companies for bundling, though there's far less of that in the last 20 years than there ought to be).
        sokoloff 3y ago
        Long prior to the M2, iPads carried a premium price. That makes it hard for me to conclude the M2 is essential to the premium.
        qwytw 3y ago
        Why are you assuming M2 would even exist in the first place if Apple knew they had to share it with everyone? Unless they wanted to enter the B2B market they would have no incentives to develop their own chips whatsoever and would just use whatever ARM/Qualcomm/Samsung/Intel have to offer. > forcing companies to do it (and penalising companies for bundling As long as they understand that this might have negative effects on innovation. Why invest significant resources into developing something new if there is a cap on how much you can benefit from that?
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      That's why we have regulation, where there is a mandatory 2 year warranty on electronic devices in EU. Also cars need to have dozens of systems that are not really needed to drive the car itself, but help with safety (eg, ABS brakes, etc.) Just add a few lines to the regulations about schematics, individual spare parts to component levels, no blocking sales by manufacturers, and we're a step closer to a greener world. The USB-C regulation should also include user-replacable batteries (or at least something that doesn't need additional parts (eg. glue) to reassemble, since the battery is guaranteed to fail with time, even if the rest of the phone survives.
      - senttoschool 3y ago
        I'm replying to a poster who implied that Apple should be obligated to provide the M2 SoC to competitors.
        amelius 3y ago
        There is something to be said for it, though. Free markets exist only where they benefit consumers.
        senttoschool 3y ago
        There is nothing to be said for it. If Apple is obligated to just give away the M2 to competitors, they wouldn't have invested to create the M2 in the beginning.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        amelius 3y ago
        Apple could choose not to innovate, but where would that leave them?
        senttoschool 3y ago
  - orf 3y ago
    The point in a free market is to force companies to sell their advantage over their competitors… to their competitors? What?
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  And if intel processors would be sold in stores, people would build competing PCs with intel chips in them. Oh wait, we've been doing that already for a few decades already.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    I'm pretty certain M1/2/.. would not exist in an environment like that. There would be no incentive for Apple to develop it unless they fundamentally changed their business model.
    - amelius 3y ago
      Because before Apple there was no progress in hardware at all?
      - qwytw 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure there was and still is. Nvidia, AMD, Intel, IBM, Motorola, Qualcomm, ARM and a bunch of others I don't recall designed or still design competitive products in this area. The thing they all have in common is that they want to make money from it... And well unfortunately the general trend is the less open and more proprietary their products are they more money they make from it (or the higher is their share price) and the more money they have to (potentially) invest into future R&D. ARM which is the most open successful company in the sector is almost literally working for peanuts (relatively to their overall impact) compared to Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm or Intel. I'm not sure how would you solve that? I mean if Apple invested X into designing M1/2 because they expected that they'd earn Y from that. However it turns out they have to make this design available to everyone (well maybe not for free but for a royalty comparable to what ARM gets) erasing their competitive advantage and as a result can only make 0.2Y at most? What would they do? Would they still invest X? 0.5X? 0.1*X? Not design a new chip at all and spend their money on something else? Maybe they wouldn't even have any money to spend in the first place because they wouldn't have been able to maintained massive margins by keeping their Software and HW designs proprietary over the years?

amelius 3y ago

But then people would build competing phones with M2 chips in them.

Xelynega 3y ago
Oh no, the whole point of the free market...
- senttoschool 3y ago
  Free market also implies that companies can create and protect moats. This means companies have the freedom to NOT provide compatibility or emphasize repairability.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > Free market also implies that companies can create and protect moats it implies no such thing Free market it does not even imply that the concept of intellectual property exists at all.
    - senttoschool 3y ago
      Free market implies that a company can create any service and product they want. It's up the customer to decide if they want to pay for it or not. This means a company like Apple does not have to provide access to its proprietary M2 SoC to anyone who asks. That makes no business sense. What's the point of investing billions to design and mass manufacture SoCs if "free market" says you must give it away?
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > This means a company like Apple does not have to provide access to its proprietary M2 SoC to anyone who asks. This also means that a disgrunted employee that knows how to build M2 SOC can leave and starts their own production. But currently goverment would send armed goons with guns, at taxpayer expense. And US government seizes my private property, if I post to myself earbuds from China that look too much luke airpods under the pretence of 'Counterfeit goods'. You are advocating hypocracy, free market for me but not for thee. I am all onboard for the real free market, where government does not interfere to protect Apple at my expense.
  - zamnos 3y ago
    It's anarchy that says companies can do whatever they want including create and protect moats, sign exclusivity agreements, and do all sorts of anti-competitive things. (Eg: Microsoft licensing deals in the 80's and 90's) In order to have a free market that's actually guided by an invisible hand, it must have competition. A market with monopolists is an unfree market.
    - senttoschool 3y ago
      How is the M2 SoC a monopoly and that Apple must give PC makers access to M2 SoC?
      - MagnumOpus 3y ago
        It is a concept called "bundling" in antitrust where the valuable M2 is only sold in concert with a less exceptional tablet in order to be able to charge triple markup for the tablet and storage upgrades... Unbundling is a heavily pro-consumer move and enlightened governments are pushing towards forcing companies to do it (and penalising companies for bundling, though there's far less of that in the last 20 years than there ought to be).
        sokoloff 3y ago
        Long prior to the M2, iPads carried a premium price. That makes it hard for me to conclude the M2 is essential to the premium.
        qwytw 3y ago
        Why are you assuming M2 would even exist in the first place if Apple knew they had to share it with everyone? Unless they wanted to enter the B2B market they would have no incentives to develop their own chips whatsoever and would just use whatever ARM/Qualcomm/Samsung/Intel have to offer. > forcing companies to do it (and penalising companies for bundling As long as they understand that this might have negative effects on innovation. Why invest significant resources into developing something new if there is a cap on how much you can benefit from that?
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    That's why we have regulation, where there is a mandatory 2 year warranty on electronic devices in EU. Also cars need to have dozens of systems that are not really needed to drive the car itself, but help with safety (eg, ABS brakes, etc.) Just add a few lines to the regulations about schematics, individual spare parts to component levels, no blocking sales by manufacturers, and we're a step closer to a greener world. The USB-C regulation should also include user-replacable batteries (or at least something that doesn't need additional parts (eg. glue) to reassemble, since the battery is guaranteed to fail with time, even if the rest of the phone survives.
    - senttoschool 3y ago
      I'm replying to a poster who implied that Apple should be obligated to provide the M2 SoC to competitors.
      - amelius 3y ago
        There is something to be said for it, though. Free markets exist only where they benefit consumers.
        senttoschool 3y ago
        There is nothing to be said for it. If Apple is obligated to just give away the M2 to competitors, they wouldn't have invested to create the M2 in the beginning.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        amelius 3y ago
        Apple could choose not to innovate, but where would that leave them?
        senttoschool 3y ago
- orf 3y ago
  The point in a free market is to force companies to sell their advantage over their competitors… to their competitors? What?
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
And if intel processors would be sold in stores, people would build competing PCs with intel chips in them. Oh wait, we've been doing that already for a few decades already.
- qwytw 3y ago
  I'm pretty certain M1/2/.. would not exist in an environment like that. There would be no incentive for Apple to develop it unless they fundamentally changed their business model.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Because before Apple there was no progress in hardware at all?
    - qwytw 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure there was and still is. Nvidia, AMD, Intel, IBM, Motorola, Qualcomm, ARM and a bunch of others I don't recall designed or still design competitive products in this area. The thing they all have in common is that they want to make money from it... And well unfortunately the general trend is the less open and more proprietary their products are they more money they make from it (or the higher is their share price) and the more money they have to (potentially) invest into future R&D. ARM which is the most open successful company in the sector is almost literally working for peanuts (relatively to their overall impact) compared to Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm or Intel. I'm not sure how would you solve that? I mean if Apple invested X into designing M1/2 because they expected that they'd earn Y from that. However it turns out they have to make this design available to everyone (well maybe not for free but for a royalty comparable to what ARM gets) erasing their competitive advantage and as a result can only make 0.2Y at most? What would they do? Would they still invest X? 0.5X? 0.1*X? Not design a new chip at all and spend their money on something else? Maybe they wouldn't even have any money to spend in the first place because they wouldn't have been able to maintained massive margins by keeping their Software and HW designs proprietary over the years?