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I expect it's a combination: 1. Engineering bandwidth (it's work to upgrade a lineup! They probably need at least a year) 2. Manufacturing bandwidth - they pr

by wrsh07 3y ago

I expect it's a combination: 1. Engineering bandwidth (it's work to upgrade a lineup! They probably need at least a year) 2. Manufacturing bandwidth - they probably spent the first half of the year manufacturing the 3nm iphone processor while researching the mbp processor. I expect it's difficult to ramp manufacturing on many chips simultaneously 3. Sure, consider the demand side. If my parents are going to buy a new laptop and a new phone this year, I think they would be more likely to do that 6 months apart. Similarly, I expect keeping a cadence of announce products a,b,c in this quarter and d,e,f in that quarter helps keep apple in the news (for good/exciting things) Wrt machine learning: I can't wait for the results to come out for this once we can get our hands on it

ajross 3y ago
> 2. Manufacturing bandwidth - they probably spent the first half of the year manufacturing the 3nm iphone processor while researching the mbp processor. I expect it's difficult to ramp manufacturing on many chips simultaneously Sort of. It's that the whole concept of a "ramp" implies that manufacturing things (not just chips!) starts expensive and risky and get cheaper and reliable over time as people work out the kinks in the various processes. The M2 is mature. TSMC can make them reliably and in high quantity at low marginal price. Why would you *not* sell a product like that if there's a market for it?
MBCook 3y ago
Also cost. Apple introduced the 15 inch MacBook Air on June 6th. If they upgraded it to the M3 right now that machine would have only lasted 4 months and 4 days. Sure they could do it, but how many sales are they really losing because they haven’t? People buying the Air are not exactly looking for the absolute best in technology. They’re probably much more likely to be price sensitive, and putting a brand new M3 in would likely make that worse. So if you consider that you have to make new boxes and manuals and new hardware and test it and change the lines and everything else… what are the chances you would come out positive after such a short amount of time? It would make some more sense for the 13 inch air which is about 18 months old, but again if you don’t have to maybe you keep selling the M2 for another six months.

by wrsh07 3y ago

ajross 3y ago

> 2. Manufacturing bandwidth - they probably spent the first half of the year manufacturing the 3nm iphone processor while researching the mbp processor. I expect it's difficult to ramp manufacturing on many chips simultaneously Sort of. It's that the whole concept of a "ramp" implies that manufacturing things (not just chips!) starts expensive and risky and get cheaper and reliable over time as people work out the kinks in the various processes. The M2 is mature. TSMC can make them reliably and in high quantity at low marginal price. Why would you *not* sell a product like that if there's a market for it?

MBCook 3y ago

Also cost. Apple introduced the 15 inch MacBook Air on June 6th. If they upgraded it to the M3 right now that machine would have only lasted 4 months and 4 days. Sure they could do it, but how many sales are they really losing because they haven’t? People buying the Air are not exactly looking for the absolute best in technology. They’re probably much more likely to be price sensitive, and putting a brand new M3 in would likely make that worse. So if you consider that you have to make new boxes and manuals and new hardware and test it and change the lines and everything else… what are the chances you would come out positive after such a short amount of time? It would make some more sense for the 13 inch air which is about 18 months old, but again if you don’t have to maybe you keep selling the M2 for another six months.