8 ms·

There are a few hiccups, but everyone'e acting like Apple Silicon wasn't one of the most wildly successful overnight improvements in laptops in the last 50 year

There are a few hiccups, but everyone'e acting like Apple Silicon wasn't one of the most wildly successful overnight improvements in laptops in the last 50 years and that airpods aren't so popular that even Android phone users buy them.

izacus 1y ago
That was 5 years ago and the chips themselves are much older than that. They can't skate on that forever, especially since the competition caught up.
- rogerrogerr 1y ago
  Oh great, where can I buy a non-Mac with the same performance, battery life, thermals, weight, premium materials, and a trackpad that doesn’t feel like styrofoam coated in oil? Since you say the competition has caught up, I assume it’ll be easy to send an Amazon link to the evidence.
  - worthless-trash 1y ago
    Not OP but that's the thing right, you've talked a lot about feels which means there will never be an answer that overcomes the emotion built in your head. I wonder what it would take to win you over, and i don't mean the rational you, which i'm sure you can justify, i mean the irrational 'i'm in love with the product' you.
    - rogerrogerr 1y ago
      It’d take these very objective things: - 7+ hour battery life while running a bunch of Docker containers and IDEs, at the same screen brightness nits I run my MacBook at. - Those things run not-perceptively-slower than on my Apple hardware - No perceptible fan noise while doing the above - The chassis does not creak when I pick it up from one corner - Does not weigh more than double my MacBook I’ll even relax the trackpad requirement and allow a 60Hz HiDPI screen instead of the 120Hz screen my MacBook from four years ago drives while doing all of the above. Is there anything that can check those boxes?
      - worthless-trash 1y ago
        This is a much more definable list, no feels there. (I don't know.. as am not hunting for a similar option, although I probably will be in the future). > - The chassis does not creak when I pick it up from one corner This would be an INSTANT 'nope' from me.
        rogerrogerr 1y ago
        Every Fortune 500 company I’ve worked for (three so far) has sent me a Windows “dev machine” laptop with huge RAM and an i7-whatever processor… and they all creak if you pick them up from a corner. And the screen hinges all make weird sounds. It’s not, like, a usability concern, but it’s something I’m definitely willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks to not feel every day.
    - tracerbulletx 1y ago
      "A lot" being in one of six items, specifically about an element that you touch and quality is generally judged by how it feels
  - izacus 1y ago
    In the nearby store stocking latops, tablets and phones. Your ignorance is not reality and we're not here to feed you examples for you to move goalposts.
    - rogerrogerr 1y ago
      _One_ example is too much to ask for? That's pretty telling. This entire thread has not one link to a competing product, just people insisting they exist.
- mg74 1y ago
  Where has the competition caught up? Arent Apple's chips still by far best-in-class from the laptop down to the watch? Its an honest question, I would love an arm based laptop running NixOS that is competitive with the upcoming M5 Pro's but I dont see it anywhere. Case in point: Google's newest Google TV box (released this year) is an absolute turd when compared with an 8 year old 4k Apple TV box.
  - TingPing 1y ago
    The main innovation was buying all 3nm production from TSMC. Snapdragon chips on the same node perform as well.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      The biggest stunt Apple pulled was making people think this is Apples new CPU designs that created the performance gap and not just buying all the production capacity for next gen fabs. We used to get that same performance gain every few years just from regular process improvements, but this time Apple made it seem like it was Apple that made the gain and not the general world.
      - rogerrogerr 1y ago
        Your argument would be much stronger with one single Amazon link to a non-Apple product that is competitive on price, perf, and thermals.
  - izacus 1y ago
    No, they're not. Competition has caught up. And why are you bloviating about TV boxes in topic about laptop chips?
eirikbakke 1y ago
And the Apple Silicon chips even include specialized cores that allow LLMs to run locally on both iPhones and MacBooks. (See the "Foundation Models Framework".)
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Which was a day late and a dollar short, even at release. Those ANEs are only really good at inference, and even then you get faster results using your Apple Silicon GPU. They're slow, incomplete, not integrated into the GPU architecture (like Nvidia's) therefore killing any chance of Apple Silicon seeing serious AI server usage. If you want to brag about Apple's AI hardware prowess, talk about MLX. The ANE was a pretty obvious mistake compared to Nvidia's approach and hundreds of businesses had their own, even before Apple made theirs.
  - drewbeck 1y ago
    These chips were designed to be SoC/SiPs for consumer hardware. It feels odd to judge them for their suitability in servers.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      The cores and architecture was designed for smartphones, it got put in desktops and rackmount servers anyways. I can judge it for whatever the product is, it's not a untold mystery why Apple Silicon servers aren't flying off the shelves in the AI boom.
  - astrange 1y ago
    The ANE is not designed to be fast. Nothing on the M-series is designed to be fast. Anytime it's fast is a lucky accident. It's designed to have optimal performance/power ratios. The GPU is faster but it uses more power.
bowsamic 1y ago
Yeah everyone complains about how Apple don’t “innovate” but currently they are just focussing on making the best consumer hardware of all time. Don’t get me wrong I dislike them for other reasons but those reasons are mainly things Jobs pushed for decades ago. An Apple fan should love the current Apple
- nottorp 1y ago
  > focussing on making the best consumer hardware of all time Yes, but what use is the best consumer hardware when the software is degrading? Considering the liquid glass thing, there's no one at Apple left who understands and cares about usability, for example. Plus the iOSification of Mac OS for no good reason... maybe to make it less attractive to developers?
  - ASalazarMX 1y ago
    This. A good device is a combination of hardware and software. If one of those is lacking, the whole product is lacking. I won't deny that Apple's hardware is great, but the software has been severely crippled by commercial rather than technical reasons. People have to go out of their way to glimpse outside the walled garden.
- mingus88 1y ago
  They also had a record breaking quarter for their services, when streaming services everywhere are bleeding out Yeah I guess it’s been a while since their last iPhone moment but that entire decade was just one revolution after another for every segment of tech, and Apple came out on top With their in-house chips they’re going to do fine for AI, even if they need to partner with someone else on it
Apreche 1y ago
Facts. I switched to Mac primarily because of the CPU. Look at the state of Intel...
- johnisgood 1y ago
  I will never buy Intel, I will be good with AMD. How and when, I do not know, as I do not have the financial means to get a new rig. My PC is considered ancient at this point and unfortunately to my medical conditions, I highly doubt it will happen anytime soon, if ever, unless someone helps me out with enough money, oh welp.
amelius 1y ago
It makes a lot of strategic sense but if you have so much money on the bank, then who wouldn't buy a silicon design firm to design your CPUs in house? I bet everyone here on HN would have suggested to do that if asked in a board meeting. The big surprise was how long it took Apple to bite the bullet. Anyway, despite this, Apple still has their castle built in someone else's kingdom, namely TSMC.
- ryanobjc 1y ago
  From a CEO pov this move makes no sense, as evidenced by the fact that literally no on else does it. It goes against all MBA orthodoxy.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  Nothing wrong with being fabless. Plus Apple could switch to inferior silicon and probably convince its userbase that they are the creme de la creme.
  - amelius 1y ago
    > Nothing wrong with being fabless. Sure, if you're able to buy all the required production slots, as Apple has been doing in the past. However, with new market pressure from AI this might not be possible in the future ...
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      What company has the money to outbid Apple for production slots?
  - sroussey 1y ago
    See C1 for an example.
alphazard 1y ago
Both of these products could be expected from any well run company. They are both very polished versions of something that already existed. The direction to optimize in was already clear. No one wants to compare Apple to a generic well run company, they want to compare Apple to itself a decade or two ago. Others have said that if Jobs were still alive, AR would be ubiquitous by now, and everyone would have a stylish pair of Apple glasses. I think that is exactly right. Instead there is an incredibly expensive VR scuba mask, with relatively little adoption. It's certainly not changing the way we use physical spaces and transforming society, which is something a previous Apple could have pulled off. Users and developers need to be shown how to get value from something radically new, and Apple hasn't done that recently.
- crooked-v 1y ago
  I think the Apple Silicon transition is far from something that could be expected from 'any' company. Microsoft already tried something similar with ARM Surface machines and the whole attempt was an absolute failure. > I think that is exactly right. I think that's entirely wrong. The hardware just isn't there yet! The AVP is the closest you can get to real "AR glasses" at the moment (as distinct from the Xreal 'non-context-aware screen overlay with a tiny FoV and fixed position'), but it turns out the hardware needed for that is >1 lb of stuff.
  - acomjean 1y ago
    It’s not even new. Apple transitioned from PowerPC chips to intel and basically did the same thing again. It’s a technical achievement to be sure. Apple users are unfortunately used to ditching software because backward compatibility isn’t something they strive for. Old Powerpc, 32 bit iOS/Mac osx software for example.
  - Kwpolska 1y ago
    Developers working for Apple platforms are used to their software being broken by Apple every once in a while, so they need to update it to match the latest OS’s expectations. In the Windows world, 30-year-old Win32 apps can still run on Windows 11, as long as they don’t use any egregious hacks. And if they stop working on an Arm PC, Microsoft will be to blame.
bigyabai 1y ago
People are acting like Apple Silicon actually matters to Apple's profit margins. Since when was the Macbook a serious contribution to Apple margins?
kllrnohj 1y ago
Apple Silicon either followed Microsoft's direction (who pushed for ARM laptops a solid 8 years before M1) or just did a better iteration than Intel at the same time Intel was struggling. Regardless of how you want to frame it, there clearly wasn't any grand innovative strategic vision in play there from Apple. It was just an incremental improvement to long established products with no shortage of equally significant and impressive increments improvements from others along the way.
- cr125rider 1y ago
  Rosetta 2 was the big innovation there. Not ARM in a mobile device.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Was that even innovative? I mean, this is the third time they've changed chip architecture, they've had some practice here. The first time I wrote anything for Mac OS, it was with Metrowerks' Code Warrior whatever-the-student-edition-was-called, where the compiler only targeted the 68k series chips.
  - kllrnohj 1y ago
    Surely you realized the "2" in Rosetta 2 isn't just quirky branding but because it's the second time they did that very thing? How was it a "big innovation"?
- nine_k 1y ago
  It's a bit like saying that an iPhone was not a big deal, phones were becoming smarter by the day, Apple just did a better iteration in 2007 than Nokia and Blackberry. Making an iteration so much better is not something I'd ascribe to luck.
  - kllrnohj 1y ago
    iPhone was a new UI focused around capacitive touchscreens which at the time was itself an entirely new category. What, exactly, did M1 change about anything about using a laptop? Longer battery life? Faster? Okay, same improvements as had been featured for the last 20 years. And it wasn't any thinner, depending on the model line it was substantially thicker even. So what exactly was new about M1 that wasn't just a bog standard iteration we'd seen dozens of times by that point? Even just considering Apple's product line surely you'd have to rank things like Intel's Core 2 as more significant, as it enabled the creation of the MacBook Air and was Apple's return to subcompact laptops. Or Intel's thunderbolt which radically changed the entire I/O story and capabilities for Apple, who fully embraced it.
pllbnk 1y ago
I agree. As usual these days, the culprit for lack of innovation is AI (mostly LLMs). Apple did try to shove it to the users unsuccessfully and they had the right amount of sanity to backtrack once they realized how the users' expectations are misaligned with what LLMs have to offer, which is mostly lack of reliability; average user thinks that something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck must be a duck, but LLMs, while pretending to be human-like are not like that. On the other hand, Microsoft is still forcing it upon their users with Copilot but users are resisting. We will see which tactic will win in the long-run but I would bet on Apple.
- lubujackson 1y ago
  If history is any indication, Microsoft will slowly improve until things become sort of decent, then Apple will release a neutered but polished version that is lauded as "Apple Invents AI" and immediately dominate the market. But their version will lack one critical feature that everyone expects, such as a power button, or copy/paste, or pinch to zoom. For AI, maybe something like "remember context". Then 3 years later they will invent "remember context," and everyone will lose their shit again.
  - NewJazz 1y ago
    The article addresses Apple's historical late mover advantage strategy, and suggests that Tim Cook doesn't have the same vision that Jobs had to pull those moves off.
    - IOT_Apprentice 1y ago
      Cook isn’t a visionary, he is an ops & logistics guy. He has a major problem with failing at AI and lying last year about “Apple Intelligence”. He needs some fresh blood in software as well. He should just buy something like Claude and lock them in with stock and very high salaries. He should also stop scrimping on integrated memory on the M series. Overpriced memory is a huge issue. And do something about the GPU as well. Perhaps an AI N series with 128gig of ram, & dramatically more powerful GPU with higher core/thread count.
NBJack 1y ago
But has Apple Silicon justified the investment? I don't doubt it's good tech, but the market share hasn't necessarily reflected it. In 2024, total shipped units dropped quite a bit. Judging by the available data, I wouldn't use the term "wildly successful" just yet (particularly if we account for pre/post pandemic sales).
- daft_pink 1y ago
  I think their problem is that laptops and computers are so well made these days that there is no real need or want to upgrade.
  - NewJazz 1y ago
    Haven't macs had that reputation for a while?
    - flohofwoe 1y ago
      Yeah, but the ARM Macs offered such an obvious advantage over their Intel predecessors that (I guess) a lot of Mac owners made the switch around the same time. But today, even the first 2021 M1 MBPs are still very good devices (I still don't feel like I need to upgrade to a more recent model). What would make me buy a new Mac is a good OLED display. The display in my new Windows laptop is the one component that's better compared to my 2021 MBP.
    - daft_pink 1y ago
      I had a Macbook Pro with a butterfly keyboard before and it was terrible and would break constantly and my Applecare was offered without accidental damage warranty and only lasted 3 years. Now I have a MacBook Pro and I pay a small annual fee and have full coverage Applecare with accidental damage and if the battery goes out they replace it, etc. The only reason I would upgrade at this point would be for a built in cellular modem or face id.
  - flohofwoe 1y ago
    Isn't that true, before I bought my current M1 MBP in 2022, I was on a 2014 13" MBP.
deleted 1y ago
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physicsguy 1y ago
Apple Silicon was definitely a massive leap forwards but I wouldn’t say the competition has stayed still either.
- ASalazarMX 1y ago
  And the innovative part was basically going system-on-chip, as even Microsoft had tried to change to ARM architecture before. It was a natural consequence of designing for mobile devices, and a massive marketing campaign to sell it as something brand new.
pjmlp 1y ago
As usual a Silicon Valey point of view, most of the world the reality is a bit different.
musicale 1y ago
I was wondering how long laptop computers have existed. The Epson HX-20 (1981) and Grid Compass (1982) seem like good early examples - the latter introducing the clamshell design used in many subsequent laptops such as ThinkPads.
v5v3 1y ago
Airpods were many years ago, as was the MacBook pro redesign. CEOs are judged on today. Past achievements are past achievements and he was paid handsomely for it. Tim Cook is a money guy. Saving money by reducing per device licensing costs via creating own chips and also now their own modems is a money guys domain. Hardware and software innovation is another skill. Tim Cook wasn't appointed on his ability to innovate. But he needs to ensure he has individuals who can do so, and that there aren't layers of management or himself obstructing them.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jajuuka 1y ago
Apple Silicon was only an improvement in battery life. AMD and Intel still made more powerful processors coupled with Nvidia and AMD GPUs that blew Apple Silicon out of the water. Also depends what you consider successful since Macbooks are still a small fraction of the laptop market. Airpods being dominant is something from many years ago. Sony, Bose, even Samsung caught up quickly and offer much better integration since half the features are locked to iPhone only. Airpods were early to market and assisted by forcing users to buy them since their phones no longer had headphone jacks. Which boosts their word of mouth marketing.
- jjtheblunt 1y ago
  > Apple Silicon was only an improvement in battery life. For a company selling huge quantities of mobile computing devices, that's paramount.

izacus 1y ago

That was 5 years ago and the chips themselves are much older than that. They can't skate on that forever, especially since the competition caught up.

rogerrogerr 1y ago
Oh great, where can I buy a non-Mac with the same performance, battery life, thermals, weight, premium materials, and a trackpad that doesn’t feel like styrofoam coated in oil? Since you say the competition has caught up, I assume it’ll be easy to send an Amazon link to the evidence.
- worthless-trash 1y ago
  Not OP but that's the thing right, you've talked a lot about feels which means there will never be an answer that overcomes the emotion built in your head. I wonder what it would take to win you over, and i don't mean the rational you, which i'm sure you can justify, i mean the irrational 'i'm in love with the product' you.
  - rogerrogerr 1y ago
    It’d take these very objective things: - 7+ hour battery life while running a bunch of Docker containers and IDEs, at the same screen brightness nits I run my MacBook at. - Those things run not-perceptively-slower than on my Apple hardware - No perceptible fan noise while doing the above - The chassis does not creak when I pick it up from one corner - Does not weigh more than double my MacBook I’ll even relax the trackpad requirement and allow a 60Hz HiDPI screen instead of the 120Hz screen my MacBook from four years ago drives while doing all of the above. Is there anything that can check those boxes?
    - worthless-trash 1y ago
      This is a much more definable list, no feels there. (I don't know.. as am not hunting for a similar option, although I probably will be in the future). > - The chassis does not creak when I pick it up from one corner This would be an INSTANT 'nope' from me.
      - rogerrogerr 1y ago
        Every Fortune 500 company I’ve worked for (three so far) has sent me a Windows “dev machine” laptop with huge RAM and an i7-whatever processor… and they all creak if you pick them up from a corner. And the screen hinges all make weird sounds. It’s not, like, a usability concern, but it’s something I’m definitely willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks to not feel every day.
  - tracerbulletx 1y ago
    "A lot" being in one of six items, specifically about an element that you touch and quality is generally judged by how it feels
- izacus 1y ago
  In the nearby store stocking latops, tablets and phones. Your ignorance is not reality and we're not here to feed you examples for you to move goalposts.
  - rogerrogerr 1y ago
    _One_ example is too much to ask for? That's pretty telling. This entire thread has not one link to a competing product, just people insisting they exist.
mg74 1y ago
Where has the competition caught up? Arent Apple's chips still by far best-in-class from the laptop down to the watch? Its an honest question, I would love an arm based laptop running NixOS that is competitive with the upcoming M5 Pro's but I dont see it anywhere. Case in point: Google's newest Google TV box (released this year) is an absolute turd when compared with an 8 year old 4k Apple TV box.
- TingPing 1y ago
  The main innovation was buying all 3nm production from TSMC. Snapdragon chips on the same node perform as well.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    The biggest stunt Apple pulled was making people think this is Apples new CPU designs that created the performance gap and not just buying all the production capacity for next gen fabs. We used to get that same performance gain every few years just from regular process improvements, but this time Apple made it seem like it was Apple that made the gain and not the general world.
    - rogerrogerr 1y ago
      Your argument would be much stronger with one single Amazon link to a non-Apple product that is competitive on price, perf, and thermals.
- izacus 1y ago
  No, they're not. Competition has caught up. And why are you bloviating about TV boxes in topic about laptop chips?

eirikbakke 1y ago

And the Apple Silicon chips even include specialized cores that allow LLMs to run locally on both iPhones and MacBooks. (See the "Foundation Models Framework".)

bigyabai 1y ago
Which was a day late and a dollar short, even at release. Those ANEs are only really good at inference, and even then you get faster results using your Apple Silicon GPU. They're slow, incomplete, not integrated into the GPU architecture (like Nvidia's) therefore killing any chance of Apple Silicon seeing serious AI server usage. If you want to brag about Apple's AI hardware prowess, talk about MLX. The ANE was a pretty obvious mistake compared to Nvidia's approach and hundreds of businesses had their own, even before Apple made theirs.
- drewbeck 1y ago
  These chips were designed to be SoC/SiPs for consumer hardware. It feels odd to judge them for their suitability in servers.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    The cores and architecture was designed for smartphones, it got put in desktops and rackmount servers anyways. I can judge it for whatever the product is, it's not a untold mystery why Apple Silicon servers aren't flying off the shelves in the AI boom.
- astrange 1y ago
  The ANE is not designed to be fast. Nothing on the M-series is designed to be fast. Anytime it's fast is a lucky accident. It's designed to have optimal performance/power ratios. The GPU is faster but it uses more power.

bowsamic 1y ago

Yeah everyone complains about how Apple don’t “innovate” but currently they are just focussing on making the best consumer hardware of all time. Don’t get me wrong I dislike them for other reasons but those reasons are mainly things Jobs pushed for decades ago. An Apple fan should love the current Apple

nottorp 1y ago
> focussing on making the best consumer hardware of all time Yes, but what use is the best consumer hardware when the software is degrading? Considering the liquid glass thing, there's no one at Apple left who understands and cares about usability, for example. Plus the iOSification of Mac OS for no good reason... maybe to make it less attractive to developers?
- ASalazarMX 1y ago
  This. A good device is a combination of hardware and software. If one of those is lacking, the whole product is lacking. I won't deny that Apple's hardware is great, but the software has been severely crippled by commercial rather than technical reasons. People have to go out of their way to glimpse outside the walled garden.
mingus88 1y ago
They also had a record breaking quarter for their services, when streaming services everywhere are bleeding out Yeah I guess it’s been a while since their last iPhone moment but that entire decade was just one revolution after another for every segment of tech, and Apple came out on top With their in-house chips they’re going to do fine for AI, even if they need to partner with someone else on it

Apreche 1y ago

Facts. I switched to Mac primarily because of the CPU. Look at the state of Intel...

johnisgood 1y ago
I will never buy Intel, I will be good with AMD. How and when, I do not know, as I do not have the financial means to get a new rig. My PC is considered ancient at this point and unfortunately to my medical conditions, I highly doubt it will happen anytime soon, if ever, unless someone helps me out with enough money, oh welp.

amelius 1y ago

It makes a lot of strategic sense but if you have so much money on the bank, then who wouldn't buy a silicon design firm to design your CPUs in house? I bet everyone here on HN would have suggested to do that if asked in a board meeting. The big surprise was how long it took Apple to bite the bullet. Anyway, despite this, Apple still has their castle built in someone else's kingdom, namely TSMC.

ryanobjc 1y ago
From a CEO pov this move makes no sense, as evidenced by the fact that literally no on else does it. It goes against all MBA orthodoxy.
cosmicgadget 1y ago
Nothing wrong with being fabless. Plus Apple could switch to inferior silicon and probably convince its userbase that they are the creme de la creme.
- amelius 1y ago
  > Nothing wrong with being fabless. Sure, if you're able to buy all the required production slots, as Apple has been doing in the past. However, with new market pressure from AI this might not be possible in the future ...
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    What company has the money to outbid Apple for production slots?
- sroussey 1y ago
  See C1 for an example.

alphazard 1y ago

Both of these products could be expected from any well run company. They are both very polished versions of something that already existed. The direction to optimize in was already clear. No one wants to compare Apple to a generic well run company, they want to compare Apple to itself a decade or two ago. Others have said that if Jobs were still alive, AR would be ubiquitous by now, and everyone would have a stylish pair of Apple glasses. I think that is exactly right. Instead there is an incredibly expensive VR scuba mask, with relatively little adoption. It's certainly not changing the way we use physical spaces and transforming society, which is something a previous Apple could have pulled off. Users and developers need to be shown how to get value from something radically new, and Apple hasn't done that recently.

crooked-v 1y ago
I think the Apple Silicon transition is far from something that could be expected from 'any' company. Microsoft already tried something similar with ARM Surface machines and the whole attempt was an absolute failure. > I think that is exactly right. I think that's entirely wrong. The hardware just isn't there yet! The AVP is the closest you can get to real "AR glasses" at the moment (as distinct from the Xreal 'non-context-aware screen overlay with a tiny FoV and fixed position'), but it turns out the hardware needed for that is >1 lb of stuff.
- acomjean 1y ago
  It’s not even new. Apple transitioned from PowerPC chips to intel and basically did the same thing again. It’s a technical achievement to be sure. Apple users are unfortunately used to ditching software because backward compatibility isn’t something they strive for. Old Powerpc, 32 bit iOS/Mac osx software for example.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
  Developers working for Apple platforms are used to their software being broken by Apple every once in a while, so they need to update it to match the latest OS’s expectations. In the Windows world, 30-year-old Win32 apps can still run on Windows 11, as long as they don’t use any egregious hacks. And if they stop working on an Arm PC, Microsoft will be to blame.

bigyabai 1y ago

People are acting like Apple Silicon actually matters to Apple's profit margins. Since when was the Macbook a serious contribution to Apple margins?

kllrnohj 1y ago

Apple Silicon either followed Microsoft's direction (who pushed for ARM laptops a solid 8 years before M1) or just did a better iteration than Intel at the same time Intel was struggling. Regardless of how you want to frame it, there clearly wasn't any grand innovative strategic vision in play there from Apple. It was just an incremental improvement to long established products with no shortage of equally significant and impressive increments improvements from others along the way.

cr125rider 1y ago
Rosetta 2 was the big innovation there. Not ARM in a mobile device.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Was that even innovative? I mean, this is the third time they've changed chip architecture, they've had some practice here. The first time I wrote anything for Mac OS, it was with Metrowerks' Code Warrior whatever-the-student-edition-was-called, where the compiler only targeted the 68k series chips.
- kllrnohj 1y ago
  Surely you realized the "2" in Rosetta 2 isn't just quirky branding but because it's the second time they did that very thing? How was it a "big innovation"?
nine_k 1y ago
It's a bit like saying that an iPhone was not a big deal, phones were becoming smarter by the day, Apple just did a better iteration in 2007 than Nokia and Blackberry. Making an iteration so much better is not something I'd ascribe to luck.
- kllrnohj 1y ago
  iPhone was a new UI focused around capacitive touchscreens which at the time was itself an entirely new category. What, exactly, did M1 change about anything about using a laptop? Longer battery life? Faster? Okay, same improvements as had been featured for the last 20 years. And it wasn't any thinner, depending on the model line it was substantially thicker even. So what exactly was new about M1 that wasn't just a bog standard iteration we'd seen dozens of times by that point? Even just considering Apple's product line surely you'd have to rank things like Intel's Core 2 as more significant, as it enabled the creation of the MacBook Air and was Apple's return to subcompact laptops. Or Intel's thunderbolt which radically changed the entire I/O story and capabilities for Apple, who fully embraced it.

pllbnk 1y ago

I agree. As usual these days, the culprit for lack of innovation is AI (mostly LLMs). Apple did try to shove it to the users unsuccessfully and they had the right amount of sanity to backtrack once they realized how the users' expectations are misaligned with what LLMs have to offer, which is mostly lack of reliability; average user thinks that something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck must be a duck, but LLMs, while pretending to be human-like are not like that. On the other hand, Microsoft is still forcing it upon their users with Copilot but users are resisting. We will see which tactic will win in the long-run but I would bet on Apple.

lubujackson 1y ago
If history is any indication, Microsoft will slowly improve until things become sort of decent, then Apple will release a neutered but polished version that is lauded as "Apple Invents AI" and immediately dominate the market. But their version will lack one critical feature that everyone expects, such as a power button, or copy/paste, or pinch to zoom. For AI, maybe something like "remember context". Then 3 years later they will invent "remember context," and everyone will lose their shit again.
- NewJazz 1y ago
  The article addresses Apple's historical late mover advantage strategy, and suggests that Tim Cook doesn't have the same vision that Jobs had to pull those moves off.
  - IOT_Apprentice 1y ago
    Cook isn’t a visionary, he is an ops & logistics guy. He has a major problem with failing at AI and lying last year about “Apple Intelligence”. He needs some fresh blood in software as well. He should just buy something like Claude and lock them in with stock and very high salaries. He should also stop scrimping on integrated memory on the M series. Overpriced memory is a huge issue. And do something about the GPU as well. Perhaps an AI N series with 128gig of ram, & dramatically more powerful GPU with higher core/thread count.

NBJack 1y ago

But has Apple Silicon justified the investment? I don't doubt it's good tech, but the market share hasn't necessarily reflected it. In 2024, total shipped units dropped quite a bit. Judging by the available data, I wouldn't use the term "wildly successful" just yet (particularly if we account for pre/post pandemic sales).

daft_pink 1y ago
I think their problem is that laptops and computers are so well made these days that there is no real need or want to upgrade.
- NewJazz 1y ago
  Haven't macs had that reputation for a while?
  - flohofwoe 1y ago
    Yeah, but the ARM Macs offered such an obvious advantage over their Intel predecessors that (I guess) a lot of Mac owners made the switch around the same time. But today, even the first 2021 M1 MBPs are still very good devices (I still don't feel like I need to upgrade to a more recent model). What would make me buy a new Mac is a good OLED display. The display in my new Windows laptop is the one component that's better compared to my 2021 MBP.
  - daft_pink 1y ago
    I had a Macbook Pro with a butterfly keyboard before and it was terrible and would break constantly and my Applecare was offered without accidental damage warranty and only lasted 3 years. Now I have a MacBook Pro and I pay a small annual fee and have full coverage Applecare with accidental damage and if the battery goes out they replace it, etc. The only reason I would upgrade at this point would be for a built in cellular modem or face id.
- flohofwoe 1y ago
  Isn't that true, before I bought my current M1 MBP in 2022, I was on a 2014 13" MBP.

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physicsguy 1y ago

Apple Silicon was definitely a massive leap forwards but I wouldn’t say the competition has stayed still either.

ASalazarMX 1y ago
And the innovative part was basically going system-on-chip, as even Microsoft had tried to change to ARM architecture before. It was a natural consequence of designing for mobile devices, and a massive marketing campaign to sell it as something brand new.

pjmlp 1y ago

As usual a Silicon Valey point of view, most of the world the reality is a bit different.

musicale 1y ago

I was wondering how long laptop computers have existed. The Epson HX-20 (1981) and Grid Compass (1982) seem like good early examples - the latter introducing the clamshell design used in many subsequent laptops such as ThinkPads.

v5v3 1y ago

Airpods were many years ago, as was the MacBook pro redesign. CEOs are judged on today. Past achievements are past achievements and he was paid handsomely for it. Tim Cook is a money guy. Saving money by reducing per device licensing costs via creating own chips and also now their own modems is a money guys domain. Hardware and software innovation is another skill. Tim Cook wasn't appointed on his ability to innovate. But he needs to ensure he has individuals who can do so, and that there aren't layers of management or himself obstructing them.

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jajuuka 1y ago

Apple Silicon was only an improvement in battery life. AMD and Intel still made more powerful processors coupled with Nvidia and AMD GPUs that blew Apple Silicon out of the water. Also depends what you consider successful since Macbooks are still a small fraction of the laptop market. Airpods being dominant is something from many years ago. Sony, Bose, even Samsung caught up quickly and offer much better integration since half the features are locked to iPhone only. Airpods were early to market and assisted by forcing users to buy them since their phones no longer had headphone jacks. Which boosts their word of mouth marketing.

jjtheblunt 1y ago
> Apple Silicon was only an improvement in battery life. For a company selling huge quantities of mobile computing devices, that's paramount.