Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month, says report

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Success and greatness are not the same thing.

Couldn't be more accurate, Equifax is a highly successful and profitable business and I think zero people would call them or their CEO "great", about the literal last thing anyone would say. 

[StDragon]

14 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

That's unfair. Apple have many faults but the one thing you cannot accuse them of is bad engineering. In fact the opposite is true, they usually over design & over engineer everything. Form over function as they say.

No they don't. They've made some egregious EE design and thermal management that would fail a class.

 

Revenue - expenses = profit.

 

Apple increases revenue through price increases. Expenses are lowered either through low cost talent outsourced, cost externalization, or both.

 

Their industrial design truly is "State of the Art", but it's just facade around common PCB design that even Dell, HP, and Lenovo have done better.

 

Edit: PCB design is probably all handled by Foxconn anyways 

[Spindel]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

No they don't. They've made some egregious EE design and thermal management that would fail a class.

 

Revenue - expenses = profit.

 

Apple increases revenue through price increases. Expenses are lowered either through low cost talent outsourced, cost externalization, or both.

 

Their industrial design truly is "State of the Art", but it's just facade around common PCB design that even Dell, HP, and Lenovo have done better.

 

Edit: PCB design is probably all handled by Foxconn anyways 

Come on, can you just decide what you want to bash Apple about?

 

Is their quality bad or is their PCB design pedestrian?

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, Spindel said:

Come on, can you just decide what you want to bash Apple about?

 

Is their quality bad or is their PCB design pedestrian?

the pcb design pedestrian implies that the quality is bad imo

i'll had:

bad thermal management => bad qulity

attributing every issue to water damage before a class action => bad quality

 

[mr moose]

On 6/11/2020 at 4:04 PM, Spindel said:

I see this being brought up a lot in this case but I can't actually see the problem (as this is the internet I'm sure someone will educate me on this pretty soon). 

 

Also currently Apple does not make all the components in their computers anyway so it actually won't become a vertical monopoly just because they switch to their own ARM processors. 

 

From my perspective this is rather a good thing. 

 

To make a car analogy: The current state of personal computers is like if the only engine manufacturers in the world, for cars, would be Toyota and Volkswagen. For any car enthusiast this fortunately isn't the case, most still applaud brands that make their own thing (or at least try to) in house (Subaru, Honda, Tesla, Mazda (to some degree) etc and Koenigsegg, Ferrarri etc on the more exclusive side).

 

 

But in the PC world, as soon as there are rumors about Apple making their own CPU, people start to scream "vertical monopoly bad!" until their faces turn red.

 

The thing that is bad for real is the current oligopoly with Intel and AMD, which for long swats of time being basically a monopoly for Intel for the most crucial component in a computer.

 

Most people aren't really worried about Apples "vertical monopoly", they just don't like Apple and that is OK, people just don't need be as obnoxious about it, as they claim Apple fanboys are about Apple.    

 

Car analogies only work for the most simple of attributes,  and the vertical monopolies mentioned in this thread are actually called vertical integration. They are not simple attributes and are certainly a thing with apple,  apple have definitely been absolute in their desire to control everything to finest detail.  That in and of itself is vertical integration,  people just call it a monopoly because that is the end result to the consumer with regard to said product.  

 

Now if you wish to argue is a vertical integration bad for the consumer, well many would argue that apple already have a strong vertical control with tight contracts and designs,  they have their walled garden and very strict repair policies that do a great injustice to many consumers.  Not being able to buy/import spare parts with apple having total control over their manufacture and customs is indeed bad for consumers and thus one can rationally conclude vertical integration indeed is something to be feared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Curious Pineapple]

20 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

That's unfair. Apple have many faults but the one thing you cannot accuse them of is bad engineering. In fact the opposite is true, they usually over design & over engineer everything. Form over function as they say.

Over-engineering is function over form. Making a laptop 3mm thinner and sacrificing cooling capacity is form over function. Designing an adequate cooler and working the design around that is function over form.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Over-engineering is function over form. Making a laptop 3mm thinner and sacrificing cooling capacity is form over function. Designing an adequate cooler and working the design around that is function over form.

Besides that, I don't know how anyone can call any of the macbooks of the last few years well engineered. Is letting a sub par cooling solution go through to the end product good engineering? is shitty broken keyboards and refusing to accept responsibility until most of the customers have thrown their macs in the bin good engineering?  I don't thinks so. 

[Meowster]

If Apple switches to ARM based CPUs, I'm switching to Windows fully, I use an iMac Pro for work, its not that good in my opinion and switching to ARM CPUs might even make it a bit worse in my opinion

[Master Disaster]

7 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Besides that, I don't know how anyone can call any of the macbooks of the last few years well engineered. Is letting a sub par cooling solution go through to the end product good engineering? is shitty broken keyboards and refusing to accept responsibility until most of the customers have thrown their macs in the bin good engineering?  I don't thinks so. 

Which brings us back to the main point, management and cost saving. If you go back a few years and look at Apples designs everything was beautiful and they would always design to be idiot proof (remember the Macs that had everything modularised and could be clipped in and out with a single lever?). Apples engineering department would come right up there with the best in the world, when they're allowed to do their jobs properly.

 

It's only since Jobs died & Cook took over that things have gone downhill. Cook is the one more concerned with profit over design. You can't blame the engineers for that.

[Curious Pineapple]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Besides that, I don't know how anyone can call any of the macbooks of the last few years well engineered. Is letting a sub par cooling solution go through to the end product good engineering? is shitty broken keyboards and refusing to accept responsibility until most of the customers have thrown their macs in the bin good engineering?  I don't thinks so. 

Just the users fault though isn't it? I mean, who buys a Macbook with a high performance CPU with the intention to actually run tasks that require a high performance CPU? Board fails, well the user should have expected that and backed up every 15 seconds as the data is non recoverable. SSD fails, well they can just pay for a new machine. Need more RAM in the future? Ha, should have though of that 4 years ago and spent the extra $400 for 8GB more.

 

It's not just the shitty treatment of customers and slipping product quality, it's the god damn users that are so blind to the issues that they will continue to throw money at Apple year after year and defend every single thing they do. "I've only had to take my Macbook in for repair 3 times in 5 years", my cheap £250 Windows laptop lasted longer than that until I finally killed the battery through lack of use. That thing still works, wherever it is.

[hishnash]

Just now, Meowster said:

If Apple switches to ARM based CPUs, I'm switching to Windows fully, I use an iMac Pro for work, its not that good in my opinion and switching to ARM CPUs might even make it a bit worse in my opinion

Firstly apple will be supporting existing x86 macs with new software for at least 7 years and another 2 to 3 years of security updates after that so you have lots more time with the iMacPro

Out of interest what do you use it for?

moving to Arm will enable apple to push tec forwards a lot faster than they have in the past. They have been expecting intel to deliver on 10nm for the last 4 years (like the rest of us) with products built and planned for those termals...

 

 

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

Cook is the one more concerned with profit

Cook is a expert in operations: handing complex depeancy chains between many many many 1000s of factories globally that make parts that all need to arrive just in time without stockpiling, given the massive spikes in demand apple has he has done a very good job for this and for the iPhone side of the company has been a large asset without someone like him they would just never have been able to to meet the massive demand they have had, apple were able to continue shipping most of their produces through theis visue outbreak even through they dont maintain stock piles due to having many redundant production pathways.

But yes the mac lines have suffered under him, Jobs had a lot more connection to the mac and macOS as it is something he worked on from the very start.

 

[mr moose]

20 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Which brings us back to the main point, management and cost saving. If you go back a few years and look at Apples designs everything was beautiful and they would always design to be idiot proof (remember the Macs that had everything modularised and could be clipped in and out with a single lever?). Apples engineering department would come right up there with the best in the world, where they're allowed to do their jobs properly.

 

It's only since Jobs died & Cook took over that things have gone downhill. Cook is the one more concerned with profit over design. You can't blame the engineers for that.

Those few years are more like 6-7 now though (jobs died 9 years ago and the issues started in 2011/12).  A fair bit of time passed when we weren't looking.

[Meowster]

1 minute ago, hishnash said:

Firstly apple will be supporting existing x86 macs with new software for at least 7 years and another 2 to 3 years of security updates after that so you have lots more time with the iMacPro

Out of interest what do you use it for?

moving to Arm will enable apple to push tec forwards a lot faster than they have in the past. They have been expecting intel to deliver on 10nm for the last 4 years (like the rest of us) with products built and planned for those termals...

 

 

Cook is a expert in operations: handing complex depeancy chains between many many many 1000s of factories globally that make parts that all need to arrive just in time without stockpiling, given the massive spikes in demand apple has he has done a very good job for this and for the iPhone side of the company has been a large asset without someone like him they would just never have been able to to meet the massive demand they have had, apple were able to continue shipping most of their produces through theis visue outbreak even through they dont maintain stock piles due to having many redundant production pathways.

But yes the mac lines have suffered under him, Jobs had a lot more connection to the mac and macOS as it is something he worked on from the very start.

 

@hishnash I use the iMac Pro for some sort of heavy photo editing (I'm a photographer) and at work, I use it to manage and share my work with staff (I work for a local architect business) and we use a lot of SketchUp to design buildings

[hishnash]

10 minutes ago, Meowster said:

@hishnash I use the iMac Pro for some sort of heavy photo editing (I'm a photographer) and at work, I use it to manage and share my work with staff (I work for a local architect business) and we use a lot of SketchUp to design buildings

i would expect when the arm imac pro replacement ships (at least a year from know) software support will be ok for you. it will be a lot faster for that type of work at least adobe will be using the deficated image pipelines that they already use on the ipad to ge smoth 120 fps on masdive projects.

[Spindel]

31 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Car analogies only work for the most simple of attributes,  and the vertical monopolies mentioned in this thread are actually called vertical integration. They are not simple attributes and are certainly a thing with apple,  apple have definitely been absolute in their desire to control everything to finest detail.  That in and of itself is vertical integration,  people just call it a monopoly because that is the end result to the consumer with regard to said product.  

 

But unless you are a clear market leader I do not see a problem with vertical integration, with one caveat: unless you are completely dominating a market, Apple is not dominant on either mobile or PC market. And regarding car analogy I think it in this particular case work perfectly. 

 

 

 

31 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Now if you wish to argue is a vertical integration bad for the consumer, well many would argue that apple already have a strong vertical control with tight contracts and designs,  they have their walled garden and very strict repair policies that do a great injustice to many consumers.  Not being able to buy/import spare parts with apple having total control over their manufacture and customs is indeed bad for consumers and thus one can rationally conclude vertical integration indeed is something to be feared.

 

But this is no different from today, a switch to ARM will change nothing in this regard. And as long we are talking vertical integration I can't claim that the Dell and HP laptops I've had (trough work) offer much more serviceability except being able to upgrade RAM and hard drive. 

 

Let's flip the argument: can you make a usable PC that is not reliant on a cpu from AMD or Intel? 

 

 

But one important last comment in this post:

You don't have to agree to this CPU architecture switch, if you don't like it simply don't buy it. But to me it is a positive that another CPU architecture might make its way into the mainstream PC market. I only see positive things from this, more competition is good. I try to not be to fan boyish toward Apple stuff (I mean I've registered in this forum after all) but it is kind of tiering to all over internet see people applaud more competition, unless it is something from Apple, in witch case it's bad. 

 

 

 

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

But unless you are a clear market leader I do not see a problem with vertical integration, with one caveat: unless you are completely dominating a market, Apple is not dominant on either mobile or PC market. And regarding car analogy I think it in this particular case work perfectly. 

Vertical integration in and of itself isn't a problem, it's what the companies do with it that is the problem.  Apple have enough guilt on them that many see it as a valid concern.  Having no user replaceable parts means they are at the mercy of the company even beyond (especially beyond) warranty.  Not that warranty means much if you own an apple product seeing as everything is water damaged.

 

 

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

 

 

But this is no different from today, a switch to ARM will change nothing in this regard. And as long we are talking vertical integration I can't claim that the Dell and HP laptops I've had (trough work) offer much more serviceability except being able to upgrade RAM and hard drive. 

Switching to arm or not switching to arm does not change the problem with vertical integration when it comes to companies like apple.     There is one thing that people are not considering with them moving to ARM,  If apple design it then they can design it as a hardware key, they have complete and total control of what software runs on it and what doesn't.  That may or may not happen, but given they have already tried to make all hardware only replaceable by apple themselves using hardware keys it is not an unreasonable fear.

 

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

Let's flip the argument: can you make a usable PC that is not reliant on a cpu from AMD or Intel? 

How is that a flip of the argument?  neither AMD nor Intel are vertically integrated, Their end products can be used with multiple board vendors and by many different OEM's. If I buy an acer PC and I want to upgrade the CPU I can (normal  tech caveats apply).  Good luck doing that with a unique apple only CPU.

 

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

 

But one important last comment in this post:

You don't have to agree to this CPU architecture switch, if you don't like it simply don't buy it. But to me it is a positive that another CPU architecture might make its way into the mainstream PC market. I only see positive things from this, more competition is good. I try to not be to fan boyish toward Apple stuff (I mean I've registered in this forum after all) but it is kind of tiering to all over internet see people applaud more competition, unless it is something from Apple, in witch case it's bad. 

 

 

 

I wasn't addressing CPU architecture, I was addressing the idea that apples vertical integration was nothing to be feared.  It most certainly is, apples MO has really made it a thing to be worried about.

 

 

[hishnash]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

AMD nor Intel are vertically integrated

they are 100% vertically intergrated they make the socket the chipset and binnary bios blob. yiu cant put an intel in a amd motherboard. 

 

15 minutes ago, mr moose said:

but given they have already tried to make all hardware only replaceable by apple themselves

only in security situations nothing else has locks they dont waist time putting in these locks that would also be a pain for themselves!

 

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

luck doing that with a unique apple only CPU

it will have the same limitations as intel or amd, needs to be socketed needs to have the same socket and needs to have a supported chipset then it will work. 

 

 

[Spindel]

9 minutes ago, hishnash said:

they are 100% vertically intergrated they make the socket the chipset and binnary bios blob. yiu cant put an intel in a amd motherboard. 

 

This was actually better some 20 years ago, I remember having motherboards with chipsets from VIA, SiS, Nvidia, ALI, AMD, Intel etc to chose from. 

 

EDIT:// I only remember owning VIA MBs back then tho

[Curious Pineapple]

9 minutes ago, hishnash said:

they are 100% vertically intergrated they make the socket the chipset and binnary bios blob. yiu cant put an intel in a amd motherboard.

Would you prefer the mess that there used to be?

[hishnash]

16 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Would you prefer the mess that there used to be?

no but im open to there being more than just intel and amd even if for each vendor you need to be within the vertical. for 95% of consumers they never change the cou howver their needs dictate most of the R&D budget.

 

one side effect of apple moving to arm is it will accelerate adoption of servers using arm64. this is good as it will lead to a massive diversification of the market abd costs will go down, cheaper game servers/game companies will support online games longer if cost is lower.

 

the other side effect will be good old competition, with 3 strong players in the consumer computer cpu space we are much less likly to end up with one becoming supper dominant like what happend with intel. when this happens proces go up and we get iterative improvements at best. 

 

apple might charge high prices but thier profit margin is 1/2 of intels so they are putting a lot more of that money back into R&D and if that pushs intel to do the same it will keep this new age of lower prices and suddend jumps in performance going.

 

34 minutes ago, Spindel said:

motherboards with chipsets from VIA, SiS, Nvidia, ALI,

i had a NV gforce chipset with an AMD 64bit Phenom II 6 core!

[Spindel]

1 minute ago, hishnash said:

i had a NV gforce chipset with an AMD 64bit Phenom II 6 core!

Wasn't the name of their chipset Nforce? Or did they have a gforce chipset too?

[suicidalfranco]

2 minutes ago, hishnash said:

one side effect of apple moving to arm is it will accelerate adoption of servers using arm64.

after completely abbandonign XServe? doubt

 

3 minutes ago, hishnash said:

the other side effect will be good old competition

How? the third option would be locked to only one vendor, available on only a restricted selection of machines, and probably locked to run just one OS

 

[StDragon]

7 hours ago, Spindel said:

Is their quality bad or is their PCB design pedestrian?

Yes

[Spindel]

8 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

How? the third option would be locked to only one vendor, available on only a restricted selection of machines, and probably locked to run just one OS

By showing that it's feasible with PCs with something else than x86. 

 

Now this might end with Apple crashing and burning, but if not it will (hopefully) show that there is something else than x86. MS are already experimenting in the ARM market with their Surface X. If Apple shows there is an alternative other companies might also start pouring resources into it. 

 

Also, we can at least hope, bigger developers like Adobe and AutoCAD continue their support for ARM Macs, which in turn means they'll have an ARM codebase ready for Windows too which might be an incentive for MS to pour more resources into this. 

[hishnash]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

fter completely abbandonign XServe

 

i dont think these will be apple servers but devs having Arm64 computers tgat tgey cab use will haveva bug impact onbtge confidance to use server side arm solutions like AWS Gravaton2

 

5 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

How? the third option would be locked to only one vendor,

consumers in the end are the people who pay. if intel and Amd stagnate again apple mught be able to get many more users by offering much faster more modern systems intel or amd cant aford that, once users switch apple it will be hard to get them back unless apple drop the ball, so apple will continue to push hard as well.... 

 

for many consumers if intel and amd just stagnant as the did for over 8 years and apple dont apple the macs will be 2 or 3 times faster and use less power etc. for 95% of users the choices apple makes with limited hardware changes are not important buying considerations.