Former Mac boss predicts PC makers will have to dump AMD and Intel to ‘go ARM’

[mr moose]

9 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Apple are not most businesses though, they're Apple. They already have huge brand loyalty with the iSheep and they know they can pretty much get away with just about anything (see Louis Rossmans video on how many design flaws they've simply shrugged at and released anyway). Apple customers will always buy Apple and there's a whole lot of Apple customers in the world.

 

You genuinely believe they think its OK to stuff an Intel CPU into a chassis that's a few MM thick and then have one heat pipe, one fan and literally zero openings in the chassis to let air flow in and out? Pull the other one, it has bells on.

 

You must remember, they designed the shit they're currently selling, to claim they're ignorant of the problem and how to fix it is absurd. Heck I'm no electrical engineer and even I know electronics need air flow to keep them cool.

 

Also lets not forget, they're not (potentially) just "making a shit product on purpose", they're making a shit product on purpose so people start to complain about the problem they designed in which allows them to ditch the more expensive component and replace it with a cheaper one while still selling the final product at the same price as before.

I never said they were ignorant of the problem, I said they didn't do it as part of some business plan to switch architectures.   They honestly think the thin lower performance version is better than a thicker higher performance version.  We call it a design flaw when viewed as a performance product. 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

Eh, I know there are management people who are that dense and out of touch with their customer base that they believe their customers will buy garbage with the apple logo on it. People buy garbage HP, Dell, ASUS, and MSI laptops all the time, so clearly being told a product is trash is not an impediment to buying trash.

 

I can tell you stories about how little Cingular cared about AT&T Wireless's customers in 2006 when they merged, and not only demoralized the customer service reps but threw the customers themselves under the bus very hard, and I would not fault anyone who was a former AT&T wireless customer from every having AT&T services ever again. When AT&T was trying to acquire T-Mobile, I was like "I see the snake is after another mouse"

 

Large American ISP's and mobile providers do not care because they have a monopoly in their fields.  Half of it is government guaranteed. 

 

I don't even know what you are trying to say with regard to talking about dell and Hp etc.   None of those companies have intentionally gimped their products to make it look better in the future when they do something different.

 

 

[Spindel]

11 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

While true I don't see how its relevant. I mean there's currently more V6 engines on the road than there is V12s, that doesn't mean the V12 isn't much faster.

If you are going to use car analogies a V6 and a V12 are just different kinds of x86 processors.

 

ARM is an electric motor, where different types of ARM CPUs are just different kinds of electric motors (DC, Synchronous, Asynchrounus, EC etc). 

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

Eh, I know there are management people who are that dense and out of touch with their customer base that they believe their customers will buy garbage with the apple logo on it. People buy garbage HP, Dell, ASUS, and MSI laptops all the time, so clearly being told a product is trash is not an impediment to buying trash.

Apple can demonstrate that their customers will buy their products regardless of any inherent flaws it might have.

 

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I never said they were ignorant of the problem, I said they didn't do it as part of some business plan to switch architectures.   They honestly think the thin lower performance version is better than a thicker higher performance version.  We call it a design flaw when viewed as a performance product. 

Which when boiled down is still ignorance. You're saying that Apple think its OK to have devices that are choked by design, that's either ignorance, stupidity or deliberate and I refuse to believe Apple are either stupid or ignorant.

 

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Here is a threadly reminder that Apple's ARM cores already exceeds Skylake and Zen 2 in IPC. 

Yes, a quad core A13 clocked at 3GHz will have higher performance than a quad core Ryzen 3 processor clocked at 3GHz.

 

The myth that ARM is slow needs to die because it's flat out wrong. 

The point wasn't that one device is faster than the other, it was that different things can exist simultaneously to do the same job (though now I read it back I get why you thought that's what I meant).

[straight_stewie]

13 hours ago, Mateyyy said:

Meh, he must have one hell of a crystal ball with that bold of a "prediction"

It's not that bold.

Eventually we will move away from x86/IA64. Maybe not to arm, maybe not during any of our lifetimes. But it's well known that the basis of the IA platform is far from optimal, and eventually we will switch away from it.

[GDRRiley]

16 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Here is a threadly reminder that Apple's ARM cores already exceeds Skylake and Zen 2 in IPC. 

Yes, a quad core A13 clocked at 3GHz will have higher performance than a quad core Ryzen 3 processor clocked at 3GHz.

 

The myth that ARM is slow needs to die because it's flat out wrong. 

do we need to go back to reminding people clockspeed+IPC across different instructions sets doesn't matter.

quad cores from AMD will soon become athlons

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

 

 

Which when boiled down is still ignorance. You're saying that Apple think its OK to have devices that are choked by design, that's either ignorance, stupidity or deliberate and I refuse to believe Apple are either stupid or ignorant.

 

The point wasn't that one device is faster than the other, it was that different things can exist simultaneously to do the same job (though now I read it back I get why you thought that's what I meant).

It's not ignorance, they traded off performance for aesthetics.  That is the key difference between what they have done (and why we all call it dodgy design) and the assumtion they did it to justify something they don't actually need to justify. In your own words:

 

Quote

They already have huge brand loyalty with the iSheep and they know they can pretty much get away with just about anything

 

Why would they gimp their products  when they don't need to?

[Master Disaster]

8 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It's not ignorance, they traded off performance for aesthetics.  That is the key difference between what they have done (and why we all call it dodgy design) and the assumtion they did it to justify something they don't actually need to justify. In your own words:

 

 

Why would they gimp their products  when they don't need to?

For 2 reasons.

 

First is the Power Users. They needed a way to justify the change to the people who use their Mac for actual work since these people might end up losing time or access to tools they had on Intel.

 

Second is Marketing. They can shout from the rooftops to all their normie users about how much cooler and quieter the new ARM based systems are compared to the old and bad Intel systems. Its called creating a problem and then selling the solution. All the people using Intel Macs will run out and buy the Arm model ASAP and Apple again have them caught in the closed ecosystem sunk cost fallacy.

[Sauron]

56 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Most managers will tell you there is no benefit in making a shit product on purpose. That not only tells the consumers your product is shit, but it also tells them you don't care about them and they were sold shit products because you want to look better later.

Unless your entire business model revolves around marketing shit as gold but yeah, I don't think they intentionally made their Intel products worse than they otherwise would have been just to make the ARM ones look better. And still I have a very hard time believing they were thinking about ARM Macs back in the early 2000s before they even launched the iPhone. I know for a fact that by 2009 they didn't see eye to eye with Intel due to the MBA fiasco but before that I think they were pretty confident in their decision.

[Kisai]

39 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

I don't even know what you are trying to say with regard to talking about dell and Hp etc.   None of those companies have intentionally gimped their products to make it look better in the future when they do something different.

 

 

Atari VCS.

[mr moose]

8 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

For 2 reasons.

 

First is the Power Users. They needed a way to justify the change to the people who use their Mac for actual work since these people might end up losing time or access to tools they had on Intel.

 

Second is Marketing. They can shout from the rooftops to all their normie users about how much cooler and quieter the new ARM based systems are compared to the old and bad Intel systems. Its called creating a problem and then selling the solution. All the people using Intel Macs will run out and buy the Arm model ASAP and Apple again have them caught in the closed ecosystem sunk cost fallacy.

They have no problem to sell a solution to, the people who have the current slower Intel macbooks think they are the bomb diggity and don't care that other faster options exist.  In fact they are intentionally oblivious the the fact macs even have issues.  It just doesn't make sense from a business perspective, not even from apples unique business position to do that for that specific reason. 

 

Gimping so they can claim the thinnest on the market males sense, 

gimping so they can claim the longest battery life makes sense,

gimping so they can say how shit their last product was and you should buy their new product does not make sense.

 

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Atari VCS.

Nintendo LCD

 

[leadeater]

51 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Here is a threadly reminder

A what? SMT enabled reminder? Is that when the alarm on both your phones goes off at the same time for the same meeting? Happens to me a lot.

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Unless your entire business model revolves around marketing shit as gold but yeah, I don't think they intentionally made their Intel products worse than they otherwise would have been just to make the ARM ones look better. And still I have a very hard time believing they were thinking about ARM Macs back in the early 2000s before they even launched the iPhone. I know for a fact that by 2009 they didn't see eye to eye with Intel due to the MBA fiasco but before that I think they were pretty confident in their decision.

The rumors about Apple switching to ARM for everything have been floating ever since the iPhone was released. 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/06/rumor_apple_plans_to_move_laptops_from_intel_to_arm_processors

Quote

A new rumor claims that Apple plans to ditch Intel processors to instead adopt the ARM architecture currently found in devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Apple's alleged move to ARM processors is expected to take place "as soon as possible," likely when 64-bit variations are available at the end of 2012 or by early 2013, according to SemiAccurate (via MacRumors. The site is run by Charlie Demerjian, previous editor of U.K. tabloid The Inquirer.)

That article is from 2011. Nearly a decade ago. Certain investors have been promising Apple will switch to ARM that year, and I can find articles from every year including this year.

 

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Nintendo LCD

 

I guess this forum hasn't learned that the indiegogo Atari VCS is a generic $400 linux box yet.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

The rumors about Apple switching to ARM for everything have been floating ever since the iPhone was released. 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/06/rumor_apple_plans_to_move_laptops_from_intel_to_arm_processors

I think you mean "wild and baseless conjecture"

If they say it every year eventually they're going to be right... right...?

 

Also 2011 isn't exactly "since the iPhone was released". I did say they started beef with Intel around 2009/2010, didn't I? The iPhone launched in 2007.

[Kisai]

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I think you mean "wild and baseless conjecture"

If they say it every year eventually they're going to be right... right...?

 

Also 2011 isn't exactly "since the iPhone was released". I did say they started beef with Intel around 2009/2010, didn't I? The iPhone launched in 2007.

I didn't want to spend all night looking at rumors so just put 2011 into the google search engine tools because that's when I know Ming-Chi Kuo starts making these predictions every year.

 

The other problem is a lot of sites use these damned "new news on every page" things and it absolutely destroys google's ability to tell if an old page has new content spamming it.

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

I guess this forum hasn't learned that the indiegogo Atari VCS is a generic $400 linux box yet.

Some of us don't care about those things.  Why are we even talking about it?

[Kisai]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Some of us don't care about those things.  Why are we even talking about it?

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I think they do plan that far in front, most companies plan decades in front of them, I just don't think they gimped it as a tactic, that goes against every successful business practice in the book. And when it comes to making a product and maintaining a product ethos Apple wrote the book.  I think their failures have been at a product marketing/management level. not a strategic company direction one.

 

Most managers will tell you there is no benefit in making a shit product on purpose. That not only tells the consumers your product is shit, but it also tells them you don't care about them and they were sold shit products because you want to look better later.

 

 

Look, you're the one who said it. The Atari VCS (2020) is literately "managers making a shit product on purpose", and believe people buying it are idiots.

 

I don't believe Apple produces crappy products on purpose, but some of their products are certainly are mediocre, overpriced, and nobody should be using them any more than people should be using the equivalent product from Dell, HP, Asus, MSI with the same marketing. sub-15" laptops are simply trash and people should not buy them. SFF PC's are trash, people should not buy them. If you want a gaming machine for the same price as a low-end desktop computer you're going to be sorely disappointed, and should have spent the money on a Nintendo Switch, not a scam banking on nostalgia.

 

[Mateyyy]

1 hour ago, straight_stewie said:

It's not that bold.

Eventually we will move away from x86/IA64. Maybe not to arm, maybe not during any of our lifetimes. But it's well known that the basis of the IA platform is far from optimal, and eventually we will switch away from it.

You said it yourself.

I'm not saying him predicting that we'll move to ARM is necessarily bold, but rather what he's saying about "x86 manufacturers playing catch-up and making the switch to ARM too" just because Apple will be doing it with their machines. And I don't think the problem here is even hardware, it's rather software - does he expect developers to just suddenly make the switch to a totally different instruction set, while also keeping support for x86? I just don't see it happening any time soon.

[Master Disaster]

58 minutes ago, mr moose said:

They have no problem to sell a solution to, the people who have the current slower Intel macbooks think they are the bomb diggity and don't care that other faster options exist.  In fact they are intentionally oblivious the the fact macs even have issues.  It just doesn't make sense from a business perspective, not even from apples unique business position to do that for that specific reason. 

 

Gimping so they can claim the thinnest on the market males sense, 

gimping so they can claim the longest battery life makes sense,

gimping so they can say how shit their last product was and you should buy their new product does not make sense.

 

But you gotta ask yourself, Why gimp a product in a way that doesn't benefit the target?

 

Putting a vent on a laptop in no way changes its thickness or battery life, heck it doesn't even affect the aesthetic since vents can be hidden on the bottom or side of the device.

 

So why exactly do Apple think its a good idea to cram a 10500 (btw that's just the first chip number that came into head, I don't know what CPUs Apple put in Macbooks these days) into a 13mm thick device that has less than adequate internal cooling to begin with and also give it no venting at all?

[straight_stewie]

7 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

I just don't see it happening any time soon.

I can't decide what I think about that. With dynamic languages becoming more and more popular, and these new class of languages that feel like dynamic languages but are actually native (like Rust and Go)...

I just see us on a steady path away from application developers having to worry about machine specific details. That's evermore being pushed to library authors and now, language authors as well.

Once we arrive at good AOC languages with abstractions as deep and powerful as interpreter/runtime languages, it's not that hard to fathom switching architectures en masse.

Every major OS already has atleast some version that runs on a platform other than x86. MacOS, Windows, Ubuntu and various other flavors...

Very few developers have to concern themselves with architecture specific details anymore. Even fewer actually write assembly. Atleast in the PC space I mean. Embedded is always a different story.

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

I can't decide what I think about that. With dynamic languages becoming more and more popular, and these new class of languages that feel like dynamic languages but are actually native (like Rust and Go)...

I just see us on a steady path away from application developers having to worry about machine specific details. That's evermore being pushed to library authors and now, language authors as well.

Once we arrive at good AOC languages with abstractions as deep and powerful as interpreter/runtime languages, it's not that hard to fathom switching architectures en masse.

Every major OS already has atleast some version that runs on a platform other than x86. MacOS, Windows, Ubuntu and various other flavors...

Very few developers have to concern themselves with architecture specific details anymore. Even fewer actually write assembly. Atleast in the PC space I mean. Embedded is always a different story.

The only problem with that is if you are not careful you are just moving the pivotal position of power from the likes of Microsoft to these essentially middle ware makers who then get to dictate what is and is not support and the performance of said platforms, much like Unreal Engine.

 

Abstraction and outsourcing is also giving up or handing over control and you become subordinate to that, there are benefits to doing it but one thing you cannot abstract or outsource is risk, in fact doing so can increase that.

 

Basically it can be done well but if any single entity gains too much influence you will start to see a disparity between hardware/platforms.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

 

Look, you're the one who said it. The Atari VCS (2020) is literately "managers making a shit product on purpose", and believe people buying it are idiots.

I said nothing about the Atari.  If you want to illustrate something you think I don;t understand then you are going to have to find a rock solid example.  For al I know the Atari wasn't intentionally shit and your just saying stuff.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

I don't believe Apple produces crappy products on purpose, but some of their products are certainly are mediocre, overpriced, and nobody should be using them any more than people should be using the equivalent product from Dell, HP, Asus, MSI with the same marketing. sub-15" laptops are simply trash and people should not buy them. SFF PC's are trash, people should not buy them. If you want a gaming machine for the same price as a low-end desktop computer you're going to be sorely disappointed, and should have spent the money on a Nintendo Switch, not a scam banking on nostalgia.

 

To be honest I don't understand what this has to do with what I said.  I am merely saying that I really don't think apple gimped their products solely to legitimize moving to ARM. That is not logical nor fits with any business practice either from them or any other company.

 

 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

But you gotta ask yourself, Why gimp a product in a way that doesn't benefit the target?

It does, the target want thin light and sexy, not fat and last all day running climate models.

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Putting a vent on a laptop in no way changes its thickness or battery life, heck it doesn't even affect the aesthetic since vents can be hidden on the bottom or side of the device.

vent equal noise and airflow and weakness in an already paper thin design.    God knows what else is going on there.

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

So why exactly do Apple think its a good idea to cram a 10500 (btw that's just the first chip number that came into head, I don't know what CPUs Apple put in Macbooks these days) into a 13mm thick device that has less than adequate internal cooling to begin with and also give it no venting at all?

Numbers and marketing,  the vast majority of their customers wouldn't know the difference between an i5 and a brain worm.  they can boast they have an i9 option, who even realizes it's gimped to the point of being slower than an i5? people will buy it because thin, light, sexy and an i9.  Those of us who do know it's gimped will go and buy something better while those who suck up apple arse all day will convince themselves it's fine and worth every cent. 

[Lord Vile]

16 hours ago, Hakemon said:

There's far more in the PC market share.  Why in the hell would Apple influence PC's when they are just so small compared to PC's?

Windows 1 used a GUI licensed from Apple. Windows 95 was Microsoft copying off Apple... and when Vista came out they copied a lot of OSX over into that. I mean look at the Surface line, can see a remarkably apple like design language across that stack too.