What if Apple designed and sold processors (and by-extension chipsets) as standalone products to consumers to be used in PCs like Intel and AMD?

[Joshua5684]

It's Apple so they obviously would never do this, but do you think this would be a good business decision?

[Lord Szechenyi]

2 minutes ago, Joshua5684 said:

It's Apple so they obviously would never do this, but do you think this would be a good business decision?

no

[Fasauceome]

much in the same vein as the fact that they don't sell Mac OS as a retail product, it works better for them to force users to buy their systems and not just their deisngs.

[jollander]

One of the major factors in their recipe to success is the way they control their ecosystem. Selling individual pieces and losing control would mean other companies could fuck up on quality or whatnot. 

So no.

[Wheresmehammer]

I always wanted an Apple in my Raspberry Pi.

[mariushm]

They can't, because they don't have x86 licenses.  Also, no need for chipset if everything is inside the cpu. 

For example, Epyc motherboards can have no chipset, all that's needed is inside the cpu.

 

Also no, they wouldn't want to go x86 because that would make them less different

 

They were using MIPS RISC processors .. PowerPC processors from IBM, moved to x86 because windows got too popular and intel processors were faster and lower power, now they're moving back because Intel screwed them and can't make enough processors for them at the right price and power budget and they also want to dumb down devices to make the interfaces like iphone and ipad and last but not least, now they have enough money to make their own processor designs and on-the-fly translation software has matured enough to make it usable.

 

edit:  I meant they were using RISC processors, PowerPC  etc,.

[Joshua5684]

Just now, mariushm said:

They can't, because they don't have x86 licenses.  Also, no need for chipset if everything is inside the cpu. 

For example, Epyc motherboards can have no chipset, all that's needed is inside the cpu.

 

Also no, they wouldn't want to go x86 because that would make them less different

 

They were using MIPS processors .. PowerPC processors from IBM, moved to x86 because windows got too popular and intel processors were faster and lower power, now they're moving back because Intel screwed them and can't make enough processors for them at the right price and power budget and they also want to dumb down devices to make the interfaces like iphone and ipad and last but not least, now they have enough money to make their own processor designs and on-the-fly translation software has matured enough to make it usable.

 

I wasn't suggesting they go x86. I was mostly referring to the M1 considering its success.

[Video Beagle]

34 minutes ago, Joshua5684 said:

It's Apple so they obviously would never do this, but do you think this would be a good business decision?

It's an interesting thought..and I've thought of such a thing as possible... even something like a deal between them and Microsoft... Microsoft gets Windows AIM working to be used in VM on Macs, and they get access to M1to make some kind of "Windows book".... It's unlikely..but it's 2020 and there's a !@#!@# monolith in the Utah desert and zombie mink in Sweeden, so who knows.

[dilpickle]

Thanks for the laugh

[whm1974]

15 minutes ago, mariushm said:

They can't, because they don't have x86 licenses.  Also, no need for chipset if everything is inside the cpu. 

For example, Epyc motherboards can have no chipset, all that's needed is inside the cpu.

 

Also no, they wouldn't want to go x86 because that would make them less different

 

They were using MIPS processors .. PowerPC processors from IBM, moved to x86 because windows got too popular and intel processors were faster and lower power, now they're moving back because Intel screwed them and can't make enough processors for them at the right price and power budget and they also want to dumb down devices to make the interfaces like iphone and ipad and last but not least, now they have enough money to make their own processor designs and on-the-fly translation software has matured enough to make it usable.

 

Why would Apple need to make x86 Processors when they have the M1 ARM SoC they designed and moving the Mac over to it.

 

Apple never used MIPS in any of their systems. Their First Macs used Motorola 68000 Series CPUs until '93 or '94. That is when PowerPC started being used.

[charlie_root]

If they truly have a better CPU than anyone else, I imagine they make more profit selling that CPU as part of their complete, mostly locked down ecosystem that forcefully pushes buyers towards buying other Apple products, and eventually (they hope) to the biggest moneymaker: subscriptions. 

 

Selling components alone involves none of that vendor lock in that selling complete systems does. 

[mariushm]

5 hours ago, whm1974 said:

 

Apple never used MIPS in any of their systems. Their First Macs used Motorola 68000 Series CPUs until '93 or '94. That is when PowerPC started being used.

For some reason my brain farted MIPS when I was thinking of PowerPC and I didn't bother to google and check myself.

You're correct, PowerPC is RISC, not MIPS.

 

[whm1974]

19 minutes ago, mariushm said:

For some reason my brain farted MIPS when I was thinking of PowerPC and I didn't bother to google and check myself.

You're correct, PowerPC is RISC, not MIPS.

 

Well MIPS was one of the first RISC CPU designs. Predates PowerPC...

[Spindel]

From a business perspective this is a "no". 

Apple now have both software and hardware that differentiate them the rest and make them "unique". Given that for me the macOS alone was enough to get me to buy mac during the Intel years. 

 

But in the "what if" scenario I do think that at least with the M1 it would kill x86 in the laptop and small form factor desktop market. If we isolate to what's available today, the M1, I don't think it would be sold directly to end users but to OEMs (Asus, HP, Dell etc) to put in their own systems. Just as it is with Intel and AMDs laptop chips today. 

[saltycaramel]

Being able to get the M1 “at cost” (after TSMC cut) and then selling the whole premium machine at whatever price they want is what makes the whole R&D effort worth it for Apple, I think.

Probably the CPU alone, especially the ones we’ll see in low volume Macs like the Mac Pro, is developed at a loss, if it was to be sold stand alone...

 

That’s also what makes these SoCs great: they don’t need to sell them to clients (with requirements, etc.), so they’re free to put the craziest things in them. They would lose some of their “magic” if other OEMs had a say (even indirectly) in their design.

[PeachGr]

Apple is design processors for many years now for iphones and ipads
I don't see any A14 processors on other smartphones
As a matter of fact i haven't seen any other Apple hardware on another device.
I think they have so much hardware on the market that making their own hardware is a problem on it's own, as we ve seen at 2020 they' ve had a problem making enough iphones on time, so they released on 2 waves

[Totality]

8 hours ago, Joshua5684 said:

It's Apple so they obviously would never do this, but do you think this would be a good business decision?

Well we do have the m1 chips

[saltycaramel]

Just now, Totality said:

Well we do have the m1 chips

He meant if you could buy a Razer laptop with an M1 chip and run Windows ARM on it, or buy a boxed M1T (future desktop version we’ll see in spring) and install it in your next PC build.

[saltycaramel]

7 minutes ago, PeachGr said:

Apple is design processors for many years now for iphones and ipads
I don't see any A14 processors on other smartphones
As a matter of fact i haven't seen any other Apple hardware on another device.
I think they have so much hardware on the market that making their own hardware is a problem on it's own, as we ve seen at 2020 they' ve had a problem making enough iphones on time, so they released on 2 waves

 

I’ll add that Apple had to book the whole 5nm TSMC fabbing capacity for this year, all of it.

There will be literally barely enough 5nm CPUs for iPhones, iPads and Macs this year (where by “year” I mean September to September). 

[straight_stewie]

9 hours ago, Joshua5684 said:

It's Apple so they obviously would never do this, but do you think this would be a good business decision?

Everyone seems to be assuming that selling processors they've designed also means that they would be giving people the right to build their own Apple devices. The two are unrelated to each other, so here's a sure-to-be-unpopular answer:

 

9 hours ago, jollander said:

One of the major factors in their recipe to success is the way they control their ecosystem. Selling individual pieces and losing control would mean other companies could fuck up on quality or whatnot. 

That isn't necessarily the case. Apple could:

1. Build their own devices and their own processor and distribute some of those processors for use in any design.
2. Build their own devices and their own processor and distribute some of those processors for use in non Apple-infringing designs.
3. Release older designs on a regular schedule.
4. Design processors specifically for the wider market.

 

Most of these don't make sense. Option 1 clearly completely gives up Apples moat. Option 2 is pretty risky, there will certainly end up being many ripoffs, although most major companies probably won't start making copies of Apple devices. Option 3 is kind of interesting as it means that Apple is always a year ahead.

 

Which brings us to good ol' option 4. Option 4 allows Apple to tap into a market with only few major competitors, while also preventing Apple from shooting itself in the foot because they can downgrade features for processors destined for the wider market. They would keep the best features for themselves, while still being able to generate a profit (actually, pretty much the entire exercise would be all profit for them: The concern will get the processor designs for free, because they are actually being designed for Apple consumer devices, and will be profitable there as well. Beyond that, it would also improve their supplier pricing: They'll be buying all the more from TSMC, and none of the production lines will need reconfiguration between the two).

In order to do that, you have to shift your thinking: Apple would probably fail if it tries to go up against Intel and AMD. They would essentially be asking the market to completely switch foundations, which is a very expensive thing to do (all apps would need to be rewritten or recompiled to work on ARM, where-as they already work on x86 and x64 processors). However, Apple could very well take on companies like Qualcomm, Microchip, and Texas Instruments (or their ARM product lines anyway).

TL;DR:

I think that they can do it such that they can maintain their business advantage, and that doing so might allow them to become a market leader in another very large market.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to CPUs, Motherboards and Memory