Apple suspended production of M2 Chips due to falling demand for Macs

[DuckDodgers]

 

 

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Demand for Apple's latest Macs has seen a downfall since January, and the company has seized production of its custom M2 series chips. According to a new report, Macs adhered to lower-than-expected demand, which lead the company to delay the production of the M2 series of chips until it regains traction. Scroll down to read more details on the subject. from the article that explains the news in a bit more detail. Don't quote the whole article, but it should be enough to give the reader a reasonable idea about what's going on. 

 

The global recession is on the rise, which is causing Mac sales to decrease. According to a report shared by The Elec, Apple's MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and other models saw a decline in demand which resulted in Apple halting the production of its custom M2 chips. The production stoppage that rested through February shows the intensity of the decrease in demand, and it will take some time before sales are back to normal.

 

The sluggish sales of Apple's MacBook have already been predicted. Apple's Mac PC business revenue in the first quarter was $7.7 billion. This is a 30% decrease compared to the same period last year.

 

Source: https://wccftech.com/m2-chip-production-stopped/

[SquintyG33Rs]

it was in 

 

[8tg]

They need to combine the best of all worlds and price it right. People aren’t caring because the overall interest in laptops as a whole has been diminished, especially in the consumer sector. In the professional sector anyone who would buy a MacBook is probably also looking at the recent competition from the last few years, more of the business laptop companies are putting effort into making hybrid workstation/fashion laptops and marketing them towards creators and home hobbyists, the same audience as higher end MacBook users generally inhabit.

 

So where apple faltered here at least in my opinion is they didn’t keep their low end bread and butter money makers desirable, the air and 14” pro. They have a reasonable market with the higher end pro models, and now those models have some real competition even. But the air and 14” pro were basically neglected in what they were supposed to be, mass consumer appealing machines to keep money moving versus the slower sales of higher end machines.

I think a lot of that comes down to the air and 14” pro have basically no features appealing to the consumer anymore beyond being ARM. And for the average consumer who would buy a low end MacBook, they don’t even know what that means or care. Maybe you can win out on the better battery life, even then most people will trade off battery life for performance.

I think apple could revitalize some interest in the low end MacBook market by introducing some new features to them hardware wise.

[Spotty]

I'm surprised Apple didn't increase demand for M2 macbooks by releasing an update for older macbooks to slow them down preserve their battery.

 

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Demand for Apple's latest Macs has seen a downfall since January, and the company has seized production of its custom M2 series chips.

Seized production? From who? TSMC? Quality writing from wccftech as always.

[SorryBella]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

Seized production?

Federal Bureau of Performance per Dollar. Theyre getting caught by the value police.

[AlTech]

MBA and many other Apple products are too expensive for the economic climate we find ourselves in. I am not surprised they are doing badly this year. Especially since they are still charging a premium for M2 MBA over M1 MBA.

 

M2 was always meant to be a stopgap between M1 and M3 (being built on TSMC 3nm but TSMC 3nm is having delays and doing badly).

 

I disagree that laptop interest is down. I think that Apple has had so much success with M1 series that you just can't sustain the growth indefinitely and what attracted people to M1 is not necessarily driving people to M2.

 

I think in this economic climate people who are buying laptops won't be spending top dollar for them and unless Apple brings a price cut to the MBA series to maybe starting at $799 I don't think we'll see that series recover anytime soon.

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

MBA and many other Apple products are too expensive for the economic climate we find ourselves in. I am not surprised they are doing badly this year. Especially since they are still charging a premium for M2 MBA over M1 MBA.

 

M2 was always meant to be a stopgap between M1 and M3 built on TSMC 3nm but TSMC 3nm is having delays and doing badly.

 

I disagree that laptop interest is down. I think that Apple has had so much success with M1 series that you just can't sustain the growth indefinitely and what attracted people to M1 is not necessarily driving people to M2.

agreed, M2 just doesn't make much sense over M1 to justify the price of a whole new device.

 

Hell, if i was to buy a Macbook, i'd go for and M1 over an M2 especially in the MBA.

[Dracarris]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

I'm surprised Apple didn't increase demand for M2 macbooks by releasing an update for older macbooks to slow them down preserve their battery.

Really?

 

Really? Okay, guess I‘ll have to adjust my expectations.

13 minutes ago, Arika S said:

agreed, M2 just doesn't make much sense over M1 to justify the price of a whole new device.

M1 and M2 MBA are totally different machines, like old MBP vs M1 MBP.

 

I‘d personally at this point never go for the very dated machine design of the M1 MBA.

I struggled to decide between M2 MBA and M1 MBP and ultiamtely went for the latter.

 

I guess demand for M1/M2 is just satisfied at this point, plus ofc general economic situation not exactly fueling acquisition of premium electronics.

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

I'm surprised Apple didn't increase demand for M2 macbooks by releasing an update for older macbooks to slow them down preserve their battery.

 

Seized production? From who? TSMC? Quality writing from wccftech as always.

FBI OPEN UP WE'RE SEIZING YOUR CHIPS

[Commodus]

Folks, as the article points out... PC sales as a whole are still down; Apple just isn't immune to those trends. In recent months its biggest claim to fame has simply been that its shipments dropped less precipitously than for major Windows vendors. Its shipments dropped 'just' 10 percent in the fall, for example, while companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo plunged roughly 30 percent or more.

 

I'd like to see the Gartner/IDC/etc. figures for the rest of the market before proclaiming this a uniquely Apple problem. That's assuming the rumor is accurate, of course.

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I'd like to see the Gartner/IDC/etc. figures for the rest of the market before proclaiming this a uniquely Apple problem. That's assuming the rumor is accurate, of course.

I don't think anyone is claiming it's a unique Apple problem, more that Apple was thought to be less affected but they aren't.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

MBA and many other Apple products are too expensive for the economic climate we find ourselves in. I am not surprised they are doing badly this year. Especially since they are still charging a premium for M2 MBA over M1 MBA.

 

Not really. It's not really positioned where it should be.

 

I would buy a Mac, any mac, but not until I can get AV1 encode and decode. Same with another PC. AV1 encode and decode is CRITICAL to being able to use internet communication tools for the next decade. Everyone has had hardware h265, but software encoding will not not save you. AV1 is even more taxing.

 

Like if I needed a laptop, like immediately, the mac is the better option over the intel laptops, but if I had to do video editing, I would not buy it.

 

If video editing is NOT on your radar, then the Mac is the better option unless you need a desktop.

 

My worry is that Apple keeps positioning the Mac in a way that is basically a toy.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

 

I would buy a Mac, any mac

Same. With top intel/amd cpu + nvidia gpu. sub $1000 and windows pre-installed. anytime 

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

AV1 is even more taxing.

That might explain why I can’t watch YouTube and game on my PC. Was getting studdering when playing games like Sun Haven. 

[Kisai]

19 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

That might explain why I can’t watch YouTube and game on my PC. Was getting studdering when playing games like Sun Haven. 

Youtube has apparently been allowing h265 ingress now, but I haven't actually seen any streams done end-to-end as h265, so they may still be doing VP9 or AV1 depending on the capability of the machine.

 

This is being sent as AV1+Opus

 

So is this

So both the Late Show and Techlinked are being sent as AV1+Opus In both Chrome and Firefox

 

However if I go pick one of my videos...

VP9+Opus 251

 

More or less, watching video on youtube the Mac, requires a 2018+ Mac to watch the VP9 stream otherwise it has to go through the h264 path.

 

AV1 support on the Mac is software only, and Safari uses davd1 to decode it.

 

So again. If you are doing (web) video work, you are at a disadvantage using a mac, and if you are primarily consuming video, you will also be at a disadvantage without the hardware decoder. It's not a huge issue in the immediate, but releasing the M2 without hardware encode/decode of AV1 is like releasing a Luxury car with a basic AM radio that you can't upgrade at all. 

 

Don't get me wrong, if I needed a laptop right now, I'd buy one, but the lack of the AV1 hardware has kept me from considering it. At this point I'm probably going to hold off buying any computer hardware until the following checklist can be met, out of the box:

 

1) AV1, H265, H264, ProRes hardware encode and decode

2) Reasonable 4Kp60 video game performance, of all games released that year (Doesn't need to be Ultra, but it needs to not be a joke)

3) 8-core performance cores without any nerfs (The stripping of AVX512 from Intel 12th and 13th gen, made that a non-starter, albeit the chances of running to a workloard requiring it was pretty much zero.)

4) Be quiet. It needs to be said, that this is where Apple has always kind of been ahead. 

 

Dell, HP, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Lenovo, etc, all their laptops are obnoxiously loud, and sound like a jet engine with even a tiny load. They all do "thin" wrong, and I quite frankly don't believe anyone uses these "thin workstation" and "thin gaming" laptops as "laptops" and instead use them as portable "good-enough" desktop-replacements. If I can hear it from the next room with the door closed, it's too loud.

 

Apple is never loud, but that's a consequence of using weaker parts. If that's what you want, that's what you get. But again, go scroll up to the "AV1 support" again. If the laptop does not have a hardware decoder, all you're going to hear is a jet engine every time you play a youtube video. 

 

[Monkey Dust]

7 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

MBA and many other Apple products are too expensive for the economic climate we find ourselves in. I am not surprised they are doing badly this year. Especially since they are still charging a premium for M2 MBA over M1 MBA.

 

M2 was always meant to be a stopgap between M1 and M3 (being built on TSMC 3nm but TSMC 3nm is having delays and doing badly).

 

I disagree that laptop interest is down. I think that Apple has had so much success with M1 series that you just can't sustain the growth indefinitely and what attracted people to M1 is not necessarily driving people to M2.

 

I think in this economic climate people who are buying laptops won't be spending top dollar for them and unless Apple brings a price cut to the MBA series to maybe starting at $799 I don't think we'll see that series recover anytime soon.

The price rise between M1 and M2 is brutal, too. I looked up what the M2 equivalent to my MBP (M1, 14" 24 core Max with 32GB ram and 1TB) would cost, it was £340 more, just over 11%.  I was just curious, obviously I wasn't thinking of upgrading.

[stuckonthis]

On 4/4/2023 at 7:08 AM, DuckDodgers said:

 

 

Quotes

 

The sluggish sales of Apple's MacBook have already been predicted. Apple's Mac PC business revenue in the first quarter was $7.7 billion. This is a 30% decrease compared to the same period last year.

 

Source: https://wccftech.com/m2-chip-production-stopped/

Apple should stick to phones and let pc's rule the computing market, keep making your ipads apple but lay off the desktops with your over priced garbage.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, stuckonthis said:

Apple should stick to phones and let pc's rule the computing market, keep making your ipads apple but lay off the desktops with your over priced garbage.

I personally like MacOS better than Windows. Also, if Apple stopped making computers Microsoft would be in trouble. A little law called the Sherman Anti Trust act. Apple computers are the only thing stopping Microsoft from being declared a monopoly. 

[PocketNerd]

The improvements in performance from intel to M1 basically made any need for more performance needless for like 90% of Macbook users. So M2 was just too soon.

 

TLDR - Apple's yearly cycle bit them in the ass

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Apple computers are the only thing stopping Microsoft from being declared a monopoly. 

But this is the year of Linux, I super swear this time.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

But this is the year of Linux, I super swear this time.

I swear, the Linux cult still enjoys calling the Android phone Linux, when it's... not. Now they're doing that with the Steamdeck.

 

Like, in all seriousness, if Linux was ever to have been adopted as a desktop OS, that was back in 2001. It lost any viability of being an alternative to Windows because Microsoft just looked at it and laughed. The GPL pretty much ensures Linux will never be a desktop OS.

 

https://betanews.com/2001/06/18/microsoft-we-use-freebsd/

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Despite the company's bitter campaign against open source software, Microsoft continues to use FreeBSD to power important functions of its Hotmail free e-mail service. Much to the chagrin of the folks at Redmond, FreeBSD and Apache continued to run Hotmail for several years after it was purchased in 1997. Microsoft publicly claimed to have removed all traces of FreeBSD last summer, and even published a case study documenting its experiences. Microsoft told BetaNews that solutions such as FreeBSD are in use throughout its IT infrastructure. A spokesperson also clarified the the software giant's position on OSS technologies, and views on GPL licensing.

 

Pretty much Linux is not an OS, it's a philosophy that says that you should have the source code to everything that runs on it, or it doesn't belong on the computer. Period. No surprise that's why desktop software and games shun it. Meanwhile Apple? Viable competitor to Microsoft, even if Apple insists on having some rather narrow-minded use cases.

[Arika]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

But this is the year of Linux, I super swear this time.

The year of desktop Linux is coincidentally the same year as Wayland completely replacing Xorg. which means it will be 2018/2019/2020/2021/2022/2023/2024/2025/2026/2027/2028 at current estimates.

[DrMacintosh]

The Mac has almost always been in a unique place in the market. The Mac has two main barriers to its own existence.

 

1.) Apple considers the Mac to be a premium product. Apple does not sell "junk." Junk in this context being a $500 Lenovo Idepad or equivalently disposable machine. I'd wager a significant portion of the population would rather have a Mac than whatever they have now...they just can't afford one.

2.) Software compatibility. The reality is that Microsoft has an effective monopoly on consumer operating systems. The impact this has on production software cannot be understated. There are very few programs that exist on macOS that were not created for Windows first. Those few apps, like Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro were created by Apple themselves, and do not have mass consumer appeal. 

 

I want the Mac to occupy at least a third of the marketshare of personal computers. Why? Because I want to see fundamental changes and technology improvements from Microsoft. Windows 11 is a fresh coat on paint on an otherwise historic structure. It's old, it's clunky, it's slow, and it runs on inefficient hardware. The only good thing about it is the software library. 

[divito]

Mac, even with performance gains, is still kind of niche in application.

As a broader trend, the more AMD, Intel, Apple make performant and efficient chips, there is going to be an interesting crossroads eventually. People will have tech that should last much longer in general.

[mr moose]

On 4/10/2023 at 12:15 PM, DrMacintosh said:

2.) Software compatibility. The reality is that Microsoft has an effective monopoly on consumer operating systems. The impact this has on production software cannot be understated. There are very few programs that exist on macOS that were not created for Windows first. Those few apps, like Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro were created by Apple themselves, and do not have mass consumer appeal. 

 

People engineer their products for where the market is, this has little to do with MS's intent and mostly simply is a result of majority of the market using a windows machine (anybody can write a program for windows without having to pay a cent to MS).  This, by the way,  is changing at a reasonably fast rate as people move to tablets and phones instead of laptops/desktops.

 

It's a shame others on this forum can't see this fact when it is the other way around,  developers trying to engineer for a market but half that market is controlled by the OS maker (who you have to pay developer fee's to amongst other costs).