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Intel Apple Technology

Apple's Tim Cook and Luca Maestri on Intel (daringfireball.net) 174

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Tim Cook and Luca Maestri's remarks on Apple's quarterly analyst call earlier this week: CEO Tim Cook: "For our Mac business overall, we faced some processor constraints in the March quarter, leading to a 5 percent revenue decline compared to last year. But we believe that our Mac revenue would have been up compared to last year without those constraints, and don't believe this challenge will have a significant impact on our Q3 results."

CFO Luca Maestri: "Next I'd like to talk about the Mac. Revenue was 5.5 billion compared to 5.8 billion a year ago, with the decline driven primarily by processor constraints on certain popular models." Apple commentator John Gruber adds, "I asked an Apple source last fall why it took so long for Apple to release the new MacBook Air. Their one-word answer: "Intel." One of the big questions for next month's WWDC is whether this is the year Apple announces Macs with Apple's own ARM processors (and graphics?)."
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Apple's Tim Cook and Luca Maestri on Intel More

Apple's Tim Cook and Luca Maestri on Intel

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  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:09AM (#58533114) Homepage

    It's not as if they're using the latest and greatest Intel chips, or that they're more than a few percent of the market.

    I'm thinking it's more likely that "Intel wouldn't sell them at the lowball prices we were demanding!". Boo hoo, Apple.

    • It's not as if they're using the latest and greatest Intel chips, or that they're more than a few percent of the market.

      Maybe they got so much criticism for using old chips that they decided to start using new ones.

      I'm thinking it's more likely that "Intel wouldn't sell them at the lowball prices we were demanding!". Boo hoo, Apple.

      Apple doesn't give a shit how much Apple charges, they'll just pass the cost on to their customers, who have demonstrated a willingness to overpay for hardware. More likely, Intel couldn't provide sufficient supply of the processors they wanted, because Intel is having yield problems these days. Apple probably also demanded chips with a cure for MELTDOWN, not just a band-aid.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:29AM (#58533206)

        Apple does care how much Intel charges exactly because they know their customers will pay any price anyway. Every cent paid to Intel is one cent less profit.

        Price is hardly affected by cost. Cost only dictates the minimum price you have to ask to break even, the actual price is where profit maximizes.

        • From what I understand, Steve Jobs might not have really cared about component costs, but Tim Cook certainly does.

          • Re: Huh? Back At You. (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            And it has "nothing to do" with the fact that latest MacBook Pro are such pieces of garbage.

          • Actually Steve Jobs cared quite a lot about component costs.
            One of the claims he allegedly made when he was shown the Amiga was "too much hardware".

            • Steve Jobs cared quite a lot about component costs.
              One of the claims he allegedly made when he was shown the Amiga was "too much hardware".

              The Amiga did have more hardware than the Macintosh, but it was warranted. Amiga and Macintosh were alike in that they were graphics-only computers (neither had a simple text mode - if you booted nothing but a shell on your Amiga, it came in a resizable window, which was located on its own graphic screen) but they were unlike in that the Macintosh only had a frame buffer, and no hardware for graphics acceleration. That was nominally okay when the Macintosh only had 1bpp, although frankly it took a more than

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday May 03, 2019 @10:15AM (#58533442) Homepage Journal

          Apple does care how much Intel charges exactly because they know their customers will pay any price anyway. Every cent paid to Intel is one cent less profit.

          Every machine not shipped by Apple is potential profit left on the table. You really think Apple would refuse to ship laptops that were supposed to be 50% profit just because they'd only be able to make 45% profit? Shipping new hardware is how a company remains relevant. Not shipping new hardware means potential customers go buy something else, because people want to buy new stuff. Customers who buy something else are likely to buy that something else again in the future, so sales lost now correspond roughly to sales lost in the future. All of this points to an inability to bring out new hardware, not a simple decision not to.

          • Ask Nintendo about how all their constant, chronic shortages affect their bottom line. Also, consider this happens with all their merch, not just game hardware and software.

            • That's very much my point. When you design for custom hardware, you'd better have the means to build that hardware. Even before all this MELTDOWN business, Intel led the market not purely through anticompetitive business practices, but also by controlling every part of the process from design through sale. They owned the processes, they owned the fabs, they designed the chips, they sold them to the distributors. Now that they're having problems with their process technology, they don't know how to maintain

              • Actually, my point is that they limit the production of many of their toys and merch to keep the prices up, namely the Amiibo collectables, and recently, the NES classic. People scoff at the idea of console hardware being intentionally limited in production, and indeed that may not be practical for a market when hardware is sold at a loss, but there are plenty of markets where intentionally limiting supply does actually work. That happens all the time for premium/luxury products.

          • Yeah, pretty much everyone forgot about Apple when they didn't release a new Mac for ... how long? 10 years?

    • last time this happened, the IBM/Motorola PowerPC effort was lagging Intel in speed and power consumption by leagues. Apple thus switched, which is a major big deal, requiring emulators for the year or two that MacOS continued to support the PowerPC machines.

      • Re:which is the point (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thermopile ( 571680 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:47AM (#58533268) Homepage
        Here we go again:

        - Apple used the 68000 series Motorola chips from 1984 to 1994 [lowendmac.com].

        - March 1994 to June 6, 2005 [google.com], was the reign of the PowerPC.

        - Intel chips from 2005 to 2019.

        If history is any indication, Apple has had a longer-than-average run with Intel. They're due for a change.

        • Re:which is the point (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @10:45AM (#58533584) Homepage

          When Apple abandoned the 68K line that was pretty much expected. The 68060 was the last release in that line and everyone knew that it was dead end technology. The PowerPC was the new kid on the block and everyone expected it to clean Intel'c clock. Funny, how that worked out.

          Tbe switch to the PowerPC was a good move for apple. It was supposed to give them the edge of the Intel PC. A newer design with better performance was expected. But the PowerPc was also a failure and didn't live up to the expectations.

          So Apple got smart and decided to go with the king of the hill, the Intel x 86 processor lines. This looked like a good business move for Apple and on paper it probably was. Apple users and developers thought otherwise.

          Up till now Apple developers developed products for the Mac then back ported them, usually poorly, to the Windows platform. With the changed in hardware again, Apple developers would have to create a whole new line of code to support the new architecture. To a great deal of developers for a system that was less than 2% of the market share, it wasn't worth it. So they abandoned Apple in favor of development for Windows.

          Some, such as Adobe, didn't exit the Apple market at first. The continued to support and release products for Apple. But instead of developing forst on Apple then porting to Windows, they now developed for Windows and ported to Apple. As results Apple has inferior products compared to Windows. Adobe has even pulled some products from the market for Apple.

          The switch from a Intel to a new processor line would probably be the end of Apple as a computer company. Apple is still less than 2% of the market, it's is just not worth supporting a system with that low a market share when you will have to redo your entire line of products.

          • The switch from a Intel to a new processor line would probably be the end of Apple as a computer company. Apple is still less than 2% of the market, it's is just not worth supporting a system with that low a market share when you will have to redo your entire line of products.

            This may have been the case 20 years ago, when computers were the only computing devices in the market, and PCs easily horned into Unix workstation and server territory. Like it was trivial for x86 to trump SPARC or MIPS, much less Power or Alpha, since those RISC CPUs had very low volumes to begin w/.

            The story is completely different now, since what's under consideration is Apple using what is already a very successful chip in another line of its products. As it is, iPhone demand is what's driving the

          • The switch from a Intel to a new processor line would probably be the end of Apple as a computer company. Apple is still less than 2% of the market, it's is just not worth supporting a system with that low a market share when you will have to redo your entire line of products.

            Unless people are writing their applications in assembly - which seems unlikely, nowadays - I suspect the switch from Intel x86 to ARM would be straightforward. It doesn't seem like the huge shift moving from Power to x86 was. Heck, Microsoft manages to keep Windows running on both.

            It would also open up the door for much easier cross-platform development, given that Macs would then be on the same processor platform as iOS devices.

            Also, macOS's market share of traditional computer OSes appears to be a touch [statista.com]

            • Unless people are writing their applications in assembly - which seems unlikely, nowadays - I suspect the switch from Intel x86 to ARM would be straightforward. It doesn't seem like the huge shift moving from Power to x86 was. Heck, Microsoft manages to keep Windows running on both.

              Actually, almost all iOS apps could run on an x86 processor easily - Apple's iOS emulator is basically an application running on MacOS, and your app is compiled to x86 code. So switching between x86 and arm code is just a compiler switch. As you said, unless you wrote assembler code.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            I started writing Mac software professionally shortly after the switch to PowerPC processors was over. I worked on many projects where our toolchain was MetroWerks CodeWarrior targeting PowerPC Macs. I also am at least familiar enough with 68K Macs that I know quite a bit about how that transition was accomplished and how the Mixed Mode Manager worked. I also was writing Mac software during the transition to MacOS X. I did a project that targeted both MacOS 9 and MacOS X and after that I worked on projects

            • This goes deeper (Score:4, Insightful)

              by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @03:49PM (#58535384) Homepage Journal

              There's a difference here, though.

              With Intel processors, a modern (present day) Mac can run VMs that can run using native processor instructions. Or do multiple boots into other OSs. So a VM running (Intel) Windows, all manner of linux versions, etc., not to mention the rarer OS versions, alternate OS boots... no problem, really.

              A switch to any processor that can't do this natively will do more than just make older native apps slower (emulation is invariably slower than native code), and eventually lock them out when Apple dumps the emulator (as we saw it do with Rosetta), it will also cripple / retard all the VM software. Or break it entirely.

              My feeling is that this is a much more significant decision than any of the past changes in architecture, and frankly, a foolish and unnecessary one.

              So that probably means it's definitely going to happen. :)

              Probably before they release a new Mac Pro, because of all the things I've been wishing they would do, the most desirable for me would be to release a new Mac Pro that is more like a proper tower than a trashcan — hard drive bays, pluggable card bays, upgradable RAM and display cards — I swear it'd be just my luck if they did that and fucked up the entire undertaking with an ARM processor.

              On the plus side, there will be good machines still available on EBay for quite some time, longer than I'll even need them to be (I'm old.) That's what I went for the last time I needed to upgrade; a 12/24-core, 64 GB proper tower is still a perfectly reasonable desktop selection.

              • They could just slap a big fat cardedge on the bottom of a reasonably-shaped machine, and let you plug an expansion chassis in down there like in days of yore. That still works very well, and it's not very expensive. Everyone likes a good expansion connector.

          • Power9 is a great chip. The PowerPC line was specifically *not* a "dead end" but had fallen out of fashion and the perception was that Apple could gain market share by not being uniue in its choice of processor. The Power series of chips continued development and have powered (no pun intended) a lot of very large supercomputers with better-than-Intel performance per watt and excellent vectorization capabilities, probably overall also better than Intel. Modern compilers can abstract away most of the processo

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              There is a difference between Power and PowerPC. Power is used in big iron. PowerPC is what drove the Macs, which is now used for the embedded world. In the Power line, cranking up the speed had no real effect because you can have a large cooling system in a half rack sized system. The same is not true on a desktop or laptop computer. Additionally, the size of the chip is not material to the end price when the cost can be spread out over a multiple year support contract.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Nice, well written comment. That happens to be wrong.

            The 68060 was quite a nice processor, but Apple didn't use it -- they'd already moved to PowerPC. Not because 68000 was a dead end, but when Apple jumped to PowerPC that did pretty much kill it. Didn't stop the 68060 from being a nice chip.

            You are even more wrong about the move from PowerPC to Intel, which is puzzling as that is more recent. The problem for Apple was that PowerPC was a joint enterprise between IBM, Motorola and Apple. The problem was they

          • Apple got smart and decided to go with the king of the hill, the Intel x 86 processor lines....Apple users and developers thought otherwise...

            With the changed in hardware again, Apple developers would have to create a whole new line of code to support the new architecture.

            Except I don't remember anything like that happening.

            What applications dropped the Mac at that time? I don't remember any large ones doing so. Photoshop was in sort of bad state for a whole code wise but it did work and never left the Ma

          • Tbe switch to the PowerPC was a good move for apple. It was supposed to give them the edge of the Intel PC. A newer design with better performance was expected. But the PowerPc was also a failure and didn't live up to the expectations.

            Apple had their own ARM core already, for the Newton. They could have been ahead of the ARM curve if they had hired in enough talent to make a broadly multicore ARM CPU. Instead they chose to get a CPU made by known-for-high-pricing IBM, and had-already-failed-to-keep-68k-current Motorola. Tell us again how that was a good move.

            Ironically, ARM is now being used in servers, and PowerPC is only used for embedded...

            • PowerPC is still very strong in IBM's AS400 and IBM RS6000 "servers" or workstations till have a HUGE used market!

          • The switch from a Intel to a new processor line would probably be the end of Apple as a computer company. Apple is still less than 2% of the market, it's is just not worth supporting a system with that low a market share when you will have to redo your entire line of products.
            That is utter nonsense. The Processor has nothing to do with the OS, and the difference between Macs and Windows is: the OS!! You port from one OS and its gUI libraries to the other, not from one processor architecture to the other.
            And

          • Apple is still less than 2% of the market

            According to stat counter [statcounter.com] it's more like 13%. I don't know how they arrive at their figures, but that seems like a more plausible number than 2% to me. Certainly if you're counting use, and not just number of machines. (i.e.: Maybe a large company has a bunch of Windows desktops lying around, but a family at home has a higher probability of owning a Mac which is likely to see much heavier use.)

      • Apple switched from Power to Intel because IBM did nor or could not deliver the amount of chips they required. Especially on Laptops.

        requiring emulators for the year or two that MacOS continued to support the PowerPC machines.
        That was not a year or two ... Rosetta was available on OSX 10.4 - 10.6.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:33AM (#58533218)

      This was Apples Message to Intel.
      Unlike other vendors Apple has shown to have the ability to switch processors on their products even to ones with dramatically different architecture. This is Apple saying, decline in profit is your fault, pay our prices or be prepared for Apple to switch.

      Being a vendor to Apple is a double edge sword. You get a lot of sales, however you will often need to increase your business to meet sales, you need bulk pricing, and Apple may drop you at any moment, leaving you with a company that is too big to support itself. Intel is big enough to be able to weather Apple dropping them, but they will still take a hit. But a lot of other smaller vendors after apple drops them, will just die.

      • Not exactly. Apple took a while when they migrated first from Motorola 68k to PowerPC, and later, when they migrated from System 7 to OS X. Once they were in OS X, the only CPUs they migrated from was PowerPC to Intel, while they used the OS X architecture to develop iOS on their ARM implementation. End result: their OS architecture of OS X/iOS exists on both x64 and the A series.

        Also, the A series is Apple's own homegrown CPU after they acquired PA Semi years ago. It's just them dealing w/ their fabs

    • processor speed is nice but other thingsmatter too (Score:4, Insightful)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:39AM (#58533238)

      Power consumption is a big one. Upgrading processors for more speed that no one will use may bring along other power consuming upgrades like memory speed or buss speed. I do sometimes use my laptops at their full potential but that's less than 10% of the time I use them. The rest of the time I'm doing things like diming the screen to try to make the battery last longer.

      Battery consumption isn't just about slow processors but on systems that can swithc speeds and many integrated things. Apple seems to do this integration very well. They get away with smaller batteries for the same lifetime on their phones.

      So I'm not terribly worried if I don't have the latest intel in my macbook. Sure it's nice to think one has the latest thing. But I've found my macbook outlast my dells and HPs by several years in lifetime usability an after a couple years the HPs aren't the newest chip either.

      • Re:processor speed is nice but other thingsmatter (Score:5, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @10:21AM (#58533486) Homepage Journal

        Heat is a big issue for Apple too. They prefer to keep the fans on low and the CPU temperature high as much as possible.

        Linus Tech Tips did an interesting video about it recently: https://youtu.be/947op8yKJRY [youtu.be]

      • While I agree, it depends on the user.

        For example, my boss needs a laptop with great battery life. He's out-and-about doing meetings, answering emails, updating tickets, writing proposals, etc. etc. I and my co-workers, on the other hand, could care less about battery life. For 99% of our time, we're plugged in to a wall socket. Frankly, my company laptop has been plugged in for the last 2 months and hasn't left it's desk. For me, it's about performance and I could generally care less about battery lif

        • if I'm plunking down $5000 for a computer, it better have the latest and greatest CPU and GPU that are out there.

          iMac Pro uses Intel Xeon W chips, and the most recent Radeon Pro Vega GPUs. The Mac Pro design is ancient and to be replaced (probably this year).

          • Right. And back in February, Intel released the Xeon W-3175X. Is that what's in the iMac Pro? Nope.

            How long you figure we'll be waiting for those to show up in an iMac Pro? With a TDP of 255W versus 140W in the iMac Pro, it probably won't get in there any time soon...

      • If you are comparing Macs w/ PCs, another factor is important today which wasn't the case even 5 years ago. That is the devolving of the Windows platform. When Windows 10 was first out, it was a somewhat neat OS, which got over the rough edges of Windows 8, but was otherwise pretty good. However, over time, Microsoft tried to make its Windows store the primary method of installing software on this, and that turned out to be their undoing, since the apps for this platform were underwhelming - not only for

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      Intel is currently production constrained: there's a CPU shortage. Apple wasn't able to get as many chips from Intel as they wanted, so they couldn't meet the demand for their computers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MikeMo ( 521697 )
      It's amazing how deep and insightful your knowledge of the working of these two giant companies is! How did you find out it was because of prices??

    • Apple is using the latest chips from Intel that they have a product to use them.

      Intel would be happy to sell to Apple at a lowball prices because they are a fraction of their sales volume but are a high prestige customer. Intel can sell them special purpose SKUs that can get the press interested, but only if Intel can make them.

    • But Macs are the most expensive PCs out there, and they don't come anywhere near the volumes of a Dell or HP. So why would Intel give Apple the lowest ASPs? If Apple wants it that badly, they should design in the Ryzen.

      But this brings to mind the question of the blurb: why isn't Apple using the A10s and others to make the Macs? Between the iPhones and iPads, they have the numbers they need, so if they just started using this in Macs, they'd be able to use the same apps in the Macs as well

    • It's not as if they're using the latest and greatest Intel chips

      Is that not the point that is being made? If Intel could make the more expensive CPUs in sufficient quantity, Apple would release a new computer and people would buy it. Most Apple customers are willing to spend more for improved performance. If it was made available both Apple and Intel would see more profits. Sounds like Intel is the limiting factor.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Nah, I think revenue was down on the Mac line because of a number of shitty decisions on Apples part (keyboard anyone), and they're using Intel as a scapegoat. They don't want to admit to investors that they're fucking up.

      • Well, the keyboard and more importantly the lack of a 17" or bigger model is most certainly what is postponing me buying a new one ... until the keyboard issue is resolved no way, and as long as they have no 17" model, I stick to my old Air model ... or pack out my old 17" one :P (which I rarely use, but will soon put back to action as youtube TV)

    • I just got off the phone with my Dell sales rep yesterday. They have a two month backorder right now on all Chromebooks with Intel chips. AMD and Rockchip Chromebooks are available now, but Dell told me that Intel is struggling to meet supply demands.

      While Apple can be known for its shrewd business negotiations, there's no arguing [extremetech.com] that Intel is having supply issues [crn.com].

    • Incorrect. Chip shortages have affected many computer manufacturers, not just Apple.

      It's also true that Apple isn't as big a buyer of Intel parts as Dell, HP, or Lenovo, so Intel might not make them quite as high a priority. And those companies make a wider variety of products so it's less likely that a shortage of one specific CPU will hurt them as badly; they'll just sell you a product with a different CPU inside.

  • I went through the PowerPC to Intel move and it was amazingly easy and the speed of the machines went up _so quickly_ that I never regretted it for a second. I'd love them to move off x86. Working on machines that don't make any noise (like my MBA or iPad) is awesome.

    • The Apple 2 doesn't make a noise either - and it boots instantly. The noise/boot time thing is just a phase computers were going through.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Teckla ( 630646 )

        The Apple 2 doesn't make a noise either - and it boots instantly.

        What about the chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk!-chunk! sound of the disk drive and the time it takes to load ProDOS from disk? ;-)

      • All serious machines still dissipate enough heat to need active cooling. Only toy media consumption devices are fanless. It's physically possible to cool a desktop PC with a passive radiator, but the necessary heat sink is larger than the average PC is!

    • Re:Oh, this again? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:14AM (#58533140) Homepage

      Working on machines that don't make any noise (like my MBA) is awesome.

      ...until you do some real work, then it sounds like it's trying to VTOL because it has to breathe through a tiny hinge.

    • Computers 20 years ago had a lot of mechanical parts, Floppy Disks, CDs, Hard disks, power supply fans, CPU cooling fans. Booting a PC caused a slew of mechanical checks and alignments. During the time of the move from PowerPC to Intel.
      Floppy disks were in essence dead technology. Cooling fans became designed to be quieter. Say moving from your PowerMac in its translucent plastic case, to the new MacPros which had a lot of fans running at a slower speed reduced noise. Plus also mechanical devices of the ti

      • Architecturally, PowerPC (IBM POWER) wasn't that bad and for some workloads they're quite good. The problem was that one of the only major customers for consumer grade PowerPC chips was Apple and IBM had no real interest in making such a limited number of chips for a single customer and wanted to focus on developing the architecture for their enterprise servers instead of something that would be put in a notebook.
        • But Motorola too was one of the manufacturers of the PowerPC and leaders of the PowerPC consortium AIM. So why couldn't Apple get Motorola to design and build for them the power saving CPUs that they needed - maybe derivatives of the original PowerPC 603?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The move away from PowerPC provided a significant speed boost because IBM/Motorola stopped making faster chips while AMD/Intel continued to make X86 faster and faster every year. ARM uses less power. That's really the only thing its got going for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Apple does drive the development of the consumer microprocessor market, and it is Apple that gave intel the funding to do what much of what it has done. No one else really has the money to spend of top quality products. As anyone who has been in business knows, it is a few customers that actually generates the profits. It is generally a few small boutique customers.

      We have seen this coming for a while. Intel has been unable to develop chips that will keep Apple far ahead of the rest of the industry.

    • god i wish MBA's made far, far, far less noise than they do currently. My linkedin feed is full of them bleating their vague market-speak drivel.

  • Give us a big new cheese grater Mac, Apple. That ashcan needs to go.

  • What's the point of this post? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:18AM (#58533152)
    "It's all intels fault that we didn't make our numbers"
    Ok - do the slashdot editors post corresponding info from intel about yields? Contradicting info about yields? Contradicting info from market reports that show other PC manufacturers are showing similar declines or can produce to the numbers they want with intel processors? Is this an inclination that Intel is purposely withholding chips from Apple? If so, why not bring that up?

    Again... what's the point here?

    • The point is that Apple stockholders want to push the idea that declining revenue is due to a "constraint" and isn't Apple's fault. Stocks are going to go up forever, don't you know? Everyone wants a $5000 laptop!

      • Everyone wants a $5000 laptop made with $400 of the cheapest parts possible.... :(

        I have been a mac guy for years. I used to pay a premium for arguably the best laptop on the market. Now, I pay a premium for something that has a keyboard that fails in 2 years. It saddens me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by klingens ( 147173 )
      It's not Apple's fault but only Intel's. Intel has problems to deliver enough CPUs to all vendors, Apple is not an exception. The reasons for this are twofold: a) 10nm is delayed for 3-4 years now. Intel uses 14nm+++ to produce their same Skylake CPUs (6xxx) since forever now. b) AMD landed a success with Ryzen so Intel had to react. They reacted the only way they could be giving parity in cores. So now we have quadcore i3, hexacore i5, up to octacore i9 and soon decacore. Both, using all those wafers with
  • Unless Apple Macs with their own Axx chips run Microsoft Office natively....

  • Although I think it would be pretty interesting to see what an ARM based laptop running OSX could do, an intermediate step I think it would be nice for Apple to take is to see Apple start using AMD chips.

    Any move away from Intel is a good one - Intel is an Albatros around ALL our necks, the sooner most of the industry moves away from thus lumbering inept giant the better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Holi ( 250190 )
      AMD has far more manufacturing constraints then Intel as AMD no longer has any fabs of it's own.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dublin ( 31215 )

      Hear, hear! It's time to leave Intel back in the 20th century where it belongs. If Apple weren't so dead set on avoiding making iOS a real OS (or supporting touch and pen on MacOS), then I'm pretty sure they'd be pushing even harder than Microsoft is to end Intel's hegemony on 21st century personal computing devices.

      There is less and less reason to really ant Intel inside of anything I buy. Yes, AMD is an option, but let's face it, given the power advantage of ARM, and the fact that is has momentum, trac

  • The Apple fail begins... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    blame this, blame that, blame over there!
  • I like how Apple isn't afraid to change up their architectures for their products. Apple was on the RISC PPC chips for a very long time and the move to Intel was a relief when it happened. If Apple can move to ARM, then that really shows some development bench strength on their part. Sometimes the B2B pipeline wears down and time to part ways.
    • LMOL yeah ok Potsy. This is a business decision. Nothing to do with technology. Apple pulled the same bull shit when it whined about IBM not keeping up with demand and Apple jumped ship to Intel. Now Apple is whining about Intel. Please. Crocodile tears. Intel is not the problem.

    • ARM with app store only = mac os is dead for pros

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dublin ( 31215 )

        Hasn't killed Microsoft, and in fact, the MS store is where you can even find things like Linux distros that run natively on Windows w/o a VM...

      • ARM with app store only = mac os is dead for pros

        They won't do it all at once. They'll switch arch first, IMO. Then later app store only.

        • App-Store only will never happen.

          How actually would they disable root on a Unix OS and the users "agree"?

          • How actually would they disable root on a Unix OS and the users "agree"?

            Exactly the same way they do it on iOS, which is based on OSX. Duh.

            • Exactly the same way they do it on iOS, which is based on OSX. Duh.
              You mean by removing a "console/terminal" and if they can not remove it, by removing sudo or by removing su?

              Sorry, not going to happen.

  • apple needs to use AMD cpus in the mac pro.

  • These are no the faulty keyboards you are looking for.

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