I will be incredibly surprised if Apple lowers prices on any Mac as a result of this transition, and IF they actually do, it will be a short-lived reduction to inspire transitional purchases.
I quite disagree. Apple, and Tim Cook in particular, are sticklers about profit margins. They pick some number (usually 32%) and price accordingly. A couple hundred bucks of every Macbook is the Intel CPU and that's going to get sliced right off the top.
"the MBA literally costs twice as much" due to that very high profit margin, and generally more expensive parts across the board.
This price cut won't be huge in practice… $2600 vs $2800 really doesn't sound like much. But $800 Macbook Airs sound likely, especially given that iPad Pros start in the mid-hundreds. In the ARM world, it doesn't make any sense for a low-end Mac to cost more than a high-end iPad Pro.
… it sounds like 16" Macbook Pros are much farther off than I had hoped. The 15" Intel MBP came out six months after "the big announcement," I was hoping the ARM transition would follow a similar pattern. I'm not going to enjoy waiting over a year… my 2016 screen has developed that gross lamination problem…
Interesting that he forecasts lower prices from higher volumes.
A big part of the cost of any product are fixed and semi-fixed costs (costs that only vary with wide swings in volume such as when you start laying off white collar workers). And those fixed and semi-fixed costs are a major part of the cost of any Mac (they include the cost of OS, software and Apple's ecosystem).
So, although those fixed and semi-fixed costs allocated down to a unit basis are critical to pricing strategies, volume is usually the weakest part of any forecast. So, predicting an increase in volume on a major switch to a new technology isolated from the industry is gutsy at best.
For example, let's assume the following:
Total Macs sold: 5 million
Variable cost to manufacture: 5M x $600 = $3,000M
Fixed & semi-fixed costs: $3,000M
Cost per mac: ($3,000m + $3,000M) / 5M = $1,200
Now, assuming variable costs go down and volume increases:
Total Macs sold: 6 million
Variable cost to manufacture: 5M x $500 = $2,500M
Fixed & semi-fixed costs: $3,000M
Cost per mac: ($2,500m + $3,000M) / 6M = $900
In this hypothetical example volume played a far bigger role in the price of a Mac than did a decrease in its variable (manufacturing) costs.
But, only Apple's internal cost accountants have any idea what the breakdown in costs are. But, even knowing that, volume projections are always speculative. Ya just don't know....
In fact, volume could decrease for two reasons:
1) People may fear a new technology that could block them from doing what they need and want to do and may hold off making a purchase,
2) The market may have already been saturated with a massive increase in computer sales as a result of stay at home orders from the virus. Essentially, every kid who ever had a shot at getting a Mac already has one -- and the same for many adults.
You are aware that Apple probably pays only $50 - if that - for the Intel i3 that goes into the $1000 MacBook Air. I don't know where the idea that Apple is going to save all this money by using their own chips comes from.
The idea comes from an understanding of business and vertical integration.. There are a great number of reasons why Apple will absolutely increase their performance per watt over what they get from Intel. This isn't wishful thinking because we've seen all the parts Apple is playing with and all the expertise they've been incorporating for decades, which is why many of us knew that this switch to Apple Silicon was going to happen. If you think that Apple's move is somehow going to result at less performance per watt at a given cost then you'll have to find some evidence as to why that's the case. For example, you might and to start with how Apple was foolish to buy PA Semi (and others) in the first place over using off-the-shelf SoCs.
Interesting that he forecasts lower prices from higher volumes.
I don't think Kuo forecasts that at all. From the AI post:
"In an optimistic scenario," says Kuo, "if Apple lowers the price of Apple Silicon's MacBook Air to reflect the cost reduction, and if the newly-designed 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are better than the old MacBook Pro, we expect... shipment volume to grow significantly to 18-20 million units in 2021."
"In our bull-case scenario," says Kuo, "the MacBook shipments in 2021 will markedly increase to 18-20 million units if Apple lowers the price of MacBook Air equipped with the lower-cost Apple Silicon and the demand for the all-new form factor design 14- and 16- inch MacBook Pro models is better than that of legacy models."
There's nothing there suggesting that higher volume -> lower prices. It's all about the reverse. He's talking about the demand curve, not the supply curve.
With all due respect, it is less "knowledge of business, supply chain and vertical integration" that gets bandied about by journalism graduates who have never worked a day in engineering, manufacturing, product management etc. than it is Apple boosterism. Simply put: do you folks honestly think that Apple will be the first company to make their own CPUs? Because if you want vertical integration, Samsung has that in spades. They make the CPUs, RAM, SSD, screens and cameras! And unlike Apple, Samsung actually MAKES these components in their own factories and foundries where "Apple Silicon" is actually made by TSMC (and was previously by Samsung). And before Samsung, IBM and Motorola used to make their own components too.
We get it: iOS is faster than Android and Apple Silicon is faster than Qualcomm (and Exynos, MediaTek and Kirin). But that doesn't translate everywhere. Allow me to say that I have long been a fan of RISC, which ARM is a subset of. I remember when Sun SPARC and Motorola 68xxx UNIX workstations and servers could crush anything that Wintel was capable of. I have also been keeping up with ARM-based servers, which some quarters have been hyping for years. Linus Torvalds claims that Mac switching to ARM will be the catalyst for ARM-based servers really taking off.
But please know this: not even Apple claims that their 5 nm A14 chip will outperform the 10 nm Intel i9 or even the i7. They merely claimed that the iPad Pro beat an unspecified MacBook (i9? i7? even i5?) on some internal tests. So keep these 3 things in mind.
1. The MacBook Pro runs tons of heavy duty performance software that the iPad Pro can't run at all rendering that test worthless for people with serious computing needs. 2. The i9 isn't even Intel's most powerful chip. The Xeon, which goes in the Mac Pro, is. 3. Intel won't be at 10 nm forever. AMD is at 7 nm, after all, and is expected to reach 5 nm as early as 2021.
What you aren't considering: "Pro" users whose computing needs tend to the ultra-high performance scale make up a tiny percentage of Mac sales. We already know that Mac is willing to give up the similarly tiny percentage of Windows (bootcamp and virtualization) users. The switch to ARM may mean that Mac is willing to give up workstation crowd too. (Because, er, making workstations will mean that Apple CAN'T put the same chips in workstations that they put in iPhones, ok? There are power/heating/expense constraints that smartphones have to work within. Make custom Apple Silicon to run in workstations? Yeah ... that's a worthwhile expense for the 250-500k Mac Pros that they sell a year. Not to mention it would drive up the cost.)
The purpose of Mac switching to ARM may well to increase convergence with iPad and iPhone users. Not to match Intel i9s and Xeons on computing power.
The 10th gen i3 is in both the MacBook Air and HP Pavilion x360 2-in-1. Despite the only real advantage the HP enjoys over the MBA being the Retina screen AND HP needing to pay for Windows where Apple gets their OS for free, the MBA literally costs twice as much. Switch to machines that cost the same as the entry level MacBook Air and you will see devices - again name brands like Dell, HP, Lenovo etc. - offering 10th gen Intel i7s with either 16 GB of RAM or Nvidia graphics card with 8 GB of RAM. Realize that this is hundreds less than what Apple charges for their REFURBISHED Intel i5 machines.
I would like to have a link for this HP Pavilion x360 2-in-1. Also, I would like to have links for these laptops with Intel 10th gen i7 with 16 GB main memory or Nvidia GPUs with 8 GB video memory for $1000 to $1500.
I don't Apple will lower prices for their computers. They determine a price point, give or take, and design a machine they think will provide enough value for their target market. So, no price changes for Apple Silicon Macs. It'll will be tiered similarly today, from $1000 to $6000 across the lineup.
With all due respect, it is less "knowledge of business, supply chain and vertical integration" that gets bandied about by journalism graduates who have never worked a day in engineering, manufacturing, product management etc. than it is Apple boosterism. Simply put: do you folks honestly think that Apple will be the first company to make their own CPUs? Because if you want vertical integration, Samsung has that in spades. They make the CPUs, RAM, SSD, screens and cameras! And unlike Apple, Samsung actually MAKES these components in their own factories and foundries where "Apple Silicon" is actually made by TSMC (and was previously by Samsung). And before Samsung, IBM and Motorola used to make their own components too.
We get it: iOS is faster than Android and Apple Silicon is faster than Qualcomm (and Exynos, MediaTek and Kirin). But that doesn't translate everywhere. Allow me to say that I have long been a fan of RISC, which ARM is a subset of. I remember when Sun SPARC and Motorola 68xxx UNIX workstations and servers could crush anything that Wintel was capable of. I have also been keeping up with ARM-based servers, which some quarters have been hyping for years. Linus Torvalds claims that Mac switching to ARM will be the catalyst for ARM-based servers really taking off.
But please know this: not even Apple claims that their 5 nm A14 chip will outperform the 10 nm Intel i9 or even the i7. They merely claimed that the iPad Pro beat an unspecified MacBook (i9? i7? even i5?) on some internal tests. So keep these 3 things in mind.
1. The MacBook Pro runs tons of heavy duty performance software that the iPad Pro can't run at all rendering that test worthless for people with serious computing needs. 2. The i9 isn't even Intel's most powerful chip. The Xeon, which goes in the Mac Pro, is. 3. Intel won't be at 10 nm forever. AMD is at 7 nm, after all, and is expected to reach 5 nm as early as 2021.
What you aren't considering: "Pro" users whose computing needs tend to the ultra-high performance scale make up a tiny percentage of Mac sales. We already know that Mac is willing to give up the similarly tiny percentage of Windows (bootcamp and virtualization) users. The switch to ARM may mean that Mac is willing to give up workstation crowd too. (Because, er, making workstations will mean that Apple CAN'T put the same chips in workstations that they put in iPhones, ok? There are power/heating/expense constraints that smartphones have to work within. Make custom Apple Silicon to run in workstations? Yeah ... that's a worthwhile expense for the 250-500k Mac Pros that they sell a year. Not to mention it would drive up the cost.)
The purpose of Mac switching to ARM may well to increase convergence with iPad and iPhone users. Not to match Intel i9s and Xeons on computing power.
And Samsung does a great job which helps keeps their products competitive. Thank you for making my point.
Why again is Apple foolish for designing their own OS and HW around their specific needs? Because, as you note, they aren't the first? Why does being first matter?
"Pro" users, which you put into quotes. LOL Besides Apple having addressed this in detail during WWDC—as if it needed to be since it should obvious—this false and elitist notion of what how a professional user is defined is always laughable on this forums.
I honestly hope that the first model in production is the 12” fanless MacBook which would be perfect for Apple Silicon.
There is so many speculations about this model. It may happen that new Air can supplement it by low weight and a bit bigger size. Lower size can be reserved for iPads.
I am gonna bet that it will be just iPad Pro running MacOS - same designs. Only that it will have more RAM and more speed for MacOS.
It will absolutely not nee an iPad Pro running macOS. It will be a MacBook Pro, a notebook computer, running macOS. It will definitely have more RAM than an iPad Pro, as we've seen with the developer's transition kit, but hopefully it will be LPDDR4 since they don't have to wait for Intel to get with the program.
"Pro" users, which you put into quotes. LOL Besides Apple having addressed this in detail during WWDC—as if it needed to be since it should obvious—this false and elitist notion of what how a professional user is defined is always laughable on this forums.
Ding ding ding! May as well say if it can't manage at least 21.5 PFLOPS, it isn't a real computer. Piz Daint? More like pissant!
With all due respect, it is less "knowledge of business, supply chain and vertical integration" that gets bandied about by journalism graduates who have never worked a day in engineering, manufacturing, product management etc. than it is Apple boosterism. Simply put: do you folks honestly think that Apple will be the first company to make their own CPUs? Because if you want vertical integration, Samsung has that in spades. They make the CPUs, RAM, SSD, screens and cameras! And unlike Apple, Samsung actually MAKES these components in their own factories and foundries where "Apple Silicon" is actually made by TSMC (and was previously by Samsung). And before Samsung, IBM and Motorola used to make their own components too.
We get it: iOS is faster than Android and Apple Silicon is faster than Qualcomm (and Exynos, MediaTek and Kirin). But that doesn't translate everywhere. Allow me to say that I have long been a fan of RISC, which ARM is a subset of. I remember when Sun SPARC and Motorola 68xxx UNIX workstations and servers could crush anything that Wintel was capable of. I have also been keeping up with ARM-based servers, which some quarters have been hyping for years. Linus Torvalds claims that Mac switching to ARM will be the catalyst for ARM-based servers really taking off.
But please know this: not even Apple claims that their 5 nm A14 chip will outperform the 10 nm Intel i9 or even the i7. They merely claimed that the iPad Pro beat an unspecified MacBook (i9? i7? even i5?) on some internal tests. So keep these 3 things in mind.
1. The MacBook Pro runs tons of heavy duty performance software that the iPad Pro can't run at all rendering that test worthless for people with serious computing needs. 2. The i9 isn't even Intel's most powerful chip. The Xeon, which goes in the Mac Pro, is. 3. Intel won't be at 10 nm forever. AMD is at 7 nm, after all, and is expected to reach 5 nm as early as 2021.
What you aren't considering: "Pro" users whose computing needs tend to the ultra-high performance scale make up a tiny percentage of Mac sales. We already know that Mac is willing to give up the similarly tiny percentage of Windows (bootcamp and virtualization) users. The switch to ARM may mean that Mac is willing to give up workstation crowd too. (Because, er, making workstations will mean that Apple CAN'T put the same chips in workstations that they put in iPhones, ok? There are power/heating/expense constraints that smartphones have to work within. Make custom Apple Silicon to run in workstations? Yeah ... that's a worthwhile expense for the 250-500k Mac Pros that they sell a year. Not to mention it would drive up the cost.)
The purpose of Mac switching to ARM may well to increase convergence with iPad and iPhone users. Not to match Intel i9s and Xeons on computing power.
If you think Apple is going to run an iPad or iPhone chip in there macs, you have not been keeping up. One thing is the Macs are going to run thunderbolt. Second, Apple thinks and plans to replace their entire Mac line with ones running Apple Silicon. That means the have some serious power in their new chips. The pros who use the current Mac Pros are not going to take something with less power than they have now. Maybe Apple will use a single chip or multiple chips for serious power. No one knows outside Apple.
Kuo's not going out on a limb much here- This is totally what everyone expects. One of the big advantages of Apple Silicon is the power-performance ratio and this matters most in a laptop. (witness the performance of previous MacBooks being limited by heat constraints.)
I fully expect Apple to keep the price the same, partially because that is what Apple does but also remember that they need to pay for processor development costs as well as the design and development of the all-new A1x-powered systems.
Personally I'm interested and excited to see what the performance of these new systems is. We've already seen how powerful the A12z processor in the iPad Pro is. That's already a generation old and likely put under some thermal constraints by the iPad packaging. An A14-powered MacBook with better thermal management could potentially give excellent power along with much better battery life than we've seen.
Interesting that he forecasts lower prices from higher volumes.
A big part of the cost of any product are fixed and semi-fixed costs (costs that only vary with wide swings in volume such as when you start laying off white collar workers). And those fixed and semi-fixed costs are a major part of the cost of any Mac (they include the cost of OS, software and Apple's ecosystem).
So, although those fixed and semi-fixed costs allocated down to a unit basis are critical to pricing strategies, volume is usually the weakest part of any forecast. So, predicting an increase in volume on a major switch to a new technology isolated from the industry is gutsy at best.
For example, let's assume the following:
Total Macs sold: 5 million
Variable cost to manufacture: 5M x $600 = $3,000M
Fixed & semi-fixed costs: $3,000M
Cost per mac: ($3,000m + $3,000M) / 5M = $1,200
Now, assuming variable costs go down and volume increases:
Total Macs sold: 6 million
Variable cost to manufacture: 5M x $500 = $2,500M
Fixed & semi-fixed costs: $3,000M
Cost per mac: ($2,500m + $3,000M) / 6M = $900
In this hypothetical example volume played a far bigger role in the price of a Mac than did a decrease in its variable (manufacturing) costs.
But, only Apple's internal cost accountants have any idea what the breakdown in costs are. But, even knowing that, volume projections are always speculative. Ya just don't know....
In fact, volume could decrease for two reasons:
1) People may fear a new technology that could block them from doing what they need and want to do and may hold off making a purchase,
2) The market may have already been saturated with a massive increase in computer sales as a result of stay at home orders from the virus. Essentially, every kid who ever had a shot at getting a Mac already has one -- and the same for many adults.
You are aware that Apple probably pays only $50 - if that - for the Intel i3 that goes into the $1000 MacBook Air. I don't know where the idea that Apple is going to save all this money by using their own chips comes from.
My example used $100 -- you can substitute $50 and the point still stands. And, if you read the quote I was referencing, the idea came from the article I was responding to.
Apple will lower the price of 100usd (or aligned to whatever is the trend on PC market) and advertise how much more powerful than INTEL based are the Apple Silicon based machines. Margins will increase and so shareholder value.
It makes more sense for Apple to drop the price without increasing margins to bring more switchers onboard, since their cash cow is software and services where the margins are much higher.
... HP needing to pay for Windows where Apple gets their OS for free ,....
Why would you think MacOS is free?
Somebody has to develop it
Somebody has to enhance it
Somebody neds to interface it with iOS, iPadOS and WatchOS.
Somebody needs to support it
That all costs money - and it is fixed over the cost of all the units sold with it.
So, since there are many, many more copies of WIndows sold, the per unit cost is likely very much lower for WIndows -- and where MacOS costs far, far more than Windows.
I will be incredibly surprised if Apple lowers prices on any Mac as a result of this transition, and IF they actually do, it will be a short-lived reduction to inspire transitional purchases.
I quite disagree. Apple, and Tim Cook in particular, are sticklers about profit margins. They pick some number (usually 32%) and price accordingly. .....
Do you have a reputable source for that assertion? I've heard speculation about such things but never anything actually informed.
And, in actuality, the only ones who actually know the real margins are Apple cost accountants and execs. Everybody else is guessing. And their guesses usually reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of cost accounting and margins.
Interesting that he forecasts lower prices from higher volumes.
I don't think Kuo forecasts that at all. From the AI post:
"In an optimistic scenario," says Kuo, "if Apple lowers the price of Apple Silicon's MacBook Air to reflect the cost reduction, and if the newly-designed 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are better than the old MacBook Pro, we expect... shipment volume to grow significantly to 18-20 million units in 2021."
"In our bull-case scenario," says Kuo, "the MacBook shipments in 2021 will markedly increase to 18-20 million units if Apple lowers the price of MacBook Air equipped with the lower-cost Apple Silicon and the demand for the all-new form factor design 14- and 16- inch MacBook Pro models is better than that of legacy models."
There's nothing there suggesting that higher volume -> lower prices. It's all about the reverse. He's talking about the demand curve, not the supply curve.
Good point. I was referring, as he did to lower costs, not lower selling prices. I used the wrong word. Sorry for the confusion.
You are aware that Apple probably pays only $50 - if that - for the Intel i3 that goes into the $1000 MacBook Air. I don't know where the idea that Apple is going to save all this money by using their own chips comes from.
They'll save more from the models that are typically higher priced. The previous entry Air ($1299) chip was priced at $281-393:
They probably don't pay that for the Air as they'll get bigger discounts with higher shipment volume (Air is a few million units) but higher-end MBPs ship much fewer units.
If the Apple Silicon chips from the Air can be tiled/stacked for the MBP, they don't need to be significantly more expensive. If the Air chip is $50 and the MBP chip is $100, they can knock nearly $300 off the price of every 16" MBP.
It will be interesting to see if they do upgrade chip versions. They don't do this with the iOS devices. There isn't a 6-core 12" iPad Pro and an 8-core 12" iPad Pro. I expect what they'll do is use SSD storage and RAM as the upgrades or maybe custom co-processors.
Just now, the top i9, top AMD 5600M, 512GB/16GB costs $3499. If 5nm Apple Silicon chips match the i9 and 5600M, that equivalent model could be $2099. Apple likely won't sell their own chips at really low prices but they have the flexibility to do this with their own hardware and still have much healthier margins. There's easily $500 from those higher-end MBP models going to Intel and AMD just now and that would just be the manufacturing costs with their own chips. They might not pass $500 to the consumer but even $200 extra in margins and $300 price drop, everybody is better off.
I will be incredibly surprised if Apple lowers prices on any Mac as a result of this transition, and IF they actually do, it will be a short-lived reduction to inspire transitional purchases.
How do you explain away other Apple decreases in price? Like the regular iPhone 11 over the prior year’s; the iPad, MacBook decreases, etc?
You are aware that Apple probably pays only $50 - if that - for the Intel i3 that goes into the $1000 MacBook Air. I don't know where the idea that Apple is going to save all this money by using their own chips comes from.
Even if that figure is true, $50 is an expensive chip component.
It is most certainly true. You can get one retail for $130, and you KNOW that OEMs - especially Apple with their legendary negotiating prowess with suppliers - don't pay retail. And no, $50 isn't expensive at all. To put it another way, you can get the same 10th gen Intel i3 in a Dell - meaning not some cheap junk that will break in 2 years - that costs $450 and an touchscreen HP (where the only real advantage the MBA has on it is speakers and Retina display) for $500. So even if Apple was getting the CPU for free - which the A14 absolutely will not be ... do you think that it will cost LESS than the $160 that Qualcomm charges Samsung for their flagship chips? - the MBA would still cost twice as much as comparable competition.
Now my point IS NOT to rehash the Apple versus Windows versus Android pricing wars. I am just pointing out that if people think that Intel has been ripping off Apple all these years for some bizarre reason and that Apple is going to be able to make cheaper Macs that will increase market share as a result etc. yeah that isn't true at all. I am willing to consider the possibility that Apple Silicon will be cheaper than Intel i7 and i9 chips. An i9 10th gen runs about $450 retail so let's say that Intel charges Apple maybe half that. (In reality, it is probably 1/3 or less but let's give Apple the benefit of the doubt.) But first we are going to have to see if Apple's ARM SOCs can have similar performance given the same type of real workloads - by this I mean engineering, programming, scientific etc. applications and not merely the Final Cut Pro X and Adobe stuff - that the Mac Pros and top of the line Macbook Pros are currently doing with Intel chips.
If you can’t show me an invoice, then it remains that we don’t know if that figure is true -- meaning, you don’t know the actual figure and made up a number. $50 is still an expensive wholesale price for a single chip component, and by the time it retails it will cost the end consumer more. Cutting it down certainly helps.
Comments
"the MBA literally costs twice as much" due to that very high profit margin, and generally more expensive parts across the board.
This price cut won't be huge in practice… $2600 vs $2800 really doesn't sound like much. But $800 Macbook Airs sound likely, especially given that iPad Pros start in the mid-hundreds. In the ARM world, it doesn't make any sense for a low-end Mac to cost more than a high-end iPad Pro.
There's nothing there suggesting that higher volume -> lower prices. It's all about the reverse. He's talking about the demand curve, not the supply curve.
With all due respect, it is less "knowledge of business, supply chain and vertical integration" that gets bandied about by journalism graduates who have never worked a day in engineering, manufacturing, product management etc. than it is Apple boosterism. Simply put: do you folks honestly think that Apple will be the first company to make their own CPUs? Because if you want vertical integration, Samsung has that in spades. They make the CPUs, RAM, SSD, screens and cameras! And unlike Apple, Samsung actually MAKES these components in their own factories and foundries where "Apple Silicon" is actually made by TSMC (and was previously by Samsung). And before Samsung, IBM and Motorola used to make their own components too.
We get it: iOS is faster than Android and Apple Silicon is faster than Qualcomm (and Exynos, MediaTek and Kirin). But that doesn't translate everywhere. Allow me to say that I have long been a fan of RISC, which ARM is a subset of. I remember when Sun SPARC and Motorola 68xxx UNIX workstations and servers could crush anything that Wintel was capable of. I have also been keeping up with ARM-based servers, which some quarters have been hyping for years. Linus Torvalds claims that Mac switching to ARM will be the catalyst for ARM-based servers really taking off.
But please know this: not even Apple claims that their 5 nm A14 chip will outperform the 10 nm Intel i9 or even the i7. They merely claimed that the iPad Pro beat an unspecified MacBook (i9? i7? even i5?) on some internal tests. So keep these 3 things in mind.
1. The MacBook Pro runs tons of heavy duty performance software that the iPad Pro can't run at all rendering that test worthless for people with serious computing needs.
2. The i9 isn't even Intel's most powerful chip. The Xeon, which goes in the Mac Pro, is.
3. Intel won't be at 10 nm forever. AMD is at 7 nm, after all, and is expected to reach 5 nm as early as 2021.
What you aren't considering: "Pro" users whose computing needs tend to the ultra-high performance scale make up a tiny percentage of Mac sales. We already know that Mac is willing to give up the similarly tiny percentage of Windows (bootcamp and virtualization) users. The switch to ARM may mean that Mac is willing to give up workstation crowd too. (Because, er, making workstations will mean that Apple CAN'T put the same chips in workstations that they put in iPhones, ok? There are power/heating/expense constraints that smartphones have to work within. Make custom Apple Silicon to run in workstations? Yeah ... that's a worthwhile expense for the 250-500k Mac Pros that they sell a year. Not to mention it would drive up the cost.)
The purpose of Mac switching to ARM may well to increase convergence with iPad and iPhone users. Not to match Intel i9s and Xeons on computing power.
I don't Apple will lower prices for their computers. They determine a price point, give or take, and design a machine they think will provide enough value for their target market. So, no price changes for Apple Silicon Macs. It'll will be tiered similarly today, from $1000 to $6000 across the lineup.
Why again is Apple foolish for designing their own OS and HW around their specific needs? Because, as you note, they aren't the first? Why does being first matter?
"Pro" users, which you put into quotes. LOL Besides Apple having addressed this in detail during WWDC—as if it needed to be since it should obvious—this false and elitist notion of what how a professional user is defined is always laughable on this forums.
There is so many speculations about this model. It may happen that new Air can supplement it by low weight and a bit bigger size. Lower size can be reserved for iPads.
I fully expect Apple to keep the price the same, partially because that is what Apple does but also remember that they need to pay for processor development costs as well as the design and development of the all-new A1x-powered systems.
Personally I'm interested and excited to see what the performance of these new systems is. We've already seen how powerful the A12z processor in the iPad Pro is. That's already a generation old and likely put under some thermal constraints by the iPad packaging. An A14-powered MacBook with better thermal management could potentially give excellent power along with much better battery life than we've seen.
My example used $100 -- you can substitute $50 and the point still stands. And, if you read the quote I was referencing, the idea came from the article I was responding to.
That all costs money - and it is fixed over the cost of all the units sold with it.
Good point. I was referring, as he did to lower costs, not lower selling prices. I used the wrong word. Sorry for the confusion.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/189912/intel-core-i5-8210y-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html
They probably don't pay that for the Air as they'll get bigger discounts with higher shipment volume (Air is a few million units) but higher-end MBPs ship much fewer units.
The CPUs in the 16" MBP are:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/191045/intel-core-i7-9750h-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-50-ghz.html ($395)
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192987/intel-core-i9-9880h-processor-16m-cache-up-to-4-80-ghz.html ($556)
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192990/intel-core-i9-9980hk-processor-16m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html ($583) <- Apple charges $300 to upgrade to this from the base chip
If the Apple Silicon chips from the Air can be tiled/stacked for the MBP, they don't need to be significantly more expensive. If the Air chip is $50 and the MBP chip is $100, they can knock nearly $300 off the price of every 16" MBP.
It will be interesting to see if they do upgrade chip versions. They don't do this with the iOS devices. There isn't a 6-core 12" iPad Pro and an 8-core 12" iPad Pro. I expect what they'll do is use SSD storage and RAM as the upgrades or maybe custom co-processors.
Just now, the top i9, top AMD 5600M, 512GB/16GB costs $3499. If 5nm Apple Silicon chips match the i9 and 5600M, that equivalent model could be $2099. Apple likely won't sell their own chips at really low prices but they have the flexibility to do this with their own hardware and still have much healthier margins. There's easily $500 from those higher-end MBP models going to Intel and AMD just now and that would just be the manufacturing costs with their own chips. They might not pass $500 to the consumer but even $200 extra in margins and $300 price drop, everybody is better off.