Rob Enderle recommends to stay away from Apple Silicon Macs
Do you remember this fellow, he is still writing about Apple products.
Some of the best bits:
Some of the best bits:
- This move to ARM for PCs is Apple’s second big pivot; the first was pivoting to x86 from PowerPC, which eventually damaged both IBM and Intel (I wonder why firms do business with Apple, given their abusive history). Now with their M1 part, they are going to try to go it alone.
- Apple’s opening claim with their M1 SoC is that it results in a platform that is faster than 98% of laptops. A number of us are having issues with this claim, really a lot of us. It could be accurate if you don’t measure actual work and use some for the artificial benchmark. There have been several processors--Transmeta comes to mind--that could, on an artificial benchmark, outperform x86.
- If the application calls features or capabilities that x86 parts have, and ARM doesn’t, you’ll likely see a crash or additional performance degradation. Besides, if the part were good with existing code, why not transition the entire product line?
- There is an old saying that “Prospectors get the arrows, and settlers get the land.” Nothing is making you migrate immediately to a new laptop, and you can buy decent used Macs if yours has broken.
- Do remember Apple employs a lock-in strategy, so you don’t get a ton of choice. With Lock-In, the vendor doesn’t have to price competitively and can more easily lift prices to increase margins. This strategy drives vendors to cheapen products while increasing prices until their customer base revolts. In effect, it layers on an Apple tax where you pay a premium to be part of the club.
- Whether it will be competitive or not, well probably not, but that’s often been the case with Apple products which sell more on status than performance. With many, we worried about our jobs, covering rent, and juggling work, and homeschooling for our kids. We don’t need more aggravations.