Rough as they inevitably are, I found these numbers useful. A cost saving will always be useful to Apple but there are signs, at least in the UK, that they are passing some of it on to the end user.
For example, Mac mini with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD: Apple Silicon £899 Intel Silicon £1099 (Another imperfect set of numbers)
The most exciting thing about this to me is that Apple seems to have opened up a sufficiently large performance gap that the average customer will notice it. Suddenly there's a benefit obvious to everyone of paying a little more for an Apple computer.
I doubt it, but keep in mind that Apple already had a sizable in-house investment for their A-series processors and probably now gets to share a lot of the R&D burden and benefits across multiple product groups. The net cost of the total R&D will be higher going forward, but the overall benefits, strategic and tactical, should be enormous. The reduced processor and component costs are gravy.
Plus Apple is going to need to develop something equivalent to Tesla’s full self driving computer, and the development of the M series is likely a step along that path. So the R&D costs are likely shared on that end too.
Comments
For example, Mac mini with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD:
Apple Silicon £899
Intel Silicon £1099
(Another imperfect set of numbers)
The most exciting thing about this to me is that Apple seems to have opened up a sufficiently large performance gap that the average customer will notice it. Suddenly there's a benefit obvious to everyone of paying a little more for an Apple computer.