safi_cz

mjtomlin said:

safi_cz said:

StrangeDays said:

swineone said:

many of the best new macOS Monterey features will only work on Apple Silicon. And so they should.

Planned obsolescence much? Indeed that's the case as will be clear from the breakdown below.

[pretend engineering snipped]

Conclusion: yeah, it's all marketing, and Apple pressuring us into an upgrade we don't really need. So much for being so "green", it's all about the greenbacks (as well it should be, but let's not pretend Apple is a saint).

Nah, you just made up a bunch of crap and claimed it as fact.

Swineone is right and you are wrong. It is planned obsolesce and also logical step. Fact: Apple I9 Macbook pro is still the most powerfull Macbook Apple has in its lineup. Even today Apple continues to promote it as a powerful tool for graphic and video professionals. And such pro tool (claimed by Apple)  is not capable to handle real time blur? Or almost real time OCR?  Yes it is. 

Second - "green environment".  You may not remember, but there were days, when you can change battery in your laptop without changing half of its case. Milled aluminium case. 

However - Apple would be stupid not to make some new features available only for M1 otherwise Apple would act against its long time strategy. After all - it is company, which primary goal is to make money:-) 

It is not planned obsolescence. "Planned obsolescence" is when a product has an inherent feature that is designed to fail at some point, making that product unusable and forcing an upgrade. There is no such thing in Intel Macs. Making a new products more desirable by giving them extra features, does not make older products obsolete. All this is, is incentivizing users to move forward and onto new hardware.

The fact is, the M1 has specialized processors that can perform tasks and process data without affecting the rest of the system. This is what makes Apple's SoC's so powerful and efficient. Apple could very well add all these "features" to Intel Macs, but those systems would probably take a major performance hit and Apple didn't think it was worth wasting the resources for a sub-par experience.

I agree that M1 can perform such task with much less watts and overall CPU / GPU utilisation. And Apple probably made right decision to not implement some features for Intel Macs to keep / provide longer battery life, because this is what matters the most in Covid / post Covid new reality (together with good camera). 

However I believe, that obsolescence in computer word is a standard planned and calculated product feature that most manufacturers do (including Apple) and it is not bad. And Apple has many good reasons to do it for Intel Macs and speed it to delicate point, that Apple customers will still accept it. Mainly not because of additional revenues it brings, but because of following reasons:
- OSX development for two CPU platforms is pain in the ass and longer you do it, the higher risk you take and that can easily result into PR disaster or in lawsuit (security, performance, design flaws, etc..).
- You may have the best managers in the world, but there are limits of what you can successfully manage. From certain point required communication and decisions process complexity rises exponentially.
- Sooner you stop production of OSX for Intel, the sooner you can get rid of the messy situation and streamline you organisation structure, processes and effort. Also you can reduce number of your staff. I worked for Czech Airlines that used planes from both manufacturers - Boeing and Airbus. You may not believe, how many processes even in HQ could be avoided by switching to only one plane manufacturer. Not only plane purchase, maintenance, pilot training, but overall management - cost prediction, revenue calculation, back office activities, audit, compliance with regulations etc.
- Working on technology to be depreciated is not a good motivation for employees - many negative HR impacts. 
- HW design and manufacture process for two CPU platforms is not cheap activity.
- Support for HW and SW required by law in some countries (including replacement parts). 

In my opinion Apple has a valid motivation to push current Intel Macs users to M1, and use all methods that his users/customers consider as legal or morale adequate. Do not  forget - Apple prefers to accept all regulations from non democratic regimes like China or Russia to protect revenue for its shareholder (valid and correct business decision), so Apple is capable of pushing its customers little bit more that we all would like it.  

But it does not mean, that I like it as a intel mac user (cannot switch due to my client M1 unsupported OSX frameworks).

EDIT: We should not forget about Apple T2 chip, that has some picture/video features too.