discountopinion

This release of M3 processors is a tour de force and is a clear demonstration of Apple and TMSC teams maturity of execution, collaboration and increased confidence in the process. Extremely extremely encouraging as an Apple fanboi, full spectrum customer and shareholder.

I can’t say how impressed i am about this level of execution and innovation at the same time. Next choke point will be the ramp supply faster to enable even more products to adopt the silicon from day 1. I imagine they go through a Tesla like production hell each ramp. Massive kudos to the team and wish them all success to ramp faster which will drive a portfolio wide upgrade rather than drip drip during the year.

My feeling is that Apple product launch cycles are largely constraints driven rather than concept maturity driven.

The iMac M3 is an absolute steal for the performance at this price point with a nice screen. Likely the best TCO and ergonomics for an office computer for most companies. People working off laptops is a killer health wise with horrific longer term body posture and chronic pain issues. Adding extra cost of screens and external keyboards makes the iMac even more competitive. Would have loved to see a 27 or 32 inch version though.

Apple should really lean in on Corporate fleet deploys of the iMac. Maybe they can call it fleet for Mac. It has a nice sound to it.

I am hoping that Apple goes full Gandalf on this release and puts a stake in the ground and does a line in the silicon on capability across their eco-system.

Hopefully they will go all in on HW RT across all their launched computer devices to ensure TAM growth for the games developers or the push is pretty much meaningless.
Another would be significant Neural engine boosts to prepare for on device generative AI models. Snapdragon is already touting it so Apple cannot be behind.

Overall the M* chips have shown to have great horsepower for genAI but Apple needs to make it a concerted and conscious push rather than a happy coincidence.

I am very much hoping for M3 HW RT + Neural Engine next generation all the things across Macs, iPad Pro and dare I say it - Apple TV.

Generative Fill like tech would be epic to help Apple TV clean, upscale and improve bad streaming video quality, compensate for network glitches etc.

Snapdragon 8 Gen3 has thrown down a useful gauntlet and I can see Apple loving the competitive challenge.

Nvidia will make oodles of cash as everyone is playing catch up on AI. It is a war of attrition in terms of capex. $5B costs that likely will increase dramatically year on year for an unknown period of time.

Now Apple just happens to sit on one of the world’s best silicon teams. Apple may want to do a Tesla like Dojo sprint and roll their own server side AI silicon or even license/partner with Tesla on it.

If they can pull this off then it feels like the sustainable move. Nvidia needs a strong counter weight.

For me this launch is something i will watch with great interest as a shareholder. 

On paper it seems like an excellent way to cover costs of streaming contentt and also getting a semi funded marketing happening and buzz included for the streaming service.
Good stuff all around in my book and maybe this will be the default playbook for more ambitious content.

Seems like early signs are promising and this is great as it may help pave the way for more content that may be a bit less commercially mainstream. 

From my side truth and perception are sometimes hard to disentangle. Apple not having visible generative AI products and a really poor quality assistant Siri that has fallen behind the times makes perception of falling behind the truth. Apple will likely have issues in attracting AI talent that is gravitating towards Google, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla etc.

They can have all the innovation in the world behind closed doors but silence is increasingly equaling falling behind in a market that is extremely open source and open discourse about their innovations.

In my view it is a huge miss at Apple to be so behind in shipping strong AI features in their products and OS. Some executives should really be replaced as they have become complacent with a string of years of high profits and margins. Craig should have ridden the AI wave but dropped the ball. They are getting the old bank disease. 

As an Apple fanboi, I find it hugely disappointing that Apple is not ground zero for some of the seismic shifts in the industry on this topic. Acquiring Siri a decade so ago was a great move and then they completely let it die on the vine. 

Right now it seems like the elite at Apple can be found in the chip department and the rest are muddling through bailed out by industry leading silicon.

Multimodal models are now busy blowing the barn doors off what is possible and Apple is busy polishing the edges of the as-is.