JessiReturns

In other news, Apple isn't likely to produce a flying car this year. Maybe next year.

Seriously, though the "tech" "press" really are kinda clueless.  Now when they do produce a flying car, these bozos can say "Delayed since 2016, beleaguered Apple *FINALLY* introduces its flying car."

sog35 said:

So this is the type of amazing insight we are paying Angela Ahredts $100 million a year for.

worth it.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but this is actually a brilliant and counter-intuitive move.


Plus if the $100M is in appreciation of stock options, then it's a steal.  I doubt Apple is shelling out a tenth of a billion in cold cash for her... stock options align her interests with those of the shareholders-- and you too can be a shareholder and profit from her insight.

Herbivore2 said:

It is doubtful that Intel will get Apple's business readily. TSMC has developed InFO which allows for thinner chip profiles. In addition, TSMC is about to move into the lead with respect to advanced manufacturing on smaller nodes. 

While integrating the modem as part of the SoC allows for certain advantages, TSMC has other advantages over Intel. 

Time will tell, but it is doubtful that Apple moves to Intel foundries anytime soon. 

dick applebaum said:

Does this foretell the ability to run legacy x86 Intel apps on ARM chips?

Fabrication is a very capital intensive business, much like chip design, and the moves on the chess board must be made years in advance of the results-- so Apple has spent years getting away from Samsung.  Getting dependent on TSMC isn't a huge improvement, Apple has made itself independent- both by in-housing chip design and also by making their designs flexible for manufacturing.

So a few years down the line, Intel could win some business from TSMC.  Apple will always keep multiple foundries fighting for its business, and thus they will need to compete on process.

Intel and TSMC both are great at process, though intel is ahead. 

Legacy x86 will never run on ARM chips, except in emulation.  What makes ARM into an ARM chip is its instruction set (ARM stands for "Advanced RISC Machines" and RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computing". x86 is CISC or "Complex Instruction Set Computing") 

The ARM Instruction set is what gives it superior power-per-watt vs Intel approach of chasing superior-power-at-any-watts.  To reduce power per watt , Intel can improve process-- and they have-- or go to another instruction set -- and if they do the latter it will no longer be x86. 

But take the superior instruction set of an ARM, and the superior SoC Design of Apple and add Intel's process advantages, and that would put Apple even further ahead of everyone else.  Literally nobody would be able to compete, even other ARM licensees (because LG is using off the shelf ARM IP, while Apple is doing better stuff in house.)

I would love it if this has a Polaris GPU.  

Even more importantly I need 32GB of RAM.

Though maybe a PCIe SSD drive will be fast enough to make this less of a problem.... But right now 16GB is not enough, and my SSD is slow on this aging Macbook Pro.


Even better- I hope the external GPU rumors are true.  Would love to have an external GPU box that I can leave at home for gaming.

"intellectual property experts from the likes of Google"

That's like saying "fiduciary responsibility experts from the likes of Congress"