techconc

I find the responses in this thread far more amusing than anything the story has to offer.  

That said, I'd like to respond to a few points.

1. Those who suggest this isn't a loss for Apple are wrong.  Full stop.  It's not a big deal in the scheme of things and Apple will find others to do the work.  However, if you're well known in the industry and even have a wikipedia page based on your accomplishments, you probably have something valuable to offer.  The point being, taking a hard nosed approach to such working arrangements will result in a loss of very talented people that have choices to work elsewhere.  What you end up with are less talented people who have fewer employment choices that accept such terms. 

2. This is a complex problem.  All jobs are not the same.  Apple is trying to push a "1 size fits all" solution to something that really needs to be addressed at a department level, not a company-wide level.  The job of any manager is to get the maximum work done by your team.  If that is effectively accomplished from home and makes for happier employees, then that's the model companies should adopt.  

3. A hybrid solution seems to work the best.  Let's face it, life, especially work life, is not the same after COVID.  Unless you're working in retail, you've had a taste of working from home.  For most people in most jobs, that's preferable.  OTOH, there is value in face to face meetings and collaborations.  A hybrid solution really satisfies both.  I'm going in once per week now.  That's a nice balance.  Our workgroup all agrees to be in on the same day and we schedule meetings for that purpose on that day.  

4.  WFH doesn't imply a work-life imbalance as some suggest.  I occasionally get an e-mail later in the evening.  I feel no obligation to answer it just because someone sent it after hours.  If that's what works for them, great.  As long as people are responsive during core business hours, that's all that should be required or expected.  Similarly, if I choose to send an e-mail after hours, I don't expect anyone to respond to it until the next day. 

This is a sad day for the Mac community to be sure.  I've always enjoyed his website.  I recall many years ago reaching out to him about something and he was the type that was happy to provide a thoughtful reply.  He and his site will be missed. My condolences to his family and friends.

9secondkox2 said:

Beyond that, let’s be real. The most impressive thing about alder lake is not even Intels CPU. It’s Nvidia's GPU. AND Apple is fighting a war on two fronts with CPU and GPU. It’s winning the CPU war for the most part. Won’t be too long before the GPU war swings Apples way either.  

The two are not directly related.  Nvidia just happens to make the best video cards suitable for Intel based PCs.  There also isn't much of a battle with the CPU.  CPUs are inherently scalable in performance.  If either Apple or nVidia wants to scale up performance, they can do so by adding more cores.  No new technology is really needed for that.  The big difference is that Apple is using shared / unified memory so it doesn't have to waste energy or performance by sending data from the CPU memory to the GPU memory and back again. 

Intel is building their own GPUs as well.  There is no technical reason Intel couldn't wholly adopt Apple's SoC approach and try to compete on that level.  

9secondkox2 said:

3DFX was on top, with Nvidia nipping at their heels. 3DFX was usually less efficient and NVIDIA was usually the more efficient, but only slightly behind in performance. 3DFX got comfortable “one day” and Nvidia eclipsed them. 

What did 3DFX do? They pulled an Alder Lake and mashed a bunch of cores onto a graphics board and required multiples power supplies. This allowed them to recapture the performance lead once again, but at the cost of a messy, ridiculously power hungry setup. 

The 3DFX history was interesting for different reasons.  At the time, you mostly only had 2D video card acceleration.  3DFX came along with an additional card that was 3D only.  Your 2D card would output to the 3DFX card and the from there it would connect to the monitor.  3DFX also had the early jump with game developers targeting their APIs specifically.  

Over time, once all video cards had 3D acceleration and games were written for common APIs such as OpenGL or eventually Direct 3D, they lost their advantage.

wood1208 said:

Intel is gunning at the wrong target. Because Apple is and will be out of Intel's range, far ahead. What Intel needs to fear is loosing market share to AMD, NVIDIA than

Apple. Moreover, Apple is in it's own league with huge financial and tech resources to stay ahead Intel or others in chip area.

Apple is showing the way forward.  To compete with Apple will naturally provide the advantage over AMD, etc.  That is, assuming AMD and others don't also follow Apple's direction.

redgeminipa said:

So, in other words, Intel is admitting they're an easy 2 years behind Apple in chip development. Because, you know, Apple's 2023 M-series chips will be... more powerful and efficient than the current crop...

Where was Intel's motivation when Apple was a dedicated customer all of those years? How long ago did the rumors of Apple's plans to make computer SOCs start flying? Why didn't Intel attempt to get into gear then? They had plenty of time to attempt to retain Apple as a customer, but kept dragging their feet. This is starting to sound a little like the Blackberry story, or was it called the Blueberry? Those are such a distant memory anymore. 

Yeah, there are things Intel can do to help narrow the gap.  They can work with TSMC to get on their best process as well.  The problem is, we don't know that Intel is committed to the SoC path that relies on shared / unified memory, etc.  That would be a drastic departure for Intel and their existing customers expectations.  Likewise, I really doubt Intel is committed to going all in on such solutions.

To your point, yeah, where was Intel when Apple was their customer?  They were complacent and stagnant.  They desperately needed a swift kick in the rear to wake up and try to be competitive once again.

hackintoisier said:

My take: Arrow lake-p seems to be designed to match a similar performance per watt as apple’s m series chips. Arrow lake-h seems to be designed to leave apple in the dust. But only time will tell. The benefactor of this competition will be us, the consumer. 

Anyone can make plans and roadmaps.  Successfully executing on those plans is another thing.  Intel has not displayed much competence in their execution in recent years.  They've fallen behind with their manufacturing process.  Their only hope is to partner with TSMC as Apple has to get on their advanced nodes.  That alone won't be enough though.  x86/x64 ISA will never be as efficient as more modern RISC based designs.  Yes, Intel converts to microcode now and leverages RISC techniques, but their decoder will always be handicapped compared to ARM and others due to uneven CISC instruction sizes.  Finally, unless Intel commits to fully leveraging shared / unified memory, they will always lag in terms of efficiency.  Right now, Intel is NOT competitive with Apple.  Sure, they've increased their single core performance to be ahead of M1, but at the cost of extreme power and heat.  No Intel based laptop is competitive with an Apple MacBook Pro at this point.  They can match performance when plugged in, but when you go unplugged, performance drops in half.  As for the desktop, Apple hasn't played their Mac Pro desktop performance card yet.  Expect dual and quad M1 Max configurations which will put Intel at a disadvantage for desktops as well.

DAalseth said:

Maybe Apple has decided that €50 million is just the cost of doing business. 

Yeah, just to do a little perspective on this.  Using the back of the napkin math...   Apple made $34.6 Billion USD profit last quarter.  Convert to Euros, that's 30.6+ Billion Euros.  Divide by 90 (days in the quarter) and that's 340+ million Euros profit per day or roughly 14+ million Euros per hour they make in profit.  So, the maximum fine represents the profit Apple makes in about 3 hours.  I suspect they can't be bothered by such nonsense.