cloudguy

Of course, you all know by now that I am not an Apple apologist. But I am not anti-Apple either! So take my point of view. Take cloud streaming. The single most promising cloud streaming effort - in my opinion - is Nvidia GeForce Now. Why? Because it allows you to play the games that you have already purchased on a Microsoft Windows PC instance in the cloud: Steam and Epic games. Or at least they did. The publishers of lots of these games refuse to allow them on GeForce Now. Despite the fact that the purchasers of these games have already bought a copy, the people who created and published the game stated that those licenses were only good for downloading them to and running them on PCs. That they didn't have a licensing model to cover cloud applications. So GeForce Now was very reluctantly forced to delist most of their catalog.

This is the same. When these publishers put these apps on the App Store, they only licensed them for iOS and iPadOS. That is a valid, legal binding contract. Those apps can't be put on tvOS, watchOS or macOS without the publishers agreeing to license them. Why wouldn't they? Who knows. But ultimately the apps are owned by the publishers. So long as they meet Apple's terms of service, they have the unilateral right to decide which platforms their apps appear on, and even to pull them from the App Store entirely. Apple's hands are completely tied here. There is literally nothing they can do legally. If they allow or do not act to prevent license violations, these app developers can and will sue them and will absolutely win because Apple will not have a valid defense. At all.

Remember: iOS is not Android. It is Android that has always sold itself as an open ecosystem and app developers who embrace Android do so fully knowing that their licenses aren't going to be honored: people are going to obtain their apps and install them on whatever devices they want, often without paying. It is for this reason that lots of developers avoid Android like the plague. They chose Apple instead because Apple promised them a secure ecosystem that would act to protect their investment as developers by enforcing their licenses and not allowing their apps to run anywhere that they aren't authorized. 

I repeat: this is a good thing. A very good thing. Security, privacy and control: the very reason why developers choose Apple over Android and Windows and why users choose Apple over Android and Windows in the first place. Well, users other than me. I prefer maximum control, which is why I prefer Linux and Android. And developers other than me. If I ever get back in the software development game again - it has been awhile and things have, er, changed lol - I will choose Android because I would want my apps to be distributed as widely as possible and, and there is the "freemium/free with ads" models to monetize those who sideload.

But I want people who have different wants - indeed different business needs than my own - to have a choice. Apple offers them a choice. Good grief, think about work environments that require security clearances. Would you even want a computer with the ability to install unauthorized apps on them in the first place? Of course not. That is why if I had a business or contract with those constraints, everyone would be required to use iPhones, iPads and Macs and they would all have the strictest MDMs to lock them down as possible. Despite my personal preference for Linux, Android and ChromeOS, business needs are business needs. OK?

As for you folks who said "why did I buy an M1 Mac in the first place if it can't run mobile apps!" ... I am sorry but buying a PC to run mobile apps makes absolutely no sense at all. They are not what PCs are for. I bought my first two ChromeOS devices long before Google added Android and Linux app capability to them and was perfectly fine with both. Your M1 Mac is just the same as your Intel Mac was, except a good bit faster.

Also, can you wait a bit PLEASE? The M1 Mac platform isn't even 3 months old yet. Give more developers time to update their licensing terms. It will be less than a year. Even better: wait 2-3 years when developers embrace writing apps with iOS, iPadOS and macOS versions! Lots of them are going to do it but it is just going to take time. They can't do it right now because they don't have M1 Macs suitable for this development work yet. Don't roll your eyes: the only M1 Macs released have been entry level devices: Mac Minis, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros with 16 GB of RAM and rudimentary GPUs. Wait until the 32 and 64 GB RAM workhorse machines with GPUs capable of taking on the best of Nvidia and AMD become available so the developers of your favorite iPad apps will actually be able to tweak their existing apps and make new ones. These M1 Macs that you bought today will still be good in 2023, right? And you didn't just throw your previous perfectly functional Intel Mac in the trash when you bought your M1 model did you? (If you did, that's on you.) 

I can't believe that I am actually defending Apple products from Apple fans on an Apple site but here we are. But if you are going to get upset over stuff like this: well Windows and ChromeOS beckon. You can run all the Android apps you want on a Chromebook or Chromebox, and with BlueStacks and its competitors running Android apps on Windows is easy too. 

anantksundaram said:

About time.

He's been an abject disaster for Intel, its customers, and the country.

What on earth are you talking about? The guy only took over in 2018. He was the fall guy for pre-existing issues.

Light years behind ARM and decades behind Apple's designs? Sure buddy. For the millionth time, the problem is not Intel's ability to design a 10nm, 7nm or 5nm chip but their inability to manufacture one. Intel could sign a contract to have Samsung manufacture their 5nm chips tomorrow and those chips would be available to purchase in 6 months. Intel won't do this because their chips still have market share that range from 50% (desktop) to 75% (server/cloud). Also, Intel wants consumers to buy the 14nm and 10nm chips that they still have in inventory and are still manufacturing, meaning that Intel won't be in any real rush to get to 7nm and 5nm until about 2023 anyway. Otherwise they will lose more money on their current chips than they will make on the new ones.

Bottom line: more Chromebooks with Intel chips are going to sell in 2021 than Macs with M1 (or M1X or M2) chips. Apple isn't Intel's competition and those of you who insist on believing otherwise are just setting yourselves up for disappointment. My guess is that in 2 years all of these columns on the coming Apple dominance are going to just quietly disappear, just as the ones from 2012 on how iPads were going to crush Windows and 2014 on how Android, Google and Samsung were on their last legs and 2016 on how the iPad had crushed console gaming and Apple was going to buy what was left of Nintendo in order to exclusively feature them on iPads and Apple TV did.

Sigh. Even Ars Technica claims that Intel's Alder Lake is a response or was influenced by/a ripoff of the M1. Shows you how the media just puts a pro-Apple spin on everything. In reality Intel is merely adopting the big.LITTLE architecture that has been standard in ARM/RISC designs of more than 4 cores for years. For example, the Qualcomm 808 used a big.LITTLE design way back in 2015. Back then, the Apple A9 was still a dual core chip (both Firestorm or equivalent).

Also, as someone above truthfully stated, wait until we get a 10nm octacore chip on Alder Lake architecture, which should occur in 2022. That is when we will FINALLY be able to get an apples to apples comparison (pun not intended) on performance and power.

The Alder Lake CPUs will be primarily used in 2-in-1 ultraportables that will compete with the MacBook Air (except they will have touchscreens, 2-in-1 designs and some will even have 5G) and in gaming laptops. So if you want a 2-in-1 or to play Steam games, you aren't going to by an M1 MacBook Air no matter how much faster it runs or less power it uses because that M1 MacBook Air won't have the features, functionality or ability to run the software that motivates people to buy the Windows and Chromebook (Chromebooks will gain the ability to run Steam this year) competition. When you add the fact that the Alder Lake competition will also be several hundred dollars cheaper than an entry level MBA, this will be still more reasons why the M1 won't change Apple's 7%-8% market share. 

What decline is this person speaking of? Quantify it. Also Apple doesn't have all of TSMC's 5nm capability. They arr making 5 nm chips for AMD and would have had capacity for Qualcomm had Qualcomm been willing to pay a bit more and countenance limited availability for about a month. Qualcomm is expected to go back to TSMC for the Snapdragon 898 in 2022.

Also the reason for the 2023 thing is that Intel doesn't have a 5nm design yet. They have 10nm designs that they cannot manufacture anything bigger than 4 cores in large yields and 7nm designs that they cannot manufacture at all.

While everyone is concern-trolling Intel no one is facing reality. Which is:

1. There is no mass migration from Windows to macOS underway and isn't going to be. If anything Windows is losing more share to ChromeOS than Windows, and thanks mostly to Google and Samsung being stupid nearly all Chromebooks use Intel also.

2. While AMD is a formidable competitor in theory in practice they cannot make enough chips to keep up with demand. Why? Because AMD's chips are made by TSMC like everyone else and AMD will not pay Samsung to help them increase volume. So OEMs have to choose between massive availability for Intel's 14 nm chips that they can have today or getting in line for AMD's 7nm chips that they can get maybe next year. Thid doesn't affect Apple because their 6-7% market share for devices that start at $999 allows them to pay to be front of the line. If you make Windows, ChromeOS or Linux PCs you are part of the 93% share with devices that start under $200.

So before you start talking about Intel's decline, provide some DATA on increased macOS market share AND their only competitor AMD signing a deal with Samsung that would allow them to double the volume of Ryzen chips they can put on the market. As it is, AMD can't even keep up with the demand for XBox and Playstation APUs (what the x86 world is calling CPUs and GPUs on the same physical chip) to the point where Microsoft publicly called them out, let alone the 250 million x86 PCs that move in a given year.

As far as Daniel Loeb goes, I bet he is just a Mac and iPhone guy anyway. He wants Intel to get into the ARM business. Which makes no sense ... we don't even know how a 5nm Intel Core i5 with an octacore big.LITTLE architecture would perform yet. Also coming out with a better ARM design than Samsung and Qualcomm would take years - AMD already started years ago but haven't decided whether to take it to market - and even if they do who is going to make it? If they make ARM chips on their existing 14nm node or their troubled 10nm node that accomplishes what, exactly? Samsung and TSMC are well into initial runs of their 3nm process and will start producing their first batches next year.

If Loeb has ideas on finding a chip fab that can manufacture the 10nm and 7nm volume that they need, then he should share them. Otherwise he is just seeking publicity for himself by endorsing the public consensus that is generated by Apple fans in the media using bad information.