cloudguy

"The expansion of the Neural Engine to 16 cores instead of 8 cores brought up the question of why Apple elected to devote transistors there and not budgeted for more GPU or CPU performance, which Millet suggests is down to how Apple views the feature."

Two things.

1. There are a lot of AI features on mobile and this will increase in the future. You offload those AI features to their own chips for the same reason that floating point math was offloaded at one time and graphics and security functions are offloaded now. Separating the specialized functions allows for botth the specialized and generalized functions to run better.

2. The other companies involved in AI - Microsoft, Amazon, Google - are using the cloud for AI. Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware. Apple is going to either aim to provide more AI functionality locally than the competition can provide using the cloud - which should be possible in theory so long as Apple can come up with applications for it - or provide similar AI functionality but with more "speed, security and privacy" than shipping AI queries and results back and forth over a 5G connection.

While it isn't this way on PCs - yet - go ahead and accept that going forward there are going to be 3 main processing units in mobile: CPU, GPU and AI. 

This is dumb. Similar to the search engine on Android auction for the EU - which was won by Microsoft and Yandex - any and all actions to break up Google and Apple will only benefit Microsoft. Let me repeat: any and all actions to break up Google and Apple will only benefit Microsoft (and Amazon and Facebook). It won't "open up" squat. It will just shift things around a bit at the top. 

It may actually hurt things. Google's existence is the very thing that keeps us from having to rely on Microsoft for everything. (This is true even if you use Apple hardware whether you wish to admit it or not.) Also, the war between Google and Amazon forced Google to court retailers - especially WalMart and Best Buy - as alternative channels. 

Also, do these folks know that without the Chrome browser, Chrome OS would be absolutely worthless? So give Chrome OS to who then? To Microsoft? Don't make me laugh. To Amazon? Yeah, they did such a good job with smartphones - when they didn't even invest the OS - that we should totally believe that they have the capability to compete with Microsoft and Apple in PCs. Who else is there? Oracle maybe? Again, they did such a good job with the tech that they got from Sun, didn't they? I still remember when their CEO stated that the cloud was going to fail. 

Also, getting rid of Chrome wouldn't do squat to solve the real problem - Google's search and ads dominance - in the first place. Apple folks should understand this: why do AirPods and the Apple Watch dominate? Because they are the best, right? Same here. First off, Google was #1 in search before the Chrome browser in the first place. Prior to Chrome, the #1 browser was Firefox, where Google was default. Also, everyone who used IE would make Google the default search engine. Ads? More of the same. Google bought DoubleClick - back when Microsoft, Yahoo or anyone else could have but no one wanted it - combined it with their own tech, came up with some innovative offerings like AdWords and so forth.

Look, if you want to split search off from Google then fine. Liberating Android, ChromeOS, Nest etc. from Google's singular focus on search would make that company better. "Wear OS is crap, our ChromeOS UI is buggy, there are no productivity apps for Android tablets, we go years without updating Android TV or our smart speakers and no one buys our Pixel phones, and were Samsung to ditch us we would be up a creek with no paddle? Ah, big deal, we get hundreds of billions a year off ads so who cares." But splitting Chrome - a free product that is primarily open source - from Google would just inconvenience billions of users while accomplishing nothing at all. 

sflocal said:

CheeseFreeze said:

Yup, this is the Apple I know as a developer. They are like the mafia. Time they get in serious trouble with the EU and get forced to clean house.

You're that rude guest that enters someone else's house, and then whine about how the owner runs it.

I you want the wild-west and anything-goes mentality, then stick to developing on Android.  The reason iOS is so popular and profitable is for those exact reasons you hate it.

As a developer myself, I remember the days of boxed software and self-marketing and particularly all the overhead.  

Ummm ... Android is even more popular and even more profitable. Android market share: 85%. Android app revenue when ALL app stores are added in including the #1 app market in the world - China - that Google Play is not present: more than the App Store and has been for years. Of course, I am not saying that Apple should adopt Google's model and I am particularly not saying that the government should force them to. But it is past time for people like you to finally admit that both the Android and the iOS models are extremely successful. Google rode Android from being a tiny company that was legitimately threatened with being run out of business by the combination of Yahoo and Microsoft to a $1 trillion valuation. Had it not been for Android, Google would be a unit of Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle or even Tencent by now. Seriously, check Google's market cap in 2011, before Android really took off thanks to the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note, and now. 

And as a former developer myself, I remember when the vast majority of software sales were via direct download over the Internet to Windows PCs. Only a tiny percentage of software sales came from CDs and DVDs. And if you were on Linux, you downloaded your software over the Internet exclusively because there was no consumer commercial Linux software market. Let me state this: app stores already existed before the iPhone. And downloading software over the Internet had already long outstripped buying CDs from retail stores as the primary method of software distribution. Haven't you ever heard of download.com? Formerly cnet.com/download? Been around since 1996. Were so big at one point that they actually had a Super Bowl commercial!

These arguments that Apple is pushing are designed to trick two classes of people. 
1. Non-technical people such as the people with degrees in law, political science and economics/business that make up Congress, the judiciary and trade boards. (Note: one of the few judges to side with Google in the Oracle lawsuit over APIs was the one who writes code in his spare time and actually used said APIs.)
2. People under 30 who have basically grown up with iPhones and can't conceive of a world without them. 

mark fearing said:

Can you imagine what a mess will be created if this kind of argument gains the favor of the courts? What business has any control to curate anything? Why do some stores only take Visa? Why can't Walmart except my payment system? Why should Target mark-up my goods they buy wholesale? They best be carful because it seems all this is a house of cards if they truly attack a business setting up and painting rules for purchase. I'd guess this will cause havoc for many companies. They don't have to offer their service on iPhones, right? Is Apple forcing them to offer it? ugh. 

Another person who for some reason is ignoring the actual issues at stake here.

sflocal said:

I’m embarrassed to be associated with these entitled crybabies.  If you don’t like the way Apple runs its exclusive platform, leave.

That is, er, not the law. The law requires that marketplaces have clear rules that are evenly enforced as opposed to vague rules that are arbitrarily enforced, and particularly rules that are vague for the express purpose of favoring some entities - such as yourself - over others during enforcement. So while your sentiments are legitimate, they are in fact very illegal.