bleab

It is amazing. Google is making a ton of positive, aggressive decisions since the COVID-19 shutdown that would have made a real difference 5 years ago. It is as if splitting up the executives and managers and forcing them to work more independently has made it harder to bottle up good ideas. Or maybe the influence of the executives has diminished and allowed the product teams and engineers actually follow through. 

Another possibility: Google and Samsung have collaborated a lot more over the past year or so. I wonder if Samsung has been telling them "this is why our products sell - they're pretty good, not as good as Apple but the next best thing - and your's doesn't - they stink" and Google is finally listening.

omasou said:

The end of the headline should read... FOR Intel.

The CEO is probably so happy that he can blame further delays on the pandemic instead of Intel's inability to innovate and compete.

I've always thought this whole Apple Car thing wasn't so much about "the car" but instead about the hardware, i.e. silicon and the software. Apple doesn't want to sell cars they want car makers to use their hardware and software. What's the point of this side trip? The point is if Intel doesn't figure it out Apple will eat what's left of their processor business for mobile and embedded devices.

The Intel bashing is wishful thinking delusion. Thanks to the combination of Apple's small market share, terrible ARM chips by Qualcomm and MediaTek and the lack of capacity for AMD at TSMC who prioritizes mobile chips, Intel has 80% market share. Despite all of the "Intel is doomed" nonsense, this isn't going to change. Even if Apple Silicon double's the traditional macOS market share, it will still be barely over 10% and less than the ChromeOS market share for the past year. And while it seems that the Apple blogs have become AMD's biggest cheerleaders since Apple announced that they were leaving Intel, the truth is that the chip shortage has affected AMD even more. It is the reason for the latest XBox and PlayStation console shortages. Most OEMs and DIYers who want to use the latest AMD chips can't get their hands on enough to make more than a few models so they are resorting making new devices with the 10th and 11th gen Intel chips that they have on hand instead. Thanks to AMD making the decision to spin off their foundry, the main thing that keeps them from being truly able to rival Intel is TSMC's needing to make a combined 300 million iPhones and iPads a year, plus fill orders for the hundreds of millions of Qualcomm and MediaTek chips that go in Android and ChromeOS devices. Meanwhile Intel can dedicate their entire foundry output to their own chips.

Not only that but expect Intel to make inroads in the discrete GPU game in the next 2 years. AMD is going to continue to be stuck behind iPhone, iPad and Mac chips at TSMC. Nvidia is going to be held back by the combination of the bottleneck at TSMC and low yields at Samsung Foundries. So when the Intel discrete GPUs launch 3Q2021 they will sell by virtue of being pretty much the only option that people will be able to practically buy. So this whole idea that losing the 20 million CPUs that they sell Apple a year was going to set off this chain reaction that was going to bring Intel to their knees was always magical thinking, just as were the claims that iPads were going to kill off Microsoft and the endless "now THIS is what will finally kill off Android!" claims that have only recently stopped. While they certainly want it, Intel didn't need Apple's business before 2005 and they don't need it now. 

sflocal said

Many of us bought Macs with the intent of also using them to run Windows.  I am one of them, and know many that can't divorce Windows entirely.  That Macs could run Windows was key for me buying my first Mac back in 2008.  I even bought a new 2020 iMac knowing this will most likely be my last Intel machine, and can run Windows for many years to come until both ASi Macs, and maybe even Windows ARM will have been fully baked when I'm ready to get another new Mac.

Of the 20 million Macs that sell a year, if over 2 million of those ever see bootcamp I would be shocked. Of those at most 2 million yearly that are now without bootcamp, most will just get an HP or Lenovo desktop - one with a recent Intel Core i5 and an Nvidia or AMD GPU can cost as little as $500 so not that big of a deal - to complement their primary Mac device. Of the very few remaining that will actually ditch macOS completely over this, they will be replaced several times over by the new customers that Apple Silicon will attract. So they will sell more Macs and will be able to redeploy the programmers responsible for bootcamp to much better tasks. No downside to this for Apple.

I look at it this way. For flagship Android devices that have prices similar to an iPhone i.e. Samsung Galaxy S and Note as well as Google Pixel devices, then the ability to use third party app stores like Amazon and Samsung and sideload apps from APKMirror, F-Droid and itch.io is a major platform advantage and differentiator for power users. (Before you say "what about Android viruses and security!" suffice to say that people who actually use Android have a very different view of that platform's actual security situation than do people that are far more likely to bash Android than actually use it: https://www.androidcentral.com/why-android-security-fearmongering-bs ). But force iOS to be just like Android in this way and that is one less major reason to buy a Galaxy S21 FE instead of an iPhone 12 Mini (they cost about the same) or a Samsung Galaxy Tab instead of an iPad Air (again, about the same cost). 

So ... I would say that Samsung, Google, OnePlus, Xiaomi and the rest should root for Apple here. Android does better when it is different from iOS - be it price or features - and not the same. Samsung realized this, and by focusing on features that iPhones don't (yet) have became #1 in smartphone sales. Meanwhile Google is now 5 years into their "iPhone except running Android!" (who only Samsung haters like ... iPhone fans obviously have no use for them and actual Android types don't like them either) strategy and is actually selling fewer devices than they did in the Nexus era (because the Nexus differentiated from the iPhone also).