Rogue01

9secondkox2 said:

the iPhone SOC is for the phone. 

Don’t weaken the Mac just to have an even cheaper model. 

Interesting comment.  You are right, the A chip is for the phone, and the iPad.  Yet Apple continues to waste M chips in iPads, and hobble it with iPadOS.  Weaken the Mac for a cheaper model.  Yet the iPads with M chips overpower the iPad to make a more expensive model, but iPadOS 'cheapens' the M chip because it doesn't fully support the performance of the chip.  Yet Apple continues to make these iPads.

The performance of the A18 Pro is somewhere between the M2 and M3 chip.  If Apple wanted to make a lower cost Mac, they should just use older M chips.  They already do that now, the problem is, they don't lower the cost.  Hello Mac Pro?  2 years old and still using an outdated M2-based chip for $7,000.  The Mac mini development kit used the A12Z Apple Silicon chip because the M chip is based off the A chip.  So the A18 Pro can run macOS, and it would already be faster than the M1 chip.  The limitation would be memory and storage.  But the A18 Pro can support more memory, but Apple doesn't utilize that in a phone, because iOS apps don't need it.  In a Mac, it would likely have 16GB for Apple Intelligence.

If this Mac does become reality, it just further proves Apple's weird roadmap.  iPads using M chips before the Mac, Macs using outdated M chips while others get updated, and now possibly a Mac using an A chip?  Talk about further confusing customers.

dewme said:

Apple Silicon is one of the best planned and best executed moves by Apple - ever. If you're going to talk about Tim Cook's legacy, Apple Silicon has to be one of the crown jewels of his accomplishments at Apple. Truly masterful. 

Fortunately, Apple does not appear to be resting on its laurels with Apple Silicon. The competition is hot on Apple's heels and they have emerged from way way over the horizon to be within striking distance. As long as Apple continues to leverage not only the success of Apple Silicon, but everything else that makes Apple so unique, they will be in great shape. There can be no pause in the action. Intel paused and AMD caught them. Intel paused some more and Apple abandoned them. Now Intel is struggling to get back just to the wake of the slowest leaders. 

I know there has been a lot of turmoil and disruption in the marketplace caused by politics, and Apple has stumbled a little bit with Apple Intelligence and Siri, but it seems from the outside looking in that Apple still has its foot firmly planted on the accelerator pedal when it comes to Apple Silicon. They have to. Apple can't wait for the dust to settle from the passing bullshitnado to figure out where their next opportunity will be. Apple Silicon needs to stay on the fast track.

Are you in a reality distortion field?  
1) Tim Cook had nothing to do with Apple Silicon.  Apple had been using their own chips since the iPhone 4 in 2010 with the A4 chip.  The A chips and M chips are ARM processors.  Apple did not invent ARM.  The first ARM-based Mac was the development Mac mini with the A12Z, another evolution of the A chip.  The first M chip was based off the A14.  It was a natural evolution to start using ARM chips in Macs.  Rumors about that swirled for years.

2) The best executed move by Apple?  It took Apple 3 1/2 years to finish transitioning all Macs to Apple Silicon.  Apple finished the Intel transition in 278 days.  Apple did a better job transitioning from 680x0 to PowerPC, compared to the Apple Silicon transition.  And the final Apple Silicon Mac?   The disastrous Mac Pro that was a huge disappointment, and still is.  The first M1 Macs were avoided in the Enterprise market because they didn't support multiple external displays.  It took Apple over a year to fix that mistake with the M1 Pro and M1 Max.

3) Apple has its foot on the accelerator pedal?  Really?  With Intel, Apple had new and faster Macs each year.  With Apple Silicon, it has taken years for Apple to update the Macs.  Some Macs were completely abandoned for years, hello M1 iMac, no upgrade for about 2 years.  Apple called the MacBook Air 15" new, but used a year and a half old M2 chip.  iPads got better M chips before Macs, yet the iPads could not take advantage of the faster chip.  The Mac Pro still has an outdated M2 Ultra chip, has useless expansion slots, and costs a staggering $7,000.  Only when the M4 came out, 6 months after doing nothing in an iPad, Apple finally updates all the Macs, except for the Mac Pro.  Apple's roadmap is a mess.  Intel Macs were faster than PowerPC and cost less.  Jobs made that happen.  Apple Silicon Macs have gone up in price, especially with RAM and SSD upgrades that users are no longer allowed to upgrade later.

Yes, Apple Silicon is fast.  But Apple's execution is just bizarre.  Macs abandoned and not updated.  iPads getting better chips than Macs.  No wonder no one knows what to buy or when to upgrade.  With Apple's ridiculous prices on memory and SSD, users are forced to pay the tax up front for the upgrades, I would never buy a new Mac.  I would buy one on clearance from B&H at a heavily reduced price that is nicely upgraded.

williamlondon said:

keithw said:

I'm not complaining- really- i have a fully loaded M4 Max MBP, but if Apple charged fair prices for RAM and SSD storage, they would likely triple their market share. People still see Macs as "overpriced luxury items," which is clearly unfair. 

No they wouldn't, other manufacturers charge similar prices, and pricing and product strategy say otherwise regarding "triple their market share." Plus, it's not about market share, it's about profit.

Wow, it is amazing how full of it you are.  Please show me another manufacturer that charges $1,400 for 128GB of memory and $2,400 for 8TB of SSD.  And don't claim it is because of Apple Silicon.  Apple had these same ridiculous and extortion prices with Intel Macs too, when they started soldering everything to the board.

I hope they use a lot of lube.  That Vision Pro is huge.  

Apple tried this stunt of making the menu bar transparent in Mac OS X Leopard, but it looked stupid with app windows that are not transparent.  People used a terminal command to remove the transparency, then after enough negative feedback, Apple made it setting in System Preferences to disable the menu bar transparency in a bug fix update for Leopard.

I guess the programmers at Apple are not old enough to know Mac OS X Leopard so they are trying this again.  No one likes transparency.  It makes everything hard to read.  Most of the transparency in early versions of Mac OS X was removed and the same occurred after iOS 7.  Versions after iOS 7 continued to reduce the transparency.  Now we are back to that mess again.  Even Microsoft learned with Vista that no one liked it.