Marvin

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Marvin
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  • Intel just took the worst beating in earnings in over a decade

    MarvinMarvin
    ITGUYINSD said:
    The article doesn't really explain WHY Intel sales were so bad.  Especially during the holiday season.  Is new gear too expensive for consumers?  Are people keeping their computers longer?  Or are consumers moving towards more mobile devices?

    It doesn't help Intel that major sellers like Dell have raised their prices making one take a second thought about buying or upgrading.  
    Their annual report goes into more detail:

    https://www.intc.com/filings-reports/all-sec-filings/content/0000050863-23-000006/0000050863-23-000006.pdf

    2022 vs. 2021
    ▪ Notebook revenue was $18.8 billion, down $6.7 billion from 2021. Notebook unit sales decreased 36%, driven by lower demand in the consumer and education market segments, and notebook ASPs increased 15% due to an increased mix of commercial and consumer products and a lower mix of education products.
    ▪ Desktop revenue was $10.7 billion, down $1.8 billion from 2021. Desktop unit sales decreased 19%, driven by lower demand in the consumer and education market segments, and desktop ASPs increased 5%, primarily from an increased mix of commercial products.
    ▪ Other revenue was $2.3 billion, down $923 million from 2021, primarily driven by the continued ramp down from the exit of our 5G smartphone modem business and lower demand for our wireless and connectivity products.

    Operating Income 2022
    (3,047) Lower gross margin from notebook revenue
    (2,183) Higher notebook and desktop unit cost primarily from increased mix of Intel 7 products
    (1,306) Lower gross margin from desktop revenue
    (1,284) Higher operating expenses driven by increased investments in leadership products
    (969) Higher period charges primarily driven by inventory reserves taken in 2022
    (320) Lower CCG other product gross margin driven by lower demand for our wireless and connectivity products and the continued ramp down from the exit of our 5G smartphone modem business

    DCAI server volume decreased, led by enterprise customers, and due to customers tempering purchases to reduce existing inventories in a softening data center market. Server ASPs decreased due to customer and product mix. NEX revenue increased primarily due to Ethernet ASPs and increased demand for 5G products, partially offset by lower demand for Network Xeon.

    Their future roadmap doesn't look too good either:

    https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-technology-roadmaps-milestones.html

    They are supposedly going from Intel 7 to Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A, Intel 18A in 2 years. Combined they are aiming for 1.8x improvement in performance-per-watt. That only brings them to where Apple is now if they deliver.

    "Intel 7 is in production and shipping in volume with the launch of 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and additional products coming in 2022. Intel 4, our implementation of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, will be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2022. It delivers an approximate 20% increase in transistor performance per watt. Intel 3, with additional features, delivers a further 18% performance per watt and will be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2023. Ushering in the Angstrom Era with RibbonFET and PowerVia, Intel 20A will deliver up to a 15% performance per watt improvement and will be manufacturing-ready in the first half of 2024. Intel 18A delivers an additional 10% improvement and will be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2024."

    Looks like they are going to burn a lot of capital to try playing catchup and it will be 2 years before they start to be competitive. If they can eventually get to a point where they can manufacture chips for Apple, that would be good but they are so far behind right now.
    Appleish said:
    My lap misses my Intel MacBook Pro, on these cold winter nights. My Apple Silicon MBP is always ice cold!
    USB leg warmer:

    https://www.amazon.com/Comfheat-Portable-Temperature-Settings-Compress/dp/B098QPD82T
    FileMakerFellernubuswatto_cobramagman1979

  • After Apple's busy January, the rest of the quarter may be quiet

    MarvinMarvin
    The other missing element, the M3 iMac and MacBook Air, wasn't expected by now. An October 2023 launch would just barely be inside the window of possibility for TSMC 3nm, and only if it is the first generation, N3. The weirdest thing about that was the M3 iMac. It was and still is a strange nugget of information. But I have to admit, it has held up so far. Very strange. My theory is in my comment above, that the iMac, like the MacBook Air, will be available with both older Apple Silicon (possibly only for Education) and current Apple Silicon. Supply chain issues threw this off, but going forward that's how it will be.

    NOTE: There's also an assumption that Apple is going to be out in front, on the cutting edge of TSMC 3nm, but you've got to wonder about that. Changing manufacturing process nodes is expensive and problematic. Apple has a lot of experience with it (I count nine TSMC node changes in the A series since 2014), but the 3nm shift is a big change and thus a big risk. There's a possibility that M3/A17 won't be 3nm at all, but rather N4P. [Not N4X, however, that seems to be money-is-no-object HPC-server territory.] Although I think if that were the case, Apple would have tamped down the M3=N3 speculation by now.
    TSMC mass production started at the beginning of the year and they have good yields. Cycle time is noted here as over 100 days:

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-first-n3-chips-in-q1-2023-n3e-node-incoming

    That's Q2 at the earliest. Anything Q2 or later would be fine, especially Macs as the unit volume is relatively low vs iPhone.

    If N3 is shipping mid-Q2 (May), they have until September for iPhone volume and Apple can do what they did with iPhone 14 and put the old one in the low end.

    I could see them doing the M3 Air in Q2 but there wouldn't be much harm in launching it in Q3 as it gives Apple time to complete the M2 lineup. Mac Studio, iMac and Mac Pro can be updated to M2 at the same time. WWDC is a good time to mention the end of the transition.

    Given that M3 is the basis for all the other chips, if they have new features like hardware raytracing and other technology like frame generation (creating frames between other frames to double framerate), that would be worth an event in Q3 (October).
    tenthousandthingsspongezillawatto_cobraFileMakerFeller

  • Twitter frustrating developers as it cuts off some third-party apps

    MarvinMarvin
    Anilu_777 said:
    Free speech my a$$. Controlled access via the official app isn’t free speech, it’s authoritarian. 
    I doubt it's about control, it's more likely about ad revenue. Some 3rd party clients are ad-free or the way they show tweets won't boost ad visibility. They even market this:

    https://twitterrific.com/ios/

    "Tweet Your Way
    No ads, promoted tweets or "while you were away" updates cluttering your chronological timeline."

    It's not a great business model to block or lower the ad revenue of the company your app depends on and then complain when they disable access.
    designrwatto_cobraradarthekatmuthuk_vanalingamJWSC

  • Goldman Sachs lost $1.2 billion in 2022 mostly because of Apple Card

    MarvinMarvin
    I wonder if the loan loss provision was made at the behest of one of their regulators.
    Or just another tax avoidance scheme:

    https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/IMF-Policy-Discussion-Papers/Issues/2016/12/30/Regulatory-and-Tax-Treatment-of-Loan-Loss-Provisions-2014
    https://www.europeanceo.com/finance/goldman-sachs-and-cargill-fined-e89m-in-uk-tax-avoidance-case/

    Big companies do this all the time. They record losses on paper in their high tax jurisdictions, even when they aren't realized losses and may never be and their income on some remote island in the middle of nowhere where they pay little to no income tax.
    9secondkox2FileMakerFellerjas99

  • Apple considering 2025 debut of touchscreen MacBook Pro

    MarvinMarvin
    dewme said:

    Native touch support would also make it easier (and seamless) to bring iOS/iPadOS apps over to the Apple Silicon MacBooks.
    It would be useful for using the iOS simulator, a lot of Mac users are developing iOS apps. Trying to mimic multi-touch using the click inputs is tricky, even swipe up to multi-task but this is a small use case. It would probably be better if an iPad displayed the testing window so it would be running on the Mac simulator and showing the visuals and using inputs on the device.

    If they added touch to the Mac, they would definitely need to reinforce the displays. I'm surprised at how thin they are on Macs. The iPads are laminated too but pressing a fingernail on the screen doesn't warp the screen like it does on the Mac.
    dewme