rmoo

Xed said:

tenthousandthings said:

Seems like it is a three-way equation. There is the science of hardware, the development of software, and the marketing of systems. Apple already has a well-oiled machine that runs on an annual cycle for all three elements. [A-series, iOS, iPhone]

For Macs, 18 months is arguably a better timetable for all three elements. For Apple Silicon, it takes time to ramp up from the base M-series to Pro/Max to multiple dies. For macOS, the annual pressure seems like it has become too much — Monterey had important features announced that ended up delayed, and an 18-month macOS cycle would ease that. Finally, an 18-month refresh cycle works well for marketing. People would know what to expect. They could upgrade every 18 months, or after three years, after four and a half years, or after six years. They could get AppleCare for any of those intervals. 

Macs non-annual HW updates in the past to stay competitive with other PC vendors because that's when Intel had processors (at scale of the type Apple needed). Now that they control the shebang they don't have abide by those component supply laws, but the annual cycle for humans around the world is still the same.

For those reasons they'll likely go with an annual or a biennial cycle (for their notebook categories), with macOS still occurring every year free of charge. macOS get annual updates that works across all their other OSes. This helps gets switches and retain users. It's synergetic and makes all their device categories better than their sum parts.

Huh? Intel updates their CPUs every year. It was Apple who only updated their Macs on a biannual schedule for their own reasons. I have never gotten the emphasis on macOS being free of charge and annual updates. Windows has been "free" also for ages, in the sense that everyone who purchases a Windows machine gets a perpetual Windows license tied to that machine. Microsoft used to charge for upgrades, but that ended with Windows 8 at the absolute latest. And annual updates is a feature when Windows emulated ChromeOS with regular rolling updates? Yeah, none of this will attract switchers, who buy devices primarily to run the apps they want - games, professional software and lots of other apps weren't even available on x86 Macs and even fewer will run natively on M1 Macs - and also consider price (a premium Wintel or WinAMD machine like a Dell XPS or HP Elitebook with 16 GB RAM, Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 CPU and Nvidia or AMD dGPU costs less than an M1 MacBook Air with half the RAM and only 7 GPU cores). As for retaining users, the loyal Apple fans will remain so, especially if they don't need x86 software and don't need to still run Windows on virtual machines or bootcamp. But as for the "synergy" ... the vast majority of iPhone and iPad users are still running iTunes on Windows, and this is despite Apple doing their level best to make the iTunes on Windows experience as painful as possible to "encourage" people to switch (the same is true of iCloud and they flat out don't support Safari on Windows anymore). 

Add it all up and no, Apple updating their Mac CPUs less frequently than Intel, AMD and Qualcomm updates their PC counterparts won't give Apple a competitive advantage. Impossible to spin that otherwise. It won't be a disadvantage either, mind you. 

TheDrivenDev said:

Considering the performance of M1 against its peers, I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't delay releases simply because the competition isn't challenging their product's performance. Let's be honest, Intel isn't even really in the game at this point.

Huh? Intel "isn't in the game" when it comes to power per watt. But 11th gen Intel Core i7 was within ballpark of the M1 and 11th gen Core i9 exceeded it. 12th Gen Intel Core i7 exceeds the M1 Pro and M1 Max. 12th gen is actually an outdated design because it needed to wait until Intel's 10nm process was ready. 13th gen launches in 4Q2022 with performance and efficiency enhancements and a mature 10nm node, meaning that 13th gen Core i5 will be competitive with the M1 Pro. 

It is amazing how the discourse went from "we are pleasantly surprised that Apple's CPUs are competitive with Intel's!", which was actually true, and "Apple's CPUs are clearly better than Intel's!", which was never true, and to the degree it was, it was only due to Apple's decision to use unified memory instead of RAM and being on a 5nm process instead of a 14nm one. On the former, general purpose CPU makers using unified memory is very stupid because unified memory removes flexibility and upgradability. On the latter, once Intel's 7nm chips arrive in 2023, while the Apple power-per-watt advantage will remain, it will significantly decrease to the point where no one is going to talk about it anymore. For example, you are going to see 7 inch Nintendo Switch-type devices and 12 inch Windows 11 tablets running 14th gen Intel Core i5 CPUs that won't require discrete GPUs or fans that will have very good battery life. 

Even Apple claimed that they were never going to be able to outdo Intel (or AMD) in single core or multicore performance and their big advantage was going to be power per watt. The problem is that unless you run a data center or are someone whose job requires them to be constantly "on-the-go" (and the people in the latter group switched to smartphones and tablets as their primary devices ages ago) then power per watt isn't going to be something that you care about that much. People aren't going to start valuing that metric overnight just because Apple says that they should, and the people who are going to all of a sudden after all these years start claiming that power per watt is the most important thing are going to be loyal Mac customers already. 

dtownwarrior said:

This is longer than the intel cycle, albeit the Apple silicon processors are better though.

This statement has two components. The first is true, the second is subjective at best.

hriw-annon@xs4all.nl said:

Not so long ago Microsoft had a go trying to be a third mobile platform. They even bought Nokia to make it happen.
They know tech and had a more than decent OS, and they failed.
If Microsoft and Nokia together can not manage to be a competitor who can?

Forcing Apple and Google to make their products worse is going to make competition happen?

As someone who owned a Windows Phone, claiming that it "had a more than decent OS" is false. Microsoft's failure here is bigger than you are stating. Microsoft actually preceded Google and Apple. Their first attempt was Windows CE back in 1996 (they began supporting ARM in 1997) and their second was Windows Mobile in 2000. While Windows CE found success as appliance firmware - though that is now losing ground to Android and other Linux distros - Windows Mobile failed at phones and tablets. Except at one thing: spurring Google into action. Their fear that either Windows CE or Windows Mobile might catch on one day and that Microsoft would use it to lock them out and grow Bing's market share is what caused them to decide to enter the mobile market and ultimately buy Android in 2005. Lest we forget, the tech world was very different back then. Google was tiny, with Microsoft and Yahoo being much bigger. As the antitrust judgment against Microsoft only covered PCs, they were free to lock competitors out of other devices. So had Microsoft's mobile devices gained traction, that would have actually resulted in Bing having a bigger search market share than Google, who lest we forget had only recently surpassed Yahoo in market share, and even that was due to Yahoo's decision to de-emphasize being a search and tech company and pivot to being an entertainment company instead. 

Back then, EVERYONE thought that either CE or Mobile would ultimately succeed. Because of this, when Andy Rubin tried to attract investors for Android, he had no takers for a platform that everyone thought that Microsoft was going to crush anyway. So then Rubin tried to sell Android to mobile device manufacturers that didn't have their own OS, including HTC and Samsung. HTC was making Windows Mobile smartphones and Samsung was making Windows CE ones, so both turned Rubin down. This allowed Google to buy Android - which was near financial collapse - for a pittance: unable to attract investors and no one else wanted them. Google had spent some time studying Microsoft's business model with CE and Mobile, and created one for Android designed to exploit its weaknesses: providing it to OEMs for free instead of licensing it, and allowing OEMs to modify it in order to differentiate it and promote their own software and services. Both HTC and Samsung switched from Microsoft to Android immediately and others followed suit shortly after.

This sort of thing is what people who call Android and iOS a duopoly are overlooking. Neither Apple or Google used unfair tactics to get where they were. They couldn't. At the time, Apple had 4% PC market share and their most popular product was the iPod. They weren't even able to initially launch the iPhone on more than one US carrier. Google meanwhile didn't even have the capability to manufacture and market a product. They had to rely on third parties, who screwed Google over every chance they got. Android and iOS succeeded against - at the time - much bigger and more entrenched competition by offering a clearly better product (Apple) and having a much better business plan  - for example the open source based on Java and Linux helped Google attract the indie developers that Microsoft, Nokia and the rest on proprietary platforms couldn't - and were also able to ultimately develop a better product (Google).

Even for the folks who point out that Google bundled Gmail and YouTube: have we forgotten that Microsoft released Hotmail years before Google released Gmail? Again, Google made a better product. Also, everyone - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo - initially tried to compete with YouTube with their own service. Google was merely the first to admit that it wasn't working and throw in the towel and buy YouTube, which Microsoft (and Yahoo) could have done first but were too arrogant to admit that they were beaten by an upstart. I really don't see why governments should step in and punish Apple and Google for their success or reward Microsoft and Amazon - whom lets face it any action against Google and Apple will inevitably benefit because no one else has the resources to compete at this point - for their failures (remember Amazon's ridiculous phone)?

tht said:

9secondkox2 said:

tht said:

9secondkox2 said:

Coulda had an iPhone native halo? Dang. 

That's not my read. It's still a cloud streamed game, it would just have an individual listing in Apple's App Store instead of an XBox cloud store app.

So, Halo would be running on a PC or Xbox in a data center, and streaming the display to client iOS devices. That's not native whatsoever. Native is a compiled app using Apple's ObjC/Swift/Metal frameworks.

It seems I forgot to post an “/s” following my post. 

Can you imagine what everyone would be doing if Apple allowed cloud? Epic snd all the rest of the sleaze would be trying to use that to redefine what an App Store is and try to assault iPhone users with untold number of crap schemes. 

At first, I’ll be honest, I thought Apple was wrong about xcloud initially. 

But after the epic slime fest, it seems Apple had great foresight. 

My apologies for not getting the sarcasm. Yes, cloud streaming is basically a Trojan horse. Microsoft retains all the value, all the leverage, and Apple would basically be at their mercy if cloud gaming takes off.

This is silly. It isn't that cloud streaming is a "Trojan horse." It is that if you are a software and internet services company - which Microsoft and Google currently are and Nvidia aspires to be - then you have every interest in video gaming migrating from hardware platforms to software and cloud ones. Microsoft and Google make almost nothing on hardware. Nvidia does, but by selling a $200 part to go in a machine that costs $2000. A hardware independent streaming model where revenue can be generated by maximizing ad and subscription revenue to the widest number of users - the same that YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, Apple Music etc. rely on - is absolutely preferable to what exists now. For all that console gaming - for example - is discussed, it really is a tiny niche subculture. The combined sales of an XBox, Nintendo and PlayStation console during a typical 7 year generation is about 250 million. You break it down and it is even worse: many people buy all 3 (or at least 2 of the 3) and some people buy multiple (an XBox for each room in their house, or their PS breaks, or they buy one early in the cycle and then buy another when the refresh with better specs hits) so you really are talking about 50-100 million people. These people are ardent mind you - they buy the consoles and accessories, watch Twitch and YouTube for hours daily, pay $70 for the games plus who knows how much more for the DLC etc. - but it isn't that many of them. Cloud gaming is a way of expanding from that 50-100 million (again, console only, I guess if you include PC gaming you could double that) into the 1.5 billion people who buy smartphones and tablets each year. If they are able to get a mere fraction of that market, they could double or triple the size of the current console and AAA gaming industry. And if the new customers they pull in take the $500 that they would spend on a PlayStation or $3000 that they would spend on a gaming rig and use that to buy games instead? Even better. 

So, it isn't a "Trojan horse conspiracy" to harm Apple. It is more akin to how the rise of Netflix and similar streaming services WERE NOT in the interests of DVD and Blu-ray manufacturers. By the way, Apple totally helped this trend along. They removed CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs from Macs to "encourage" downloading media from iTunes instead. They also created servers and storage media to handle the massive media libraries that they wanted people to download, and the original purpose of the Apple TV was to facilitate people streaming their iTunes content (instead of playing music CDs and movie DVDs). Was it a conspiracy to harm Sony, Samsung and other electronics manufacturers? Nope. It was merely Apple - who didn't manufacture DVD and Blu-ray players or have retail operations to sell DVDs - pursuing their own commercial interests. Which is exactly what Nvidia, Microsoft and Google are doing here.