shamino

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shamino
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  • Apple suggests it won't sell Apple silicon to other companies

    shaminoshamino
    Rayz2016 said:
    This is precisely why they won’t do it, and precisely why they won’t buy ARM. 

    And I think about five years from now, one of their competitors will trigger a federal investigation citing that Apple’s domination in chip design makes it impossible for them to compete. 
    That rumor about Apple buying ARM is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of some pundits.

    Apple would be completely insane to do that.  They want to sell computers and consumer products.  They have absolutely no desire to take over stewardship for every single ARM-based chip sold worldwide.  In addition to setting off a zillion red-flags regarding anti-competitive behavior, it would be a massive and expensive responsibility.  There is no hypothetical set of circumstances where I can imagine such a move producing any benefit to Apple, and all have massive downsides.  No way, it won't ever happen.

    As for competitors alleging that they can't succeed without Apple's silicon, I'd love to see the lawsuit where they all swear under oath that all of the decades-old industry leaders (including Intel and AMD) are incapable of producing a commercially viable product.  Again, I can't see it happening.

    I can see some politicians throwing around baseless accusations in order to try and get votes from people who hate corporations in general, but there's no possible way such a suit will ever have merit.
    watto_cobrajbdragonFileMakerFellerspock1234

  • Apple suggests it won't sell Apple silicon to other companies

    shaminoshamino
    Makes perfect sense to me.  The A-series of chips are designed to work hand-in-hand with Apple's software.  If they started selling these chips to others, those customers would start demanding features important to their products, but irrelevant (or maybe even counter-productive) to Apple's products.

    Apple would be forced to choose between two very bad options.  Either implement those customers' design requests and compromise Apple products.  Or refuse to implement those designs and be accused of deliberately crippling competitors' products, ultimately leading to costly lawsuits.

    Far better to just do what they're doing now.  It's not like there aren't plenty of ARM-based processors from other vendors that their competitors can use.
    watto_cobra

  • YouTube TV hikes monthly subscription price to $65

    shaminoshamino
    Cable TV without the cable!   What a brilliant idea!   Except that the problem with cable was hardly limited to the cord.  

    Isn't this exactly what Apple was rejecting when they created the app driven AppleTV -- you buy only for what you want to watch?
    App-driven TV devices (not just AppleTV, but Chromecast, Roku and many other streamboxes) are not the same thing.  Each app has its own pricing and content.  Some apps offer free content.  Some make you pay for a subscription.  Most stream stored content - very few offer live TV without a paid-up subscription.

    Some TV networks offer live streaming via their web site, but there aren't many of those, and I don't know of any that will stream to an app-based device.

    The whole idea behind YouTube TV (and Hulu+Live TV, and other similar services) is that you can get live broadcasts the way cable and satellite customers do, but without the high prices that go along with those services.  But it appears that this is all amounting to a pipe dream.  The live TV streaming services offer a very small selection of channels and those that don't are finding that they have to raise prices as high as cable companies charge.

    I guess they figured out that the high cost of cable is actually the cost of paying all those hundreds of content providers and not some grand conspiracy to overcharge the world.  Which is why "cord cutting" is proving to be no more economical than cable subscriptions, unless you stick with the cheapest bargain-basement service and are happy with the very small selection of channels they offer.

    The ability to cherry-pick the 10-20 channels you really care about and only pay for them is proving to be far more difficult than originally imagined.  Some channels want abusive amounts of money (e.g. CBS wants $6/mo for just their channel), many channels don't want to offer a-la-carte service, and many more will only permit streaming if bundled with their many affiliated networks.  In other words, that vision is probably not going to be possible any time soon, and if it ever happens, it will probably cost as much as a cable subscription ($6 per channel for 20 channels is $120/mo - more than what you pay cable companies for hundreds of channels).

    Cord cutting is a nice idea, but the reality is not living up to the vision.
    muthuk_vanalingam

  • OWC Envoy Express is a Thunderbolt-certified DIY NVME SSD enclosure

    shaminoshamino
    My big question about this device is thermals.  Modern SSDs can get very hot.

    The Envoy's case is aluminum, but will there be a thermal pad or other solution for dissipating the SSD's heat to the case?  And will it be enough for it to be reliable under stress?

    I'll be looking forward to seeing test results.
    rob53 said:
    I have a 2015 iMac and it only has TB2 along with a Fusion drive. 
    ...
    I'm not sure if the Apple TB2 to TB3 adapter works as a powered port. I have the adapter but it's connected to a TB3 RAID, which is powered.
    Apple's adapter does not deliver power, and the OWC device is bus-powered.  You would need some kind of TB3 hub that can provide power.  If your RAID has a pass-through port, you could probably use that, but you probably want it on a separate bus, to avoid taking bandwidth away from the RAID.
    jdw said:
    Why is this product speed-limited to 1553 megabytes per second when the SSD inside it can perform at twice that speed?
    I'm guessing that the bridge chip isn't using the full 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0.  Probably only using 2 lanes or PCIe version 2, either of which would cut the bandwidth in half.
    watto_cobra

  • Compared: Apple's Developer Transition Kit versus Mac mini

    shaminoshamino
    melgross said:
    ... TB is still an x86 implementation. Will Intel bring it to ARM? Maybe, maybe not.
    How so?  Intel manufactures quite a lot of Thunderbolt controller chips that are not integrated with any CPU (x86 or otherwise).  They only need PCI Express lanes to connect to.

    Intel's integration of TB3 with CPUs is a new thing.  It is not the only viable implementation.  Apple dosn't need to put Thunderbolt on their SoC.  If they provide PCIe lanes, they can use off-the-shelf Thunderbolt interface chips to them.

    command_f said:
    In terms of Thunderbolt, I think it's integrated into the Intel processor that they've removed and not in the iPad processor that they've added. I think I've got that right.
    They're integrated into Intel's latest and greatest processors.  All prior processors use external interface chips, which only require PCI Express lanes to connect to the CPU.
    elijahg said:
    In the context of Thunderbolt, internal architecture does make a difference, since TB is essentially just an extension of PCIe. Apple could of course translate their own interconnect with PCIe, but for now - that's likely a long way off.
    Why do you assume it's "a long way off"?

    Apple has already shipped non-Intel computers with PCIe slots (the last-generation PowerMac G5), which proves that it can be done.  Why is it unreasonable to assume that Apple's silicon will also have support for PCIe?  And once you have PCIe, you can buy Intel Thunderbolt interface chips to attach to PCIe lanes, just like Apple has been doing for years.

    We don't know what features will be in the shipping product, but I don't think it's right to assume that they will match what's shipping on those developer kit computers.
    Fidonet127watto_cobraMacPro