tenthousandthings

DangDave said:

tenthousandthings said:

The details of this will be telling. If it works out and Apple is able to still take a competitive cut of those revenues, it will become the norm worldwide very quickly. As I understand it, the law only applies to in-app payments. So it’s got nothing to do with the App Store. 

True, but since many if not most Apps have now moved to “freemium”, free to download but in-app payment for premium features, Apple may not get paid to maintain these Apps. 

DuhSesame said:

tenthousandthings said:

commentzilla said:

I expect the Mini to get the base M2 with an option for up to 32GB RAM. That’s it.  No mythical headless Mac. It will remain a consumer device.

Agree, hope you’re right about the memory, generally I think a Mini Pro is unlikely because most people who can afford that silicon will just get a MacBook Pro or an iMac Pro.

There’s a place for the Mini between the Air and the iMac. Not so much when it comes to the higher end. 

an 8+2 chip isn't that powerful, barely a pro chip by any means.  M2 will likely see similar bottlenecks, I don't know there's any LPDDR5 that can do 16GiB on a single die.

blastdoor said:

tenthousandthings said:

blastdoor said:

tenthousandthings said:

I posted something like this in the Air thread as well. I think we’ll see this Mac Pro before the M2 comes out. There will be four release/refresh stages for macOS devices:

[1] Each generation of Macintosh Silicon will appear first in the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini. Both will be silent masterpieces of technology with minuscule failure rates, with no fan, utterly reliable. 

[2] Next come the iMac and the MacBook, with the colors and the same silicon as the Air and Mini. These are consumer Macs, with lower prices and higher failure rates.

[3] Then the MacBook Pro gets its refresh with the new Pro and Max configurations. 

[4] Finally, the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro complete the cycle, with multiple dies and GPU advances. Depending on what they do with the Mac Pro, this stage could be split into two phases.

All of this takes place over a cycle of about 18 months, with some flexibility built into it. Apple Silicon will not make promises it can't keep. It won't be like clockwork, and it won't be an annual cycle. macOS will stay on an annual cycle, because it has to keep up with more than just changes in the M series, but that doesn't mean the hardware will.

Even if it's not exactly that, I agree with the main idea -- small first, big later when process yields improve.

I suspect the timeline for the first generation was disrupted a bit by COVID. The fact that it's over a year since the M1 was introduced and we still likely haven't seen the full lineup (waiting now for the multi-die Pro desktop version) is hopefully going to be an anomaly. Hopefully the 'normal' pattern will be that the full lineup is refreshed in less than 12 months. 

There’s little doubt the MacBook Pro release was delayed, and likely the iMac Pro (or whatever, the larger iMac) as well.

Maybe it’s just my age showing, but I have a really hard time imagining a 12-month refresh cycle for Mac hardware, even if the pandemic didn’t exist. I think Intel got itself into serious trouble with its inflexible, clockwork model as the realities of science collided with their marketing. Apple had a front-row seat for that… 

To clarify -- I meant that there would be no more than a 12 month delay from the introduction of the low end M# chip to the highest end M# of that generation. I don't mean that there will be just 12 months between generations. In other words, I don't mean M2 and then 12 months later M3. I mean M2 and then within 12 months, M2 Max^4 (or whatever they call the highest end pro desktop part). 

In terms of time between generation (eg, M2 to M3) I'm guessing about 18 months. 

blastdoor said:

tenthousandthings said:

I posted something like this in the Air thread as well. I think we’ll see this Mac Pro before the M2 comes out. There will be four release/refresh stages for macOS devices:

[1] Each generation of Macintosh Silicon will appear first in the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini. Both will be silent masterpieces of technology with minuscule failure rates, with no fan, utterly reliable. 

[2] Next come the iMac and the MacBook, with the colors and the same silicon as the Air and Mini. These are consumer Macs, with lower prices and higher failure rates.

[3] Then the MacBook Pro gets its refresh with the new Pro and Max configurations. 

[4] Finally, the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro complete the cycle, with multiple dies and GPU advances. Depending on what they do with the Mac Pro, this stage could be split into two phases.

All of this takes place over a cycle of about 18 months, with some flexibility built into it. Apple Silicon will not make promises it can't keep. It won't be like clockwork, and it won't be an annual cycle. macOS will stay on an annual cycle, because it has to keep up with more than just changes in the M series, but that doesn't mean the hardware will.

Even if it's not exactly that, I agree with the main idea -- small first, big later when process yields improve.

I suspect the timeline for the first generation was disrupted a bit by COVID. The fact that it's over a year since the M1 was introduced and we still likely haven't seen the full lineup (waiting now for the multi-die Pro desktop version) is hopefully going to be an anomaly. Hopefully the 'normal' pattern will be that the full lineup is refreshed in less than 12 months.