nht

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

avon b7 said:

muthuk_vanalingam said:

avon b7 said:

StrangeDays said:

Apple's pulling down the majority of the premium profits? Again?

"Paging knockoff-defenders... Paging all knockoff-defenders...You are need in the forums."

1. This is the lowest Q2 profit share that Apple has had over the last three years. Way lower than some people here will even accept. Next week, this news will have been erased from their memories and they will insist again that Apple has all the profits. 

2. The article points out that Samsung is down but skips the point that Apple is also down.

Avon - One correction. The points 1 & 2 by you are misleading a bit. This is where the statement - "There are lies, damn lies and then statistics" comes into picture. Apple having JUST 62% of profit share compared to 90% 2 years ago DOES NOT reflect negatively on Apple. The right metric in this case is - what is the actual profit in $ and what is the trend? On both counts, Apple has done exceptionally well. This statistic "Profit share percentage" just shows the Android OEMs (particularly Chinese) in positive light, without degrading/demeaning the achievement of Apple.

The key takeaways from the numbers in this article are

i) Apple continues to do exceptionally well as they have always done

ii) Top 4 Android OEMs have "learnt" to make a profit, making it a sustainable business for them.

iii) Overall financial health of smartphone companies is going in a positive trend.

The point isn't to reflect negatively on Apple but to highlight the reality. To show another perspective. Yes, figures can be misleading. That is why I shone some light on the original presentation of this news.

We now have over three years without any real change in this area. In fact these figures are the lowest of the last three years and if Samsung has dropped, and that is pointed out, then Apple dropping is also noteworthy IMO. If there is a Q2 trend to point out more than any other it is precisely that Apple is, at best, simply not where some people here persistently claim they always are. The details are lost on those people. Just like they are when Apple's Q1 numbers come in and people forget they represent a peak during Apple's annual cycle and that competitors don't operate in the same way.

In fact, flat growth and lowest Q2 profit percentage in three years, even with the iPhone X in the numbers, shows that competitors have clawed back huge chunks of the profit pie - even with Apple's 'most popular phone' being its most expensive. If Samsung is down, it doesn't automatically swing numbers in Apple's favour because we now have the Chinese block to consider and they are a wedge that squeezes both Samsung and Apple.

However, while all of this is happening, my bigger beef was with the 'profit share is news' premise itself. Who had the largest share in profits is irrelevant. As long as profits are made and products can be developed successfully, who has the largest share is virtually anecdotal.

No truer than today where Apple is lacking in key handset areas and this aspect isn't news anymore. 

The P20 Pro stole the show this year. Few people can dispute this.

The Mate 10  for example can reverse charge devices. With more and more battery charged accessories it's a cool feature to have. That product is a year old now.

Apple was late to wireless charging and it was extra slow when it finally arrived. The Air Power solution has hit obstacles but now we have Huawei rumours pointing to the Mate 20 wirelessly reverse charging accessories (wireless ear buds in this case). If true, that's a cool option to have. The wired charging will reportedly see an 80% increase in its power rating too. We already know what Apple will have right through to September 2019 and in technology terms it will likely struggle again this year too.

You have pigeonholed Apple into being a smartphone maker; they are more than that.

The article below is an excellent illumination of what Apple is, hence why I'm convinced that the Android OS marketplace is both zero sum, and non growth, just as you are sure that Apple is long term going to suffer "flat" unit sales.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2018/9/19/connecting-the-apple-dots

While the Chinese Android OS device makers are cutting out all stops to growth in higher ASP smartphones, Apple has already laid the groundwork for what follows, and they have the software, hardware, technology, and resources, not to mention funding, to go to the next big thing.

I'm not pigeon holing Apple as I frequently go out of my way to make it clear I am referring to the handset business.

I have gone on record saying that we are now IMO probably in a post iPhone era (in company terms) and seeing Apple try to reduce its revenue dependence on phones.

That in itself is a tacit admission of Apple's business beyond iPhone. That said, its business is currently still very rooted in iPhone. Any fluctuation in that business automatically has a negative effect on the company.

You really can't comprehend that the Android OS device business is flat for unit sales. There is no low hanging fruit for Huawei; they will have to compete with Samsung, plus the other OEM's on price and features, which is going to be very difficult in a zero sum market.

So why does the Mate RS exist?

Huawei competes with everybody. Including Apple.

neilm said:

Surprised the comparo omitted the Promise TB3 dock. We have two or three of them at work and have found them very satisfactory for a reasonable $249. 60W of charging power, support two 4K displays, five USB 3.0 Type A ports, one GigE, card reader. Available at B&H or Amazon.

pascal007 said:

friedmud said:

BTW - as a way of comparison...  Here's a quick run of our custom scientific simulation software using 4 cores in my 2017 MBP that with a 3.1GHz i7-7920HQ that can turbo to 4.1 GHz:



As you can see it looks like it's thermal throttling - but it's actually not.  Those dips in frequency actually correspond to dips in the instruction intensity of our software.  This is software that gets run on the largets computers in the world (literally... later this year we're planning a run that uses all of the new Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory... which is currently THE fastest computer in the world (according to Top500 anyway))... so it has been incredibly optimized... but even it still has dips and stalls that allow the processor to clock down slightly.

I would expect something like a rendering program to have even more... it probably has to do plenty of file i/o... at least writing out the frames!  Every time it goes to the filesystem the CPU frequency will drop because the processors don't have enough to do.  This will average out to something less than spectacular looking.

If it was only the CPU taking a breather, as you say, the task would still be performed faster. Yet, as Lee showed, the task is performed faster (or as fast) using a i7 CPU compared to the i9, so there is a real performance problem when heat-stressed.

Adding a second GPU helped a bit and made it so that it was beneficial to have roughly six CPU cores instead of just four or five. With dual GPUs, however, we saw three instances where having two physical CPUs was worse than just having one (H.264 4K, CineForm 4K, and RED 4K)."

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-Multi-Core-Performance-Update1-806/

The more recent tests are here:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-2017-Intel-Core-i7-7700K-i5-7600K-Performance-884/

For folks that think Intel isn't doing anything:

Starting with the Core i7 8700K, we saw huge performance gains compared to the Core i7 7700K. A 31% gain when rendering previews and a 36% gain when exporting is a staggering increase in performance. Even warp stabilize was on average 24% faster than the Core i7 7700K! Live playback didn't improve much, but this makes the Core i7 8700K a terrific CPU for those on a budget. There are certainly higher performing CPUs available like the Core i7 7820X, Core i9 7900X, and Core i9 7940X, but considering the price point of the Core i7 8700K this is a very impressive result.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Performance-Core-i7-8700K-i5-8600K-i3-8350K-1047/

Testing this sort of stuff in macOS is going to be annoying but the same general behavior should be expected.  Windows allows you to lock tasks to cores but macOS treats them as hints and you have to do it programmatically.

It strikes me that the new i9 MBP isn't geared toward video editors but those developers who have been whining about running a dozen VMs at the same time.  Typically you want to reserve 2 cores for the host OS and that sure doesn't leave a lot for VMs even when counting logical cores (aka hyper threading).  Most of the time, at least during the testing I've seen, the load across all VMs aren't terrible all at the same time as some machines end up computational bound while others are IO bound.  

That should allow the i9 MBP to handle more VMs than the i7 without ending up in thermal overload and throttling down.

As someone who actually travels with a MBP and does coding in the field (usually in a desert in a conex or trailer) I still prefer the current MBP design and wouldn't go with a huge 7-10 lb laptop (like the Dell 7720 or Alienware).  Anytime I need one of those I'm better off FedExing a real workstation (or iMac) in a pelican case and bringing a Honda generator.  

ElCapitan said:

nht said:

ElCapitan said:

corrections said:

ElCapitan said:

>However, Apple hasn't been actively pushing Macs at Windows users lately. Actually Apple hasn't been actively pushing Macs at a rather large group of existing Mac users either.
Mini, Mac Pro and to some extent MacBook Pro users have been neglected, pushed out in the cold for years. Add to them macOS Server users, and with the deprecation of OpenGL, an entire class of high end graphics and scientific users from whom the ability of running iOS apps is virtually irrelevant.

Yes.
The installed base of Mac users is ~150M. 
The installed base of iOS users is ~1,150M

The media narrative that Apple isn't updating Macs 

Media narrative? - What planet are you living on?

Besides ALL the iOS users are 100% dependent on Macs.

Not a single app is created without a Mac. 

NOT catering to the developer community who creates and maintains those apps is over time cutting the branch you sit on. 

NOT catering to the IT professionals running the backends and infrastructures for those devices in everything from small businesses to large enterprises  is over time cutting the branch you sit on.

As a dev I can heartily say you’re full of it.

Docker works fine on my 2016 MBP.  XCode works great. Swift is very nice.  

If you don’t need mobility then the MBP isn’t designed for you.  Buy an iMac.  If you do need mobility (as in you actually travel) the current MBPs are better than the older ones.

And with eGPUs you can have both power and mobility, although at slightly higher cost than just an iMac.

Docker works depending on what you want to run on it. One example is UNMS - Ubiquiti Network Management System they cannot get to work reliably in Docker for macOS.  Besides if you really want to use Docker for anything but hobby and some testing there are virtually no hardware from Apple any more that makes sense to deploy it on. 

No, the 2016 MBP is not designed for me. For lengthy Xcode builds that routinely takes 50 minutes with all cores active, due to the thermals of the 2016 MBP it starts throttling a few minutes into the build. - NOT GOOD!  

Even for testing the application stability on that hardware that many users may end up with (for any reason), the GPU also starts throttling after a few minutes. So it is useless. 

International pricing is also an issue when a moderately configured 2016 MBP 15" set you back over $3700, that is also not very good. 

In addition there are 4 minis in a setup to properly test the software (backend for multiple clients), and they all are looking long in the tooth since new i7 minis cannot be had. The ability to run multiple processes at full load is much more important than absolute processor speed. 

ElCapitan said:

corrections said:

ElCapitan said:

>However, Apple hasn't been actively pushing Macs at Windows users lately. Actually Apple hasn't been actively pushing Macs at a rather large group of existing Mac users either.
Mini, Mac Pro and to some extent MacBook Pro users have been neglected, pushed out in the cold for years. Add to them macOS Server users, and with the deprecation of OpenGL, an entire class of high end graphics and scientific users from whom the ability of running iOS apps is virtually irrelevant.

Yes.
The installed base of Mac users is ~150M. 
The installed base of iOS users is ~1,150M

The media narrative that Apple isn't updating Macs 

Media narrative? - What planet are you living on?

Besides ALL the iOS users are 100% dependent on Macs.

Not a single app is created without a Mac. 

NOT catering to the developer community who creates and maintains those apps is over time cutting the branch you sit on. 

NOT catering to the IT professionals running the backends and infrastructures for those devices in everything from small businesses to large enterprises  is over time cutting the branch you sit on.