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Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

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Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#391

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Give Mac software a few years to "catch up" and everything will feel just as slow as usual (and I'm not even joking, so far, software was always excellent at undoing any advancements in hardware very quickly).

If you don’t run Electron apps, even an older Mac will fly. My 2015 is still astoundingly fast, it just doesn’t have Chrome bogging it down.

My old 2013 is still a charming little machine. I made my GF "upgrade" to it from a random ~2017 HP plasticbook and she loves the thing. 4 GB of RAM can still fly if you only run native apps.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#392

This would be quite an accelerated timeline if Apple ships its second-generation M-series chip only eight months after the first. Typically, they’ve followed a sort of six-month tick-tock pattern for the A-series, launching a new major revision in the fall with the new iPhone, and launching an “X” revision in the spring with new iPads. I think most observers have been expecting an “M1X” for Apple's first pro-oriented…

> I think most observers have been expecting an “M1X” An M2 name implies some architectural differences like extra cores or more external bandwidth. I'd be totally happy with an M1x with some tweaks like more external connectivity and more memory. Which, for me, would be quite perfect. The only reason I'm holding back this purchase is the 16 GB memory limit.

Same here. I want a replacement for my 27in iMac and would have held my nose at the slightly smaller screen, but really want more memory than 16GiB (docker, etc...).

So Apple will just have to wait to get my money until fall (or whenever they announce the successor to the 27in iMac).

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#393

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The latest Mac Pro does come in a rack mount option, but I'm not sure what market it's targeting.

I think it’s mainly for Mac / iOS development CI systems like for CircleCI or Mac Stadium. The hardware just seems too expensive for it to replace more generic arm services that AWS is offering.

On-site music and video production. You can rack it in a portable rack with your other racks of music equipment and it fits in the back of a van.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#394

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1 - Apple is not going to enter the server market ever again, especially not the generalist cloud infrastructure 2 - 90% of the laptops sold Worldwide aren't Apple laptops, most of them are sub $500 laptops. Amazon best selling is ASUS Laptop L210 Ultra Thin Laptop, 11.6” HD Display, Intel Celeron N4020 Processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB Storage priced at $199 Basically only Mac users who upgraded to M1 are going to notice the…

> 90% of the laptops sold Worldwide aren't Apple laptops, most of them are sub $500 laptops. Apple’s share of the total PC shipments is closer to 15% now and their share of the laptop market is even higher.

... in the US. It's a different story worldwide where Apple is around 8% (source: https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/11/mac-huge-q4-growth-49-percent...).

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#395
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post #6

If Apple is having this kind of success, it seems they should look to compete in the data center with this or the following generation of chips. I wonder if it is a good time to invest in Apple.

What's in it for Apple? I'm not trying to be glib, here, but unless there were some Mac only server functionality, nobody would buy an Apple ARM powered datacentre machine.

First of all, Apple could save a huge amount of money replacing Intel based servers with their own chips. Both on the CPU price, expecially the Xeons are really expensive as well as on electricity consumption, probably the largest running cost of data centers.

Then the gains of scale, making a CPU just of the Mac Pro would mean too low production numbers, but with data center usage would drive those up - especially if Apple also sold it to other customers, e.g. bringing the Xserve back. For the OS they could run Linux virtualized or they give the native Linux on Mac developers a hand.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#396

Somewhere, the collective whos who of the silicon chip world is shitting their pants. Apple just showed to the world how powerful and efficient processors can be. All that with good design. Customers are going to demand more from Intel and the likes. Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. edit: a word.

> Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. As a developer, I'm sweating bullets. Imagine a future where Apple is the only serious platform left on mobile, server and desktop, then developers can forget about starting that next disruptive startup and instead they will become just second-class Apple "employees" with contracts similar to Uber drivers.

I guess maybe if Apple makes more changes after all of that happens. 10 years ago Instagram was iOS-only for years. Uber launched on iPhone and later added Android. Clubhouse is iOS-only right now. These companies are choosing to focus on iOS for their startups.

The other day there was an article here about Swift on the server and it was full of replies from people who would love to use it more but lack of investment from Apple makes it often a poor choice. It's doubtful even Apple is using it much server-side in house.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. As a developer, I'm sweating bullets. Imagine a future where Apple is the only serious platform left on mobile, server and desktop, then developers can forget about starting that next disruptive startup and instead they will become just second-class Apple "employees" with contracts similar to Uber drivers.

Apple isn't harnessing magic here. The opportunity for competition exists, but everyone else is just sitting on their asses while Apple's chip team puts in the work. If you want to beat Mx, you have to think outside the box, just like how Apple thought outside of x86. That being said, I do enjoy the shift to ARM as the dominant arch. x86 has far too many decades of cruft behind it. I don't think Apple will take over…

I'm really hoping one of the other chipmakers jumps on the RISC-V bandwagon. There's substantial potential to do to ARM what ARM did to x86 here. If Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/Broadcom/whoever started talking about a significant RISC-V offering I'd be buying as much of their stock as I could.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#398

Somewhere, the collective whos who of the silicon chip world is shitting their pants. Apple just showed to the world how powerful and efficient processors can be. All that with good design. Customers are going to demand more from Intel and the likes. Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. edit: a word.

> Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. As a developer, I'm sweating bullets. Imagine a future where Apple is the only serious platform left on mobile, server and desktop, then developers can forget about starting that next disruptive startup and instead they will become just second-class Apple "employees" with contracts similar to Uber drivers.

With all the respect in the world, I think the complete lack of that happening at all this century should make you pause and reflect on why you think it's even remotely possible.

I'm happy to be wrong, but I think you're buying too much into the SV/media fearmongering on a handful of companies whose main business is actually just attention economics.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#399

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I would prefer just one 6K or 8K monitor personally at a size of say 55" with a wide ratio. Simpler setup. No post in the middle. Something like this but bigger with higher resolution, and maybe a bit more height vertically (this one is a bit too wide for its height in my opinion): https://www.samsung.com/ca/monitors/gaming/super-ultra-wide-... I think that dual 4K is the old way, single 6K/8K ultra wides are the fut…

Only if I can have a nice tiling WM. I work on mac all day and on my 1440p widescreen I am constantly trying to put stuff so I can use everything I want to at the same time. `[Code|App|Docs]` is so common we ought to be able to split a wide screen 3 ways the way we do a normal 2.

Try out Rectangle.app. It saved my bacon mentally and can tile windows how you want. Just not automatically like a full tiling window manager.

https://rectangleapp.com/

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. As a developer, I'm sweating bullets. Imagine a future where Apple is the only serious platform left on mobile, server and desktop, then developers can forget about starting that next disruptive startup and instead they will become just second-class Apple "employees" with contracts similar to Uber drivers.

With all the respect in the world, I think the complete lack of that happening at all this century should make you pause and reflect on why you think it's even remotely possible. I'm happy to be wrong, but I think you're buying too much into the SV/media fearmongering on a handful of companies whose main business is actually just attention economics.

Not happening this century is a big statement. I don't know a lot about this industry, but I don't see why Apple couldn't do what IBM did to arrive at "everyone on x86".
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