What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
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What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
1–10 of 263 posts
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#2[deleted]
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#3[deleted]
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#4Hopefully what’s also left is a 27-inch iMac with M2 or M2 Pro chip inside. The current 24-inch iMac just doesn’t cut it, and the Mac Studio + Apple Display combo is way to expensive compared to the price point of Intel iMacs.
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#5How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product?
Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now.
I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some innovation or new product line coming if an Apple Silicon Mac Pro is to ever exist.
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#6How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…
I expect the chip to be used in the upcoming Apple XR/MR headset.
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#7How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…
> clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now.
It will simplify MacOS when they end Intel support.
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#8Xeons have many, many PCIe lanes. Apple Silicon only needs enough HSIO for SSD and Thunderbolt ports, and they’ve released all of the non-internally-expandable machines already. They needed a chip that added 48+ PCIe lanes to the package so they could satisfy the relatively few Mac Pro customers.
And without external DRAM, they’ll never be able to provide as much memory as a low-end Intel chip in the Mac mini at the same price point. In-package DRAM is better performing but it changes the price/perf graph.
Apple simply optimized their silicon packages for 90% (or more?) of their users over the outliers.
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#9How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…
I expect the chip to be used in the upcoming Apple XR/MR headset.
A high-end chip usable in the Mac Pro will draw more power than the M1 Ultra at 60W. I don’t think they are gonna fit a chip like that into any wearable unless the device comes with a backpack with the processing elements (and battery) in it.
Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
#10IMHO Mac mini isn't going to die any time soon; it is there in the lineup to be hostable/rackable operations glue for running old software and (old operating systems) headless.
I doubt they will release a M2 Pro Mini. They will instead update the Mac Studio. Conversely, if they make a M2 Pro in the current Mini form factor, they'll likely use that as an excuse to redesign the regular M2 Mini to be smaller (Mac Micro) and more compatible with DC-power data centers.