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Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

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Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#71
post #2

hard to feel sorry for Intel here they're still tied to Windows which is increasingly weaker and more rotted over time, losing market share every year for a decade (Microsoft doesn't even seem to care afaict) the Apple M1 laptop is an incredible value, offers 10x the performance the average person will need, with good battery life, a better OS/ecosystem...and its priced right! Intel needs to seriously look at Linux..…

> the Apple M1 laptop is an incredible value, offers 10x the performance the average person will need, with good battery life, a better OS/ecosystem...and its priced right! Ehh... Is it? I use the M1 issued by my employer. It's an okay machine in terms of hardware, but I absolutely loathe MacOS. I certainly wouldn't pay for the M1 at the price they sell it, way over expensive toy. I vastly prefer my personal machine,…

> and has a GPU I can use to play with StableDiffusion.

You can run stable diffusion faster on a M1 pro macbook pro than on a 1080ti 3900x desktop. DiffusionBee, I get .7s/iteration on a M1 using just 45w of power vs .98s/iteration on my 1080ti using over 5x that amount of power...

I could upgrade to a 4080 and I am sure it would destroy it, but I doubt your laptop has a full power 4080 anyway.

> But 99% of the time I use my laptop on my desk anyway,

As someone who works remote and has to travel for work, battery life is incredibly important to me, and the M1 is just leaps above its competition. I can write code and build all day without even plugging in on the M1 16"...

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8GB is pretty sad though and it’s soldered on with no ability to upgrade

But it’s more than RAM and it’s enough even for web dev so for most people it’s way enough

I tried to do web dev on an 8GB Mac and it wasn't fun. If you use an IDE, it will be constrained for memory if you have things like browser windows open, you will have a bad time if you try to open multiple projects and running Docker made it all worse. Virtual machines were out of the question which made mobile app development difficult.

If you can stick with a terminal or some lightweight editors, 8GB might be okay for you, but I feel like 8GB has been pushing it for at least 5 or more years now.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#73
post #50

I find it kind of amazing that Intel haven't found a way to profit during the global chip shortage. Look at food and energy over the past year or so: supermarket and oil & gas companies are posting record profits. They are riding the wave of price rises and supply constraints. What's different about CPUs?

There was huge purchasing of equipment at the start of the pandemic to enable work-from-home. Most of which is still current enough to not need replacing.

Meanwhile it's possible that the high food and energy prices are impacting the amount of money available to spend on tech goods ..

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they care. If they care they sure don't act like it. Microsoft is clearly squeezing Windows users for whatever revenue is left. Nothing else explains the user hostility, backwards compatibility breaks and unending advertising and data collection.

My parents aren't technical and don't see the builtin ads and news feed as being user hostile. They like that candy crush is pre-installed and that Windows shows them random spam news articles that they find interesting. I hate it and use a Mac, but I suspect most users aren't like you and me.

My parents are in their 70s and have run Linux for the last 15 years. Supported by me, of course.

They don't know the difference.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#75
post #50

I find it kind of amazing that Intel haven't found a way to profit during the global chip shortage. Look at food and energy over the past year or so: supermarket and oil & gas companies are posting record profits. They are riding the wave of price rises and supply constraints. What's different about CPUs?

At the beginning of the chip shortage, Intel's CPU just weren't very good. AMD was beating them at performance and efficiency. Intel has caught up now, but their chips still use significantly more power than the current AMD chips.

Intel spent a lot of time and money developing their new Arc GPUs. They were delayed and they missed the crypto boom. Drivers and GPU performance were disappointing even after delaying the launch. This first generation of intel GPUs will be a huge loss for them.

Intel is less diversified today. They sold their LTE modem business to apple a few years ago. Intel exited the ARM chip business ~15 years ago, right before the smartphone took off.

Intel is now losing the server chip business. AMD is making competitive sever chips for a lower price. Larger companies are developing their own ARM-based server chips.

Intel is going to start using their foundries to manufacture chips for other customers. It remains to be seen if Intel can compete with TSMC.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#76
post #66
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are incredibly good value. The M1 Air actually starts at 800$ if you chase the deals and $900 if you buy from Apple with education discount. Nothing ever comes to the quality at that price, so even if you can buy much cheaper laptops those suffer in quality and performance. This means the value per dollar is not any better than MacBook Air, unless you are extremely short on dollars. Also the re-sell value of App…

If you're looking for value and durability, you can buy a used business laptop like thinkpad or dell latitude. You can get a used thinkpad with an 8th gen intel and 16gb ram for $200 maybe. Sure the cpu will be slower but with 8gb ram on a mac you're not going to be doing much anyway.

The screen will be terrible, the performance will be 1/3 of the M1 air, the battery life will be useless and the device itself will be heavy.

Bad deal overall. At that price I would prefer a Chromebook.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#77
post #64
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are incredibly good value. The M1 Air actually starts at 800$ if you chase the deals and $900 if you buy from Apple with education discount. Nothing ever comes to the quality at that price, so even if you can buy much cheaper laptops those suffer in quality and performance. This means the value per dollar is not any better than MacBook Air, unless you are extremely short on dollars. Also the re-sell value of App…

I agree they are but what if you can't afford to spend 800 or 900 on a laptop? There's also plenty of people who use their laptop until it's dead. Infact, I'd argue it's probably more economical to purchase a repairable laptop and replace parts as needed.

If you can't afford $900 you shouldn't be buying a laptop unless you absolutely need it in short term to get out of your current situation. You are probably in a precarious state, not really a chooser at this time and all you can do is to sort by price and buy the cheapest.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they care. If they care they sure don't act like it. Microsoft is clearly squeezing Windows users for whatever revenue is left. Nothing else explains the user hostility, backwards compatibility breaks and unending advertising and data collection.

My parents aren't technical and don't see the builtin ads and news feed as being user hostile. They like that candy crush is pre-installed and that Windows shows them random spam news articles that they find interesting. I hate it and use a Mac, but I suspect most users aren't like you and me.

In the short-term, Targeting older people (like your parents) who don't care works for Microsoft. But eventually they won't be around anymore.

Take a look around and most people under 30 seem to have a MacBook. At least here in my area of the United States.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#79
post #50

I find it kind of amazing that Intel haven't found a way to profit during the global chip shortage. Look at food and energy over the past year or so: supermarket and oil & gas companies are posting record profits. They are riding the wave of price rises and supply constraints. What's different about CPUs?

In 2020, Intel generated a record $35.4 billion cash from operations and $21.1 billion of free cash flow (FCF) and returned $19.8 billion to shareholders. They profited massively, and put their dividend up 5%.

They brought in Gelsinger and used that cash to build 2 new leading edge fans, and upgrade capacity on newer ones. Then the economic downturn happened, and sales dwindled. They're making less revenue but still funding the production of new fabs. That coincided with a weak roadmap. Sapphire Rapids is only just starting to ramp, after a nearly 3 year gap in their Xeon roadmap.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#80
post #2

hard to feel sorry for Intel here they're still tied to Windows which is increasingly weaker and more rotted over time, losing market share every year for a decade (Microsoft doesn't even seem to care afaict) the Apple M1 laptop is an incredible value, offers 10x the performance the average person will need, with good battery life, a better OS/ecosystem...and its priced right! Intel needs to seriously look at Linux..…

> the Apple M1 laptop is an incredible value, offers 10x the performance the average person will need, with good battery life, a better OS/ecosystem...and its priced right! Ehh... Is it? I use the M1 issued by my employer. It's an okay machine in terms of hardware, but I absolutely loathe MacOS. I certainly wouldn't pay for the M1 at the price they sell it, way over expensive toy. I vastly prefer my personal machine,…

The M1 MacBook Air is regularly on sale for $800 or less. I'm not sure how you can consider that an "over expensive toy". It's competitive and often beating Windows Laptops at that price. The M1 chip is 2 years old now, and still competitive.

I can understand hating the OS. But MacOS is my preferred OS, I really don't like Windows or Linux. MacOS just works. Linux and Windows always have some driver/kernel/etc. update that breaks something.

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