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Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

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Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#141

Post by solardev »

answiftydev wrote: post #77
DesiLurker wrote: post #44

I call BS on them being not good market fit, Apple does totally fine with mac mini. also these are just laptops w/o screen and battery. IMO the real reason may be worries around minipcs finally getting good enough that they may cannibalize higher margin PC market. BTW there are other vendors like Beelink that make semi decent tiny computers and I have one of those as my teenage kids pc,works just fine.

I would bet the majority of Mac minis sold are used as ci/cd servers for iOS and Mac development. I would also bet the Mac mini is the third lowest selling Mac with the Mac ultra and Mac Pro being the least.

The Mac Minis are a great value compared to the rest of Apple's lineups. The NUC is overpriced, like why would I get that instead of a generic laptop? It was just a poor value for what it offered.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#142

Post by jychang »

answiftydev wrote: post #77
DesiLurker wrote: post #44

I call BS on them being not good market fit, Apple does totally fine with mac mini. also these are just laptops w/o screen and battery. IMO the real reason may be worries around minipcs finally getting good enough that they may cannibalize higher margin PC market. BTW there are other vendors like Beelink that make semi decent tiny computers and I have one of those as my teenage kids pc,works just fine.

I would bet the majority of Mac minis sold are used as ci/cd servers for iOS and Mac development. I would also bet the Mac mini is the third lowest selling Mac with the Mac ultra and Mac Pro being the least.

I strongly suspect the iMac sells less than the Mac mini.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#143

Post by Baeocystin »

stevezsa8 wrote: post #54
DesiLurker wrote: post #44

I call BS on them being not good market fit, Apple does totally fine with mac mini. also these are just laptops w/o screen and battery. IMO the real reason may be worries around minipcs finally getting good enough that they may cannibalize higher margin PC market. BTW there are other vendors like Beelink that make semi decent tiny computers and I have one of those as my teenage kids pc,works just fine.

How is the beelink? I'm really tempted by the price and what you get. But I've never bought anything that wasn't a well known brand like Dell.

I've deployed about two dozen of them for small business clients who needed the form factor.

Everyone has loved them. I wound up getting one to manage my print farm, and no complaints there, either. Knock on wood, but they Just Work, so far. Noise and heat have not been an issue, even with the oldest units.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#145

Post by Aromasin »

rasz wrote: post #5
mydriasis wrote: post #2

I'm not on the up-and-up with Intel. I know they're building a fab in Ohio... generally, does anyone know what their next moves are meant to be? I'm curious to hear about their business plan -- I know they've been lagging some other producers in recent years.

Their plan might boil down to distributing subsidies as dividends to shareholders.

Considering Intel recently cut their annual payout from $1.46 per share to $0.50 per share, while simultaneously building 3 new fabs and expanding 3 others, I somehow doubt it.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#147

Post by akira2501 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #112
DesiLurker wrote: post #44

I call BS on them being not good market fit, Apple does totally fine with mac mini. also these are just laptops w/o screen and battery. IMO the real reason may be worries around minipcs finally getting good enough that they may cannibalize higher margin PC market. BTW there are other vendors like Beelink that make semi decent tiny computers and I have one of those as my teenage kids pc,works just fine.

> BTW there are other vendors like Beelink that make semi decent tiny computers and I have one of those as my teenage kids pc,works just fine. The issue is, Intel's aiming more upmarket (based on their pricing) for something that doesn't offer a lot more. Intel's done interesting/fun things, such as building the entire motherboard into a single slot sized unit, but going out and buying a Beelink is a better propositi…

> If anything, I think Intel can exit this market because they succeeded.

They lead the creation of a market but failed to maintain any competitive edge in it. That's a story of initial success that ultimately ran through their fingers, like so many other examples you've presented. Calling this fully "a success" seems very generous.

> If anything, I think Intel can exit this market because they succeeded.

You could spin the entire unit off so it could compete on it's own terms. There's plenty of success stories to be found this way, and Intel's habit of doing this time after time means that I have very little confidence in any new product they bring to market outside of CPU cores and view them mostly as a consumer electronics company now.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#148

Post by pavlov »

jychang wrote: post #142
answiftydev wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet the majority of Mac minis sold are used as ci/cd servers for iOS and Mac development. I would also bet the Mac mini is the third lowest selling Mac with the Mac ultra and Mac Pro being the least.

I strongly suspect the iMac sells less than the Mac mini.

Just from anecdotal observation, the iMac seems to have several niches where a fashionable desktop is called for: at least higher-end shops and lobbies, and musicians and other artists who dabble in production enough to need the larger screen but not enough to invest in a more expensive setup.

The Mini seems more specialized. I’ve bought many of them over the years for things like video installations, but I never see them in “regular people use”.

Re: Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

#149

Post by nologic01 »

I guess Intel is not the kind of company that would reinvent itself with a "iphone moment".

Granted the idea of a personal home cloud is not exactly radical and Intel does not have an OS (though they could adopt linux) but its not a stretch of imagination to think every home running one or more such devices.

The challenge of navigating the post-Moore's law era clearly requires focus as a few more missteps (whatever happened to Xeon Phi?) could be terminal.

The best way to survive an uncertain future is to shrewdly engineer one to your liking, rather than chase others working on their own strengths.

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