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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

#251

Post by giantrobot »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #210
scarface_74 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NUC was never going to be a mass market product. Sure Apple sells the Mac Mini. But the entire Mac line is only 10% of Apple’s revenue and most of that is laptops. But Apple has to support its ecosystem as its only supplier. Intel doesn’t And besides, a NUC based on x86 chips is by definition going to suck at either performance or heat.

> Sure Apple sells the Mac Mini. But the entire Mac line is only 10% of Apple’s revenue and most of that is laptops The 10% figure is spot-on and that really threw me - I was expecting something like 25-30%: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q4_Consolidated_Fin... It’s unnerving that Apple is effectively dependent on a single product line to subsidise everything: Apple Silicon must have cost tens (hundreds?) o…

> which leaves them with less access to trend-setting professionals - which erodes their ability to compete, long-term, imo

Those people all have MacBook Pros or Mac Studios. The Mac Pro has been a niche of a niche item for a decade.

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

#252

Post by Sunspark »

ISL wrote: post #214

:(. I've been happy with NUCs. I've been very happy to pay a premium for a product I'd certain would be consistent. In fact, I've recently been trying to find a NUC-like system that could accommodate a 3.5" drive -- does anything modern exist?

You could use an external enclosure for the drive.

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

#254

Post by adrr »

simmons wrote: post #117

Oh, I'm sorry to hear this. :( I've bought many NUCs over the years. I'm literally sitting in my office right now with 8 NUCs set up -- 1 as a workstation, and 7 as servers performing various tasks. I know people have always complained that they are a bit more expensive than the alternatives, but I'm willing to pay a premium for the excellent Linux compatibility and reliability. That said, I've been expecting this fo…

Curious how many they sold. We had them deployed for all our meeting rooms to run conferencing software on the large monitors attached to the walls.

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

#255

Post by etempleton »

anonylizard wrote: post #221
javier2 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a bigger issue that the next gen NUCs will be good enough to cannibalize the rest of the desktop market. Look at the recent amd offerings and the mac mini with M1. They can replace my destop fully. The only reason I have a desktop now is for gaming.

That's not happening. The new high end application for PCs is running AIs locally. No way you can fit a 4090 in a NUC, the GPU itself is larger than a NUC, heat dissipation requirements cannot be 'optimized' away.

There are some pretty interesting custom builders on YouTube such as Optimum Tech that do some fascinating custom loop compact builds and then under volt the GPU. Here is a recent one with a 4090: https://youtu.be/X0ukdo7Xx7U

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

#256

Post by scarface_74 »

giantrobot wrote: post #251
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure Apple sells the Mac Mini. But the entire Mac line is only 10% of Apple’s revenue and most of that is laptops The 10% figure is spot-on and that really threw me - I was expecting something like 25-30%: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q4_Consolidated_Fin... It’s unnerving that Apple is effectively dependent on a single product line to subsidise everything: Apple Silicon must have cost tens (hundreds?) o…

> which leaves them with less access to trend-setting professionals - which erodes their ability to compete, long-term, imo Those people all have MacBook Pros or Mac Studios. The Mac Pro has been a niche of a niche item for a decade.

And if Apple “fails” with “trendsetting professionals” which is only a tiny market and the Mac itself is only 10% of Apple’s revenue, does it matter?

The entire global PC market is around 286 million:

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-01-1....

Compared to 1.5 billion+ phones

https://www.sellcell.com/how-many-mobile-phones-are-sold-eac...

“Trendsetting professionals who buy PCs” don’t even move the needle.

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

#257

Post by windexh8er »

giantrobot wrote: post #218
windexh8er wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NUC, depending on the model, had decent cooling. I've owned a few of them over the years. My Skull Canyon having been my longest desktop computer ever and always had great Linux support. Funny enough the fan on that unit was recalled and Intel happily replaced it well out of warranty. But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and…

> But with the advent of Minisforum, Beelink and all the other random options on AliExpress I would gather it's been getting harder and harder to command a premium price because it says Intel on the box. It was my impression the NUC sold by Intel was always meant to be a proof of concept for the NUC-class device to inspire third parties to make them. Intel getting out of the market now that it's proven sort of makes…

NUC was always a platform that exposed the latest and greatest in a small form factor. I, honestly, don't believe the form factor itself was the driver. But the ability to show off the new hardware capabilities in a cheap, small, package. People were using these things in the DC, not because of the size (in fact that was often an impediment) but the capabilities in a small footprint.

Losing this outlet for them is a loss for Intel to bring new considerations to their platform beyond just chips. Again, if Intel was looking at NUC as a profit center, surely it was smart to shut it down. But I highly doubt the NUC line was a significant revenue generator to begin with. Because that wasn't the real value add for Intel. It got people talking about Intel and using it. That is one of the greatest forms of marketing for a chip manufacturer.

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

#259

Post by giantrobot »

scarface_74 wrote: post #256
giantrobot wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which leaves them with less access to trend-setting professionals - which erodes their ability to compete, long-term, imo Those people all have MacBook Pros or Mac Studios. The Mac Pro has been a niche of a niche item for a decade.

And if Apple “fails” with “trendsetting professionals” which is only a tiny market and the Mac itself is only 10% of Apple’s revenue, does it matter? The entire global PC market is around 286 million: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-01-1... . Compared to 1.5 billion+ phones https://www.sellcell.com/how-many-mobile-phones-are-sold-eac... “Trendsetting professionals who buy PCs” don’t even move…

> And if Apple “fails” with “trendsetting professionals” which is only a tiny market and the Mac itself is only 10% of Apple’s revenue, does it matter?

Only in that Apple would need a platform to develop for iOS. But at that future Mac failure point that dev platform would just be iPadOS or something. I would be disappointed if Macs went away, Windows is garbage and no Linux desktop experience is as good (for me) as the Mac's but Apple wouldn't really notice in terms of revenue.

However I don't think there's any foreseeable reason for the Mac to go away. Most of the Apple's development effort is shared between macOS and iOS with even more iOS things being ported to the Mac side. Even hardware development is shared between the platforms and will be shared with the Vision platform. Even with 10% of the company's revenues the Mac is nowhere near 10% of Apple's OpEx so it definitely makes more money than it costs to develop and maintain.

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

#260

Post by ceejayoz »

hbbio wrote: post #203
adrian_b wrote: post #10

This is sad, because the Intel NUCs were some of the last computers with adequate technical documentation. For most modern computers you cannot be 100% sure about what you get for your money, until you have them in your hands and you can run tests yourself. By then, if you discover that the computer is not exactly what you want, it is too late. You cannot get your money back because the computer is not defective, it…

> nobody has made good computers with 35 W CPUs and with a volume of less than 0.5 L Apple

And as a bonus, "You cannot get your money back because the computer is not defective, it is just different from what you expected" isn't true for them; you can return for any/no reason in the first two weeks.
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