Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

servethehome.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 526 posts

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

#301

Post by ffhhttt »

whynotminot wrote: post #243
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…

> Apple has seemingly intentionally priced themselves out of reach of smaller and indie creative-types I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. But with Apple Silicon, there's actually never been a better price to performance ratio at the bottom end of their lineup, perhaps in Apple's entire history. An entry-level Mac Mini or MacBoo…

> indie creator tremendous power and performance per dollar.

Not with 8GB of RAM and Intel and AMD had caught up with performance per dollar. Apple is mainly competing on performance per thickness/battery life/fan volume which are still huge selling points.

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

#302

Post by phpisthebest »

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…

The Intel NUC was too successful and none of the big commercial players (Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc) ever embraced it as they basically repurpose their Laptop boards and engineering into their "tiny" and "nano" 1L platforms which function like a headless laptop.

None of these players are interested in budget systems either, which is where my attraction to NUC platform was, Celeron. None of the big players touch Celeron, they only make I3, I5, and I7 systems, all in excess of $600 ea.

I can get a Celeron intel NUC fully equipment with a Windows Lic for less than 1/2 that that is perfectly suited for Line of Business Applications, Kiosk Machines, or other Low I/O, Low Memory single Application workloads.

Things that could run on PI or other ARM SBC if not for the application stack requirement of Win32 API and the management integration of Windows (Active Directory, Intune, ConfigMgr) etc.

I see alot of comments on here about how Great the NUC linux compatibility is. Ironically the Main Reason I use Intel NUC platform in a commercial setting is because of its Windows Compatibility, something alot of the low cost, tiny form factor, SBC platforms (like Odriod, rPI, etc) lack. I require Windows for my environment unfortunately .

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

#303

Post by diffeomorphism »

squokko wrote: post #51
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.

The Mac Mini is a totally different market: it 1) runs macOS 2) has Apple Silicon 3) has no competitors for running macOS 4) is the cheapest entry point into iOS development which is a high paying job

Is that supposed to be positive or negative? Because the only thing I'm reading is "I can think of nothing positive to say, but if you absolutely have to use macos, it totally runs that.".

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

#304

Post by ffhhttt »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #282
whynotminot wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has seemingly intentionally priced themselves out of reach of smaller and indie creative-types I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. But with Apple Silicon, there's actually never been a better price to performance ratio at the bottom end of their lineup, perhaps in Apple's entire history. An entry-level Mac Mini or MacBoo…

> I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. Yes, of course - but historically Apple's MacPros (and G3, G4, and G5 PowerMacs before that) had a fairly reasonable entry-prices - but in recent years (especially since 2013) the entry-price of Apple's workstation-tier machines has risen sharply over inflation: In 2005, Apple advertised[1]…

That’s because most people who bought these machines 20 years ago now just buy laptops which are perfectly sufficient for their use cases.

Even if there was a 3000-400 desktop Mac Pro I doubt many people would buy it instead of a MBP.

If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.

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

#305

Post by drcongo »

toast0 wrote: post #31
drcongo wrote: post #21

Does NUC stand for something? Is it an Intel sub-brand or a more general classification?

Intel coined NUC as "Next Unit of Computing" in 2012. I don't believe they claim a trademark on the term, but I've not seen any other company use it. There's plenty of other products with a similar footprint, it's about as small as you can shrink a board with a mainstream laptop chip with modular memory and storage, and a decent amount of ports.

Thanks all.

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

#306

Post by Aromasin »

kfinley wrote: post #179
Aromasin wrote: post #140

Funny enough, I predicted this in a previous HZ comment 3 months ago when they cut their server systems business. > "My guess is that they're cutting the portfolio down to feature only chipsets and add-in cards. Just CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, networking. It makes sense if anything - it really focuses on their core business. No more side-projects with questionable profitability. In the last 2 years since Pat Gelsinger…

> If any hedge funds are looking for analysts, I'm always open to offers... How would you invest based on this prediction?

Depends on the portfolio and strategy, but personally I think Intel is a Buy. They're burning money building new fabs with little indication that they can execute on their node or product roadmaps, but they've really took a chunk out of their cost-centre to the point where even during one of their worst quarters in the last 30+ years in terms of sales, they're still turning a profit. The Saphire Rapids Xeon is out finally out and making money after 3+ years of delays. The client products are the best they've looked in 15 years. They've got some big customers lined up for IFS. Considering the market was happy to price them at ~$64 just two years ago without all that information, makes me believe $33 is a poor market for where they're at. That's near enough their asset price.

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

#307

Post by diffeomorphism »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #108
jwells89 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on situation, the way NUCs typically needed external power bricks also made them less attractive. Mac minis aren't as small no, but the size difference for having the PSU be internal is minimal and it eases power strip woes.

Price aside, the power brick was always a huge annoyance that kept me from getting one. Now that usbc gan chargers can hit 100W, I keep hoping for a mini pc option that runs a ~65W class CPU with integrated GPU on a non proprietary charger.

That exists and is common, e.g. the usual chinese brands (minisforum, beelink,....) have usb c pd in.

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

#308

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

ffhhttt wrote: post #304
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. Yes, of course - but historically Apple's MacPros (and G3, G4, and G5 PowerMacs before that) had a fairly reasonable entry-prices - but in recent years (especially since 2013) the entry-price of Apple's workstation-tier machines has risen sharply over inflation: In 2005, Apple advertised[1]…

That’s because most people who bought these machines 20 years ago now just buy laptops which are perfectly sufficient for their use cases. Even if there was a 3000-400 desktop Mac Pro I doubt many people would buy it instead of a MBP. If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an op…

> If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.

Laptops, even those marketed as "mobile workstations", really can't compete with a proper desktop-experience - yes, a docking-station goes a long way with replicating connectivity options, but (in my life, at least) there's far too many qualiatative and quantiatative benefits to having a "proper" desktop for dev.

----

A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day - which means I'm careful to avoid putting irreplacable data on my laptop (and have Bitlocker enabled, which does noticably impact disk IO, even today) - whereas my desktop is a different, and a more trusted, environment. I'm not going to compromise my daily computing experience by using a throwaway-ish environment.

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

#309

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

giantrobot wrote: post #259
scarface_74 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Windows is garbage

I accept that as an ex-MSFTie I am biased - but I'm honestly curious what Windows did to you that put you off it. Can you share?

(Though I agree Windows 11 is ... not good, so I'm sticking with Windows 10 - though I am starting to experiment with a Slackware desktop too).

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

#310

Post by Arn_Thor »

nextos wrote: post #161
Aromasin wrote: post #140

Funny enough, I predicted this in a previous HZ comment 3 months ago when they cut their server systems business. > "My guess is that they're cutting the portfolio down to feature only chipsets and add-in cards. Just CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, networking. It makes sense if anything - it really focuses on their core business. No more side-projects with questionable profitability. In the last 2 years since Pat Gelsinger…

Sad news. NUCs could have been an excellent platform if they had tried to work a bit more on cooling. On third-party cases, NUCs were great. But on stock cases, some models were too noisy. Still, they provided great value. Nonetheless, I agree it's better for Intel to focus on their core business and leave this market to others. Some niche PC makers such as Cirrus7 offer great NUC-like systems.

This is why I'm so sad about this news: reviews showed the latest generation had a much less, and more pleasant, fan noise
Post reply on HN