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Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#461

Post by markus_zhang »

izacus wrote: post #36

I was just buying a laptop for my family and the prices of MacBooks here in Europe are utterly crazy. The crappiest 8GB RAM (?!) 256SSD M2 Air model is 1650EUR. 1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. The 16GB model is rounded 2000EUR, which was before reserved for a high-end gaming laptops. It's bonkers.

God a 16' 16GB M2 costs 3200 CAD which is almost 4000 CAD after tax and a few extra but necessary peripherals. Although I understand that M2 pro is usually reserved by professionals who need some extra punch but it's still outrageously expensive.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#462

Post by brundolf »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #454
drooopy wrote: post #32

In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm…

The amount of people that do almost nothing beside use spreadsheets, the browser, and email is pretty significant. The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing. I would be astounded if ~80% of users get any material benefit from a laptop newer than a high-end device from 4 years ago.

The first thing I noticed when getting an M1 was that Jira became fast

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#463

Post by renewiltord »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #145
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dollar is insanely strong right now This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance. Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous ind…

Outside of Peter Zeihan, I'm also utterly surprised that no one even brings up the demographics debate. Everyone has been so indoctrinated on the "we have too many people" propaganda that they haven't even realized how fast birth rates have dropped across the globe (and they're dropping even faster now). The demographics of Europe, China, Japan and S. Korea are all terminal at this point. Outside of UK, France, and t…

No. The US does not have high fertility. If the nation does not import labour or perform massive automation it will face a massive problem.

The present phenomenon where unions and local power groups can extract massive rent is coming to an end.

America will fracture unless she accelerates. San Francisco is the earliest example of that.

The old must die or make way and they are not.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#464

Post by merpnderp »

ajross wrote: post #437
carlosjobim wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries are only redistribution of current money supply. Inflation means an increased money supply and only banks can increase it, wether it's government banks, private banks, or both.

It's a feedback cycle, arguments about which node in the graph is the "real" one are pointless. My point was just empirical: almost always, the proximate cause of "inflation" is increased consumer spending, and the proximate cause of that is usually salary growth. And it was this time too. So an argument of the form "salaries don't keep up with inflation" is backwards (usually). They already did!

It is not so simple as to say salaries went up so inflation went up. Inflation from decreased supply at the same time as increased Treasury spending through stimuluses, coupled with the workforce shrinking, is what caused salaries to rise.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#465

Post by sounds »

Apple's products enjoy a halo effect, driving up demand. But their chips don't because the new M2 competes against their own existing products.

I expect Apple will make some more concessions to repairability in order to maximize their ROI after buying out TSMC's leading edge node.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#466

Post by joshstrange »

anthonypasq wrote: post #449
joshstrange wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience since I first went from windows to mac. People always talk about the "Apple Tax" and it's real but it's not as obscene as people make it out to be when you factor in longevity. I had friends in college who were replacing ~$400-500 machines almost yearly while my ~$1,200 machine (2009) lasted all 4 years and then some. I only upgraded since I was using it professionally and wanted some more…

did you ever stop to think that maybe if they bought a $1200 windows machine it would have lasted 4 years. also macs were very early to hop on the ssd train and that was an insane advantage over most windows machines. I think that gap has closed substantially at this point.

It might have lasted 4 years, but you'll note I said I knew people using them up to 10 years. In fact my 2014 MBP is still in service, a friend of mine uses it. I had a $1k+ Windows laptop that was a few years old in 2007-2009 and I was thoroughly unimpressed in it's build quality and how crappy/slow it was after 2 years. This was all pre-ssd even on macs (or at least the macs I was buying).

I have no doubt that Windows laptop build quality has improved in the last decade, in no small part to chasing after Apple, but at this point I can't imagine going back to Windows so I'll never really know.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#467

Post by dchftcs »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #454
drooopy wrote: post #32

In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm…

The amount of people that do almost nothing beside use spreadsheets, the browser, and email is pretty significant. The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing. I would be astounded if ~80% of users get any material benefit from a laptop newer than a high-end device from 4 years ago.

>The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing.

Seems apt to post this exceptionally cheesy Mac ad: https://youtu.be/8kF5x2D3rqo

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#468

Post by agumonkey »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #74
pigsty wrote: post #30

The dollar is insanely strong right now and global Mac prices raised in accordance with that. In places that don’t use USD, prices shot up by tens of percent overnight while the US prices are the same as ever. Japan, for example, got a price increase of about 40% on all items. Unsurprisingly, sales declined.

> The dollar is insanely strong right now This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance. Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous ind…

I run into people that are thinking the opposite. Maybe they're too contrarian but they think this is the start of a rebalance toward china / brics / non western countries.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#469

Post by sliken »

nrki wrote: post #404
varispeed wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. Technically it is replaceable - replacement of surface mount components isn't actually too difficult and tools that are needed are affordable. Problem is that the Apple won't give an option to buy memory or SSD chips on an open market. While the replacement wouldn't be feasible for a typical laptop user, plenty of mobile repair shops would have done…

> Technically it is replaceable It's not user-replaceable. It would not be _that_ difficult for Apple to keep a SODIMM slot free, or even come up with a new standard - as they are wont to do. Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money - it's as simple as that.

Well trick is, decent iGPUs need better than 128 bit wide DDR5 @ 5200 Mhz. So apple's solution is a small CPU package with ram on board that lets them do 128, 256, 512, and 1024 bit wide memory interfaces. All but the 1024 bit wide are low power enough to be in thin laptops.

Considering even the Ryzen 7950x or Intel I9 for desktops are 128 bit wide that's a pretty huge difference. You have to move up to Epyc, Threadripper, Xeon, or a Workstation CPU to get more than 128 bits, and those aren't available on laptops.

So I'm going to have to disagree with the "Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money".

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#470

Post by mattrighetti »

nonninz wrote: post #367
mattrighetti wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an M2 a couple of months ago, coming from an i9 16". Oh boy, I know what it is like to have a hot machine :sigh:. The Intel version was stuck at 70C in idle, which is nuts. I think that that was probably the main reason of the switch.

So the new M2 runs much cooler?

Definitely! I mostly use it connected to my 4K display and on a typical day it does not heat over 50C and that happens when you're compiling stuff for minutes. My Intel Mac's fans activated simply because it was connected to a 4K external display.
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