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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

#521

Post by jbergens »

scarface_74 wrote: post #186
rcme wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this basically the innovator’s dilemma? You can call it focusing the core business, but you can also call it dropping investment in long term cash flows.

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.

In a way it would be logical for Apple to get out of the computer business and scrap all MacBooks and Mac Minis. That they only have around 10% of the market means that most people uses iPhones with non-Apple computers anyway. They could focus on making that experience even better.

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

#522

Post by Aromasin »

halicarnassus wrote: post #194
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…

> It's sad to NUCs go, but it was inevitable. They made products for customers, while simultaneously competing with said customers. That is true, but they're already a decade into shipping NUCs. Maybe it wasn't a problem after all. It could also be just a move to show the stock market that they focus on getting leaner. RIP NUC :'(

You can then argue that they've spent the last decade slipping into irrelevance, so perhaps the NUC focus was a distraction from their core issues. They're at an inflection point in the company where either they turn the ship around and successfully become the second largest foundry, closing their technology gap with TSMC, or they continue losing market share. They can't fund new fabs and new nodes without a massive reduction in their cost center.

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

#523

Post by Aromasin »

mips_r4300i wrote: post #7
bell-cot wrote: post #4

Ah, classic Intel. Randomly start making/selling X with great fanfare, maybe do that pretty well for a while, then quietly abandon X later. For any X != "x86 CPU's".

My greatest fear is when they decide they don't know what to do with FPGAs anymore and get rid of Altera (please do this, Intel, your website doc format is awful compared to good old Altera's) Funnily enough, Intel did used to make PLDs in the 90s. And back then, Altera actually rebranded and sold them!

Their FPGA business group grew 2x last year, compared to every other business unit which shrunk anywhere between 10-30%. If anything, it's their golden child at the moment. They've just announced they're getting back into the mid and low-end devices with Agilex 5 and 3, and now do a RF focused Agilex 9 product, so I really doubt it's going anywhere: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/fpg...

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

#524

Post by scarface_74 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #321
scarface_74 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think most developers in 2023 are using desktops?

Honestly, I don't know - but I'm not willing to bet either way: don't forget there's a _huge_ contingent of people at companies of all sizes that figured out VBA in Office by themselves and write software internally at work who don't identify with us, the HN fringe, who only code in the office, on a company-provided desktop. I've only ever seen (and experienced first-hand) software companies and startups issuing lapt…

I work with a lot of enterprisey companies and state and local companies (cloud consulting department at BigTech) everyone has a laptop.

If you don’t recall there was a worldwide pandemic a couple of years ago and a lot of people started working remotely.

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

#525

Post by dangus »

alwillis wrote: post #515
dangus wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually looked at the price of pre-built desktops lately? Check out all the big computer manufacturers like Dell and HP. Go to their “cheap desktops” section (e.g., Dell Inspiron). Focusing on Dell, the cheapest one I see is $499 and the specs are a 13th gen i5, Intel UHD 730, 8GB of RAM, 512GB SSD. Bring your own monitor! For laptops, the Inspiron 15 for $430 gets you 12GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 11th gen core i5,…

> Look at Apple and the Mac mini will save you $400 over a MacBook Air but you’ll need a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and webcam/microphone. Yes, that's who the Mac mini is primarily targeted at--PC users that want a Mac but don't want to spend a lot of money and who have a keyboard, mouse and display. > In the case of Apple, the desktop is literally louder because the only Apple system with a fanless design is the MacB…

I wish Apple disclosed individual product line sales because I think they would show that I am right and you are wrong ;-)

I don't think the Mac mini is the workhorse or a strong seller of the Mac lineup; it's just a convenient little niche to keep around.

Regarding performance advantage: When Apple was on Intel, Intel's SKUs had way more of a wattage/thermal difference between their product lines: The 16" MacBook Pro was sucking down 100 watts while my current 14" MacBook Pro can stay charged on an iPhone charging brick.

So when you look at a Mac Mini at $600 having a handful of extra cores over a $1000 MacBook Air, it's like, "yes, it's technically faster," but not "I'm going to be able to enable new workflows with this additional performance."

If you can play a game or edit a video or browse the web on a Mac mini, you'll be able to do the exact same thing on a MacBook Air and, as a generally subjective human, not notice any difference in capability or speed. This was not the case when Apple was selling 12" MacBooks that felt miserably slow editing a Word document new out of the box.

Regarding storage: That 8TB upgrade is only available on the top-tier Mac mini, and choosing it brings you to $3699. Choose the lowest tier MacBook Pro 14" with that same storage upgrade and for $4399 and you get the exact same processor with the exact same performance (not thermally limited), and on top of that you get a 120Hz mini-LED high DPI display, keyboard, trackpad, webcam, battery, and all the convenience that a laptop gets you.

What person with nearly $4000 to spend on a system is going to choose not to have a laptop for less than 20% more money when they don't even lose even a single digit percent of performance? It's not like the Mac mini is internally expandable or upgradable at all.

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

#526

Post by MongoTheMad »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #164
xgbi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The form factor is way bigger than a NUC that fits on a vga mount!

There's a bunch of different models of the 5050 (poor branding on Dell's part IMO). OP is probably talking about the micro version.

Yeah, I was referring to the slim version.
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