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Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

What kind of bizarre thinking is this? There is surprise that a laptop released at the end of October is not built with a chip released in September?? WTF? Even if the chip is fully 100% slot compatible, neither MS nor Apple would or could take that at face value. The power requirements are different, that alone is cause for a redesign of the board.

The author seems to be living in a fantasy land, it takes time to test, purchase the processors, build the laptops, ship the laptops, and I'm sure I'm missing about 10 other bottlenecks in the process. The Pascal GPU was only released in May, and that is still too soon to have been designed around.

Missing are examples of computers that have shipped in high volume using 1-4 months old components. Missing is some realization that if both MS & Apple are doing the same thing, there's probably a good reason.

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Also, I think Microsoft got burned by power management problems with Skylake in Intel's IGP drivers. I don't think they want to take the same chance with Kaby Lake.

The problem is Intel's execution, not Apple or Microsoft. The original retina Macbook Pro launched with Ivy Bridge less than two months after that chip came out. But Intel managed to launch that with a full suite of SKUs. With both Skylake, Intel released the chips in trickles, with ULV parts appearing in August 2015 and Iris Pro parts appearing in May 2016.

CPU's don't show up from thin air. Partners can release compatible boards on day 1 making the official release date kind of irrelevant.

Laptops don't either, it's highly probable the specs were locked down completely for more than 2 months, chances are the components were already purchased and shipped an in-house before Kaby Lake was available, chances are the components were already purchsed and shipped an in-house before Pascal was available. This makes the release date completely relevant, because there simply wasn't enough time to purchase, stock & manufacture using the new CPUs.

I don't know specifics about either Microsoft's or Apple's manufacturing & shipping processes, but I have worked on a product that shipped from Asia, and everything was done, completely done, two months before the product could hit the shelves. Moreover, that two months was the software deadline, the easiest thing to change. The hardware, materials, components, design, that was all done and locked a year before the product shipped.

Intel does not start manufacturing the CPU on release day either. Partners can have access to the 'final' product well before the official release day.

The vast majority of companies don't qualify for this, but MS and Apple are not most companies.

Yes, you're right, Intel has a lead time too. Which means the difference in shelf date between Intel's chips and Apple's laptops is probably roughly representative of the difference in lead time starts too.

No idea, but I would speculate wildly the MacBook has a longer lead time than Intel CPUs do, the laptops being a more consumer product and for various other reasons.

Either way, access != volume, Apple can't ship Intel CPUs until it has them. But, it's clear you understand the issues. And so I assume it is obvious that having a laptop on the shelves with a chip that is less than 2 months old is not even realistic, right? You're not arguing that either company actually could have used Kaby Lake, right?

The author says all the same things in the article - are you sure you disagree with it?

Well yes, but the question posed in the article is stupid. Apple and Microsoft aren't using "such old processors". They are using the previous generation, because that's what was available to them.

Both companies, according to the article, where in fact using the very latest GPUs and CPU on the market, had Intel and Nvidia not released new chips just as Apple and Microsoft where beginning production.

Pretty sure, given the title and the goading, incredulous comments throughout, like "What's up with that?" and "Why?" and "I asked reps from both companies why they’d elected to go with older CPUs and GPUs when the new ones should have been able to slot into their devices with relative ease." and "In the case of Microsoft, it’s frustrating, because that old GPU is significantly slower than the Pascal GPUs available. The gorgeous Surface Studio appears hamstrung as a consequence."

Apple would have received early samples of Intel & nVidia's chips under NDA months before they were publicly announced.

And I'm certain both companies called out here have those samples and have been testing with them. There is a reason they didn't ship with them yet.

Samples don't do anything for high volume manufacturing, and a couple of months simply isn't enough time. You have to remember that the release date for MS and Apple products means those laptops are on the shelf. To get to the shelf, they shipped from Asia, which alone takes weeks. Before that they were manufacturing and stocking, before that they were testing like crazy and hotfixing everything they found for a couple of months, and simultaneously purchasing and shipping the components to the manufacturer. It's easy to see that component lockdown has to happen several months before the product is on the shelves, which means there is literally zero chance Kaby Lake was even a choice.

Yeah, it's enough if Intel said "we can provide 1 million Skylake chips before October, but only 200k Kaby Lake chips by the same date", and Apple doesn't get a choice in that regard.

How does that help Apple or Microsoft to ship a product when the samples aren't available in quantity yet? Should they have waited for the new chips sometime next year. Surely no one would have complained about that delay.

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