How far they've grown from Steve Jobs' "never be afraid to self-cannibalize" mentality.
1,013 karma · joined June 15, 2020
At $299 this feels like a very niche product with limited functionality.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion: Google would greatly benefit from this AI bubble to pop and take down OpenAI and Anthropic.
The sad fact here is that OpenAI and Anthropic are only looking for a max 1-year runway (Anthropic's is only a few months away) so that they can IPO and their VC investors cash out immensely. They do not care about AI safety or fairness, only to appease their VC overlords. But the public is being lied to and pitched this narrative that "open weight AI models are all bad".
In short, a bad or subpar chip design/architecture can be masked by having the chip fabricated on a leading edge node but not the inverse. Hence everyone is vying for capacity on TSMC's newest nodes - especially Apple in trying to secure all capacity for themselves.
Sure Intel GPUs are inferior to both Nvidia and AMD flagship offerings, but they're competitive at a price-to-performance ratio. I'd argue for a 1st gen product, it was quite successful at opening up the market and enabling for cross-selling opportunities with its CPUs.
That all said, I suspect the original intent was to fabricate the GPUs on IFS instead of TSMC in order to soak up idle capacity. But plans changed along the way (for likely performance reasons) and added to the IFS's poor perception.
Restoring Intel's foundry lead starting with 18A was central to Pat's vision and he essentially staked his job on it. 18A is supposed to enter production next year but recent rumors is that it's broken.
Splitting Intel is necessary but probably infeasible at this point in the game. Simple fact is that Intel Foundry Services has nothing to offer against the likes of TSMC and Samsung - perhaps only cheaper prices and even then it's unproven to fab any non-Intel chips. So the only way to keep it afloat is by continuing to fab Intel's own designs, until 18A node becomes viable/ready.
Fundamentally Apple wants to leverage their supply chain to maximize shared parts between the Pro and base iPhones. Lack of hardware innovations makes it hard to create product differentiation.
Heck, even the A18 Pro chip seems a marginal upgrade over the base A18 chip: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/apples-a18-chip-desi...
Just as Standard Oil used their position to force railroads and other distributors to only carry their oil and not of their competitors', the same case here with Google.
Arguably all these antitrust cases, while better late than never, are at least a decade late. If it was filed in the early 2010s, then possibly there could've been viable competitors to Google, Apple, Amazon, and even Meta. But now these tech titans all have unassailable positions.
I think you're giving Apple too much credit. They are too myopic and too focused on optimizing their current financials, especially under Tim Cook. To build a new search engine would mean 1) tossing away the $20B Google offers, and 2) spend potentially billions to build or acquire something viable.
Would be unacceptable to the Apple institutional shareholders. Akin to what Meta tried to do with their Reality Labs.
As an end user this sounds appealing since it allows to opt in or out.
Easy to forget that Microsoft has had 5 years since the release of Qualcomm SQ1-powered Surface Pro X back in 2019. Sure these Nuvia-built cores are much superior but Windows on ARM remains a WIP at best.
Could be extrapolating this incident too much but it feels it encapsulates the transformation of Apple from this quirky, unconventional upstart into a monopolistic leviathan the past 2 decades. There's also a sense of hubris at suggesting your single electronic device can replace all those creative tools.
The most interesting aspect of the M4 is simply it's debuting on the iPad lineup, whereas historically it's always been on the iPhone (for A-series) and Macbook (for M-series). Makes sense given low expected yielded for the newest node for one of Apple's lower volume products.
For the curious, the original TSMC N3 node had a lot of issues plus was very costly so makes sense to move away from it: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/tsmcs-3nm-conundrum-does-it-e...
On the Macbooks (running MacOS), RAM has been used as data cache to speed up data read/write performance until the actual SSD storage operation completes. It makes sense for Apple to account for with higher RAM spec for the 1TB/2TB configurations.
Like it or not, there are different rules for the biggest players who wield market power. If you want an iPhone, then Android is not an alternative option. DOJ's argument is that Apple has added artificial disincentives to enable switching to a non-iPhone and also favor its own apps/services.
This is verbatim the argument against Microsoft and how it was wielding its Windows monopoly to stifle competition like Netscape. Easy to forget that Microsoft had closed APIs for 3rd parties and dictated how OEMs installed its OS before the US government judgement. You could've made the same counterpoint at the time that there's theoretical alternative OSes like Linux and Unix.
For millions of people, it's their main/sole computing and internet access device so should be a neutral platform - with clear evidence as cited that Apple has not maintained its neutrality. As a neutral platform, customers should have the freedom to use their devices without undue interference or restrictions from Apple.
These are similar arguments made in the Microsoft vs. Netscape case. The lone example of being unable to install non-App Store apps is enough to justify the DOJ's case. Question is what would the verdict be? Similar to the EU's DMA rules would be a likely starting point.
I think it's inevitable iPhone 16 prices will increase in EU starting later this year. Arguably similar to Valve's Steam Deck, iPhone prices are subsidized by the apps revenue. Apple is going to try preserve their profit margins one way or another.
Or someone will inevitably create an app that will do this automatically & indefinitely.
Otherwise why go through the additional overhead and headache of implementing region-specific rules? iOS is becoming branched into 3 forks: EU, China, and rest of the world.
Just look at Google's recent failures or inability to thwart competitors, despite its massive scale and resources:
- YouTube Short: took too long (4+ years) to launch against TikTok
- Meet: lacked feature parity to Zoom despite the perfect market condition
- Stadia: telegraphed its intention (Project Stream) 5 years early and lacked conviction
- ChatGPT: caught flat-footed and playing catch-up for 2+ years now
It's surprising that he hasn't been fired by the board already.
Arguably it's the reverse: if there was clear vision from the beginning, "Bard" would've never existed as a brand name.
Now with the additional $10/month bundled into this "Google One Premium AI" subscription, looks like they're finally looking to monetize. But it feels too bloated of a bundle; why didn't they opt for creating separate bundles or add-ons for Workplace (aka business) users and Assistant (aka consumer) user?
This is identical to other article to charge up to 27% for non-App Store purchases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39020365
In a world of stagnant hardware sales, Services is the only growing category for Apple. Say goodbye to AAPL stock prices if this gets serious eroded by sideloading apps, etc.
They both contain the AMD Z1 Extreme SOC, which not only has 8 cores but contains a pretty good iGPU (780M is comparable to Nvidia's 1050Ti in benchmarks). Added bonus is that it contains a battery and display, so very portable and fairly good gaming machines.
Maybe get an external HDD adapter for when you need to access old files.
Case in point: Nvidia has been hosting "GPU Conferences" annually to build awareness and drive adoption of CUDA. These events surely aren't free to host but necessary to build momentum and give an edge to your custom stack.
Luck is more applicable to the cryptomining boom and bust cycles that Nvidia also profited from. Their gaming GPUs (along with AMD's) just happened to be the best available at the proof of work.