Apple will soon be (Tramiel era) Commodore

[Bug-Creator]

In the 8Bit day C= made their own CPUs, custom chips, motherboards and cases.
O.k. those were running MS-Basic as on OS/BIOS, but on the other hand C= did have their own production lines and even made the chips.

So Apple now has about much of their product "in house" like no other major player in the past 35 years. Lets just hope it doesn't end as badly.

 

[cmaier]

In the 8Bit day C= made their own CPUs, custom chips, motherboards and cases.
O.k. those were running MS-Basic as on OS/BIOS, but on the other hand C= did have their own production lines and even made the chips.

So Apple now has about much of their product "in house" like no other major player in the past 35 years. Lets just hope it doesn't end as badly.

no major player other than IBM (Power/PowerPC), Sun (Sparc/UltraJava), Silicon Graphics (MIPS), DEC (Alpha, StrongARM) or HP (PA-Risc)?

 

[MichaelDT]

no major player other than IBM (Power/PowerPC), Sun (Sparc/UltraJava), Silicon Graphics (MIPS), DEC (Alpha, StrongARM) or HP (PA-Risc)?

None of those have been what we would call success stories.... I think a move away from standards is a loss for consumers. ARM is a standard, if Apple implements the EFI/Bios and motherboard architecture in a standard compliant way with the rest of the industry I’m hopeful. Something tells me they will not.

 

[cmaier]

None of those have been what we would call success stories.... I think a move away from standards is a loss for consumers. ARM is a standard, if Apple implements the EFI/Bios and motherboard architecture in a standard compliant way with the rest of the industry I’m hopeful. Something tells me they will not.

Apple hasn’t even done it yet - can’t call them a success story before it even happens!

My only point was that this is not nearly as rare as it seems. DECs entire business was built on machines using their own CPUs. Same with Sun.

as for your other point, I wouldn’t bet on it either way. But note that “Apple Silicon” doesn’t have the word ”Arm” in it, and they haven’t gone out of their way to discuss Arm (other than explaining to developers that the ISA is arm).

 

[MichaelDT]

Apple hasn’t even done it yet - can’t call them a success story before it even happens!

My only point was that this is not nearly as rare as it seems. DECs entire business was built on machines using their own CPUs. Same with Sun.

as for your other point, I wouldn’t bet on it either way. But note that “Apple Silicon” doesn’t have the word ”Arm” in it, and they haven’t gone out of their way to discuss Arm (other than explaining to developers that the ISA is arm).

The last point is what has my concern. I remember PPC days, seemed like the better option then Apple made their own arch incompatible with the others (which sorta died outside of game consoles). A few years into it Pentiums were smoking PPC G3-G4s and we were all drinking the MHz myth koolaid Apple was serving up. ;-)

 

[Bodie CI5]

Oh, this is a Pleasance topic. Kronologically this sounds MOS like a new dAWN for Apple. I'm hoping it goes very well for users and company alike.

As you say, let's hope it doesn't up like a Mehdi Ali or Irving Gould operation with the move to ARM!

Hope you've been well

 

[Bug-Creator]

no major player other than IBM (Power/PowerPC), Sun (Sparc/UltraJava), Silicon Graphics (MIPS), DEC (Alpha, StrongARM) or HP (PA-Risc)?

Other than IBM these were all novelty workstations that sold in the 1000s not 1000000s, and even IBM barely registers when it comes to PPC systems they shipped themselves. Now the mainframes of old might be a different thing but that was on a whole other scale (in more than 1 way).

Pleasance topic.

Only if Tim Cook had tried (and failed) to take over Apple after a bankruptcy while having 3£ to himself

 

[limo79]

Single core Intel Lakefield CPU perfomance is so tragic that there is no reason to believe in any Intel promises. I am sure that decision was hard but Apple lost believe in Intel roadmap and had enough of delays and terrible perf per Watt products with increased TDP year by year. From the business point this means that Apple had a lot of confidential information that Intel are in trouble to get a real 10nm process and go down to 7nm within next year. These companies have totally different goals since Intel use dominant position there is no hurry with releasing better CPUs and pushing ODMs to release just a few devices on Renoir with much worse quality and spec. Regarding Commodore I am sure that Apple estimated risk but as I said in different post with such great SoC team and after veryfing it on iPad Pro which has better performance than MBA this analogy to Commodore is wrong especially because Commodore stuck in one technology making bad product business decisions at wrong timing. We need to note that Samsung released ultrathin ultrabook on Intel Lakefield so they plan to make similar move like Apple but with current Intel lineup products it is impossible to offer customers really satisfying performance. With custom SoC designed and controlled by Apple they have much more control (depends where they are going to manufacture it - in TSMC or Samsung?) and they can fix most of chip hardware anomalies quickly without negotiate it with Intel which is not so easy as most of you think. I hope there is a high chance that we can expect a better quality products and potential problems or hardware complaints can be take into consideration by Apple to fix it. So there should be no situation that eg AMD say to Apple that heat issue when plugging external monitor is FAD (functions as designed) and we are not able to change anything or talk to Intel to fix chipset USB hardware issues. Apple SoC hardware design team can fix it quickly. Deliver production files to SoC manufacturer and release a new chip revision. Then manufactured chips can be supplied to Apple ODMs like Foxconn. Less complicated product flow and less time for waiting for critical decisions. Huge benefiit for end-customer beside a great hardware optimization process. Like wearing custom made suit or hand made shoes. I was always fan of Intel based Macs but I think this is a right moment to split from Intel and as a consumers we need to give Apple some credit. As a person disappointed with the latest MBA (cooling), MBP 13 (no Tiger Lake or Ryzen) and 16" (increased size and weight) I have much higher expectations from Apple. New Macbooks on ARM will show soon if it was worth to wait.

 

[cmaier]

Other than IBM these were all novelty workstations that sold in the 1000s not 1000000s, and even IBM barely registers when it comes to PPC systems they shipped themselves. Now the mainframes of old might be a different thing but that was on a whole other scale (in more than 1 way).

These are all major players in computing, and all in the last 35 years. Let’s not pretend nobody’s done this before. It used to be the norm for real computer manufacturers to design their own processors. That began to change with the personal computing era, but it’s not been unheard of. (Other examples: TI-99/4a, General Instrument, DEC Vax, etc.)

 

[Bug-Creator]

Lets just agree that we disagree on what "major player" means.

Cos otherwise we'd have to go back to old days when computer companies made their own vacuum tubes or coil memory

 

[ArPe]

There’s no similarity business wise, management wise or market wise.

There are some great documentaries on YouTube about Tramiel, Atari, Commodore etc regarding the delays, production problems, and financial problems those 16 bit machines faced in the face of rising PC and Mac competition.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Nah, you're over focused on computers as a business.

The bulk of Apple's revenue comes from iPhone sales. iPad sales are about the same as Mac sales.

Remember that Steve himself announced the corporate name change from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. This was before Apple shipped their first iPhone.

Steve knew that the Mac/computing side of the business was headed for a vastly smaller role.

How many cellphones did Commodore sell? Yeah, I thought so.

This is a classic example of a technologist not seeing the forest for the trees.

 

[Bustermd]

Like it or not, most software (especially consumer-level) is moving towards web based, subscription based, “software as service” models. It’s already here for most things average users need (Office 365, GSuite, etc). It’s coming to gaming as well.

So, big difference between now and the 80s. It won’t matter who makes the hardware as people will be able to run whatever they want on whatever they buy. The companies that survive will be those that make the most attractive hardware packages for consumers.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Like it or not, most software (especially consumer-level) is moving towards web based, subscription based, “software as service” models. It’s already here for most things average users need (Office 365, GSuite, etc). It’s coming to gaming as well.

The latter is well on its way.

A few days ago I tried Nvidia's GeForce NOW service on a ghetto $180 Windows PC with integrated Intel HD Graphics. The bottleneck was my broadband connection, not the wimpy Intel silicon.

The next generation of videogame consoles might look like an Apple TV or Roku streaming stick. My guess is that Xbox Series X & S/Playstation 5 might be the final hurrah of dedicated mainstream videogame console hardware.