The technology Apple uses is inherently more expensive. State of the art manufacturing node, wide RAM interface, custom memory packaging - these things are already expensive, and then you have R&D on top. It’s entirely possible that Apple can save a few $ compared to what they paid Intel and AMD earlier, but it won’t be a huge per unit difference. Of course, there are also other expenses, like display panels.
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Are yearly M-series refreshes a success?
- Thread starter Bodhitree
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The technology Apple uses is inherently more expensive. State of the art manufacturing node, wide RAM interface, custom memory packaging - these things are already expensive, and then you have R&D on top. It’s entirely possible that Apple can save a few $ compared to what they paid Intel and AMD earlier, but it won’t be a huge per unit difference. Of course, there are also other expenses, like display panels.
I don't know why people are annoyed by this and expect Apple to some day switch things up and refresh specs for every Mac annually, at one big event, or even just within 12 months or sooner from dropping the next chip gen.
Apple has never done that and never will.
Apple has always been about creating scarcity and making sure there's wide gaps in value and specs across the entire product line-up, making for a selection of models that vary greatly in use cases and specs despite all just being laptop and desktop computers running MacOS.
Apple would be doing the same for smartphones as they do with Macs if it were not for the fact that the average smartphone is about 2.58 years old, meaning that consumers are still upgrading every 2-3 years.
Macs are commonly much more expensive and require a big purchase of several hundreds or thousands of dollars, or taking up an expensive loan. Whereas most mobile devices can be paid for with interest free loans through carriers.
You really have to give Mac owners a good reason to upgrade. M1 was that and more.
But Apple got too zealous thinking M2 was good enough. But M2 underdelivered.
I think Apple's reaction will be to add even more time between each chip generation, to make sure the "hunger" for new Macs is even bigger and that they can deliver bigger improvements over the previous generation.
To be fair, the pandemic and supply chain issues both played a big role in the delays between M1 and M2. Since both Intel and AMD have fabs located in multiple locations throughout the world, they can shift production around as needed. With the Apple/TSMC relationship, the focus on the latest and greatest process nodes already limits the available facilities for production as not every fab gets updated to the newest processes at once. Furthermore, since most of those facilities are in SE Asia, they were among the hardest hit by COVID-related closures.
The other consideration is that we have only seen the one generation shift so far. To get an idea of what the update cycle might be going forward, we need at least 2-3 more generations of Apple Silicon to even begin to see a trend.
I don't think that was ever a realistic expectation. Apple is a brutally profit-focused company, these prices will never come down without some truly fundamental shifts to the computing industry as a whole.
What it potentially did was make the chips cheaper to Apple (I'm not familiar with the costs of R&D or the manufacturing deals Apple gets, so I don't know if that's really the case, but at the scale Apple sells these devices I'm inclined to believe it is). This lowers the total bill of materials per machine, meaning that if they maintain or increase the price to consumers, they could either pocket that extra profit or invest in other areas of the machine (eg: display, materials, battery technology, etc).
And you can’t upgrade a darn thing now. Such a mess. It’s one of the reasons why Apple lost me as a customer.
Only thing I did was buying a 2TB SSD but it's such a mess with Apple. I installed macOS Ventura 13.0 on it - I can't install a single update on it anymore. It's slow. About 50% of the timed I try to boot into it, it ends up booting the internal drive. Connection's fine. And I'm using 10 GB of swap file memory. Ugh.
I think the opposite is more likely. The market for personal devices is mostly phones and tablets now, while computers are primarily used as tools for some purpose. With tools, brand loyalty is less important, as the focus is on getting the job done. Macs are increasingly becoming boring interchangeable beige boxes, with the users more prepared to switch to another vendor if Macs are no longer competitive.
The Apple model is based on releasing new devices rather than simply starting to install new components instead of the old ones. With this model, the devices available on the market are older and less capable on the average, which is an obvious disadvantage in the tool market. The longer the time between the releases, the bigger the disadvantage becomes.
I meant 2TB external SSD (the internal SSD has 256GB).
It didn't stop working, but let's say it's the least reliable setup I've ever had in my entire life. This entire computer has been a frustration.
According to whom was this meant to result in cheaper Macs?
People engaging in some very wishful thinking. At best they could use older chips to make the MBA or Mac mini less expensive but that’s about it.
Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with this site. I guess Louis Rossmann was was correct.
1. "Should" meant that if Apple were to release a new M SoC yearly, we'd be on M3 and going to M4 soon.
2. Apple Exec said they want to push a new SoC out yearly.
Source? I don’t remember any such statement. At least not for the M series of SoC. The A series is obviously different.
2. Apple Exec said they weren’t bound by previous partners CPU schedule. That does not mean once a year.
I suspect they want to get in a yearly cadence, but the entire industry is behind on 3nm because of the pandemic delays. Not really a good measure of the current status of what apple’s update plans are.
I don't think M-series chips need to be refreshed every year, but I do think Apple has to regularly refresh Mac lines to encourage more sales. That doesn't mean each product needs to be refreshed every year, but there need to be new Macs released regularly. And that seems to be what they're doing, so...yeah.
Ultimately I think ALL chips are going to see smaller performance gains in the future. The days of huge leaps in technology happening every year are over. Shrinking the die can only go so far.
Ultimately I think ALL chips are going to see smaller performance gains in the future. The days of huge leaps in technology happening every year are over. Shrinking the die can only go so far.
Source? Did they specify which series of SoCs they were referring to? Because they've always had a new A-series SoC each year. That doesn't guarantee that their plans are the same for the M-series.
Those companies are all nipping at each other's heels. Apple has more leniency and can afford to be lazy with refreshes to its lower-yield products. That being said, the Mac Pro negligence of the post-Steve Jobs Apple is unlike anything ever done in that space before. Apple historically was much more on top of things with the Mac Pro and its predecessors.
The first five years of Intel iMac also saw very frequent refreshes which some users of this forum probably remember fondly. Aside from some graphics issues these all held up well even in their base model configurations. The post-Intel iMac is more of a novelty and less of a priority for Apple.
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Well what they are doing now is a very irregular update schedule for some products. The 24” iMac in particular is still using the base spec M1 chip, while as a desktop machine you’d expect it to be in line for more horsepower. The Mac Studio is still running M1 chips, same thing. And instead the Mac Mini gets an M2 Pro upgrade option.
I think eventually the gains from process improvement will slow down, but there will be some sizeable jumps yet. As you go from the hypothetical 5 nm to 3 nm, you lose significant amounts of die area and resistance. From 3 nm to 2 nm you make almost as big a jump. So the next few years should be interesting.
What, mainly whining like a little B(*&H. Yeah he's all about that. I get his message, but he sounds like a freakin crybaby.
I can't remember that anyone promised yearly release cycles? And while Apple is no longer bound by Intel's release schedule, their own innovation isn't instantaneous either. To create the M1 family of chips reportedly was the "culmination of more than a decade of Apple's work on chips".
"Culmination of a decade" because it's been a decade since Apple started designing their own chips. They can make new iPhone chips every year too, doing the same for the Mac is certainly feasible (especially since the chip families are based on shared architecture), just expensive. The question is whether it's worth the effort and investment.
I do think that Apple plans to introduce a new generation of M-series every year, it's just that the execution has been challenged by many constraints.