Are yearly M-series refreshes a success?

[The point and shoot pro]

Intel was more responsible for that then Apple was. One big reason Apple ditched Intel was because they had trouble manufacturing CPUs that would work within the Mac's thermal profile and physical specifications.

No, it was more they were behind as they always had the previous gen chips in their "new" computers. It was only after they were going with the JOHNNY IVE thin above all else nonsense did they start having thermal issues. They moved to AS and made the pros thicker again after they got rid of the egomaniacal, one trick pony.

 

[senttoschool]

If you are updating Max every year you can do the same for the Ultra. It would even make economical sense. Since Ultra/Expreme is made from Max-type chips, you are wasting fewer chips if you keep them synchronised.

The assumption is that Apple will have to keep engineering better bridges to keep up with the bandwidth requirements for the Ultra/Extreme chips. Perhaps there are also other parts of the Max that must be upgraded in order to make them and it's just not worth it economically each year.

We haven't seen the M2 Ultra yet but we do see the M2 Max already. But who knows, Apple might surprise us with an M2 Ultra at WWDC.

 

[Gudi]

It was only after they were going with the JOHNNY IVE thin above all else nonsense did they start having thermal issues.

Jony Ive was Apple's chief design officer (CDO) from 1997 until 2019. This includes the entire Intel era. There is not a single Intel Mac design in the world for which Jony Ive wasn't ultimately responsible for. And arguably before that era the design was even worse. The clamshell iBook and sunflower iMac made no design concessions to the boxy shaped tech inside whatsoever. Steve Jobs was convinced, you've got to start with the product design in mind and then work back and invent the tech to make it possible. Apple's enormous success proved him right in the end, even thought the way wasn't without problems.

 

[jdb8167]

“The M2 family was really now about maintaining that leadership position by pushing, again, to the limits of technology. We don’t leave things on the table,” says Millet. “We don’t take a 20% bump and figure out how to spread it over three years…figure out how to eke out incremental gains. We take it all in one year; we just hit it really hard. That’s not what happens in the rest of the industry or historically.”

That’s a fairly broad interpretation of wanting yearly refreshes but I’ll accept it. We will see in a little over a week.

 

[quarkysg]

UMA is a phone-centric design which is impossible to scale (hence no AS Mac Pro let alone AS server).

I guess you have no idea how digital electronic circuits are designed?

 

[senttoschool]

That’s a fairly broad interpretation of wanting yearly refreshes but I’ll accept it. We will see in a little over a week.

Well, I don’t know how he could be more clear without being explicit. The fact that he said one year, not 1.5 or 2 years is telling. And on top of that, he said this doesn’t happen historically in the industry. Two years is very common historically. AMD does 2 year releases for Zen architecture. Intel has been doing 1 or 1.5 lately to catch up.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

Jony Ive was Apple's chief design officer (CDO) from 1997 until 2019. This includes the entire Intel era. There is not a single Intel Mac design in the world for which Jony Ive wasn't ultimately responsible for. And arguably before that era the design was even worse. The clamshell iBook and sunflower iMac made no design concessions to the boxy shaped tech inside whatsoever. Steve Jobs was convinced, you've got to start with the product design in mind and then work back and invent the tech to make it possible. Apple's enormous success proved him right in the end, even thought the way wasn't without problems.

Oh, I know he was Apple. But from the time the iPhone 6 was released, he was out of ideas, drive, and whatever else. He was stale, and done. Thinner is better was his only mantra. Considering we had 4 years of the exact same iPhone was all we needed to see. Then, neuter the entire macbook line with crappy thermal designs since all he wanted was paper sheet thin laptops.

 

[senttoschool]

Jony Ive was Apple's chief design officer (CDO) from 1997 until 2019. This includes the entire Intel era. There is not a single Intel Mac design in the world for which Jony Ive wasn't ultimately responsible for. And arguably before that era the design was even worse. The clamshell iBook and sunflower iMac made no design concessions to the boxy shaped tech inside whatsoever. Steve Jobs was convinced, you've got to start with the product design in mind and then work back and invent the tech to make it possible. Apple's enormous success proved him right in the end, even thought the way wasn't without problems.

If you've ever worked with a designer, you know that they're dreamers and they desire form over function. Engineers desire function over form. Without someone more pragmatic, like Steve Jobs, there to say no to Ive, he made huge blunders with the 2016 Macbook Pros and the Trashcan Macs. The 2012 rMBPs were far better designs and were the last designs to receive input from Steve Jobs.

Ultimately, Ive was most certainly pushed out by other Apple execs. Thank goodness.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

If you've ever worked with a designer, you know that they're dreamers and they desire form over function. Engineers desire function over form. Without someone more pragmatic, like Steve Jobs, there to say no to Ive, he made huge blunders with the 2016 Macbook Pros and the Trashcan Macs. The 2012 rMBPs were far better designs and were the last designs to receive input from Steve Jobs.

Ultimately, Ive was most certainly pushed out by other Apple execs. Thank goodness.

Agreed 100 percent. His ego did himself in at Apple actually. You know that by what he's designed since. A "token" to stroke his own ego, a camera built out of the slipperiest material out there with no buttons to control it, and basically that's it.

 

[senttoschool]

Agreed 100 percent. His ego did himself in at Apple actually. You know that by what he's designed since. A "token" to stroke his own ego, a camera built out of the slipperiest material out there with no buttons to control it, and basically that's it.

That’s right. I’ve worked with many designers before and every single one of them wants to turn the project into their art project.

You have to reel designers in and bring them back to the real world.

No one could do that for Ive after Jobs died. No one ranked higher than him except Cook and Cook is not a products guy.

Apple backtracked on everything Ive did for the 2016 MacBook. More ports, no touchbar, thicker for better cooling, keyboard with more travel.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

That’s right. I’ve worked with many designers before and every single one of them wants to turn the project into their art project.

You have to reel designers in and bring them back to the real world.

No one could do that for Ive after Jobs died. No one ranked higher than him except Cook and Cook is not a products guy.

Apple backtracked on everything Ive did for the 2016 MacBook. More ports, no touchbar, thicker for better cooling, keyboard with more travel.

the only thing I disagree with Apple reversing is the touchbar. I liked that feature. I guess I am the only one.

 

[jlc1978]

No, it's not yearly and Apple has done a pretty terrible job "refreshing". Where's the M2 iMac for instance? HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. all refresh like 100 SKUs every time a new AMD/Intel/Nvidia chip drop within a few months but Apple who makes both the computer and the chip now can't. I would have thought the switch to AS would have helped here. But nope.

The Intel crowd is kind of forced to upgrade on Intel's timeline because they need the latests and greatest to compete with each other. If your flagship has last gens chip you are at a disadvantage. Apple doesn't need to pay that game but can introduce new chips as the market and performance increases make it worthwhile.

If Apple can do a yearly update for the M chips, sales will increase overall. Period.

Not necessarily. Many people would not upgrade because the performance increase is likely to be small and the AS chips are already plenty fast for most people. It's not like phones, when a significant amount of upgrades is driven by status and upgrade prices are a lot cheaper than for a Mac; especially when you consider trade in values or special deals.

The biggest reason for Mac sales drop is the covid cycle and/or global economic downturn. Apple doesn't have control over that. The second biggest reason is that there's no compelling reason to upgrade from the M1. Apple does have control over this. We should actually be on M3 right now, with M4 about 4-5 months away. Instead, we're still on M2 and rumors are that the 15" MBA will launch with M2 next month.

True, but the costs of such development would need to be spread over a shorter period, hurting margins.

If I posted the sky is blue, you would certainly say its not actually blue blah blah blah. I guess some folks like to argue just for the sake of arguing and bending over backwards to prove they're right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll byte - The sky is not blue, it is clear. Light conditions make it appear blue, red and black.

To the other poster's point, context is important, even when stating a fact.

As for heat, for most users with a properly designed machine, the impact on lifespan is irrelevant since tehy are likely to have EOL'd the machine before heat reduced lifespan occurs.

If you've ever worked with a designer, you know that they're dreamers and they desire form over function. Engineers desire function over form. Without someone more pragmatic, like Steve Jobs, there to say no to Ive, he made huge blunders with the 2016 Macbook Pros and the Trashcan Macs.

I'll second that. I have done some work with designers and they often fail to see how their design is impractical in a real world setting. I did some work with designers on a process control system, and they made a beautiful panel full of digital gages, which would be fine at steady state, but when things go wrong all you get is fast blinking numbers that don't give you any useful information, unlike an analog gauge where at least you can tell how big the swing is and what is the average value at a glance.

Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" is a classic on that issue.

the only thing I disagree with Apple reversing is the touchbar. I liked that feature. I guess I am the only one.

Ye, the Touch Bar was a love - hate idea. I liked the concept and ability to customize it so it was useful in various contexts, but I missed real function keys.

A better design, IMHO, would have been to put it above the function keys, perhaps making the F-Keys a bit smaller and leaving a full size esc key since it is probably used more often than the function keys.

Or make the touchpad slightly smaller or the Mac slightly bigger.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

The Intel crowd is kind of forced to upgrade on Intel's timeline because they need the latests and greatest to compete with each other. If your flagship has last gens chip you are at a disadvantage. Apple doesn't need to pay that game but can introduce new chips as the market and performance increases make it worthwhile.



Not necessarily. Many people would not upgrade because the performance increase is likely to be small and the AS chips are already plenty fast for most people. It's not like phones, when a significant amount of upgrades is driven by status and upgrade prices are a lot cheaper than for a Mac; especially when you consider trade in values or special deals.



True, but the costs of such development would need to be spread over a shorter period, hurting margins.



I'll byte - The sky is not blue, it is clear. Light conditions make it appear blue, red and black.

To the other poster's point, context is important, even when stating a fact.

As for heat, for most users with a properly designed machine, the impact on lifespan is irrelevant since tehy are likely to have EOL'd the machine before heat reduced lifespan occurs.




I'll second that. I have done some work with designers and they often fail to see how their design is impractical in a real world setting. I did some work with designers on a process control system, and they made a beautiful panel full of digital gages, which would be fine at steady state, but when things go wrong all you get is fast blinking numbers that don't give you any useful information, unlike an analog gauge where at least you can tell how big the swing is and what is the average value at a glance.

Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" is a classic on that issue.



Ye, the Touch Bar was a love - hate idea. I liked the concept and ability to customize it so it was useful in various contexts, but I missed real function keys.

A better design, IMHO, would have been to put it above the function keys, perhaps making the F-Keys a bit smaller and leaving a full size esc key since it is probably used more often than the function keys.

Or make the touchpad slightly smaller or the Mac slightly bigger.

Or, have a dedicated Fn/esc button on the upper left corner of the touchbar at all times. touch it and it got you esc hold cmd fn and get your F keys

 

[jlc1978]

Or, have a dedicated Fn/esc button on the upper left corner of the touchbar at all times. touch it and it got you esc hold cmd fn and get your F keys

Another possibility, but I'm not sure that is a good human design - you still need to hold two keys and lack tactile feedback.

The advantage I see to the TB is you can put on it context relevant settings/macros/menu items that you would normally mouse over to use or launch with a set of keys, so looking at it to see what you want is not that different, vs knowing where fiction keys are without looking at them.

Still, an interesting idea for the TB. It's a shame Apple never really tried to make it more useful by rethink some of the design decisions.

Now with sidecar, handoff, etc. why not make the iPhone a programmable touch panel for the Mac, so you could use it much like the TB.

 

[senttoschool]

Not necessarily. Many people would not upgrade because the performance increase is likely to be small and the AS chips are already plenty fast for most people. It's not like phones, when a significant amount of upgrades is driven by status and upgrade prices are a lot cheaper than for a Mac; especially when you consider trade in values or special deals.

If Apple can make a new Apple Silicon chip every year, their yearly upgrades will compound and Apple will run away with the performance crown. Everyone will be relegated to second place - which is what is happening in the mobile SoC world.

Even for the iPhone, notice that the first feature they present every year is the new SoC? It's clearly the best selling point to get people to upgrade in an average iPhone year.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

Another possibility, but I'm not sure that is a good human design - you still need to hold two keys and lack tactile feedback.

The advantage I see to the TB is you can put on it context relevant settings/macros/menu items that you would normally mouse over to use or launch with a set of keys, so looking at it to see what you want is not that different, vs knowing where fiction keys are without looking at them.

Still, an interesting idea for the TB. It's a shame Apple never really tried to make it more useful by rethink some of the design decisions.

Now with sidecar, handoff, etc. why not make the iPhone a programmable touch panel for the Mac, so you could use it much like the TB.

OHHHHH Now your talking. And make mac touchscreen already. It's all useful.

 

[jlc1978]

If Apple can make a new Apple Silicon chip every year, their yearly upgrades will compound and Apple will run away with the performance crown. Everyone will be relegated to second place - which is what is happening in the mobile SoC world.

Even for the iPhone, notice that the first feature they present every year is the new SoC? It's clearly the best selling point to get people to upgrade in an average iPhone year.

I think the phone market is a bit different:
1. Annual upgrade costs are less, from both a trade in and device price point
2. Older devices can be sold at a lower price point with less risk of canibalization than with a Mac. Last years Mac would be plenty fast for more users and if cheap enough take sales from new ones for first time buyers. If the M1Air was much cheaper I suspect mote people would buy it over the M2Air than do so currently.
3. Other features are easier to add to phone that will drive adoption, besides speed which already is fast enough for more users, such as better cameras, crash detection, etc. on a yearly basis.

 

[dmccloud]

If Apple can make a new Apple Silicon chip every year, their yearly upgrades will compound and Apple will run away with the performance crown. Everyone will be relegated to second place - which is what is happening in the mobile SoC world.

Even for the iPhone, notice that the first feature they present every year is the new SoC? It's clearly the best selling point to get people to upgrade in an average iPhone year.

Apple has to lead with the new silicon, because it's usually what enables some of the new features coming to iOS. That's why you'll hear certain features mentioned at the iPhone launch that are specific to the latest iPhones.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

What Apple Needs to do is to add different colors , add new hardware features && redesign the the MacBook Pros every 3 years to drive new sales. If I was charge Face ID 🆔 would have been included on the M2 Pro macs & the sales would have been HUGE! Along with a 1 new exclusive Pro color. It’s the simple things . M3 Pro MacBook 5K OLED Screens, Faster Port speeds, all metal keyboard. M4 Pro MacBook Redesigned from the ground up, 5K OLED touch screen with dual lighting, improved speakers & mics, the keyboard could come off. M6 Pro Mackbook a glowing Apple Logo. M7 Pro Fully functional touchscreen Apple Logo that show notifications etc etc Yall get the picture.

We disagree, strongly. Real pro users want/need pro hardware. We neither want nor need cosmetic changes just for the sake of change like some silly new exclusive Pro color. [You do know that color on a laptop changes the color perception of viewed images, right?]

And no, we do not want a touch screen changing our long-established pro workflows. Those of us needing to touch a display have done it with Wacom for decades and do not want to try to do it on the laptop display.

As to Face ID on laptops, you do know that it is a security issue, right? Many locations would wisely ban devices with that feature.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

In fact I was buying a temporary computer so I bought cheap. But Apple's entire Mac lineup is pretty screwed up right now in terms of desktop computers, I had to keep it longer.

I just ordered an M2 Pro Mac Mini Refurbished with 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM. This one I know is well calibrated for my needs and I can keep it for a few years. But I will lose my 5K display and awesome webcam from the iMac, I have to find something equivalent.

I will wait until WWDC before I open it though. We never know what might be released, but I have no hope for anything M3 before 2024.

I looked at that same box. It really is Apple's best value at the moment IMO. Limitations of 32 GB RAM are the primary reason I bought an M2 MBP instead of the M2 Mini.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I would liken the M-series chips more to the A-x series processors in the iPads (eg: A8x, A9x, A10x, A12x) which get roughly a 1.5 year refresh cycle, rather than the A-chips in smartphones.

Personally, I don't see the point. People are not replacing their Macs at the same rate as smartphones, so I feel Apple is fine sticking to a 2-3 year refresh cycle. Having a new M-chip every year just strikes me as wasteful, since processor design is expensive, and Macs don't sell in sufficient volumes year over year to reap the efficiencies of scale.

This is tech and routine performance improvements are expected; a necessity IMO. The fact that "People are not replacing their Macs at the same rate as smartphones" does not mean that folks buying new Macs every 3-6 years or so do not need to see that the hardware is being frequently updated.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

No, it was more they were behind as they always had the previous gen chips in their "new" computers. It was only after they were going with the JOHNNY IVE thin above all else nonsense did they start having thermal issues. They moved to AS and made the pros thicker again after they got rid of the egomaniacal, one trick pony.

Wrong. The not-thin G3 series were physically the hottest IIRC correctly. Moving to thin was just smart design and moving to more efficient M-series chip design is more smart design.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

the only thing I disagree with Apple reversing is the touchbar. I liked that feature. I guess I am the only one.

You are not the only one. I too liked the touchbar.

That makes two of us...

 

[jlc1978]

This is tech and routine performance improvements are expected; a necessity IMO. The fact that "People are not replacing their Macs at the same rate as smartphones" does not mean that folks buying new Macs every 3-6 years or so do not need to see that the hardware is being frequently updated.

Define "frequently." If you are like I was, until Apple allowed AC+ beyond 3 years, on a 3 year replacement cycle an 18 or even 24 month cycle was frequent enough. YMMV.

I suspect many Mac users keep their machines long enough not to care that the update cycle isn't yearly.

 

[JouniS]

Define "frequently." If you are like I was, until Apple allowed AC+ beyond 3 years, on a 3 year replacement cycle an 18 or even 24 month cycle was frequent enough. YMMV.

I suspect many Mac users keep their machines long enough not to care that the update cycle isn't yearly.

A reasonable update cycle would be 1-2 updates every year. That means refreshing the hardware every time a new SoC is released or when third-party components (RAM, SSD, display, etc.) become better/cheaper.

I usually keep my Macs 5+ years, but I try to avoid models that are older than 6 months, because old hardware tends to be poor value for money. The moment I update is often beyond my control, which means that a 18-month or 24-month cycle would usually force me to buy obsolete hardware if I want to continue using a Mac.