ARMacs prices?

[iBug2]

I expect a price drop for certain low end products like MBA.

For two reasons:

1. They can drop the price and keep the profit margins as they are. No need to increase the margins even further, they already have crazy high margins compared to the rest of the industry.

2. They can easily get more marketshare if they drop the price. So this might be the perfect time to give one MBA to every college student without lowering the margins.

 

[old-mac-man]

If you're not in China, don't expect a price drop.

 

[Return Zero]

mm nice point, but, which is the actual market equivalent for Arm-powered computers? None. Apple need to do a good marketing work to allow some comparison with other processors so you can know what you are buying. Maybe this is not important for people in the apple eco system but for the normal consumer it could be a bit confusing.

That's true. I'm guessing they will front load this marketing effort in their first few models using similar workflows as they always do with new models, depending on the demographics, showing certain popular programs which run "2X as fast as the previous model" or whatever. Of course they will cherry pick the programs which have been specifically optimized to show the most dramatic results (like they did with the afterburner card). All that is to say, I think they will talk about equivalent workflows, not equivalent hardware, which is largely what they've always tried to do anyway.

I'm foreseeing "A14X [or whatever] runs such-and-such program 25% faster than the old MacBook did, and gets 2 hours more battery life, all at the same price." Clock speed might not even be mentioned, but things like core counts, graphics/AI engines, energy use, and hardware/software optimizations will be beat to death.

 

[Ursadorable]

If it doesn't have a 40% profit margin, Timmy dumps it.

The prices will either stay the same or go up.

I think you missed a zero there.

 

[marco114]

considering an iPhone is like $1400 brand new, don't count on it.

 

[vpr611]

Any thoughts on Apple just offering single A12 processor on the MacBook Air or the Mac mini, with dual or quad core options on the Pro lines? Offering a single processor would help keep costs down on the base models, while allowing a premium on the pro lines.

 

[robbieduncan]

Any thoughts on Apple just offering single A12 processor on the MacBook Air or the Mac mini, with dual or quad core options on the Pro lines? Offering a single processor would help keep costs down on the base models, while allowing a premium on the pro lines.

It won't be an A12. Even the A12 is 6 core. I assume you mean dual socket/package on the Pro lines. This is possible but not with any current Apple Silicon: they simply do not support dual (or higher) socket systems. Other ARM server lines do so it's possible to do this. However it adds cost compared to simply adding more cores to the SoC. Unless Apple need truly huge core numbers they won't go this way. There are 48 core single SoC ARM chips out there. I can't see Apple even going that high.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[magbarn]

Here's what I could imagine Apple doing... Reveal the Arm MacBook lineup and iMac.. iMac prices stay the same- MacBook lineup receives a maximum $100 price reduction if at all.. Then Apple is going to market the s*** out of the battery life Macs have over any other laptop PC in the world.. Apple will bundle music or TV subscriptions like they have been with new Apple products. Apple will continue to refresh their new Arm Macs like iOS devices- soon many people will be owning the Mac.. Word of mouth will cannibalize laptop PC sales.

Im guessing Apple could get to 60% laptop market share in 10 years. And bump their desktop market share by 10%.
Unless a college student wants to play a game, but who wants a graphics card 5-10 years from now when cloud gaming is the only gaming you probably will want to play, a college student is almost 80%+ certainly going to buy Apples MacBook.

EDIT:
I think we'll also see Google drop officially tablet support in Android and Chromebooks. Windows will try to compete still with surface and move to Arm officially. Intel and AMD announce Arm chips of their own for the PC space. Apple will prove that 24-48 hour battery life is essential for laptops- Intel can't deliver that. I think Apple can hit those hours if you think about how fast A13 is and compare the size of the battery in the iPhone to the number of hours of use you get. Then 10x the mass of the battery and you get 2 whole days of use on an A13.
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iPhone 11 Pro w/ 256 GB and AppleCare is $1400.. But thats basically Apple flagship right now. iPhone SE 2 for $399 performs like 95% as fast as iPhone 11 Pro.

Apple would be lucky to even get 50% of consumer laptop purchases. Majority of computers desktop/laptop are still being bought by companies which are firmly entrenched in Winx86.

 

[mr_jomo]

Any thoughts on Apple just offering single A12 processor on the MacBook Air or the Mac mini, with dual or quad core options on the Pro lines? Offering a single processor would help keep costs down on the base models, while allowing a premium on the pro lines.

I agree with the sentiment at least: Apple could easily use the A12Z in a base model
ARM-MBA in late 2020, lower the price by $100, outperform the current version, improve battery life and laugh all the way to the bank ?.

 

[naturalstar]

We are talking Apple here.

I doubt they will be cheaper. Apple will need to recoup R&D costs for one. The hint is also there with the Apple Card 0% financing expanding to Macs and the updated trade-in program. Take the hint from when the iPhone X hit and crossed the $1000 threshold.

We will be fortunate if the Mac pricing remains the same.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Any thoughts on Apple just offering single A12 processor on the MacBook Air or the Mac mini, with dual or quad core options on the Pro lines? Offering a single processor would help keep costs down on the base models, while allowing a premium on the pro lines.

Apple will not release Apple Silicon Macs using old hardware. The new Macs will debut on new hardware. There isn't going to be any A12-anything on Apple Silicon Macs.

They are only using A12Z in the Developer Transition Kit device because that's what they currently have in use and has likely been running in their labs for the past year or so.

"Tada! Here's our brand new revolutionary Apple Silicon Mac! Oh, sorry, it's running a CPU that's eighteen months old. But try to ignore that. It's new!"

NOT.

 

[Supra Mac]

I could see the MacBook coming back soon, quick return in investment for them at $1299 to cash in on early adopters. Between MacBook Air i3 And i5 performance but in a smaller form factor. No rush on the air as that is sort of their entry level line.

What ever they come out with, you will see good/great performance jump but I don’t think it will be spectacular, they will spread those gains over years.

 

[Puonti]

If as rumored the first ARM Mac being released this year turns out to be the 24" model (without a larger companion, which would be an interesting change of pace), I imagine it'll be more expensive than the 21.5" 4k iMacs by just enough to cause many to say Apple's being greedy, but not so expensive that someone buying the then-current 27" iMac will feel terrible. "Well I need the larger screen anyway, and this thing will still let me boot to Windows for years to come. I don't want a toyMac".

The rumored 24" will likely include some hardware or physical features that none of the Intel iMacs will have (besides the ability to run qualifying iOS and iPadOS apps), which together with the larger display size will help "explain" why it's more expensive. Nearly edge-to-edge screen and rounded screen corners, of course. Maybe FaceID. Some "first time ever on a Mac" feature other than Apple Silicon, because Apple likely wants their "regular" customers to not really worry about the silicon part. It's kind of like the amount of memory on iPhones and iPads - regular folk don't need that info.

For a while it'll be the only new iMac option, so it'll sell to A) regular people looking for a new iMac, B) enthusiasts wanting a taste of the new ARM Macs and C) people who would really much rather have a larger iMac, but really like the new design and "just can't wait, potentially for another year" (and will absolutely post on these forums asking if they should go for it).

After some time has passed (and at least the smaller ARM Macbook Pro has been released) Apple could then release the larger ARM iMac which will be more expensive than the current 27", once again "explaining" the price difference with some physical difference or hardware capability. Same design language as the smaller one, of course. Still not the ARM iMac Pro, though. I imagine Apple will want to prolong the life of the current Mac and iMac Pro as much as they can within the two-year transition period both to build industry confidence in their "more affordable" ARM Macs and to give software developers ample time to port and refine their pro tools. They'll manage that just fine on the smaller iMac and Macbook Pro.

Maybe Apple releases the ARM Mac mini at the same time with the larger iMac, to showcase an ARM Mac at a price point that's considerably lower than all the other ARM Macs they've released by then (quite possibly even in line with the current minis because it'll be lower-powered and headless). It'll look really tempting to a certain segment of potential customers who have up until that point been lamenting how expensive these things are. It'll be a no-brainer for a lot of people.

I imagine the larger ARM Macbook Pro will then follow. It will have been enough time for anyone who would have originally "really wanted the larger Macbook Pro" to have already bought the smaller one because "they couldn't wait", and now they curse and consider switching to the larger one.

Admittedly that's a really wild and odd way to release new Macs, but if the rumors turn out to be true that the smaller iMac will be released without a larger counterpart, it would suggest a staggered transition where Apple seeks to offer only one size of desktop and laptop product at first to cater to both markets. Apple also likes to release products that tempt enthusiasts to buy now, while the release dates of the products they really want remain unknown.

This forum is full of threads from those people

 

[cubbie5150]

I had been planning to buy a new MBP in the second half of 2020 for almost a year now, but with the ARM news, I'm going to try and hold out until at least the first revision after the initial launch of 14"+ sized MBP. Come on mid-2014 MBP, hang in there, baby! If my 2014 can't hang 'til then, I'll just go cheap used or refurb temporarily.

I have the money to buy now, but I'm assuming we'll get a price increase by the time the first revisions are released.

 

[verticalines]

It won't be an A12. Even the A12 is 6 core. I assume you mean dual socket/package on the Pro lines. This is possible but not with any current Apple Silicon: they simply do not support dual (or higher) socket systems. Other ARM server lines do so it's possible to do this. However it adds cost compared to simply adding more cores to the SoC. Unless Apple need truly huge core numbers they won't go this way. There are 48 core single SoC ARM chips out there. I can't see Apple even going that high.

So it's likely A14 tentatively just going off naming conventions as I can't see them having the desktop be a number behind the iPhone release. Could be a whole new line too, the M-series or whatever. This year is apparently 5nm EUV from TSMC so that's a good jump in efficiency and performance boosts if desired. 5nm is a pretty interesting point in chips since this could be the first mainstream EUV chips but I digress.

I'm thinking 4 fast cores and 4 efficiency cores starting out baseline. A 4+4 for the mainstream machines and perhaps scale to hex (6+6) setup for the beefier setups. I guess it could be different since we're used to hyper-threading generic cores and these are actual little cores for different purposes.

If their processor benchmarks are true, then the core count is fine. I'm more curious how they supplement a discrete GPU--Intel's Iris can probably be replaced without issue but the AMD chips? If I was on the fence, that'd be my biggest question going forward. Would like a HBM pairing with AMD, maybe the cost savings post-Intel is reinvested there.

 

[robertosh]

That's true. I'm guessing they will front load this marketing effort in their first few models using similar workflows as they always do with new models, depending on the demographics, showing certain popular programs which run "2X as fast as the previous model" or whatever. Of course they will cherry pick the programs which have been specifically optimized to show the most dramatic results (like they did with the afterburner card). All that is to say, I think they will talk about equivalent workflows, not equivalent hardware, which is largely what they've always tried to do anyway.

I'm foreseeing "A14X [or whatever] runs such-and-such program 25% faster than the old MacBook did, and gets 2 hours more battery life, all at the same price." Clock speed might not even be mentioned, but things like core counts, graphics/AI engines, energy use, and hardware/software optimizations will be beat to death.

I think that this would work for someone which is already in the Apple ecosystem, but from someone coming from Windows world, for example, paying like 3000$ for something with an A14X processor is kinda meaningless. Also the fact of 2X performance of a MacBook Pro is also meaningless. I think that they should specify the cores and ghz, as these are specs that are common nowadays, and even if you don’t know what it is you will be able to compare with other products. I’m really curious about how they will manage this!

 

[ian87w]

Apple's pricing usually have no correlation to cost. Apple's pricing correlates to the perceived value of their products to consumers. And as a brand, you have to maintain your products at certain level of pricing so your customers will still have the same perception of your brand.

At the same time, I believe certain price points is a given. I don't think it's a secret that Apple would probably want to have a $999 price point for a base Macbook (akin to the 11.6" Air). The switch to ARM might enable Apple to do that (and make something even lighter, which was one of the marketing pole for the 11.6" Air).
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I think that this would work for someone which is already in the Apple ecosystem, but from someone coming from Windows world, for example, paying like 3000$ for something with an A14X processor is kinda meaningless. Also the fact of 2X performance of a MacBook Pro is also meaningless. I think that they should specify the cores and ghz, as these are specs that are common nowadays, and even if you don’t know what it is you will be able to compare with other products. I’m really curious about how they will manage this!

We never see Apple advertising the speed/number of cores on their iPhones and iPads. I believe it would be the same for these new Macs. The speed and number of cores are not comparable anyway to intel's architecture. I bet Apple will simply do it like on iPhones. We will probably have something like A14, and then A15, and consumers only need to know that A15 is x times faster than A14, or something like that (whatever processor naming scheme Apple will use). I think Apple will avoid any traditional spec list like GHz. I think Apple has had enough of that when they were trying to convince people their less MHz PPC being faster than higher MHz Pentium in the past.
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Apple would be lucky to even get 50% of consumer laptop purchases. Majority of computers desktop/laptop are still being bought by companies which are firmly entrenched in Winx86.

True. I think people forget that the majority of computer purchases are not from consumers, but from enterprise contracts.

The Wintel landscape of general PC market won't change much.
However, I expect to see interesting things on the consumer side. Consumer perception on their personal computers will change. Once consumers taste how laptops can last for 10 hours of use like an iPad, there will be a shift in expectations. PC OEMs will scramble and demand intel/AMD to do something. Meanwhile, Microsoft will get the last laugh by dangling Windows on ARM to these OEMs (and maybe partner with Qualcomm or something), and also dangle UWP to the stubborn Windows developers.

 

[ian87w]

We are talking Apple here.

I doubt they will be cheaper. Apple will need to recoup R&D costs for one. The hint is also there with the Apple Card 0% financing expanding to Macs and the updated trade-in program. Take the hint from when the iPhone X hit and crossed the $1000 threshold.

We will be fortunate if the Mac pricing remains the same.

Well, Apple can be cheap if they want to and/or see the advantage if they do. Ie. iPhone SE (both original and 2020). We will see.

 

[naturalstar]

Well, Apple can be cheap if they want to and/or see the advantage if they do. Ie. iPhone SE (both original and 2020). We will see.

Apple already has the cheap ARM price point covered with multiple iPads and the $999 MacBook Air.

IF, and it’s a BIG IF, Apple brings back the 12” MB, it won’t be until after all the other existing devices have converted and there is a specific market to penetrate by adding that device. You stated yourself regarding value-based pricing. The ARM move is huge for Apple. To make this leap and come in with lower costs goes against their brand perception.

 

[ian87w]

Apple already has the cheap ARM price point covered with multiple iPads and the $999 MacBook Air.

IF, and it’s a BIG IF, Apple brings back the 12” MB, it won’t be until after all the other existing devices have converted and there is a specific market to penetrate by adding that device. You stated yourself regarding value-based pricing. The ARM move is huge for Apple. To make this leap and come in with lower costs goes against their brand perception.

Definitely. Eg. we will never see a $499 Macbook.
OTOH some people seems to peg Apple at "expensive," period, while their product lineup shows that they can be aggressive in pricing when they see fit.

Imo the first round of ARM Macs would be the iMac (coincide with a redesign) and maybe the mac mini. The first mac with intel was the iMac.

 

[verticalines]

Definitely. Eg. we will never see a $499 Macbook.
OTOH some people seems to peg Apple at "expensive," period, while their product lineup shows that they can be aggressive in pricing when they see fit.

Imo the first round of ARM Macs would be the iMac (coincide with a redesign) and maybe the mac mini. The first mac with intel was the iMac.

Something like a $1299 24" with Apple chips and 16GB and 256GB all-SSD would be nice. It's currently at $1299 starting but if they can get at least the SSD inclusive, that'd be a fairly solid device. Quiet, speedy, and bigger screen. Maybe the compromise is 12GB.

I'm thinking their Mac Mini gets down to maybe $699 and $899; the Air at $799 (already $899 in EDU pricing). Take off about $100 by ditching Intel chips and it's quite feasible.

 

[naturalstar]

Definitely. Eg. we will never see a $499 Macbook.
OTOH some people seems to peg Apple at "expensive," period, while their product lineup shows that they can be aggressive in pricing when they see fit.

Imo the first round of ARM Macs would be the iMac (coincide with a redesign) and maybe the mac mini. The first mac with intel was the iMac.

Fair enough. Apple for what it offers for my needs isn't very expensive. However, there have been times in my life where because of affordability, yes, Apple was too expensive for me. There's a difference there that sometimes gets conflated. I see the value even when my budget/finances can't meet the asking price.

RE: cheap. Any "gateway product": your iPod Touch, iPhone SE, iPad mini/Air, etc - those should be priced affordably relative to the pricier products. It's the taste of the potential of the Apple ecosystem. At the same time, Apple isn't going to give it all away.

Value-based pricing is the hardest form of pricing to engender to customers. You are going to have people who want the highest specs and latest technology for $999 on a Mac, otherwise they don't see the value. Not going to happen on a new machine. Then there are comparisons to the PC world. The competition in the PC is greater and that drives down pricing. Although lately you have manufacturers who are trying to differentiate with higher end builds and specs that ask for prices similar to Apple. Is the value there or are those manufacturers just following the market leader (Apple) in price setting?

Anyway, I hope the 24" iMac comes in first only because I'm curious for the new design, the pricing, quality, and how it will do in the market.

 

[tdar]

If you have been listing to Craig F. and company over the past few days, you have some clues. First there will not be a mac with the A12Z, they are doing a Mac only processor. The A12Z is 8 cores, the new Mac processor is rumored to be 12. I expect that the 2020 systems will be a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air. Since they are using the Mini as the developer system, just update the processor and go. They are going to want a low-cost laptop like the MacBook Air to show the power and the battery life you can get from Apple Silicon. 2021 will see an iMac and the MacBook Pro, leaving the Mac Pro for last.
All of these systems will be priced as they are now.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!