Even when Apple was using Intel chips, they were updating at least once per year, sometimes twice per year. It was only when Intel crap the bed on 14nm that threw Apple's updates out of balance.
Indeed, I came to pretty much the same conclusion. While the iPad AX chips which the M series evolved out of were on an >12 month cycle (skipping an A series generation every few years), it's a much different proposition when you have to do it with at least 4 chip variants, going into multiple devices, each of which are on different refresh cycles themselves. It gets messy if, as above, they want new MPro and MMax chips every October, but are happy to let the MacBook Airs and iPads with the base M chips go 16, 18 or 20 months, and on top of that have the Mac mini and potentially the iMac using both the regular M chip and a Pro option.
As has now been noted ad nauseam that's not really how it works, not any more anyway. Indeed, a lot of features on the 3nm node won't be 3nm, and there's lots of different things they tweak and redesign to help improve the density and efficiency of a new node. It's not just about transistor size. There's probably still years of tweaking and improving and refinements they can eke out before traditional silicon chips are fully exhausted. Maybe don't expect regular game changing leaps any more, but things aren't going to grind to a halt in the way you're suggesting anytime soon.
Both TSMC and Intel have plans for sub-2nm in place. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be successful but they both seem confident. I wouldn’t bet against them myself.
I think it's different when you are shopping for chips from another company and can afford to simply pay for the latest and best that Intel has to offer, without caring two hoots about what went on behind the scenes for R&D.
It’s partially because the lga1700 socket was kept too long. That and Intel can’t keep up with new node sizes in their own foundry. So if Apple buys all the capacity for 3nm nodes from TSMC Intel can’t use it.
But they have done that to survive and thrive on the years the smartphone business was very cutthroat on multiple levels. Nowadays the competition is much more around specialised applications of AI computation, mainly photography and video and they have focused on those aspects with the same yearly cadence.
Apple deemed it important enough to update its laptops with new Intel chips as many as twice per year. That should tell you that every time they make an update, however minor, sales jump.
they’d be doing themselves dirty giving up their hand now.
I think Mac mini was said to be late 2024 before its next upgrade according to one of the leakers. If Apple make thier M series chips obsolete quickly and end up forcing people to make updates way to early I mean the M2 Pro is good enough for many as it is now, then people might get a cause of looking at other markets, maybe not hardcore Apple fans but casual Apple Mac users and any businesses that use Apple computers (most use Windows) would not be able to justify the cost, especially home users.
They boxed themselves in a corner. Should have just re-packaged it as V1 or something. Then it won’t matter if it’s M2 based as it’s what they deemed appropriate for that device.
Yes. Especially with the Ultra as they fixed the 2x scaling issues with graphics and media encoders/decoders.
