Apple Halted M2 Chip Production in January Amid 'Plummeting' Mac Sales

[120FPS]

I definitely think Apple should focus on increasing the power of their GPUs if they are going to never support 3rd party GPUs again, which seems to be the case. However, Apple isn't doing anything the way I would if it were up to me. Before even thinking about a VR headset they should be taking gaming seriously and making Macs with very powerful GPUs, and really push for game developer adoption, and buy some game studios like Sony and Microsoft always are. They should also make a game console version of the Apple TV also with a powerful GPU. But Apple isn't interested in any of this, nor are they interested in making a new Mac Pro with GPUs that beat out Nvidia and AMD.

Also if the VR headset rumors are true, we aren't even talking about a Mac Pro, because the headset is supposed to be a standalone device. It will have the graphics power of an iPad. Apple just doesn't care about the kind of hardware modern PC gamers care about.

We’ll see what happens, I have a feeling Apple are focusing on weight reduction for a low heat comfortable experience with airpods level audiovisual transparency so the SoC could be with the external battery pack connected via a cable. So far these devices are popular with gamers, for art projects and other esoteric uses but I do not know if the upper limit in pricing would make this a compelling product and given Apple‘s fixation on control I do wonder if gaming companies will welcome this device especially since Apple has been at the throat of the company behind Unreal Engine and they might not be keen to cavort with their devil.

As I said more and more of what we do is going to 3D, including the moving image field Macs thrive on. The AS M3 is meant to have ray tracing so at least it’s moving in a positive direction. The reason for high-end hardware is for development time; by the time the software is released on the hardware it’s meant to run on, things would have progressed significantly. We’ll see, Apple may do a Nintendo (low spec, more fun) if they do look at gaming or mostly focus on the human communication experience.

 

[enb141]

I definitely think Apple should focus on increasing the power of their GPUs if they are going to never support 3rd party GPUs again, which seems to be the case. However, Apple isn't doing anything the way I would if it were up to me. Before even thinking about a VR headset they should be taking gaming seriously and making Macs with very powerful GPUs, and really push for game developer adoption, and buy some game studios like Sony and Microsoft always are. They should also make a game console version of the Apple TV also with a powerful GPU. But Apple isn't interested in any of this, nor are they interested in making a new Mac Pro with GPUs that beat out Nvidia and AMD.

Also if the VR headset rumors are true, we aren't even talking about a Mac Pro, because the headset is supposed to be a standalone device. It will have the graphics power of an iPad. Apple just doesn't care about the kind of hardware modern PC gamers care about.

As I said in other post, my guess is that apple is moving to mobile (iPad, iPhone, Macbook) so Mac Mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro are probably not their main targets, they saw with the iPhone and iPad that they can build a custom GPU that can compete in mobile area, Nvidia and AMD are in the mobile but apple can compete with them in the mobile world.

 

[Danfango]

I retract my comment now about the pricing. I'm dirty student scum now so I get a the educational discount on Apple. Happy days, I'm now paying what I was in 2021 ... 🤨

 

[simoss23]

Is this not merely a case of exceptional sales of the M1, following the debacle that was the touchbar Intel laptops — coupled with the M1 iteration being so good, that fewer see the need to upgrade to the M2 versions?

Personally, it will be a long time before I find a need to upgrade my 14” M1 MBP. Surely my situation is not unique?

Obviously the new macbook pro are good with the m1 and m2 but the problem is the pricing, especially when customers were expecting a more reasonable price when the M1 entered in production. To my surprise it didn't happen. And to not forget the fact that even the latest M1 max is still far away from it's equivalent NVIDIA in terms of GPU although the mac provide a good balance in terms of energy consumption and processing power.

 

[GandalfvsRand]

It sounds like you didn't buy the right machine. That base line Mac mini is for light use and, sadly, any Adobe product is not light use. MS Outlook is also a poorly optimized piece of software, especially on Macs. But I will say that Apple did you little favors by shipping the Mini with 8gb of non-upgradeable RAM. Lots of users will find that amount of RAM an issue.

However, there is no reason why you should have your operating system and boot drive running off the external storage. That is a mistake. You should keep operating system and boot on the internal storage; keep a nice solid 20 to 40 gb of space free on the internal storage, move everything else to the external. Note that MS Outlook saves every email attachment to your Mac, but the Mac OS/MS Outlook stores it as part of the System Data files (not sure if is MS's fault or Mac's fault that it gets put there). So if you have an absolutely huge System Data file, that could be 70% MS Outlook Email attachments. I had this issue and learned the hard way with my 256gb storage mini running out of space because my "System Data" was well over 100gb. I went into the Library, found the Outlook email files and deleted them. Eventually stopped using MS Outlook, but I didn't need to do that.

I am aware of the benefits of using the internal ssd drive as the boot drive; however, even when most apps were moved to the external drive, the system still ran out of application memory often. MS Outlook puts its swap file on the boot drive regardless of where the application is located. Several other apps appear to do the same. The net result: the internal ssd's free space became too low causing system freezing or slowdown. Making the external drive the boot drive solved this problem as there is plenty of free space on it. Additional RAM might have solved the problem, but I don't think so. The urgent need was for more ssd storage space. This is where Apple's high markup on storage upgrade costs becomes a real problem.

Now much of the M1's benefits may flow from its system on a chip setup so I get why the machines could not be designed to be upgradeable for either RAM or ssd storage. But that makes it all the more important that Apple's charges for RAM and ssd storage be more competitive. A 2tb .m2 Gen 5 drive has about the same speed as Apple's internal ssd drives but can be bought on Amazon for about $180 (San Disk). Going from 256gb to 2 tb with Apple costs $800 on the Mac Mini.

 

[TallManNY]

I am aware of the benefits of using the internal ssd drive as the boot drive; however, even when most apps were moved to the external drive, the system still ran out of application memory often. MS Outlook puts its swap file on the boot drive regardless of where the application is located. Several other apps appear to do the same. The net result: the internal ssd's free space became too low causing system freezing or slowdown. Making the external drive the boot drive solved this problem as there is plenty of free space on it. Additional RAM might have solved the problem, but I don't think so. The urgent need was for more ssd storage space. This is where Apple's high markup on storage upgrade costs becomes a real problem.

Now much of the M1's benefits may flow from its system on a chip setup so I get why the machines could not be designed to be upgradeable for either RAM or ssd storage. But that makes it all the more important that Apple's charges for RAM and ssd storage be more competitive. A 2tb .m2 Gen 5 drive has about the same speed as Apple's internal ssd drives but can be bought on Amazon for about $180 (San Disk). Going from 256gb to 2 tb with Apple costs $800 on the Mac Mini.

Yeah, those internal upgrades are expensive when you buy from Apple. I agree that RAM won't solve the problem if the boot drive is continually driven up to a point where it doesn't have free space. If the external drive is working for you, then great.

Just an FYI, I found that MS Outlook was saving every attachment (sometimes multiple times) into my system data. Once I went deep into the library and found where it was saving the attachments (and once I got into the library it wasn't hard to find because it was the folder with 10s of GB), I could just delete all the old attachments and free up storage. Eventually I just deleted MS Outlook though. I only use that for my work email and I just decided to use a different email client on my Mac. MS Teams gets me my work calendar same as Outlook, so it is okay. I think there are other programs that do this, but none of the other ones really matter except Outlook because it is only through that email that under my workflow that I'm collecting files that will add up into the GBs.

Coincidentally, I just had my RAM fail on my 2018 Mac mini causing a kernel panic. I put back in the original 8GB of RAM and it works. But this is pushing me closer and closer to getting a new Mac mini. I'm going to get it with the upgraded SSD to 1tb because the space will be convenient and the 1tb SSD configuration of the current Mac minis is a very fast 6,000+ MB/s SSD disk speed. So in this case, that upgrade is a twofer, more storage and more speed. So I'm resigned to paying for that upgrade cost.

 

[duck apple]

M1 was extremely successful. Anyone who wanted Apple Silicon pretty much bought it already. That means most people won’t upgrade until M3 or M4. IMO, Apple went to M2 too quickly. They should be on an almost 4 year cycle of releasing new processors rather than releasing every 2 years. People don’t upgrade computers like they do phones.

It's not Apple released M2 too quickly, it is TSMC delay its 3nm production for too long.

 

[duck apple]

I'm one of those holdouts still using an Intel iMac due to my needs of Intel-based OS virtualization. I'm going out on a limb here, but I really think switching to Apple Silicon was a mistake.

I got my Mac Studio Max max out with 2TB and then I was hit by series of projects needing x86 Linux environment (native or in x86 VM). I had to grab an Intel iMac 2020 5K 27" from eBay about the same price as the Mac Studio yet giving lesser CPU and GPU performance with more heat and noise.

The next big invention in the M series is to embedded a 10th-gen or later i5 4-core or i9 6-core.

 

[bobcomer]

I had to grab an Intel iMac 2020 5K 27" from eBay about the same price as the Mac Studio yet giving lesser CPU and GPU performance with more heat and noise.

You paid too much. I bought my 27" iMac for $1300 from Apple, added 128G of RAM for $600, for a total of $1900 plus a couple hundred for apple care. (I don't remember how much I paid for apple care) My Studio Max was over $3000. (1TB ssd). My Studio has the whine, but I never hear my iMac.

And it's only a slightly slower, ~15 percent. I use the iMac instead of the Studio for everything. But I got it for x86 VM's too. The monitor is enough to tip the balance over even my Windows desktop.

 

[bobcomer]

The next big invention in the M series is to embedded a 10th-gen or later i5 4-core or i9 6-core.

I would like that, but I don't see it happening!

 

[Serqetry]

The next big invention in the M series is to embedded a 10th-gen or later i5 4-core or i9 6-core.

No chance in hell, as x86 is a dying architecture.

The only thing keeping x86 around is PC gamers and Windows. The future is ARM and RISC-V. It might take a while longer for it to happen, but it will eventually happen.

 

[enb141]

No chance in hell, as x86 is a dying architecture.

The only thing keeping x86 around is PC gamers and Windows. The future is ARM and RISC-V. It might take a while longer for it to happen, but it will eventually happen.

Desktop, servers, they won't go ARM / RISC-V any time soon, ARM is going to be in a lots of mobile devices but desktop ARM won't phase out Desktop x86.

 

[xyz01]

Yep for most people, even if people from this forum says otherwise.

8/256 is only gonna work if you use Facebook and read your email, and maybe open a small XML or doc file.

Also, having a low minimum spec makes it harder to support with OS updates etc... It might be OK for a minimum spec right now, but it should be usable and upgradeable in 5 years too, hopefully more,

 

[chucker23n1]

No chance in hell, as x86 is a dying architecture.

The only thing keeping x86 around is PC gamers and Windows. The future is ARM and RISC-V. It might take a while longer for it to happen, but it will eventually happen.

Also, a 10th-gen Intel CPU? What would the point of that be, when you can already emulate faster than that?

 

[chucker23n1]

Desktop, servers, they won't go ARM / RISC-V any time soon,

Servers have already started shifting towards ARM.

Desktops? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but one of the biggest vendors has gone all ARM.

Plus, most Chromebooks are ARM. That’s another huge chunk of the market.

ARM is going to be in a lots of mobile devices but desktop ARM won't phase out Desktop x86.

Only if you restrict “desktop” to “Windows”.

Yes, x86 is still very big. But it’s not big enough or fast enough to justify Apple putting x86 cores on their SoCs when 1) they already have an emulator (as does Windows), and 2) a lot of software already runs on ARM anyway.

 

[bobcomer]

The only thing keeping x86 around is PC gamers and Windows.

Don't forget businesses and business software, especially custom.

 

[bobcomer]

Also, a 10th-gen Intel CPU? What would the point of that be, when you can already emulate faster than that?

Emulation via Windows on arm is only as fast as gen 7 or 8, definitely not as fast as 9. It's also not perfect, not everything runs. If you're talking full emulation like QEMU, maybe gen 1 in the current line and unstable.

I agree there''s no way it's happening, but it would be better than emulation by a good margin.

 

[chucker23n1]

Don't forget businesses and business software, especially custom.

Business software is (to my chagrin) increasingly moving to the web, and when it isn’t, it rarely has high CPU requirements. It’s almost always CRUD stuff. You can simply put it in a VM.

 

[jdb8167]

I got my Mac Studio Max max out with 2TB and then I was hit by series of projects needing x86 Linux environment (native or in x86 VM).

Linux VMs running on MacOS can now use Rosetta 2. For most x86 Linux binaries that will be faster than a 10th gen Intel CPU. There might be some Linux hardware that still has problems in a VM but most software should run fine.

 

[Serqetry]

Don't forget businesses and business software, especially custom.

Oh, I've forgotten alright, intentionally. No, I don't think businesses and business software are keeping x86 alive. We live in a bling bling RGB world now, and it wouldn't be that way if it wasn't for the fact that gamers are the main market.

The rest of the computer world has no problem either using old machines (lots of businesses don't do a lot of upgrading) or moving on to ARM. Macs are quite popular in the non-gaming sectors, and with x86 emulation there isn't any reason to avoid changing CPU architecture. Gamers are stubborn, they won't tolerate a break in compatibility or degradation in performance due to CPU emulation.

 

[enb141]

Servers have already started shifting towards ARM.

Desktops? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but one of the biggest vendors has gone all ARM.

Plus, most Chromebooks are ARM. That’s another huge chunk of the market.

I've heard it by the software availability, right now you can't get pretty muchy any mayor software / games on ARM, even android for desktop is using a lot of x86 CPUs.

One hardware vendor going ARM doesn't means is the end of x86 on servers / desktop

Chromebooks yes, Chromebox no.

Only if you restrict “desktop” to “Windows”.

Yes, x86 is still very big. But it’s not big enough or fast enough to justify Apple putting x86 cores on their SoCs when 1) they already have an emulator (as does Windows), and 2) a lot of software already runs on ARM anyway.

Emulation has cons, first is not perfect, some apps won't work, and in other cases, apps run slow or consume lots of energy.

 

[pdoherty]

No chance in hell, as x86 is a dying architecture.

The only thing keeping x86 around is PC gamers and Windows. The future is ARM and RISC-V. It might take a while longer for it to happen, but it will eventually happen.

Oh, is that all? Just 75% or so of all compute in use?

 

[120FPS]

Are we talking about Apple going ARM or has Intel and AMD decided to go all in on ARM. Have I missed something? Is there some big announcement this year at Computex?

This push for ARM has been far slower and Microsoft’s poor efforts, mixed messaging, support everything badly approach is killing adoption. Apple can take a unilateral approach but others cannot, or will not.

 

[120FPS]

Business software is (to my chagrin) increasingly moving to the web, and when it isn’t, it rarely has high CPU requirements. It’s almost always CRUD stuff. You can simply put it in a VM.

You speak as if there isn't a cost associated with this. Is it me or has everyone got money to burn on intermediaries?

 

[bobcomer]

You can simply put it in a VM.

Unless it requires special hardware. It's not anywhere the need to do that now anyway.

Only new development is web here...