Does Apple provide a loyalty discount to its customers? I know it offers discounts to certain sectors but many other companies do that as well.
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Apple Now Facing Unprecedented Competition for Chip Supply
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Even if the AI bubble bursts, this is what executives are thinking:
www.windowscentral.com
Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud
Amazon's Jeff Bezos once revealed how he thinks of local PC hardware as antiquated, ready to be replaced by cloud options. Will DRAM prices make it come true?
www.windowscentral.com
I was speaking more in regards to corporate or business level loyalty and or alliances.
Sadly Apple (as far as I know) has zero owner loyalty programs. Closest we have is trade-in values from them, but their competitors often give more for old Apple devices than Apple does themselves.
Even if the AI bubble bursts, this is what executives are thinking:
Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud
Amazon's Jeff Bezos once revealed how he thinks of local PC hardware as antiquated, ready to be replaced by cloud options. Will DRAM prices make it come true?
No frickin' way.
Not for this guy at least.
Intel can make cutting edge chips. It is more a question of volume and price than 'make'.
The rumors was that Intel might get M7 production. That would be a subset of the Mac and iPad needs in a future product down the road. That wouldn't reduce TSMC a huge amount ( larger aggregate die per package Mac consumption could stay with TSMC and all of the phones. )
Besides Apple has lots of chips get manufactured. Networking , Celluar , R1 (or whatever the new glasses need) , Watch besides just the A- and M- series. Not everything Apple is doing requires super bleeding edge. If designed in that direction that is where it goes.
So very true. Apple not receiving loyalty is just karma coming to bite them in the rear.
AI has an impact on the environment and downstream manufacturing processes. Evs do not. Studies have shown that there is enough grid capacity for EVs, along with studies that show cradle to grave emissions of EVs compared to ICE vehicles is a net positive.
What loyalty? Apple didn't choose TSMC because of some grandfathered agreement or romantic reason. Apple chose TSMC because they were heads and shoulders above everyone else in technology. TSMC beat out Samsung for A9. Everyone else like GlobalFoundries and UMC were miles behind.
If anyone helped TSMC grow the most, it was Nvidia back in 1997.
Apple approached TSMC in 2010 as a backup to Samsung.
Apple doesn’t need loyalty programs. Except here in MR Apple is a respected corporation with high loyalty marks.
As far as their vendors - well.
Because manufacturing those batteries have no impact at all; it does not require resource mining, there is no habitat damage, water pollution, manufacturing is not energy heavy, there are no eol disposal issues, etc.
Interesting. I tend to ignore those summaries. I wonder whether it's possible to turn them off in favour of better indexing.
When Nvidia started making all of these circular deals I said out loud here that I believed a huge part of it was not about anything less than tying up TMC production. Whether Apple, or anyone else trying to get chips into production. GOOGLE, AMAZON, MICROSOFT and new players in AI chip players were all going all-in to try to cut off their Nvidia dependency with their own chips. Tying up production would allow not make it easy for anyone wanting to get their data centers running with anything other than tried and true and more likely in stock NVIDIA chips.
That's totally impossible.
USA lost its capability of manufacturing for all markets and Intel is a great example. Making chips in USA will only increase the price and yet poor quality and performance. Besides, how will you gonna deal with a technology gap between Asia and USA? The manufacturing capability of USA is already long gone after WW2 and Trump doesn't know that.
USA could force companies to manufacture in USA but it will only increase the price while suffer from mass production. Mac Pro 2013 was a great example and Apple ditched to produce Mac Pro in USA for many issues as they lack infrastructures, highly trained labors, know how, price, technology, manufacturing capabilities, human rights, laws, and more.
It's USA who need to beg Asia to produce products and which is why China is a huge threat in many markets.
Well ain't that a cryin' shame. 🤠 Maybe if Apple quit worryin' about fancy marketing and actually built their factories right here in the Heartland, they wouldn't be beggin' for scraps behind Nvidia in Taiwan.
We got plenty of cheap land and hardworking folks with grit right here in the USA who could run those machines. But nah, y'all keep lined up to buy gadgets made by folks who don't even speak our language while our own factories sit empty. If it ain't stamped MADE IN THE USA, I don't want it. 🇺🇸
HIRE AMERICAN, BUY AMERICAN. Simple as that. But I reckon that kind of common sense is too advanced for "Silicon Valley." 😂
We got plenty of cheap land and hardworking folks with grit right here in the USA who could run those machines. But nah, y'all keep lined up to buy gadgets made by folks who don't even speak our language while our own factories sit empty. If it ain't stamped MADE IN THE USA, I don't want it. 🇺🇸
HIRE AMERICAN, BUY AMERICAN. Simple as that. But I reckon that kind of common sense is too advanced for "Silicon Valley." 😂
Historically? From 2000-2017 who had better fab process. Intel or TSMC?
Intel has certainly hit a deep bump in the road , but trying to cast that over the whole historical record is also a big overgeneralization of hjistory.
Apple started off the home grown with Samsung, not TSMC. Jobs asked Intel to do the work initially. ( Intel didn't really listen to what they were being asked. But asked because they did have the technical 'chops' to do the work. )
In terms of a deliberate fab contractor, Intel doesn't have much of a historical record there. That record is short with some failures and would be relatively risky. It is the lack of history there that is problem; not a long historical record.
It never really was about 'winning'. Getting a.wafer start allocation isn't a 'win' It is just paying for something. Hauwei had to get banned from TSMC to stop them from being at the front of the line. Apple didn't 'win' that. They certainly benefited from it , but they didn't 'win' it.
Apple splitting the 'regular' iPhone out into the Spring is somewhat indicative that they are not 'winning' ( in the heavily dominating sense). Missing in action. M5 Pro/Max ?
Since N3B (which hardly anyone else wanted) , they haven't be 'first'. (Mediatek shipped N4 before Apple did). AMD is rolling out 'first' on TSMC N2.
TSMC new fab process rollout has mostly shifted to Q4 timeframe in each year. That is too late to 'snag' the iPhone. Or the MBP or Fall 'dog and pony show day' Mac line up.
If 'win' is being able to brow-beat and intimidate your fab vendor into submission then Intel is less of a bad bet. They are relative 'new' ( to being a contract vendor) and need some bake-off wins (so might take a hit on price if that is co-top priority. ) .
It is possible to skip them, but if not building a better index on the backend.... it isn't going to just magically appear. The indixes , like the AI models, are built before you ever do any queries.
The default is 'on' and most folks are incurring that workload on Google's infrastuructre. The impact has to be paid for. Fringe user settings isn't going to change that.
And still EVs have lower cradle to grave emissions than ICE vehicles. But what you mention also applies to chip production and generation of power for AI datacenters.
Actually it isn't. Apple was incrementally losing this position even without AI. As Intel and Samsung stumbled in transition to EUV based leading edge fab business that means more customers piled into TSMC. Throw on top Intel doing bonehead moves in x86 and Graphics largely meant that AMD was not going to be the "almost broke , hoping to being to pay the light bill' consumer at TSMC. (AMD's lock-up agreements with Global Foundaries coupled to how long term strategic flawed that spin out was positioned ). Even less so after AMD bought Xlinix which was already doing some advanced fab work with TSMC that Apple was not. Nvidia and Qualcomm tried to limp along at Samsung but had to shift. That really wasn't "AI" that was more so Samsung screwing up.
The iPhone maturing as a product also puts a cap on Apple 'leverage' over TSMC. Similarly the Mac transition is a short term 'big bang' but that too isn't a high growth product.
TSMC's growth model is having more customers. Not one dominate customer that will push them around. TSMC was never trying to only be Apple's flunky .
Hauwei had to be banned to keep them from competing with Apple at TSMC.
'Wall Street' had at least as big a hand is screwing this all up as "AI". ( Intel not investing in fab business because was going to spin it out to chase profit margins. Similar mechanizations of chasing money and 'power' at Samsung left them distracted. )
The collapse from 20 fab vendors down to. 10. down to 4-5. has been a steady progression for last 40 years. Some of that is the technological expense driven and some just bad business decisions.
Intel had the undisputed lead 2000-2014. But Intel was in deep "14nm" woes by 2015-2016 . So even though TSMC might have still been catching up to Intel in 2016, the writing on Intel's wall was already there. By 2016 everybody knew the watch had no hands, since Intel themselves said they were dropping the tik-tok model in favor of the new tik-tok-tok one (which didn't last them long, but that's another story). So I'd peg Intel's world lead to the 2000-2015 time frame.