Apple TV+ has been losing money, billions of dollars, in fact, since its inception so I'm not sure what ROI you're talking about.
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Apple Silicon Mac Pro Reportedly Not Coming at WWDC, Mac Studio Refresh Likely Delayed Until M3
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Mmmm... the Mac Cube... That is what inspired this idea:
But I do have a lot of doubts about Apple putting multiple SoC packages in the a Mac. It just breaks the scaling model that Apple has been using where programs don't see the separate chips. I buy that Apple might make their own 1st party accelerator, but that isn't the same thing.
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Where do you get your financial numbers? My understanding is Apple does not publically break out AppleTV+ from the other services they deliver. For the quarter ending Dec 31, 2022, their services revenues are $20.1B and expenses are $6.0B so gross margin is $14.1B. How much of those numbers are attributed to AppleTV+ subscriptions is not disclosed to the public as far as I am aware?
SSD and CPU and some GPU for scene rendering. The difference is substantial ... up to 50% faster.
I think there is a lot of GPU capacity built into AS that is latent because the GPU is not fully used yet. Blender has a Metal beta going on now and there are big performance improvements. The Blender Metal implementation is ongoing so the user experience should continue to improve.
Carplay doesn't directly bring in any money either. ( 'freely' licensed although automakers have to do some development work for integration. )
The Carplay 'strategy' is to keep people using their phones for longer period of time so can be tracked and monetized better.
Making a whole car and building a Human-Compter interface for a car infotainment subsystem are two different things. One Apple is competing with their partners and the more a partner ship play. Apple tends to want to be the holistic system integrator. That leans them to start thinking about making the whole thing. But it is really is pretty far outside of their wheelhouse of talent. There is enough of an overlap ( and plenty of folks doing cult like valuations of totally automonous electric car vaporware ) that Apple can't stop dipping their toe/leg in the water.
In terms of the car it is a big money pit because more than several competitors are already moving with popular product. Apple isn't close to shipping anything and "no qualification corner cutting" class 5 autonomous cars is largely still snake oil sales. Cars that help people drive better? already being done.
As someone pointed out if Apple abandon their entertainment thing at some point they could just sell the library of content and walk away. The 'whole car' thing would likely just be a big hole in the ground that no one would buy ( apple want to sell IP . Big tech company tend to just bury IP they end up not using. ).
Only it really isn't primarily a VR headset. If it is a headset that could help people do work in the real world there are lots of use cases. Part of the ' compelling use case' problem is folks keep trying to cast it in the light of how it can be an even bigger escapist consumption crack-candy than the iphone. And the $8K Mac Pro isn't going to be a compelling use case for the entry Mac Mini user base. Apple isn't likely aiming at 'what would the rabid Apple fans buy' use case with this initial headset. Can more so start with questions with 'what is very hard/difficult to install , dianose , fix' followed with what kind of information can be made available without being distracting to make that process easier. So in the middle of surgery could you give a doctor better information to that don't cut the wrong thing. Probably. Assisting folks in doing their jobs better and improving productivity is a relatively broad and compelling use case. It is a tool , pick it up , do a task well/better , and more on. Just has to be more useful than popular.
An advanced headset would likely benefit from custom silicon designed to do advanced camera analysis. Gee Apple has done what with cameras and highly customer silicon with the iPhone over last 10 years? So lots of overlaps. Advanced screens needed ... again overlap in an area have had some success.
Thinner and lighter ? An issue headsets vendors really haven't mastered yet.
Apple making a > $100K car that only a fraction of the 1% can afford so they can be solely robot chauffeured around in bling bling style isn't compelling. More so a "got more money than common sense' money pit.
If that's the case, based on what fact did you make the claim that entertainment content generates ROI? Where did you get your numbers?
Did you even bother to read the article?
You can extrapolate the revenue of Apple TV+ based on the number of paying subscribers and how much each movie and show costs. The latter is based on a mix of insider knowledge and estimates. The fact that the budget of Apple TV+ had ballooned from 1 to 6 billion USD in 2019 but the number of its paying subscribers hasn't kept pace even in 2023 is a strong indication that Apple is eating a huge loss in order to compete with the likes of Netflix and Disney.
Apple TV+ is the bulk of Apple's entertainment content. You seem clueless when you made the claim that it's a profitable business. It's even more puzzling that you chose to extrapolate the revenue of Apple TV+ from their service revenue, which comprises a myriad of services such as Apple Books, Apple Pay, iCloud, and App Store. Again, you just don't know what you're talking about.
Apple's eventual goal with its EV is most likely a vehicle capable of fully automatic driving that can replace most forms of public transport, taxi, or even private car ownership. Apple definitely won't stop at the boutique luxury category. It won't be cheap but it won't be exorbitant either.
I supplied the facts above from Apple's quarterly financial statements ended Dec 31, 2022. Including AppleTV+, Apple is generating a rather healthy 70% gross margin on their aggregate services. That sounds like it is both profitable and generating an ROI. It is not clear where your facts come from.
Yeah... AppleTV is doomed. Lol...
Apple's TV service will grow like crazy and be a $9 billion business by 2025, Morgan Stanley says
Morgan Stanley is bullish on Apple TV+ growth, even if only a small fraction of people who pick up the free year end up paying to subscribe.
AppleTV is the best streaming service I have tried so far, and I'm sure it will only get better. They have a shocking number of amazing shows.
"Aggregated" services... LOL
We're talking about Apple TV+ and you're talking about all of Apple's services in aggregation. Nice try though.
The fact that Apple TV+ is losing money won't change just because you're misdirecting and strawmanning.
If you actually bother to read the linked article in the original post, you'd know where I got my information from.
For a guy who doesn't know the difference between Apple TV and Apple TV+, you sure have a talent for sarcasm. 😂😂😂Yeah... AppleTV is doomed. Lol...
Apple's TV service will grow like crazy and be a $9 billion business by 2025, Morgan Stanley says
Morgan Stanley is bullish on Apple TV+ growth, even if only a small fraction of people who pick up the free year end up paying to subscribe.www.cnbc.com
AppleTV is the best streaming service I have tried so far, and I'm sure it will only get better. They have a shocking number of amazing shows.
And just so you know, just because a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted that Apple TV+ will grow, doesn't mean that it hasn't been losing money since 2019. Growth and loss are not necessarily causal or even correlated. A smart chap like you surely knows that a business can grow but still lose money...right?
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The article was written in 2021 based on someone's speculation in 2018. That was 5 years ago. How is that relevant to the facts disclosed in the financial statements of Dec 31 2022?
There's a million articles that say Apple TV is doing just fine. There I said it again without a "+" just to annoy you.
Also you're sexist to assume I'm a guy or a chap.
You got to spend money to make money.
As noted, AppleTV+ has, IMO, a very solid catalog of content, even if it is not a wide and deep catalog of content. It may not make money on it's own, but it exists to promote Apple products that do make money (iPhones and iPads).
And it is not money that is preventing the Mac Pro from coming - it's management attention and interest. Apple's functional organization structure (implemented by Jobs upon his return in 1997) has been a major contributor to Apple's success, however it does mean that each product category competes for overall management attention as none has it's own complete management team (Sales, Marketing, Product, etc.). And with iPhones the largest revenue stream and Services the strongest-growing revenue stream, that means everything else (iPad, Mac, Home, Software, etc.) gets less attention.
It also doesn't help that Apple's management has also been focused on getting the VR headset out the door.
As noted, AppleTV+ has, IMO, a very solid catalog of content, even if it is not a wide and deep catalog of content. It may not make money on it's own, but it exists to promote Apple products that do make money (iPhones and iPads).
And it is not money that is preventing the Mac Pro from coming - it's management attention and interest. Apple's functional organization structure (implemented by Jobs upon his return in 1997) has been a major contributor to Apple's success, however it does mean that each product category competes for overall management attention as none has it's own complete management team (Sales, Marketing, Product, etc.). And with iPhones the largest revenue stream and Services the strongest-growing revenue stream, that means everything else (iPad, Mac, Home, Software, etc.) gets less attention.
It also doesn't help that Apple's management has also been focused on getting the VR headset out the door.
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If you think about it, modern processors long ago added a bunch of stuff, which used to all be on separate chips, onto one chip. Regardless, of that, those processors can still connect to more powerful off-chip functionality. E.g. the Intel processors come with a built in on-chip GPU, but allow discrete GPU's to override the built in GPU, and even allow the OS to switch between them as needed. Similarly, most modern processors come with multiple levels of RAM on-chip, ranging from higher speed, lower capacity registers, to lower speed, higher capacity cache RAM, including L1, L2, and L3 cache, and then also connect the Chip can to external main RAM, and also page fault to the SSD if needed. Current AS moves the off-chip RAM entirely on-Chip, but there is no reason it can't use both. AS already uses the off-chip SSD for page faulting.
There is absolutely no reason that, regardless of the, so called, SOC design, can't also allow modularity. The Apple engineers in charge of Macs have well and truly proven their genius with the brilliant AS Macs, I don't know why anyone would doubt them.
You must like very different stuff than I do.
I enjoyed For All Mankind, Mythic Quest, & Slow Horses...
I will add Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, Shrinking, Blackbird, Truth Be Told, Tehran, We Crashed, Echo3, The Problem, to the list.
There is a difference between "can't do it" and "won't do it".
Could Apple treat it's on package (the memory is not on-chip, it is just on the interposer package with the other SoC dies) memory as L4 cache... yes. Will they? probably not.
I could be wrong, but I feel:
1) If Apple can get an M3 Quadra (4x M3 Max chips) working, it will probably have at least 384 GB. I just don't think there are enough users who need more RAM for Apple to invest in solving the problem.
2) The on-package memory has more bandwidth than normal RAM DIMMs, but it isn't 10x faster. For it to be worth additional caching memory, you really want a magnitude speed difference for it to be worth it.
3) The DDR5 Apple uses is not built to be cache memory. It doesn't have the hardware to optimally work as cache. Could it be made to work, yes; but should it? Probably not.
If Apple can get close to half a TB of RAM, I'm sure they'll just call it a day and be happy with that.
Sixteen 32GB LPDDR5X chips should deliver 512GB RAM (for a Mn Quadra configuration) and 2.16TB/s UMA bandwidth...?
$7/mo * 12 = $84 . At 25M subscribers that is about $2B . At the previous $5/mo charge there were likely issues for a while.
Part of the cost bump though is MLS which is fine given that is yet another additional charge. $79/year. And don't have to subscribe to AppleTV+ to get it ( more money ). No where near same number of people but if the incremental cost increase is covered ... then again not really a problem. (similarly have folded the MLB "Friday Night Baseball" into AppleTV+ subscription. Which may move the AppleTV+ subscriber numbers. )
Likewise Apple's move to put movies in theaters goes where in the financial books?
Apple Reportedly Planning to Release Movies in Theaters and Increase Spend to $1 Billion Per Year
Apple plans to increase its spend on movies for Apple TV+ to $1 billion annually, as well as release them in theaters globally, Bloomberg...
www.macrumors.com
Putting movies in theaters means they get getting money from folks who don't necessarily have a AppleTV + subscription. Spend on movie costs don't typically line up with the revenue generation. Could be 12-18 month gap there. If Apple does have $1+ B tied up in this largely delayed revenue feedback mechanism it really shouldn't be buried in services which are delivered in minutes.
Also a bit unclear how much of the increased spend is for content to make themselves more viable as a streaming service in another worldwide market. (some countries have restrction on minimal amount of local content requirement before can enter market) . Again some of this may be upfront buy-in money to enter new markets and an investement that takes time to pay off
That said... if Apple looses App Store exclusivity and electronics sales take a hit later in 2023 in a recession and borrowing costs go up .... whether the "spend money like drunken sailors " mode will stay turned on in Hollywood.
I agree with you that as of the moment at least, we don't know how TV+ is doing financially. That said, pretty much every other video streaming service I know of isn't profitable either. Which is why the future of said product may not be as a standalone service, but an ecosystem feature which props up the rest of the ecosystem.
That said, I do feel that Apple has gotten a lot of things correct with their video streaming service. They prioritise quality over quantity (which should at least help keep costs down), offer a pretty competitive pricing model, are able to bundle it with their other services to offer an even more compelling offering, and their apparent strategy of focusing on Hollywood star power has been pretty effective in garnering attention, it seems.
It's not hard to look at TV+ and see how it, despite being a service, embodies Apple's ideals about the end user experience.
AppleCare+ seems a necessity for peace-of-mind with Apple silicon, just remember to keep up-to-date Time Machine backups...?
Apple needs to release a new Time Capsule...