Apple went to 11 last year (probably to one-up microsoft like they did with iPhone numbering when Galaxy came close). We are on macOS 12 now with Monterrey.
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Macs With 'M3' Chips Expected to Use TSMC's 3nm Chip Technology With Test Production Reportedly Underway
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I don't think obsolete means what you think it means. By that logic every CPU ever released has been obsolete because there were always new processes in development.
Intel "We completely failed to fabricate chips at the levels our customer demanded, and we continue to create mega-watt, hot running inefficient chips that help destroy the environment ... we also will create advertisements that are misleading and fraudulent to help keep people using our products instead of Apple's until we can figure out what to do. ... so in the interim let's copy Apple's business model, use their primary fab plant vendor and steal the already limited and strained production". Thank you Intel -- how about building your own 3nm plant and start making chips in the US again?
Knowing Tim Cook, the M1 MacBook Air will almost certainly stick around at a lower price.
Assuming the M2 Air can stay at $999, I expect the M1 will be $899 with $799 being for Education markets. And at $799, I expect it will be quite popular with students (and their parents).
It's not just RtR - Apple's own warranty outlays rose not-insignificantly between 2016 and 2019 due to things like the Butterfly keyboard and the various "Gates" because their products were so difficult to repair and required significant sub-assemblies to be replaced (like the entire upper case for keyboards). By making these machines easier to repair with the 2020 and 2021 models, they have driven down those warranty outlays a good bit and will continue to due so.
I suspect Apple found out that all the effort to make their devices hard to repair backfired on them in terms of doing their own repairs. Apple's iPhone redesign had coming down the pipe for a while as it takes time for design changes to work their way through the pipeline (I read somewhere two years is considered a good turn around). Heck, the M1 Mini was effectively a very slightly modified x86 case; IIRC Apple didn't even bother replacing the fan.
I have a feeling the forthcoming big iMac with the M1 Pro might be a bit too costly for my liking, maybe. If it starts about the same as a 14in. MacBook Pro then it’s a maybe. If it’s more then I will wait for the 24 iMac with upgrade to M2.
Its going to be great to go beyond what we call fast today on newer models. I sure hope apple isn't using M1 chips 3 years from now and just releasing new models that cost more with the new chips. The watch, phone, tablet and headphone lines are pretty much like this. Would hate to see the Mac line go down this route. Its a lot nicer when new faster models replace outdated slower models.
Apple will certainly be releasing newer and faster versions of the M-series chips and putting them into their computers. We don’t know what their release cycle will be yet, but indicators suggest that at lease the lowest end of the M-series may be updated annually. They might release the middle or higher end chips on more of an 18-24 month cycle. That is a little harder to predict. Apple does sometimes not update the CPUs of some of their secondary products like the watch or the lower end iPads as quickly. that is mainly as those products are not focused on performance and not competing against other products for performance. The Mac line will probably be updated on a fairly regular basis to maintain an edge in performance.
This is very much like they currently do with the A-series chips in the iPhones where each year a new version is released that is faster than the previous year. In fact these are tied together as the A chips and the M chips both use the basic processor core design within a given generation of chips.
I’m not sure what you would hate about the route for the Mac line.
Yes, I hope they don't make it every-year-kind of think, I just bought m1 max and rumours of m3 started already, man!
It makes more sense to come out with a new chip model every die shrink unless Macs ships >50 million units annually.
Then you‘d be paying a whole lot of VLSI designers to sit around and do nothing every other year.
Mac hardware sales are a small slice of Apple's revenue.
VLSI designers focus on iPads & iPhones that globally ship >50m & >250m units respectively.
And at the moment they also are working on three Mac chips per year. If they aren’t working on that what would you have them work on? More iPhone chips? Twice a year updates to those?
As I pointed out iPad & iPhone keep them busy.
M1 Pro & M1 Max appear to be the same chip but chopped off GPU cores.
The rumored Jade-2C & Jade-4C die are M1 Max chips stitched together.
It's high enough for 18-24 month upgrade cycle for tablet/laptop-specific design.
Apple Silicon is already sunk in cost subsidized by over a dozen years of iPhone & iPad money.
Moving to ARM just allows them to leverage their current tech and node advantage over any x86 chip.
If Apple was solely dependent on Mac sales to fully cover the R&D cost of Apple silicon then Macs would be 2x its cost at ~22.5 million units/year.
Laptop/desktops without Macs is >252 million/year. That's a little more than the combined sales of iPad & iPhones annually.
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But it won’t keep them busy - after all, they ALREADY do that, and still have enough free time to do the max and pro (which are not “stitched”). Nor do we know that the Jade-2C and 4C are simply “stitched” together - in fact, since there is no obvious crossbar on the max it’s not clear how they could even do so without adding more logic somewhere.
And your comment about “but chopped off GPU cores” is the kind of thing that would only be said by someone who never designed a CPU.
So all those people working on max, pro, and the two as-yet-unseen variations would be doing what?
Bloomberg calls it a chopped chip. Those tech writers would know more than people that claim I dont know ****.
You two have fun trying to tear down someone who writes with confidence.
Pretty sure a former chip engineer knows more about chips than a journalist.
"Stitched together" may not be the best analogy (
) , but it has been reported that the M1 MAX does have double the necessary components on-die that is believed to allow it to interconnect with another M1 MAX. So perhaps it seems reasonable to presume Jade2C-Die, at least, could be two M1 MAX interconnected.
"Stitched together" may not be the best analogy (
That’s not quite true. It’s been noted that there is some unexplained circuitry on the bottom of the M1 Max, but it’s clear it isn’t a crossbar. Nor is there any evidence that any of the jade products can be made without any additional design effort.
Let's get technical then."Stitched together" may not be the best analogy (
Mask stitching.