"MacStadium sees a ‘massive opportunity’ for Apple in business markets"

[theorist9]

From computerworld.com, Jan 27, 2023, referring specifically to Apple Silicon:

MacStadium sees a ‘massive opportunity’ for Apple in business markets

“I’ve never been more optimistic for the Mac platform,” says MacStadium CTO Chris Chapman.

www.computerworld.com

Plus we already have these that started during the Intel era:

IBM-Apple Partnership:

IBM Apple Partnership

Ready your mobile workforce with Apple and IBM

www.ibm.com

​

And:

IBM: ‘Mac users are happier and more productive’

IBM, which has embraced Apple hardware in a big way, says the employees who use Macs are more likely to stay at the company – and are more productive. The insights came at this weeks Jamf Nation User Conference.

www.computerworld.com

​

 

[senttoschool]

I've had a lot of thoughts on both an "Apple Silicon Cloud" (MacStadium's business) and the enterprise market for Macs.

Apple Silicon Cloud:

Seems like you're more "Team Federighi" and I'm more "Team Stauffer".

This email chain was written in 2017 by the way when cloud gaming was still a myth and Geforce Now was still 3 years from launching. Their stance could have changed entirely within the last 4 years now that they've seen more of what other companies are doing via the cloud and they know more about their Mac chips.

I think there is a middle ground in which Apple integrates local and cloud environments seamlessly. If you control the OS and the Cloud, you can do things like selectively use local hardware for latency-sensitive things and the cloud for acceleration. You can hit a button in the OS and have a hybrid environment where some applications are streamed from a 256-core Apple Silicon SoC but your Notes app is still running locally. You can even use one desktop as local and the other as Cloud and all you need to do to switch between them is a 3 finger swipe.

Eventually, I think cloud centers will be built everywhere (edge) to reduce latency and more and more things can be done in the cloud. If gaming can be streamed from the cloud, most things can.

Sticking to pure local compute is a losing game long term though. You have to think that Apple is smart enough to see the trends.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youre-apple-you-just-built-a-40-core-soc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-30186709

Mark Gurman is saying that Apple is working on a 40-core SoC for the Mac Pro for 2022.

You're Tim Cook, sitting in his nice office, looking at how much money you just spent to make this giant SoC for a relatively small market. In fact, you have to do this every year or every two years to keep the Mac Pro relevant. How do you recuperate some of this money spent?

You create "Apple Cloud". No, not iCloud. Apple Cloud. Like AWS. Where anyone can come and rent a 40-core M3 SoC running on macCloudOS. You get into the cloud hosting business. You file this under the "Services" strategy that you keep pushing to make Wall Street happy.

Soon, you'll be releasing 64-core SoCs with 128-core GPUs, then 128-core SoCs with 256-core GPUs, and so on. Somehow, you're actually beating anything AWS, Azure, Google Cloud can offer... without really trying.

Apple Silicon Cloud.

You're Apple. You just built a 40-core SoC for Mac Pro. Now what?

Mark Gurman is saying that Apple is working on a 40-core SoC for the Mac Pro for 2022. You're Tim Cook, sitting in his nice office, looking at how much money you just spent to make this giant SoC for a relatively small market. In fact, you have to do this every year or every two years to keep...

forums.macrumors.com

Nailed it.

This SoC never made much sense for a highly niche product. In order to profitably produce and provide frequent updates for this chip, Apple would have to make a cloud version too.

IE. AMD and Intel's ultra high-end chips have a highly lucrative server market to support them. No "Extreme" Apple Silicon would have that so Apple is likely to always make a loss on it. It'd only serve as an expensive "halo" product.

I'm still holding out hope that Apple would produce an M3 "Extreme" chip but it'll always be one of the first things to get canceled when the finance people want to cut costs.

Gurman: All-New Mac Pro Still in Testing, But 'M2 Extreme' Chip Likely Canceled

Apple continues to test an all-new Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra chip, but the company has likely abandoned plans to release a higher-end configuration...

www.macrumors.com

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youre-apple-you-just-built-a-40-core-soc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-31815657

Macs in the enterprise market:

Apple wants the enterprise market. It's exactly the type of market a $2.5 trillion-dollar company needs to get into.

For the longest time, Apple couldn't compete with the likes of Dell/Lenovo in value since they offered the same Intel/AMD/Nvidia hardware but at a discount. Apple Silicon changes that equation just like it does for consumer markets. Apple has an opportunity to add more value than Dell/Lenovo.

Support infrastructure can be built. Many enterprises use third-party support companies like CDW without going directly to Dell/Lenovo/HP anyways.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youre-apple-you-just-built-a-40-core-soc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-30221253

Apple just launched this:

Business Essentials

Apple Business Essentials makes it easy for small businesses to manage Apple devices, including mobile device management (MDM), support, and storage.

www.apple.com

There's the one-day hardware support right there.

Small to medium-sized businesses are a good start.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youre-apple-you-just-built-a-40-core-soc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-30610111

I worked for a large tech company (and plenty of smaller ones), and pretty much all of them had combinations of Macs and Windows for workers. In the product departments, everyone used a Mac. And everyone had iPhones.

All I'm saying is that Apple's new Macs make them extremely attractive for small businesses, medium businesses, and enterprises. No, not all companies can switch to Macs. But the average worker can certainly do it. Every day, more and more companies are switching to browser-based tools. More and more apps are built with cross-platform in mind. When a company tool is built for iOS and iPad, it can work on macOS.

It's blindingly obvious that Apple wants a bigger pie of the business phone, tablet, and computer market. They're already there with iPhones and iPads. Now they just have to replace Windows computers with Macs. Their new Business Essentials software clearly signals Apple's intention.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youre-apple-you-just-built-a-40-core-soc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-30616164

As a reminder, there are more people who use a combination of iPhone + Windows than iPhone + Mac. Macs have a huge potential to grab market share in the consumer, small business, and enterprise markets. The iPhone is the trojan horse for Macs just like how I personally started using Macs after buying my first iPhone.

I think the launch of a 15" Macbook Air will help tremendously here. Most office workers do not need anything more than the power of an Air but most workers would prefer a 15" over a 13" laptop.

PS. I work in Silicon Valley. Go into any tech company here and you'll see that 95% of tech workers use a Mac. Macs have already taken over Silicon Valley tech departments and have well before Apple Silicon.