For more than a quarter century Apple has been the top end supply chain company. So all their decisions rests primarily on their effectiveness on that end.
Is that the secret to their success? Being a "supply chain company"? No. Their success is due to innovative hardware and software. Careful supply chain management and remarkably disciplined engineering decisions allow them to deliver those innovative products at a reasonable price, but that is not where "all their decisions primarily rest".
An engineering company designs then executes. Apple does an amazing job getting both of those phases coordinated over timelines of many years.
Your explanation would applicable to any question relating to the "Apple Tax" on RAM & SSD and even Mac Pro wheels.
I always thought the term Apple Tax was bizarre given how much value there is in their lowest cost products. If you want to think of it that way, then understand that they use a progressive tax structure to fund a form of transfer payments. It's the reason why very nearly the same Apple Silicon architecture can be compared to both the top end and budget end of Intel's lineup. We can price compare to the Surface and bottom end Dells, and performance compare essentially the same product to the latest i9s.
You read it wrong. I said if there are more iPhone chips than iPhones then you put those iPhone chips into Apple TV 4K, iPad, etc.
How did I read it wrong? You're saying there aren't enough iPhones to consume the iPhone chips.
That's not what's happening. It's not a "chef's special" where, because they bought more asparagus than they needed yesterday, today's special is asparagus soup. Apple is leveraging their engineering effort in multiple places so they don't need to design specialized processors for every product and specialized software for each of those specialized processors-- that way lies madness.
Mac mini historically had
Core i3,
Core i5 and
Core i7 chips. So why would the 2020 Mac mini only have
M1 chips that occupies
<50% of the enclosure?
Launching the M1 was an unbelievably challenging undertaking, so they minimized their surface area to better focus on what had to happen to get the product line launched effectively. Why design new enclosures and ship every combination under the sun when it's already enough of an R&D effort to get the core product line release ready.
The Mini had i3s, i5s and i7s because Intel was footing the bill for R&D and, by the way, playing the same pricing games. Do you think the difference in price between an i3 and i7 is justified by a difference in manufacturing cost? Of course not-- they segment the market just like Apple does and use the margins on the i7s to balance the margins on the i3s.
So if Apple wanted to sell a budget Mini and a performance Mini, they needed put the cheaper chip in the cheaper product and the expensive chip in the performance product and Intel processes the transfer payments. I don't remember people being up in arms about it at the time though-- because the "BOM cost" of a CPU is more opaque than storage.
When the M1 shipped, you essentially got an i7 in every box. Apple didn't cripple the CPU to create tiers, they created tiers with storage. The kept the Mini form factor the same because why go through the expense and engineering risk of changing it? They did the same with the Air and 13" MBP-- no change to the form factor while they focused on getting the architecture launched.
Why the 2023 Mac mini having
M2 &
M2 Pro chips?
As I said, because they've been learning and growing the line as they settle into the AS age.
Supply constraints is also related to multiple COVID lockdowns impacting supply chains from 2020-2023.
With such challenges you simplify your supply chain as much as you can.
People use the term "supply chain" in weird ways sometimes, but sure Apple's had to focus a lot of energy on keeping their operations humming.
These challenges were attributed as to why Mac chips are not refreshed at the same annual pace as iPhone chips.
That remains to be seen, frankly. I think it's easy to hang our wishful thinking on the news story of the era, but most of the lockdowns were in China and the chips are made in Taiwan.
I think the product line is slowly filling out because Apple prioritized certain products over others (no M1 Pro Mini, for example) to focus their engineering efforts, but I also don't see a reason to update the M series on an annual pace.
People don't turn over their computers at the same rate they turn over phones and there are a lot more iPhone customers than there are Mac customers. Even the iPad line isn't updating every year anymore, why would the iMac?
When you look at Apple's profit breakdown, they make most of their profit from phones and there are essentially 4 models (standard, plus, pro, pro max). They make a minor and static fraction of profit on Macs and there are at least 10 of them (air, 13", 14", 14" max, 16", 16" max, mini, pro mini, imac, mac pro). Most companies allocate internal resources internally according to profitability, so the Mac team has to work to keep their R&D costs down. An obvious way to do that is to not release new silicon every year.
I know there's a whole other thread about how Apple's comments about taking all the performance benefit then can in the same year is being seen as an indication that they're on a yearly cycle, but I read it as the opposite: They aren't going to trickle out innovation to ensure they have an annual release, they'll take what they can get when they can get it. That was the strategy under Intel: don't release a new product unless there's a reason to. I'd expect the same here.
No charger or PSU can sustain their rated peak output at sustained periods of time
I challenge that assertion. The Mac Studio has a 370W power supply in it, and I'd bet you if you put a resistor across the output it would drive that load for years.
The ~140W was the measured input power recorded by Mac Studio M1 Ultra users.
Do you have a link for that? I haven't seen numbers that high, but also haven't looked too hard.
Last month Intel released a
24-core laptop chip that requires a 330W charger. As expected the laptop
- had a short battery life
- ran hot
- thick
- expensive
- throttled
Intel doing this is a sign that there is a market for said device in spite of its bullet pointed limitations.
In other words people will buy it.
Apple doesn't build things just because people will buy them... That is one of their best/worst qualities.
Within the next 6 months Apple is expected to release the M2 Ultra, their 24-core SoC that requires no more than a 240W charger when placed in a MBP 16". It would probably halve the MBP 16" M2 Max battery life of up to 22hrs.
For approx a decade any Intel MBP owner have accepted all the above mentioned bullet points. The last MBP 16" Core i9 had a battery life of up to 12hrs.
Anyone buying into a MBP 16" M2 Ultra, that I estimate will cost up to $2k more than the $3.5K MBP 16" M2 Max base SKU, is doing so for raw performance over battery life or thermal output. Why? Because it still is the best performance per watt out there as the performance is linear without increasing clock speed.
What is up to 11-12hrs battery to anyone who is making more than the cost and hassle of that laptop that they can pencil in as a business expense?
M2 Ultra will be the only 24-core laptop chip that uses the
- least power
- most performance per watt
- longest battery life
- least heat output
What you're forgetting is that Apple. hates. fans.
Look at the amount of cooling Apple provisioned for the Studio Ultra. You think they'll double the power consumption and put that in a laptop?
Did you read the post of Apple's biggest hardware failures over the years and how many of them were because of cooling issues? This isn't new. Jobs baked it into Apple's DNA. If you hear a fan, you failed. They've failed a few times, but they still pursue that silent ideal.
