This only makes sense if you know nothing about Apple's business.
You really think they're doing this to save $50 from ~5m Macs? You really think all this upheaval is for a mere $250m a year in savings? It'll cost them 10x that in pain alone to migrate to a new platform.
Come on now....$250m is nothing at Apple scale. Think bigger. Even if you hate Apple, think bigger about their nefariousness (if your view is that they have bad intentions - one I don't agree with).
I'm not sure how you calculated that but they sell about 20m macs per year not 5m. I also doubt the chips cost them 50$ per unit. The savings may worth few billions so it's not really like nothing. And they wouls save this every year. Will this change cost them 10x in pain alone? I doubt it. They already make the chips.
> I'm not sure how you calculated that but they sell about 20m macs per year not 5m
Quarterly numbers come in between 4.5-5m units these days but point taken - I recalled numbers for the wrong timeframe.
> I also doubt the chips cost them 50$ per unit. The savings may worth few billions so it's not really like nothing.
The true cost of this move is reflected in more than the R&D. This is a long multi-year effort involving several parties with competing interests. People are talking here as if they just flipped a switch to save costs.
Let me make this clear. In my view, this is an offensive/strategic move to drive differentiation, not a defensive move to save costs (though if this works, that could be a big benefit down the road). Apple has a long history of these kinds of moves (that don't just involve chips). This is the same response I have to people peddling conspiracy theories that Apple loves making money off of selling dongles as a core strategy (dongles aren't the point, wireless is; focusing on dongles is missing the forest for the trees).
You aren't making anything clear, just straw man arguments. Apple switches architecture when it suits them, you think they switched from powerpc to intel was for differentation? Nope, it was cost and performance aka value.
The question isn't whether it suits them. The question is: "Why did they choose to take on the level of risk in this portion of their business and what is the core benefit they expect?"
If the the main reason was cost savings, this would be a horrible way to go about it.
There's a better answer: Intel can't deliver the parts they need at the performance and efficiency levels Apple needs to build the products the way they want to build them. This is not a secret. There is a ton of reporting and discussion around this spanning a decade about Intel's pitfalls, disappointments, and delays. Apple might also want much closer alignment between iOS and MacOS. Their chip team has demonstrated an ability to bring chipsets in-house, delivering performance orders of magnitude better than smartphone competition on almost every metric, and doing it consistently on Apple's timelines. It only seems natural to drive a similar advantage on the Mac side while having even tighter integration with their overall Apple ecosystem.
I think you are spot on. Any kind of cost savings here is going to be gravy and won’t come for a long time. This is going to let Apple reuse so much from phones in the future Mac line - all their R&D on hardware, the developer community, etc. It will be very interesting to see what the actual products are like, and whether the x86 emulation is any good.
Oh, so we are talking about value now? Please stick to an argument after you fail to defend it. You already used your dongle argument no one asked for.
Then don't go on a tangent, when the point the parent was talking about potential savings and big oof when you get your numbers wrong then try to strawmen about points no one is arguing against. No one was arguing about vertical intergration bonuses Apple gets by their own SOC. You wanted to boil it into one dimension by dismissing the value Apple can provide with their own chip.
1. I stated quarterly numbers off the top of my head instead of yearly numbers. This mistake doesn't change my point at all at Apple scale - it's a negligible amount of savings relative to the risk. Companies of this scale don't make ecosystem level shifts without a reason far far better than "we can _maybe_ increase yearly profits by 1% (1/100 * 100) sometime in the future". It's just not relevant to bring that up as a primary motivation given what we're talking about.
2. I think you actually missed the point of the conversation. OP said "that's still an insane amount of additional profit per unit to be extracted" and followed that up with "amazing for Apple and its shareholers."
It is not insane at all. And not amazing. It just comes off as naive to anyone who's worked in these kinds of organizations and been involved in similar decisions.
I think it's hard for some people to comprehend that trying to save $1b a year for its own sake at the scale of an org like Apple can in many cases be a terrible decision.
You came with your strawman that it was for its own sake, they just stated it was a profitable move and "amazing for Apple and its shareholders, which is hard to refute. OP even said "They don't need to deal with single-supplier hassles and they get much more control over what cores go into their SoC." It seems you are now arguing with your own points.
> It seems you are now arguing with your own points.
Half the fun is writing down your own thoughts!
> You came with your strawman that it was for its own sake
That's possible. I saw the emphasis placed differently than you did even though we read the same words. Probably describes the nature of many internet arguments. Happy Monday - I appreciate you pushing me to explain myself. Seems like others were able to get value out of our back and forth.
The fact that they are saving $1 billion per year is what makes the transition possible, it's not actually the cause of the transition. They could have done the transition a long time ago if it was just about the money.
It saves them much more over the long term if it lets them get away from having two different processor architectures. It paves the way for more convergence between their OSes. Eventually a macbook will be just an ipad with a keyboard attached, and vice versa.
Yes, they're a big company. But they're also a mature company. A lot of their efforts are going to be boring cost-cutting measures, because that's how mature companies stay profitable.
This only makes sense if you know nothing about Apple's business.
You really think they're doing this to save $50 from ~5m Macs? You really think all this upheaval is for a mere $250m a year in savings? It'll cost them 10x that in pain alone to migrate to a new platform.
Come on now....$250m is nothing at Apple scale. Think bigger. Even if you hate Apple, think bigger about their nefariousness (if your view is that they have bad intentions - one I don't agree with).