This kind of deal is quite smart - there is a big incentive for TMSC to increase yields quickly, reducing overall costs all around. This really leverages Apple's long-term commitments to purchase high-end chips into huge investments into TMSC's manufacturing processes. The economies of Apple's scale are very apparent here!
A classic anticompetitive case of 'the rich get richer'. The world's wealthiest corporation, Apple, which closed today with a $2.8 trillion market cap, uses its money to (1.) ensure none of its competitors can make 3nm chips, so competitors cannot initially offer the same performance per watt, and (2.) force TSMC to eat costs that smaller competitors normally must eat. Apple did this same thing when launching the M1 and many praised the M1 as revolutionary....
If you compare Geekbench scores[1][2] and top 500 "green" supercomputer rankings (gigaflops per watt)[3], you see x86-64 still reigns supreme not only at peak performance but also real world scientific performance per watt:
Apple's laptops nowadays essentially amount to ultra premium Chromebooks. Nice rigs for running a web browser and doing npm+JS dev. Everyone doing serious AI and science is on AMD64 though, particularly AMD64+nVidia, running either Linux or Windows+WSL. The cheapest Apple you can buy with 64GB is $2399 (Mac Studio). Go to pcpartpicker.com and you can build a nice 64GB rig for under $1000 and get minimum 3 to 5 year warranties on all the individually user replaceable components you buy. But if you buy a Mercedes for 2.5x the price of an equivalently comfortable Toyota you get to flex that three pointed star badge on the front of your car....
No offense, but you don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about. Apple’s secret to survival after Jobs returned has always been maximizing economies of scale. Although Mac had no market share in 2000, the iMac was the biggest shipping SKU by far. Because of the education market, the iMac was also the largest selling SKU in the distributor channel.
Even today, Apple sells like a dozen major SKUs per product line, and many use the same components. Dell probably sells 200 laptop models.
The Apple strategy as applied to the M1/M2/etc is super successful. They are selling laptops at a 10% premium that are superior, with 45% margins But… the things that make it the best laptop on the market make it a mediocre high end device. That M1 64GB part is expensive because it’s a low volume SoC.
The factual/“essentially factual” parts of this comment are disenfranchised by the hyperbole around the supposed lack of performance of M1, and the supposed performance of x86 at the $1000 price point.
Macs are about as upgradable as comparable laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft and all ultrabooks command a hefty premium these days, Apple-made or not.
The qualities many people seek in a laptop is superior battery life alongside decent performance, solid build, and good ergonomic design. Apple sells this in spades. Comparing the size of Apple's market of business users with the market of "Everyone [who is] doing serious AI and science" reveals a gargantuan disparity in numbers. And even then, I'm pretty sure you can get plenty of serious AI and science work done on a higher-end Macbook Pro.
I think "anticompetitive" is not the right word to use, unless you've got a lot more to back that up. The facts point more toward the TSMC+Apple dominance being a situation that is somewhere along the lines of "market failure" or "natural monopoly": chip and fab R&D costs have grown so large that only a handful of entities can even theoretically compete at the leading edge, because the total global market for semiconductors is finite. You don't need to postulate anticompetitive behavior to explain the shrinking oligopoly, because the fundamental dynamics of the semiconductor market already predict that trend.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 39.2 ms ] threadIf you compare Geekbench scores[1][2] and top 500 "green" supercomputer rankings (gigaflops per watt)[3], you see x86-64 still reigns supreme not only at peak performance but also real world scientific performance per watt:
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
[3] https://www.top500.org/lists/green500/list/2023/06/
Apple's laptops nowadays essentially amount to ultra premium Chromebooks. Nice rigs for running a web browser and doing npm+JS dev. Everyone doing serious AI and science is on AMD64 though, particularly AMD64+nVidia, running either Linux or Windows+WSL. The cheapest Apple you can buy with 64GB is $2399 (Mac Studio). Go to pcpartpicker.com and you can build a nice 64GB rig for under $1000 and get minimum 3 to 5 year warranties on all the individually user replaceable components you buy. But if you buy a Mercedes for 2.5x the price of an equivalently comfortable Toyota you get to flex that three pointed star badge on the front of your car....
No offense, but you don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about. Apple’s secret to survival after Jobs returned has always been maximizing economies of scale. Although Mac had no market share in 2000, the iMac was the biggest shipping SKU by far. Because of the education market, the iMac was also the largest selling SKU in the distributor channel.
Even today, Apple sells like a dozen major SKUs per product line, and many use the same components. Dell probably sells 200 laptop models.
The Apple strategy as applied to the M1/M2/etc is super successful. They are selling laptops at a 10% premium that are superior, with 45% margins But… the things that make it the best laptop on the market make it a mediocre high end device. That M1 64GB part is expensive because it’s a low volume SoC.
Macs are about as upgradable as comparable laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft and all ultrabooks command a hefty premium these days, Apple-made or not.
What's the barrier to competition? You not having money?
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036217