Why doesn't Apple do servers?

2 points by throwaway4good 2y ago ↗ HN

It seems to me that Apple Silicon would be particular well suited in a server. Including for AI; Apple laptops are widely popular amongst developers and Apple could use that popularity to promote an alternative to NVIDIA CUDA.

4 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 32.5 ms ] thread

[dead] oldpersonintx 2y ago ↗

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nabla9 2y ago ↗

The profit margin is orders of magnitude higher in their own products.

Apple Silicon is very expensive to manufacture. Only Apple and Nvidia and few others have profit margins high enough to outbid others to get access into latest TSMC process. They pay premium.

Server chips should be power and cost efficient. Intel has still 70% market share in server CPU's because they have their own fab. AMD has close to 30%.

pipo234 2y ago ↗

> Apple laptops are widely popular amongst developers

I'm not so sure they are popular for the right reasons, though. When targeting anything server-like developers quickly grab something like docker desktop as a kind of poor-man's Linux. Apple has no OS or cloud platform presence. Also, so far it has shown little interest in supporting Linux community hacking away on apple silicon (Asahi).

jrjsmrtn 2y ago ↗

They did the popular Xserve, and the AWS before. They did A/UX, AIX (by IBM, of course), MkLinux and even Xenix (on the Lisa) way before OS/X. There was even a version of Netware for Mac. What they don't have anymore are the _enterprise_ sales and support channels.