> But then Apple can negotiate on another basis and say, well, if you don’t do us a favor here and give us a better rate, then maybe we won’t work with you when all this settles down. You know things are going to settle down. These things are always cyclical. There’s never been a semiconductor boom that’s not followed by a semiconductor bust. Never. And they know it.
I have to think that the RAM suppliers wouldn't be that easy to intimidate with threats, since they know perfectly well how few alternatives Apple has. And they are also perfectly aware that Apple will play hardball with them when the market turns, regardless of whether they were nice to Apple now.
Ask Intel, Broadcom, AMD, Nvidia, Samsung chip division and soon to be replaced Qualcomm, Apples SOC designs, probably meant memory was coming in house at some point down the road anyway. The present market conditions will probably just hasten the inevitable move.
After all, how does one miniaturize future SOC devices if you don’t bring memory in the house eventually?
"So much so that I heard Samsung’s making more money now with memory than Nvidia’s making with their processors."
I loved Asymco during the Apple 2010s run up, but this, inter alia things mentioned in other comments, should give the reader pause and evaluate how much of this is general knowledge x handwaving x vibes versus a practical ground floor understanding in 2026.
But memory is a quite a specialist manufacturing process, they couldn't just send a design to TSMC and get the same quality and cost. It would take years (decades) to create their own factories that might be able to produce competitive memory. If they use a third party to manufacture with existing skills (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron etc) they might as well just use their designs too (and buy their chips)
The author doesn’t seem to understand that Apple places RAM orders years in advance. I’m not sure if it’s even feasible or possible for Apple to fully integrate their supply chain and open up memory fabs, the cost of entry must be enormous.
Got a shitty PC with 32gb ddr5 now the ram alone is almost worth as much as the purchase price of it all. It is playing up.. normally I'd return it to Amazon but...
Ex-Apple kernel engineer here, Apple will deal with the memory shortage by making software more efficient in ram usage. Apple will just make every aspect of the system more and more memory efficient. They've done it before over and over and can do it again.
This is a great long term strategy despite what the share holders would want to believe. If you increase efficiency even on lower end devices, you will get people coming back for more. It isn't the sale today, it is the sale tomorrow that matters.
* Absorb the impact by some margin
* Slash base models (which they are already doing)
* Efficient software - So, end user experience is not affected.
* Direct Price hike always be an option.
I think it's kind of inevitable for somebody to take up a RAM factory to sell for normal consumers and brands even if it means less profit the sales would be much bigger. The question is if somebody is kind enough to do so.
Just a thought - stop bloody soldering the RAM and the SSDs. That partially transfers the burden on to the customers and makes their product more repairable ... Mac Minis (with un-soldered RAM and HDD / SSDs) used to be sold with minimum 4 GB RAM, if I remember right). This, way, you can still sell devices with lower RAM, and customers can upgrade in the future when supply increases.
The thing is why do they have to do so? In terms of bargaining power, Apple has the best position comparing to other cell phone/ iPad/ PC vendors. Their software are way more memory efficient than the competitors (like Windows 11 with all the bloated Electron/ Webview2 wrappers).
Bloated Electron / WebView wrappers also tout the feature of running on macOS - and many are forced to use such apps on the mac too ... what then? Apple deciding how much RAM is "enough" for you is based on the use case it has decided for each category of the device. If that isn't sufficient for you, you are supposed to buy the more "premium" edition, even if your use case for that is rare. Imagine if you suddenly need more RAM for a popular app 2 years down the line but you can't really do anything on a Mac now a days because the RAM is soldered and fixed. Buying upgrade-able RAM is obviously much cheaper, and much better for the environment, than buying a whole new device.
I am just sadden to see this question constantly being floated. Someday Apple will make their own memory, own chip, own Fab. It makes zero sense for them to do so. People don't seems to realise how commodity works. When price is high everyone is saying it is a cartel. When they are losing money they say it is tough luck.
Apple can deal with the memory shortage in the same way they dealt with Intel saying no to building a processor for the iPhone the Apple Silicon design group can certainly do what’s necessary in house to design memory and SSD’s in house, and since Apple saved money on not participating in the AI data-center fiasco money won’t be a problem.
Apple can team up with TSMC to build some type of memory fab in the United States may take three years? Prineville, Oregon looks good close enough to water and Micron who won’t need many people once the Chinese use this memory crisis to take over the worldwide memory market…
Memory optimization is incredibly low hanging fruit. We have been so spoiled with the abundance of memory.
There is just so much code out there that does not manage object life cycles well (over allocation, leaks, etc.), encodes data in text rather than binary representation.
The move to static binaries over dynamic libraries, applications that run web engines underneath rather than cleaner UIs.
I hope the memory shortage will encourage us to focus on efficiency again.
34 comments
[ 9.5 ms ] story [ 54.7 ms ] thread> But then Apple can negotiate on another basis and say, well, if you don’t do us a favor here and give us a better rate, then maybe we won’t work with you when all this settles down. You know things are going to settle down. These things are always cyclical. There’s never been a semiconductor boom that’s not followed by a semiconductor bust. Never. And they know it.
I have to think that the RAM suppliers wouldn't be that easy to intimidate with threats, since they know perfectly well how few alternatives Apple has. And they are also perfectly aware that Apple will play hardball with them when the market turns, regardless of whether they were nice to Apple now.
After all, how does one miniaturize future SOC devices if you don’t bring memory in the house eventually?
I loved Asymco during the Apple 2010s run up, but this, inter alia things mentioned in other comments, should give the reader pause and evaluate how much of this is general knowledge x handwaving x vibes versus a practical ground floor understanding in 2026.
No brainer. Best move they will ever did.
* Absorb the impact by some margin * Slash base models (which they are already doing) * Efficient software - So, end user experience is not affected. * Direct Price hike always be an option.
Apple can team up with TSMC to build some type of memory fab in the United States may take three years? Prineville, Oregon looks good close enough to water and Micron who won’t need many people once the Chinese use this memory crisis to take over the worldwide memory market…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC_Arizona TSMC announced the Arizona Fab in 2020 they won’t have the final build out until 2029 for the 2nm (Build in house go around)
There is just so much code out there that does not manage object life cycles well (over allocation, leaks, etc.), encodes data in text rather than binary representation.
The move to static binaries over dynamic libraries, applications that run web engines underneath rather than cleaner UIs.
I hope the memory shortage will encourage us to focus on efficiency again.