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.

> Oh, so we are talking about value now?

If you want to boil this conversation into one dimension, I'm not your guy - you'd be better suited by finding someone else to talk to. Cheers!

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.