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A comment on Apple Silicon M1 Disruption. Parent comment

Re:Apple Silicon M1 Disruption by spideymans on Sunday December 06, 2020 @07:51PM (#25328235)
I think the M1 is more analogous to the release of the 64-bit A7 CPU. Which doesn’t diminish it’s importance at all. The A7 was the inflection point that had the competition scrambling [unsuccessfully] to catch up to Apple ever since.
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Re:Apple Silicon M1 Disruption by neogodless on Sunday December 06, 2020 @07:58PM (#25328290)
It's also worth remembering that while it may have shifted the smartphone market (and certainly Apple tablets), competitors still exist, improving over time, remaining relevant. Would someone argue that Android is simply not an option as a smartphone for a very large portion of the smartphone market? No.

And likewise, competitors to Apple's laptops and workstations are very much going to continue to be relevant, and to improve and compete. The M1 has shown that power, battery life, and minimal heat production are more possible than ever. That doesn't mean end users will all suddenly drop everything and stop buying products from the competition. They'll just raise their expectations for future revisions.

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Re:Apple Silicon M1 Disruption by alwillis on Sunday December 06, 2020 @09:53PM (#25328914)
It's also worth remembering that while it may have shifted the smartphone market (and certainly Apple tablets), competitors still exist, improving over time, remaining relevant.

Apple has captured 66% [1] of the profit in the cell phone industry. Other than Samsung in the US and other manufacturers in Asia, Apple has made the other companies a lot less relevant. When the iPhone shipped in 2007, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Motorola and others were the giants in the industry; I'd argue none of what's left of these companies is relevant today.

The same thing will happen with laptops; we already caught a glimpse of this in Japan, where Apple became the #1 selling desktop when the M1 Mac mini started shipping [2].

As the price/performance and performance/watt becomes more obvious, Apple will make inroads with new customers and markets.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...

[2]: https://www.imore.com/apple-now-top-desktop-pc-maker-japan-t...

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Re:Apple Silicon M1 Disruption by neogodless on Sunday December 06, 2020 @10:14PM (#25329013)
I certainly don't think I'd want to be a competitor to Apple. (I'm a consumer, instead.) Of course, the landscape has changed, and the iPhone absolutely disrupted the industry. These days, I believe the only big Android options are Google, Samsung, and a handful of smaller players such as (the new) Motorola, LG, OnePlus, etc. As a consumer, I don't really care (for now) who profits or doesn't - I'm still deciding between all these phones. (Others only consider Apple or not Apple.)

The discussion above was specifically about how the advance in performance of the A7[0] in 2013 changed things. Honestly I don't know the numbers for market or profit share in 2013 to compare to now, but for consumers the decisions are not wildly different, except for someone specifically comparing phones on CPU performance alone, and ignoring the other differences. Of course, some will also be affected by Apple's marketing of "the fastest smartphones" and that helps with selling phones.

To apply this to laptops is, in my opinion, much trickier. Now I can't speak for all consumers considering purchasing a laptop, but as technical as I am, performance/watt is not my number one consideration. It kind of is, indirectly, an important one. I don't want a hot, loud laptop, and I want some battery life. But things like playing demanding games, or compiling code with as many cores as I can throw at it are more important to me. That and price, being able to upgrade RAM and SSDs when the need arises, etc.

So I have a $950 laptop with a dedicated GPU, 8 cores, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVME SSD, and I can add RAM and another NVME SSD when the need arises. Of course, I only get about 4 hours of battery life, and I'd love more, but it isn't going to change my life much either way (it's freezing outside, I am almost always within range of an outlet!), and I can't give up all the other things that this laptop has that an M1 Macbook lacks, even if the performance/watt is much better.

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