This is Apple's opportunity to become a hardware giant. I hope they don't mess this up.

As others mentioned, they really are a hardware company already.

Where I disagree with you, though, is why do you want consolidation of expertise into a single silo?

I would prefer better competition and consumer choice. As many point out...

* With Windows, you are beholden to Microsoft and the control they exert over Windows 10, including stuffing ads into your start menu or even popping up alerts over your taskbar insisting that you try Edge.

* With Linux, you have all of the choice, but sometimes a steeper learning curve. Depending on the kinds of gaming you prefer, it's a non-starter.

* With Apple, they make all the choices for you, and as long as you are OK with their choices, you're a happy camper. If you don't like their choices (or depending on the kinds of gaming you prefer) it's a non-starter.

There's a constant tug-of-war between unity and choice. If there was one central way of making games that worked across operating systems, you might have better choices between Windows, Linux and MacOS, but you'd be stuck with whoever controls the game standard.

So back to the central point, I'd be happy for Apple to be a dominant low-level hardware maker... if it wasn't stuck inside their walled garden. I'd much rather have three solid CPU makers (or more) that were compatible with several operating systems, each with support for Unity, Unreal, etc. not to mention things like CUDA.

* With Windows, you are beholden to Microsoft and the control they exert over Windows 10, including stuffing ads into your start menu or even popping up alerts over your taskbar insisting that you try Edge.

I use Windows 10 and never experienced any of those after turning them off after a fresh install

Your anecdote does not refute reality. I also (almost exclusively) use Windows 10. The experience is better on Pro, but a laptop with Home repinned Edge to my taskbar with the latest update, and popped up an ad for Edge just above the taskbar, pointing at the newly repinned Edge shortcut.

Yes, you can unpin, disable Suggestions, etc and it does improve the experience, but the default behavior is intrusive.

I have candy crush ads in my start menu from a recent fresh install

> This is Apple's opportunity to become a hardware giant.

You meant this as a joke, didn't you?

Just in case you didn't: Apple already is a, if not the hardware giant - it became the first trillion-dollar company a year ago and just passed the $2 trillion mark in August.

Trillion dolar company =/= hardware giant. On the server,datacenter and large scale CPU processing scenes you don't see much Apple hardware. But now it is starting to look like a feasible option. We might see Mac Pro's in the datacenter rooms soon.

Maybe were talking about enterprise datacenter giant more than hardware giant? I'm curious what those distributions are since I've worked very little in enterprise scale datacenters, just utilized them with non-Apple hardware.

Apple develops and manufacturers a lot of hardware (one of the few positive things I'll plug them for). I would definitely consider them a generic "hardware giant" in that context. Much of this hardware are phones, watches, laptops, and peripherals. I know their server/datacenter market is traditionally pretty slim but don't know what it typically looks like. I know AWS recently announced Mac EC2 instances[1]. The fact EC2 has been so dominant and Apple hardware in EC2 is just now arriving gives much merit that they're not in that much demand in datacenters. I work in research and have only encountered a handful of instances where projects interfaced with Apple hardware (especially in a datacenter) but there's no reason that couldn't shift given Apple's capital and talent pool that already exists.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-use-mac-instances-to-bu...

Apple has taken several kicks at that can over the last couple decades and each time it's been a flop. Not because the hardware wasn't good, but because it's just not the kind of market that makes sense for them and their business model. They're not interested in low-margin commodity bulk product.

They're a luxury brand and they make money off of selling personal lifestyle computers. Often good quality, and, yes, the M1 looks fantastic (literally just bought my wife a new M1 MacBook Air) but this is a company that doesn't even really sell a commodity desktop machine. I cannot see them going head to head against SuperMicro.

Maybe, _maybe_, they'd license M1 out, but I doubt it.

I don't think they will ever be interested in the datacenter again. Making consumer products is in their DNA, servers isn't.

Yep. The XServe was a great product. It just made no financial sense, and with the long tail of the server market being pretty much AWS/GCP/Azure, it makes even less sense for Apple now than then.

TSMC is the hardware giant. Apple is a different industry.

Design is very important in the hardware industry.

By your definition, fabless companies like AMD or NVIDIA aren't HW giants, which is absurd.

Actual text of the article says "as many as 32 high-performance CPU cores". 32 cores seems pretty plausible, but this article is just a re-wording of a vague rumor with lots of wiggle room.

Who will be the target market for these cores?

Is apple going after gamers? A good gaming core is different than a good general purpose cpu. And apple has many more fundamental problems re gaming than a lack of horsepower.

If apple going after server market? I don't think so. Apple products may be efficient but they simply cost too much and I don't see the apple premium going away. A cpu with a mix of cores is also not as directly scalable.

I think apple is still going after that "core" apple user, the one that appears in all the commercials. They work at a graphics design office in the village. They have a phone/tablet for email and a desktop PC for serious photoshop work. That's the target market: The desktop PC that needs to on occasion push through a few minutes of photoshop rendering, not gamers or others who will run these CPUs at full throttle for hours. The cpu needs to be power-efficient (ie quiet) 95% of the time, but remain able to ramp up on occasion to complete a task. Rather than solid power it has a mix of cores to address whatever is thrown at it as elegantly/quietly as possible.

The article discusses GPUs in addition to the CPUs.

For example:

> While the current M1 chip comes with either seven or eight GPU cores, Apple is currently testing models with 16 and 32-cores, and is working on chips with as many as 128 for late 2021 or 2022.

I do believe that developer support will be crucial for "serious" gamers, though.

Apple's issues re gaming are more cultural than hardware-based. The walls of the garden are particularly high when it comes to games, game development/mods, and subscription gaming. The fastest CPUs in the world won't change that.

"In addition to advertising Apple Arcade within iOS settings (see picture above), Apple is actively fighting against companies like Epic Games who are seeking permission to offer their own game stores on iOS. Apple is also restricting companies like Microsoft from offering game subscription/streaming services on iOS."

https://hardware.substack.com/p/falling-out-of-love-with-app...

I’d be happy with a 16 core M2, extremely happy!

32 M1 cores may well be the most powerful desktop you can get. The only equals it might have are the top-end Zen3 chips.

IMHO this would be more fitting for the Mac Pro's price. Intel Mac Pros have always been grossly underpowered for something so expensive. It should be the most powerful desktop you can get for that tag.

> . It should be the most powerful desktop you can get for that tag.

It should not, the most powerful machine you can get tends to be the one you build yourself from components sourced from competing suppliers. This is one of the reasons people build 'Hackintosh' machines, trading design and branding for raw power.

I think you misunderstood the parent comment. They are suggesting that if you're paying the massive premium that Apple charges for the Mac Pro workstation, it should be the most powerful desktop available.

The actual situation is more like what you're saying, but that isn't what the word should means.

No, it isn't a misunderstanding, just a statement of fact. If you want the highest price/performance ratio branded products are usually not the place to go, especially not products from companies which produce "luxury" goods. You pay for the branding, the marketing, the right to be part of the community of users just like you pay for the hardware. Those who built 'Hackintosh' style systems spend less money but more time getting their systems up and running.

The thermals might rather fit an iMac instead of a Mac Pro though :D

you can get a 64 core threadripper so....

Yeah, forgot about that beast. That would beat it. A multi-chip Epyc or high-end Xeon would beat it too, but that'll set you back almost as much as the Mac Pro.

A 32-core pro would still win hands down in power efficiency. A 64-core Threadripper or a multi-Epyc would be a nice extra space heater in cold climates though.

Is this a re-submission of a previous post that received many critical comments?

Edit: It is not. The criticized submission is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25331442 but they talk about the same possibility of a rumored 32-core processor.