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Post by aaplsauce on Mar 16, 2022 21:36:02 GMT -8
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chinacat
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Post by chinacat on Mar 17, 2022 5:19:31 GMT -8
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Mar 17, 2022 7:42:56 GMT -8
So here's one out of the blue. I've been reading a lot about the cloud. The consensus seems to be, chipmakers must go into the cloud (and cloud must go into chips, like Amazon is doing with Graviton), vertical integration, to survive in such a cutthroat, margin squeezing era, to amortize the ridiculous costs of chip design and fabbing. Even Intel is doing cloud now. IBM as well. Obviously AMD. (Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and HP are clouding too, but so far not designing their own chips). So what about Apple? Obviously they have iCloud. But that is just for backups, running the App Store, and updates. The only thing I could find was a 2016 leak about something called the Pie project, which supposedly is Apple wanting to integrate its IT infrastructure in one place under one team. It should be apparent by now that Tim has made the strategic decision to make every Apple product using as many Apple parts and services as possible; after all, cobbling together random off-the-shelf parts like Wintel PC's do isn't really an Apple product. It's logical: Why hand Intel (or God forbid, Samsung) all that money for CPU's? The success of the Mx platform shows the performance benefits, but it's part of a larger strategy to make Apple products from Apple parts, both to distinguish them and to improve profits.
OK, but the more I read about the manufacture of CPUs, and the enormous costs involved, it's almost a no-brainer for chip companies to get into cloud to justify such CapEx. Yes, the margins are smaller, but if you are making the colossal investment anyway, why not? Obviously, if Apple is consistently supply chain limited just trying to get its consumer electronics products out of the factory, that would be a big reason not to create an entirely new product category that demands endless silicon. But Apple needs new product lines beyond iPhone. What's it going to be? IMO, Apple could hit the ground running in cloud, since they have already done the hard part, making microprocessors. Before you Sponge me (Sponge. verb. 1. To laugh one off the board over his preposterousness), let me explain why Apple could be an instant contender in cloud.
I'm sure even the average tech investor didn't know that Amazon designs its own ARM-based chips just like Apple does, for AWS. I didn't until recently. What sets them apart from x86 and AMD and Power should be no surprise for those familiar with ARM chips: Much lower power usage. Which leads to lower pricing for cloud customers, especially in this increasing energy costs environment. We know the Mx is a modern marvel of high performance and low power. Sound like a good cloud computing candidate? The question I have isn't should Apple do it. My question is, would Apple have green lit the enormous costs in designing its own chips in the first place, without the original intent of it doing more than just powering iPhones and Macs? Apple sells a metric assload of iPhones. But it really doesn't sell that many Macs, a magnitude less than mobile devices (Apple sells about 6% of Macs that it does mobile devices). So how to get Mac chips selling in the numbers that mobile devices sell?
I am 100% convinced that Apple has at least considered general cloud services. Tim could sell Apple Cloud Services (ACS) as a green, power saving wonder. All integrated with Mac OS and iOS.
Why not?
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chinacat
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Post by chinacat on Mar 17, 2022 8:02:50 GMT -8
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Post by Lstream on Mar 17, 2022 9:22:00 GMT -8
On the Cloud stuff, a huge part of the market requires Windows instances. And not emulated. Then you have important software like SQL Server that won’t even run on the M1. Leading me to wonder if Apple would be destined to be a niche player best case in the Cloud market. I do agree that the power efficiency is hugely attractive, but question if the rest of the story really works.
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Post by CdnPhoto on Mar 17, 2022 9:39:56 GMT -8
Most of the cloud actually runs on Linux. Even Microsoft's Azure runs with Linux.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Mar 17, 2022 10:05:38 GMT -8
We know the Mx is a modern marvel of high performance and low power. Sound like a good cloud computing candidate? The question I have isn't should Apple do it. My question is, would Apple have green lit the enormous costs in designing its own chips in the first place, without the original intent of it doing more than just powering iPhones and Macs? Apple sells a metric assload of iPhones. But it really doesn't sell that many Macs, a magnitude less than mobile devices (Apple sells about 6% of Macs that it does mobile devices). So how to get Mac chips selling in the numbers that mobile devices sell?
I am 100% convinced that Apple has at least considered general cloud services. Tim could sell Apple Cloud Services (ACS) as a green, power saving wonder. All integrated with Mac OS and iOS.
There are two different parts here, or 3. We've got the chips that are awesome on a processing power basis, especially including power usage. Then there's a physical server or blade to build into a server farm. And then the Server software or service, the "what are you going to do with it" part. In the past Apple has at times worked on all 3. There has been server software, and Apple has/had things like iTunes, .Mac/iCloud/.me. It also had physical servers which at first were mostly just towers with a 4 port ethernet card slapped in that were fine sitting in a corner or on someone's desktop, like a PowerMac 9650. But then Apple came out with the Xserve. These were rack mountable servers, with some hot serviceable parts. They were loud, especially the first round codenamed P69. Our open rack was across the lab and started with 2-4 units, working up to 10-20, and you heard them over the ~400 other machines. They disappeared from Apple at some point, and even the server software has lightened up dramatically. I'm not sure what all iTunes, the app store, and .Mac/iCloud/.me have run on, but I believe it's been a variety of cloud providers. At one time I think Macosrumors said iTunes was running on AWS. Either way, at scale it makes sense to look at what can do it most efficiently. I'm not a chip designer so I don't know the details, but my generalization is that you want something that works well with the data chunks you use a lot of and the computations you do a lot of, you want the parts to talk to each other as quickly as possible, and want it to be power efficient, both to be cheap and green, but mostly due to heat generation. You've got to get rid of all of that heat so it doesn't ruin things. What I don't fully realize is the different sizes of data chunks and different computations that you would want on iOS, MacOS, or in a server farm, just as I don't really know the difference in those on a CPU vs GPU. Right now, with Apple chips having great power, and low energy needs, they seem temping to all high processing power applications, especially if the cost is competitive. And if processors aren't constrained (seems unlikely right now), it would make sense for Apple to use them in any and all high processing power needs, internally but potentially externally. There are design needs there if going beyond rack mounting a bunch of Mac Studios, but also server software issues. At that level, if going for processing power and scalability, you're not just running MacOS. I'm sure I have some errors here, and I know my chip design theories are basic and probably also wrong. I just barely played around with an xGrid setup and another Mac based distributed computer setup in '98-'00, Applesomething. If someone has good experience with varying chip design (even CPU vs GPU), I'd like to hear a good description. Likewise on a massive server farm setup.
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Post by duckpins on Mar 17, 2022 10:32:32 GMT -8
I think and this is just MHO that these products don't have any flow together. The older box on the floor with removable hard drives at least looked better. The mighty mini monster mac just looks like a gray box that takes up space on the desk. Better a tower on the floor.
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Mar 17, 2022 12:12:39 GMT -8
On the Cloud stuff, a huge part of the market requires Windows instances. And not emulated. Then you have important software like SQL Server that won’t even run on the M1. Leading me to wonder if Apple would be destined to be a niche player best case in the Cloud market. I do agree that the power efficiency is hugely attractive, but question if the rest of the story really works. Little known fact (meaning I just realized it recently): There is an ARM version of Windows. Unfortunately, the bozos involved haven't licensed it for Boot Camp. So when I buy my Mac Studio, I'll run it via Parallels until the lawyers get their shit together. Looks like Apple embargoed Mac Studio reviews until today, as they are starting to trickle out. The consensus seems to be that they are awesome for Premiere and the like, but Apple's claim that they kick Nvidia's ass in graphics is suspect. Also the reviews pan the Studio Pro, and I think rightly so. My guess is Apple is working on an improved monitor, but it just wasn't ready in time. I'll probably get a third party 4K high refresh rate monitor(s).
I'm very interested in seeing the Mx based Mac Pro. Makes me wonder what video card Apple will put in them - if any.
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Post by Lstream on Mar 17, 2022 13:37:47 GMT -8
Been a while since I looked, but I recall that Windows on ARM has brutal performance. I used to run Parallels.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Mar 17, 2022 14:21:07 GMT -8
I think and this is just MHO that these products don't have any flow together. The older box on the floor with removable hard drives at least looked better. The mighty mini monster mac just looks like a gray box that takes up space on the desk. Better a tower on the floor. Then put them on the floor. Or somewhere behind the monitor. Or mounted under the desk. It's not as pretty as a G4 Cube, and it's nice to have the available ports right there for jump drives, but no reason not to hide it if you want to. The problem with "under the desk" is that visibility is a lot tougher, if you ever need the plugs. We mounted my parents previous Mac Mini just under the desktop, to keep it out of the way but mostly due to "the cat that would pee on things" that I mentioned a while back. No problems, though that cat, which is still living, became a permanent outdoor cat shortly after that. Plugging things in, and even powering on, is a little more difficult. But if it fits what you want, whether avoiding a problematic cat or just wanting a cleaner desk, there are options. Sometimes we get a little too nitpicky, a little too worried about minor things that we don't think are perfect. I just talked to a guy over in Truckee, as we were browsing big chainsaws at the shop. 4 years ago when he was 61, his car was hit by a county snowplow, the driver of which was high on drugs. The guy had a mangled leg, eventually losing it below his knee. We chatted outside a bit, and I just read a story now about the ordeal, which I had read back then. I wouldn't say it instantly put things in perspective, but thinking about something huge like that at least lets you overlook some of the small things in life. Like that the front of a Mac Studio doesn't look as sexy as you'd want it to, if leaving it on your desk. Nice to see $160 again, even if AAPL lagged the market. It's a start, and up $10 from the low from Tuesday morning is pretty amazing.
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ono
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Post by ono on Mar 18, 2022 7:55:25 GMT -8
Little known fact (meaning I just realized it recently): There is an ARM version of Windows. Unfortunately, the bozos involved haven't licensed it for Boot Camp. So when I buy my Mac Studio, I'll run it via Parallels until the lawyers get their shit together.
I recall reading that Qualcomm has an exclusive with Microsoft for Windows on ARM of fairly short duration.
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ono
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Post by ono on Mar 18, 2022 8:15:43 GMT -8
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