{"id":30635,"date":"2020-11-10T14:37:02","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T19:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=30635"},"modified":"2022-11-01T15:26:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T19:26:01","slug":"apple-silicon-the-roads-not-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/10\/apple-silicon-the-roads-not-taken\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Silicon: The Roads Not Taken"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesper<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Raspberry Pi-like, “tinkerer-friendly” Mac, for under $100.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

A Mac mini the size of the Apple TV, for $199, with 4GB RAM, 64\/128 GB of iPhone-like storage, hardly any I\/O, and probably an A12, A13 or A14.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Take the current Mac mini, make it a bit smaller and make it affordable. Again – the Intel tax is gone, and Apple, if they want to, can churn out silicon in large scales by themselves already. The first Mac mini was $499 – there’s no reason the first ARM Mac mini can’t be.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

All of these products essentially are based on this: there’s an Apple that makes iPhones for $399 with industry-leading performance, and there’s an Apple that sells wheels for almost twice that price. It’s up to Apple to define what they want to sell and how they want to market it, and heading into a transition where you drop a hardware partner for your own designs is a perfect time to choose a new tack.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Sebastiaan de With<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Cool performance bump for the MacBook Pro, but today’s PC laptops have fantastic screens with tiny bezels. Face unlock. Touchscreens and pencils. 4G modems. Tons of awesome features. This looks like a faster MacBook Pro from 2015 with a tiny touchbar nobody wants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Frank Reiff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Perhaps the most puzzling thing is that they haven’t made a successor to the 12” MacBook. That would have been amazing. The only things wrong with it were the performance, the single port and the keyboard: all things that they could have solved with the M1.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Frank Reiff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

For those who hoped that Apple was going to use the Apple Silicon transition to course correct on issues such as ports, Touch Bar and perhaps introduce a new design language or new iOS features such as FaceID, tonight was a bitter disappointment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n