Apple: Mac division losses due to Intel's supply difficulties

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

During the announcement of the latest quarter (Q2) results Apple told its investors that the Mac division made less profit compared to before due to Intel having big supply difficulties.

We launched a new more powerful iMac, with dramatic increases in both compute and graphics performance, making it a great update for consumers and pros alike. For our Mac business overall, we faced some processor constraints in the March quarter, leading to a 5 percent revenue decline compared to last year. But we believe that our Mac revenue would have been up compared to last year without those constraints, and don’t believe this challenge will have a significant impact on our Q3 results.

[...]

Next I’d like to talk about the Mac. Revenue was 5.5 billion compared to 5.8 billion a year ago, with the decline driven primarily by processor constraints on certain popular models.

This is Tim: Transcript of Apple’s Q2 2019 call with analysts

[Every quarter Apple’s CEO and CFO talk to financial analysts on an hourlong call. This is the transcript of that call from Tuesday, April 30, 2019. While you’re here, check out our cha…

sixcolors.com

Amazing insights, that Intel has even difficulties to provide established CPUs with established manufacturing processes by now. Maybe the ARM Mac is nearer around the next corner than somebody might think due to this.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Their plan is to migrate from intel to in-house chips in the next few years. In fact, some machines already run both intel CPUs and Apple's co-processors .... a nice trick.

 

[Porsupah Ree]

Their plan is to migrate from intel to in-house chips in the next few years. In fact, some machines already run both intel CPUs and Apple's co-processors .... a nice trick.

In a manner of speaking - but those current uses (the T2 runs the Touch Bar and TouchID) are entirely independent of the main OS, rather than sharing the workload. But could Apple shift from Intel? A few years ago, I'd've been much more sceptical, but their latest SOCs are quite remarkable, with mid-range performance at mobile power cost - and having their own in-house chip design offers clear benefits over reliance on external suppliers, as we see here, not to mention not being restricted to more or less the same processor selection as everyone else.

The main challenge, it seems to me, would be implementing a performant Intel emulation layer, given how hugely different Intel and ARM architectures are. They could opt to not even bother with emulation, and let devs just recompile - much as I despise software subscription as a business model, that would mean all Creative Cloud subscribers being able to use the new ARM/Intel fat binaries as soon as they were available, and App Store buyers could just download the update at no extra cost, if the dev chose to keep it as the same SKU. I'd more expect them to offer backward compatibility, though.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Actually, I think they offloaded other stuff too. I assume as a stop gap to give the intel chip more bandwidth. I am guessing their eventual plan is to put in more and more powerful ARM chips and leave the intel in there for a few generations until everything major is already compiled for the ARM.

 

[Clara D.]

Actually, I think they offloaded other stuff too. I assume as a stop gap to give the intel chip more bandwidth.

Not more bandwidth, but to reduce CPU use. A lot of the macs have completely shite cooling, so are thermal throttling a lot.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Not more bandwidth, but to reduce CPU use. A lot of the macs have completely shite cooling, so are thermal throttling a lot.

Yeah, when I bought my macbook pro last year I was glad I did not spring for the i9. Although even what they do to an i7 is pretty bad.

 

[Clara D.]

Since someone disagreed . . . (note, I said a "lot" not "all) It mostly applies to laptops/notebooks and their newer all-in-one computer-in-a-monitor units and Apple's form > function.

Consumer Reports says MacBook Pro thermal throttling is a feature not a bug

The top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor has gotten some bad press. The new laptop reportedly is subject to thermal throttling,

www.cultofmac.com

The Apple IIe tended to stew in it's own juices if left on too long

TBF, Apple isn't the only company with top-tier laptops that throttle.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I bought a macrbook pro last year rather than a new imac. I figured as long as they would cripple me to what was basically a laptop in terms of cooling and expandability I may as well get the benefits of having a laptop.

Seriously apple? Who CARES about thinness on a a desktop product? It is not like it saves me much space except for the fact that I can put a drive behind it. Which would not be a problem if I had a bloody tower to install one in in the first place.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

It doesn't have anything to do with them stalling on the Pro and the trickle down effects on that, the appalling keyboard problems they continue to have that are increasingly harder to treat as something they're capable of fixing, and their ongoing cooling problems across the board. OF COURSE NOT.

Jony Ive needs to get a minder. Someone capable of saying "YOU AM PLAY GOD".

I am super skeptical they can pull off a third CPU transition without a CPU that's unquestionably faster than what they're currently using. The PPC was significantly faster than the 68k, and the new Xeons could be presented as faster than the G5 and the Intel Core was much faster than the G4 e600 (though it may not have been faster than the G4 e700 they never gave it a try so people didn't have it to compare against). They basically took advantage of a design transition that Freescale, Intel and IBM were all ramping up at the same time from super-long pipeline "brainac" chips to shorter pipeline chips with a faster memory bus (the first Core and Core Duo chips actually used the Pentium III core). Their best Axx chips are competitive with consumer mobile chips, at least multicore, but they need to be significantly faster than Intel's next generation to pull it off.

 

[Kara Spengler]

It doesn't have anything to do with them stalling on the Pro and the trickle down effects on that, the appalling keyboard problems they continue to have that are increasingly harder to treat as something they're capable of fixing, and their ongoing cooling problems across the board. OF COURSE NOT.

Jony Ive needs to get a minder. Someone capable of saying "YOU AM PLAY GOD".

I am super skeptical they can pull off a third CPU transition without a CPU that's unquestionably faster than what they're currently using. The PPC was significantly faster than the 68k, and the new Xeons could be presented as faster than the G5 and the Intel Core was much faster than the G4 e600 (though it may not have been faster than the G4 e700 they never gave it a try so people didn't have it to compare against). They basically took advantage of a design transition that Freescale, Intel and IBM were all ramping up at the same time from super-long pipeline "brainac" chips to shorter pipeline chips with a faster memory bus (the first Core and Core Duo chips actually used the Pentium III core). Their best Axx chips are competitive with consumer mobile chips, at least multicore, but they need to be significantly faster than Intel's next generation to pull it off.

The annoying thing is my loyalty to them comes from when they were a real underdog and were producing the highly expandable Apple ][. When they turned to WIMP (windows, icons, menus, and pull-downs) boxes they still kept the expandability, then pretty much every desktop OS went WIMP anyway by the end of the century. Then phasing out the concept of internal expansion combined with rare (and less powerful) updates to their last tower computer (the humble cheesegrater) felt like they were stabbing Apple hardware loyalists, including Woz, in the back.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

They didn't have much expandibility in Macs except for the high end until the Performas, and the Performas were kind of crazy with over 60 different models in 5 years.

 

[Kara Spengler]

They didn't have much expandibility in Macs except for the high end until the Performas, and the Performas were kind of crazy with over 60 different models in 5 years.

Also the quadras. I practically droloed when we got a quadra tower (8500?) at my workplace way back when.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Also the quadras. I practically droloed when we got a quadra tower (8500?) at my workplace way back when.

I think they qualified as high end.

I think the 8500 was a Power Mac, at least I got an 8500 in a bundle of old macs maybe 10 years later. I liked the 7500/7600 a lot better, the last generation of beige power mac towers were a nightmare to work on, but the desktops were lovely.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I think they qualified as high end.

I think the 8500 was a Power Mac, at least I got an 8500 in a bundle of old macs maybe 10 years later. I liked the 7500/7600 a lot better, the last generation of beige power mac towers were a nightmare to work on, but the desktops were lovely.

Ah yes, looked on wiki and I was thinking of the 840 family. I had a 7600 a few years after that, a nice machine.

Still love my 660 av though. The ports! The ports!