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Apple's Shifting Differentiation

(stratechery.com)
292 points kaboro | 2 comments | 11 Nov 20 13:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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klelatti ◴[11 Nov 20 14:35 UTC] No.25058716[source]▶
> it is possible that Apple’s chip team is so far ahead of the competition, not just in 2020, but particularly as it develops even more powerful versions of Apple Silicon, that the commoditization of software inherent in web apps will work to Apple’s favor, just as the its move to Intel commoditized hardware, highlighting Apple’s then-software advantage in the 00s.

I think Ben is missing something here: that the speed and specialist hardware (e.g. neural engine) on the new SoCs again give developers of native apps the ability to differentiate themselves (and the Mac) by offering apps that the competition (both web apps and PCs) can't. It's not just about running web apps more quickly.

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1. ksec ◴[12 Nov 20 09:13 UTC] No.25067968[source]▶
>that the speed and specialist hardware (e.g. neural engine.....

Yes. For one, there seems to be no Unified API for GPU Computing in the PC Market. And Microsoft doesn't seems to be interested in doing a Direct X version of it.

And for NPU, which is increasingly important for things such as Speech Recognition, ( For many parts of the word where Languages aren't easily typed into, they are the default way of input on their Phone ), Photo Face Recognition without using the Cloud. Increasing use in Graphics, Video, Audio productivity apps. There aren't even any specific Hardware on PC market. ( That is why Intel is desperate to move the XE as a co-processor ). And it will be years if not a whole decade before a PC parts comes up and reach a large enough market volume.

And it sort of makes you wonder 3-4 years down the road when the M1 ( excluding Memory ) becomes a $20 SoC, will we see a variant of Mac cheap enough that will hit back at the 1.5B Windows PC Market. Where Apple current has roughly 110M Mac.

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2. klelatti ◴[12 Nov 20 14:03 UTC] No.25069902[source]▶
Good points but I suspect Apple is more interested in the $1000 business PC market - so say a videoconferencing app that was much, much better as result of using Apple's API's might be a handy way of selling more Macs to business.

Of course set against that they've lost the ability to run x86 Windows in a VM for legacy business apps (but not sure many were doing that anyway!).