[samwillis]

Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good. TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them, thats what Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash. This investment by Apple eventually leads its way to other customers and smaller businesses. The whole industry thrives on the wake Apple leaves behind.

As a complete other aside, I'm excited to see what comes with the M3, particularly any neural cores. I would be much more excited about all the new AI tools if they could be run locally, Apple are again in the unique position to be able to make that possible for the masses. WWDC is hopefully going to be super interesting.

What we need is a sudden and massive increase in memory on these chips to make having LLMs viable on everyday affordable devices. I do wander if that may be something Apple surprise us with.

[Veliladon]

You would be correct if investment were the bottleneck. It's not.

The bottleneck on advanced processes is how fast ASML can build its EUV fabrication machines and they're extremely complicated pieces of kit with lots of specialized parts that are also extremely complicated pieces of kit. Even with all our modern production ability we're limited in how quickly we can assemble these machines that can actually do the lithography and everybody wants them.

ASML currently has a backlog of 100 machines. Intel, Samsung, TSMC, they all want them. They sell for $200m+ a piece. Everyone has the cash for them. ASML just can't produce them fast enough.

[bhouston]

Why can't ASML scale? They are siting on $20B of orders. That is insane. What is ASML's delivery throughput of these machines?

[hoorible]

My understanding is that it could, but these machines take a really long time to build. Probably a simplification, but it’s likely not unfair to say that by the time they scaled 3nm production, we’d already have moved on to 2nm, etc

Asianometry YouTube channel did a few really good videos on chip fabbing and the unique challenges. Scale is addressed IIRC. Highly recommend.

[Veliladon]

They make about 50 a year. One of the parts in these machines is a 30cm mirror that is the flattest that humans can make with our current level of technology.

If you have a way to churn them out please let Zeiss SMT know.

[cortesoft]

Do whatever they are doing now, but twice?

What in the process wouldn’t work with this method?

[jsnell]

They can't simply choose to do the same thing twice. They might need to double the machines, facilities, and workers trained for the production of those components. Oh, wait. Not just that component, but every other specialized component of the lithography machine, and every specialized input for one of the specialized components. If there's a single one that can't ramp up production and they can't find a substitute for, there's no point in any of them doing that investment.

Presumably a lot of the machinery needed to build these components is incredibly specialized too. That machinery won't be purchasable off the shelf. It will be ordered custom with long lead times, and (again!) could have bottlenecks in production that make it simply impossible to deliver in large quantities.

I'd bet (with no supporting evidence, just a gut feeling) that this industry needs to know five years in advance what the demand for chips in a given process node is going to be just to set up the supply chains to manufacture the right number of lithography machines. If that estimate is wrong, it'll take so long to build up that infrastructure that you might as well not bother, and just try to get things right for the next node.

[sdwr]

I got first-hand (virtual) experience with this playing Dyson Sphere. Late-game tech requires a whole web of dependencies. Doubling from 1x <shiny item> per minute to 2x <shiny item> means doubling the entire supply chain all the way down the line. It's not just doubling the factory making the thing, it's doubling the inputs, and the inputs to the inputs.

For example, the mirror might require extremely high purity silica, made in a top-notch cleanroom environment. To produce 2x, you don't just need 2x the raw material, you need 2x the air filtration systems, purifying machines, trained staff.

Which is fine, that large footprint can be doubled! But maybe this whole process is only going to be state-of-the-art for 5 years, and after that won't command top dollar.

[jb1991]

Peak HN. Surely a casual brainstorm by a casual reader of the thread somehow unlocks all of the challenges that ASML is facing.

[cortesoft]

I figured there was something I was missing, I was asking to try to get an answer. Why won’t the naive scaling method work?

[tekno45]

3nm.Do()

[lr1970]

> What in the process wouldn’t work with this method?

Testing of EUV lithography machines is very complicated and slow process. You cannot scale it without magically cloning all the test engineers and technicians.

[gamblor956]

Doing twice as much of it wouldn't scale.

Making a super-flat mirror is extremely difficult and requires state-of-the-art facilities, and state-of-the-art equipment. And highly trained, experienced employees. And there aren't enough of any of that to scale rapidly.

It's not just about scaling 1 input. You have to scale the entire supply chain.

[cortesoft]

Right, when I said “do everything twice” I was including the entire supply chain.

If there is enough money sitting on the table, it seems like it would be worth it to do that. But it sounds like it would take too long with uncertain returns?

[MagicMoonlight]

But then they’d get less money

[notaustinpowers]

I'm not familiar on the throughput, but their EUV lithography machines are some of the most complex machinery humanity has developed to date. We're lucky this even works, let alone dream of scaling it.

[renewiltord]

The answer is quite simple, actually. It's a hardware business so they have to right-size their equipment to projected demand and the tool-up time in specialty hardware is long because of the need for specialty components.

i.e. they need to project out demand x years in advance because their things are expensive and slow to build, and their components vendors have the same problem with the additional problem that their components vendors only have one customer for some of their products: them.

There is no other equivalent use for much of what they need so if they fuck it up they've got too much equipment too fast.

This is a classic hardware business problem.

[michelb]

Here's a good docu about ASML that shows some of the challenges in making these machines: https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/backlight/asm...

[Timshel]

A bit late to the party but the 100 backorders is in fact quite small if you consider they make 50 a year (as mentionned by another comment).

Even if it was possible to double the production for free in a year then without new orders when this come online you only have 50 orders left to process ...

If you look some plane production backorders are in the decade I believe atm. Looking at the A320 orders you can see how they ramp up production (and this ramp up might production line switching from aircraft type not new lines) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320neo_famil...

[ftxbro]

It looks like the local-LLM enthusiasts will want to use Apple computers. This is funny to me for some reason, like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci.

[PragmaticPulp]

Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs.

What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon.

> like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci.

Apple M-silicon laptops are high quality, but they’re not the same as overpriced luxury goods. The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

[daniel-thompson]

> Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs.

For processing speed, Ms are fast but I agree not anywhere near a top Nvdia chip.

For memory size, the memory on an M chip can be used as graphics memory, so a person could get an M2 today with 128GB of graphics memory for ~ $5k. Not bad considering an Nvidia chip approaching that memory size is several times that much.

[Maursault]

> Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs. What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon.

It'd be pretty silly for Apple to cram in big, dedicated GPU when 99.9% of their customers don't care and don't want to pay for it, especially considering that anyone that does want big, dedicated GPU can outboard as much GPU as they want.[1] And many seem to think that the onboard GPU along with Neural Engine should be adequate for local LLM.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

[thoughtsimple]

Only on Intel Macs which are going away soon (only 2019 Mac Pro is remaining outside of refurbished.)

Apple Silicon doesn't currently have any provision for external graphics cards.

[Maursault]

There are two issues.

     1) Apple Silicon won't support PCIe. 

     2) Apple doesn't want it to.

#2 means Apple is taking nVidia and AMD head on in the GPU space. Apple wants to control everything, and allowing these competitors on their platform is giving away too much. Because Apple Silicon scales better than competitors' hw, the desire for third party GPU is probably going to evaporate within a few generations of Apple Silicon. I mean, we'll see, but that is my best guess, because it seems like that was an intentional decision rather than oversight.

[bhj]

AS supports Thunderbolt just fine. Isn't the lack of eGPU support due to lack of ARM drivers for them?

[nordsieck]

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Mac Pro.

It could be that Apple does away with it entirely and the Mac Studio is the new Pro.

Or they might make a machine with PCIe support, but make it so expensive that only people with a serious need get access to it.

Or something else.

[dacryn]

they share their main memory with the GPU.

There is no cheaper way to have 50gb of memory allocated to your GPU compute pipeline (buy a 64gb macbook pro or studio). So yes big, only the fast aspect remains a reason to buy expensive dedicated gpu's

[samwillis]

> it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon

It's not yet. Apples combined memory architecture enables them to significantly cut the cost of bundling more memory for various GPU, Neural or other domain specific cores. I believe they will catch up or even overtake Nvidia as the leading AI platform.

Desktop AI class GPUs are hell expensive. If Apple can get something 50% as performant, but in an iPhone Pro or MacBook Air, thats going to change so very much.

[xipix]

It's so funny to see Apple's "combined memory architecture" praised. When Intel did this a decade+ ago with its integrated GPUs, it was roundly slated.

[comex]

Well, the difference is that compared to a baseline where GPUs typically get faster RAM than CPUs, Apple is providing fast RAM to both, whereas Intel provided slow RAM to both. Of course, that’s hardly Intel’s fault given that their integrated GPUs are aimed at the low end and are usually paired with external socketed RAM.

[gpderetta]

but AI class GPUs are expensive because NVidia can pretty much ask whatever it wants as it has no competition. If Apple were to become competitive in the area, things can change.

[diffeomorphism]

> The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

Caveats: In the US, with low ram and low storage.

Without these caveats you look at about 2000€ or so (m2 macbook air with 16gb of ram and non-halved storage performance in Germany). That can still be a decent deal for what you get, but "extremely reasonable" -- not quite.

[nordsieck]

It is a little funny... but the combination of pretty good integrated graphics and (potentially) large amounts of on package ram mean that macs are actually a pretty inexpensive way to get access to a GPU with lots of graphics memory.

[braymundo]

I wish gaming on Mac became more popular due to the same reason.

[heliophobicdude]

What are some broken-down reasons why gaming on Mac didn't take off. I'm sure it's a few different reasons all together

[dagmx]

A lot of people will likely blame APIs etc, but that’s just an easy scapegoat for people outside the game dev industry.

The reality is likely just market share, hardware and the makeup of that market share.

Macs used to actually be a big gaming platform once upon a time. Myst was a Mac exclusive (built with HyperCard) and Bungie used to make games for macs first before getting bought by Microsoft.

But windows got the upper edge:

1. Much larger slice of the market

2. More of the market is made up of gaming enthusiasts than Macs which are usually either targeting light use, education or professional.

3. You can make affordable gaming PCs with windows. You can’t really do it with any kind of Mac because there’s no product for that market between the Mac Mini and iMac (which were targeted at more casual users) up to the Mac Pro and iMac Pro (which were targeted at professional users)

It’s easier to target the biggest piece of the pie and the one that will buy your products.

That’s why the “API” reason never makes sense, because iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac. Game engines often need to support multiple graphics APIs anyway.

So Mac gaming did take off, but it fumbled and never recovered. Part of that is that Apple themselves fumbled as a company, on the verge of bankruptcy before the return of Jobs. What made them successful post his return is also what killed gaming on their platforms: they targeted a different audience.

[pier25]

You can't ignore API reasons though.

Before Metal, macOS used to ship with old OpenGL versions. I remember around the Tiger days (10.4) OpenGL was 4-5 years old compared to the version shipped in Windows. And with DirectX, Windows had a better API about two decades before Metal for macOS was released.

I do agree with your other points. Macs are expensive so they are always going to be a niche market. And in most countries, Apple products are luxury products.

Another point is really that Windows GPUs have always been more powerful. If you wanted to play the latest AAA games at good quality and fps you had to be on Windows.

And there's also an ouroboros vicious circle. Devs don't put effort into the Mac because there aren't many gamers on it, and there aren't many gamers on it because dev don't put too much effort. And it doesn't help the decisions that Apple has taken to further ostracize themselves form the desktop gaming market.

> iOS is THE dominant gaming platform

In the US. Worldwide iOS has like 28% market share I believe.

Nevertheless, Apple could really become a gaming powerhouse outside of mobile. If they released an AppleTV with a gamepad and an M3 chip, they bought or partnered with a couple of good console/desktop game studios (not mobile game studios).

The AppleTV already has games but there's not a lot of good content and Apple doesn't even provide an official gamepad. It's clear Apple doesn't care much about gaming outside of iOS.

[__alexs]

> iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac

The problem with OpenGL ES AIUI (especially in the early days) is that it exposes lots of hardware specific weirdness. The reason this works for iOS is the same reason it works for Nintendo etc. Millions of devices with identical hardware.

[Maursault]

I don't think the race is over yet, but it is really entirely up to developers, not Apple. Apple Silicon isn't quite 3yo yet, and it is hard to say right now what the gaming landscape will look like in another five years. Technically, however, though it is somewhat of a cheat, as soon as Apple released the first M1 Mac, the new platform instantly had nearly an order of magnitude more games than PC. While there are something like 50K games available through Steam, and x86 Macs only had like 7K, as soon as the M1 was released, early Apple Silicon Mac users had access to something like 450K AppStore games from iOS and iPadOS. Plus, Steam was ported to macOS, and Rosetta 2 allows many x86 PC games to run adequately in emulation (virtualized + emulation). This may not be satisfactory for hard core gamers than need massive fps, but I don't think it can be honestly claimed anymore that Macs suck for gaming. At the very least, they're competitive, and that's only going to get better, though how much better is, again, up to developers.

[braymundo]

I don't know, but if I had to guess it would that Apple was never really interested in it or in supporting it. I fondly remember some companies (like Blizzard) who would always support Macs, until they stopped (looking at you, Diablo 4).

[ajmurmann]

I think it might be a chicken/egg problem. Most Macs of don't come with hardware that's good for games. That doesn't matter though because no consumer asks for better gaming hardware in new Macs because there aren't many games. People who care about games, know they don't get it on Macs and thus have either a console or a gaming PC in addition. I play games, but generally it's just a nice surprise if I see that a Steam game supports macOS. It's so far away from being a viable primary gaming system that it's just accepted at this point.

[__alexs]

No DirectX support.

[ChuckNorris89]

More like no Vulkan support.

[andrewmcwatters]

The biggest reason is that Steve Jobs hated games. It’s well documented. John Carmack also had some words to say about graphics on Macs.

[barbariangrunge]

Such as?

[foldr]

If you care about the combination of portability, battery life, performance, and display+audio quality, then Apple’s laptops have been price competitive for quite a while now. People who think they are overpriced usually don’t care about at least one of these things.

[raxxorraxor]

I think it is least likely that we will run local AI instances on Apple hardware to be honest.

But yes, the comparison would be apt. I think people want to solve a problem with dependence on third party services...

No, I expect GPUs with insane amount of memory surfacing and that isn't really a field for Apple yet.

[zitterbewegung]

Not many laptops have 64 gb of RAM that can run llama.cpp https://gist.github.com/zitterbewegung/4787e42617aa0be6019c3...

[ac29]

Plenty of non-Apple laptops support 64GB RAM. For example, both the AMD and Intel variants of the Framework Laptop can take 64GB. All of of the large vendors have laptops that support a 64GB configuration too (HP, Dell, Lenovo).

[Gare]

Apple was cost-effective most of the time if you wanted high-quality tools.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

I'm not aware of any local-LLM framework that works with Apple GPUs?

[Maursault]

Does this qualify?[1]

[1] https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/05/mlc-llm-mobile-laptops/

[apozem]

Exactly. TSMC can spend tens of billions of dollars on new processes because they know Apple will be there day 1 to use it all.

The iPhone and Mac have good performance and power efficiency, but people will always want their phone and laptop to do more and get longer battery life. Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.

[MichaelZuo]

> Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.

I don't think so, the typical iPhone user has not scaled up their compute needs much past the 2015 A9.

And if you exclude the computational photography stuff, I could imagine some users don't take advantage of it at all.

[darkr]

Performance per watt is the new Moore's law - though most users don't need more power, they do appreciate longer battery lives

[msh]

I think that the games on my iphone would disagree.

[MichaelZuo]

Genshin Impact runs on the A9, I don't think there exist any more computationally demanding games on mobile.

What games are you referring to?

[msh]

I enjoy xcom 2 and civilization for example.

[MichaelZuo]

Those run on the A9?

[pier25]

What percentage of iOS users are really hardcore gamers? I don't know, but I doubt it's even close to 25%.

It's anecdotal but I don't know of any iOS/iPadOS user that plays anything remotely demanding. Most users I know don't game. Those that do usually play casual games like Candy Crush.

[ytch]

It's just my (unprofessional) assumption, but besides CPU and GPU, maybe NPU (AI) still have room for improvement.

[reisse]

Not for compute, but for performance per watt. Raw compute is much better served by Intel/AMD + Nvidia workstation.

[reacharavindh]

I enjoy the competition that Apple brings to the computing market with M* chips. As an innocent bystander in the world of AI, neural networks etc, I wonder if Apple Silicon and its neural cores would become the proprietary brake like CUDA is for ML work. That is if they do something phenomenal with the 3nm facility and bring about some hardware that only they can do..

I'd rather have a healthy competetive ecosystem where people writing software need not say stuff like "needs CUDA to work or needs Apple Neural cores to work" and instead says something like "need XYZ acceleration provided by CUDA cores, Apple Silicon, and AMD blah.."

[audunw]

I think it's too early for AI/ML acceleration to standardize on an API. It takes a long time to figure out what abstractions we should standardize on before we can make a universal API.

Consider the whole history of OpenGL, Metal, Vulcan, WebGL, WebGPU...

It would have been a mistake to keep using OpenGL, and WebGL was perhaps a mistake from the beginning. It was the wrong abstractions. Metal and Vulcan are clearly better abstractions for GPU APIs, and it really doesn't matter too much that Metal is Apple-only because they're close enough that you can have a good Vulcan API on top of Metal (MoltenVK). That is, what matters is that we converge on the same abstractions, and those take a long time to get right.

Now in the end we've gotten WebGPU (which isn't only for web browsers btw, can be used from native apps too) that can provide a nice universal cross-platform API.

[klodolph]

A bit harsh to say that WebGL was a mistake from the beginning. The spec was released in 2011, along with some initial implementations. At the time, Vulkan didn't exist (2016). Not even Metal (2014) or Mantle (2013) existed yet. I don't think even the AZDO folks had done their work yet.

WebGL looked pretty damn good in 2011. It was based on OpenGL ES 2.0, which was the latest version of OpenGL ES, and the great thing about OpenGL ES is that it's a little cleaned up from OpenGL and reflects the capabilities of a broad class of graphics implementations.

[sharikous]

What about WebGPU? The only thing that I find unsatisfactory about it is that float64 (double) is not a standard type in WebGPU and it's not supported on Apple GPUs anyway.

[foverzar]

> TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them

I mean, does anyone doubt that thinner process nodes will be in demand?

[samwillis]

No, but companies still like to have preorders to pay for the investment, rather than having to empty their savings to raise cash. Apple with the cash they have thrown at TSMC and the almost certain high sales they know they will have, can make pre-emptive moves other companies will struggle to do.

[raxxorraxor]

How are we to proceed if we reach the size of a single atomic layer which is around 0.5nm?

Sure, 3nm is marketing too, but there are hard limits and reliability might suffer if manufacturing cannot keep up.

[JKCalhoun]

I suppose in some other timeline Apple funds/owns their own fab and, to the points you raise, that would be worse for everyone outside of Apple.

[hammock]

>Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash

Don’t all the big tech companies have giant cash accounts?

[JKCalhoun]

If I'm googling this right Apple had perhaps $48B in cash in 2022. I don't know how others compare.

[eloisant]

Goog = $110B MS = $100B Amazon = $64B Meta = $37B

So no, Apple is not the big tech with the most cash. They do have a much higher market cap than the others but it's simply based on their brand image and speculation.

[adventured]

Apple's higher market cap is not based significantly on their image and speculation.

It's based on their consistently enormous income generation.

Apple has $114 billion in operating income over the past four quarters. Alphabet is close to $75b by comparison; Microsoft is $83b; Meta is $29b. Amazon is a joke at $12b (which is increasingly being reflected in their very mediocre stock market performance; Amazon stock has nearly contracted on an inflation adjusted basis over five years).

For large corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, etc., profit generation is overwhelmingly what matters. Apple has led the way on that for a long time now and it's reflected in their market cap.

[daniel_iversen]

And revenue! i.e. 2022:

Apple: ~$395bn Microsoft: ~$200bn Amazon: ~$500bn Meta: $116bn

[adventured]

Revenue is a very poor reference for the context.

Amazon extracts a poor margin out of their $514 billion in sales. Over the past four quarters their operating income margin is a pathetic ~2.4%.

Apple's operating income margin is ~29.4% by comparison. They have a vastly superior business.

Eventually Amazon investors will tire of the terrible stock market returns that present Amazon is generating and the garbage that is retail and they'll demand the company split itself up. That will involve spinning off AWS so investors can realize max value for that (before it's too late and growth slows to a crawl in that space).

[hammock]

I look at FCF. Amazon -11B last year vs Apple +111B. Gives you an approximate run rate for their cash on hand

[inkyoto]

Apple Q2 2023 report indicates USD 166 billion in cash reserves.

[MichaelZuo]

I believe that's including things like high liquidity investments and so on, so not quite cash.

[inkyoto]

I am not going to bet my life on it, but as per [0] the definition of the «[cash] reserve» is: «In financial accounting, reserve always has a credit balance and can refer to a part of shareholders' equity, a liability for estimated claims, or contra-asset for uncollectible accounts».

So it refers to a credit balance, and it does not mention investments.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_(accounting)

[hammock]

The term "cash reserves" is not a standard accounting term or classification. "Cash reserves" is commonly used to refer to funds set aside by a company or organization for specific purposes, such as contingencies, future investments, or working capital needs. These reserves are typically considered as part of a company's cash and cash equivalents.

Under GAAP, cash (and cash equivalents) includes currency on hand, deposits in bank accounts, and any highly liquid investments that have an original maturity of three months or less. Cash equivalents are short-term investments that are readily convertible to known amounts of cash and have original maturities of three months or less from the date of purchase

[mikeyouse]

That's a slightly different thing - a reserve account is what you've correctly linked, but what people here are talking about is just a basic balance sheet categories of cash and marketable securities;

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/386e8c0...

So they have $25 billion in cash/cash equivalents (T-bills), $31 billion in "Current Marketable Securities" which are just those that are liquid this year so short-term debt and the like, and then $110 billion in long-term marketable securities which can be medium term bonds and other investments on a >1 year timeline.

Add those up and you get to $166 billion which is a good proxy for the amount of money they can invest today.

[hammock]

Google $115B Microsoft $105B Samsung $91B Amazon $64B

[nordsieck]

> What we need is a sudden and massive increase in memory on these chips to make having LLMs viable on everyday affordable devices. I do wander if that may be something Apple surprise us with.

Honestly, I just wish that they'd refresh the Mac Studio. I know that probably won't happen in any processor generation which they plan to roll out the Mac Pro, though.

[epolanski]

I don't think those criticism are valid. Apple has insane order numbers, competitors do not. It's only natural they prioritize who gives them more business.

[nabakin]

I'm excited for the M3 too. I hope this is the generation Apple adds AV1 hardware support. If they don't, I have no confidence they will ever add support

[michaelsshaw]

Nobody really benefits when the leading process node is being wasted by a walled garden company on, mostly, consumer laptops

[natdempk]

The new nodes also typically go towards iPhones and tablets as well, and in total that's only hundreds of millions of people benefitting from improved devices, so yeah pretty much nobody.

[michaelsshaw]

How improved though? iPhones are already pretty fast. I don't know about you, but i've never compiled a kernel on my phone. Having a faster, actual workstation grade computer would be better. But yeah you're right, sarcasm is the right approach.

[iknowstuff]

Haha yes compiling a kernel should be the focus. Forget all the advancements in instant computational photography, on-device voice recognition and Siri, 4K HDR 60fps stabilized videos, 120Hz retina screens running perfectly smooth animations on an all day lasting battery, because neckbeards can't compile a kernel

[michaelsshaw]

Using faster computer chips to make faster computers, rather than Apple products, should be the focus, yes.

[taylodl]

Apple's phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop products are computers. And they're making them faster, apparently. I would argue the phone is where the focus should be since that's the primary computer for many people around the world.

[hardware2win]

Whats the difference between taking photos/videos on a phone from 2018 and cutting edge?

[rowanG077]

50% more optical zoom. Real-time image stabilization. 4x the pixels. Deep fusion/photonic engine which vastly improves image clarity due to merging multiple pictures into a final image.

[madeofpalk]

There's also energy consumption.

[kitsunesoba]

Yep, reducing energy consumption and boosting performance per watt seems to be one of Apple’s main focuses, and for most people buying phones, tablets, and laptops that’s probably the correct choice — while raw perf is nice computers have been “fast enough” for a long time.

People who only browse the web need barely more than a Core 2 Duo, even now, and most devs and media professionals will find an M1 Pro to fill their needs somewhere between reasonably and very well. You know what almost nobody will turn down though? Laptops that are cool to the touch and rarely need to spin up fans and all manner of battery powered device that lasts longer, even doing “real” work.

Of course there will always be those who need the fastest big iron they can find and don’t care if they have to feed it 2000W and cool it a 15lb heatsink with ear piercing fans, but this group is comparatively niche.

[neogodless]

There's a very common mindset that you only "benefit" if you have the latest, best "thing."

There are so many ways to benefit. I've never owned an Apple product in my life! And yet, I own an AMD CPU that was built on a TSMC process. I feel like that benefits me. Would that TSMC process be as good if they didn't have Apple as a customer? Maybe not. I don't know for sure - it's not something I obsess over.

It would be different if the products you could buy outside of Apple were actually bad. (And for some people who want fanless Apple Silicon, a lot of laptop alternatives are bad, but for my needs, both desktops and laptops with fans are fulfilling my needs and wants.)

[freedomben]

I don't necessarily disagree with you, I think you're much more right than wrong, but there is a loser in it. anecdotal observation from talking to coworkers, I know several people who have switched to macs for the apple silicon because of their speed/power efficiency. That's obviously not just 3nm at play, but yes there are definite losers in this race. Also if one takes the approach that an apple user pulled in to their walled garden is a net bad for the industry at large, it's not just a short term problem but also long term as well.

[goalieca]

Apple is giving some pretty funding guarantees TSMC. The rest of the industry will certainly benefit.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Nobody really benefits when the leading process node is being wasted by a walled garden company on, mostly, consumer laptops

I would say consumers benefit if the leading process node is used on them, wouldn’t you?

I don’t understand the problem. The most efficient processes are always dedicated to mobile devices where the premium is worth it.

[eptcyka]

Laptops? Phones and tablets.

[michaelsshaw]

Yeah, definitely more of these (which is even more of a waste), I was more just thinking about myself :)

[steve_taylor]

It's holding back Skynet.

[thomastjeffery]

Do you have any evidence whatsoever that TSMC would struggle financially without Apple?

Sounds like FUD to me.

[jryle70]

I don't think they will be struggling, just that Apple is willing to pop up cash, or have clear commitment in advance. Businesses prefer clear and stable outlook.

[thomastjeffery]

So, "no".

[hulitu]

> Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good.

And if Apple leaves TSMC will be left with the pants down.