[Meganet]

GPUs are niche for a long time already.

The big hit happened when intel started doing this. It killed the whole category of desktop GPUs.

Audio and NICs are very different though and the Apple GPU integration has nothing to do what happened to Audio and NICs: Apples customer demand GPU power for Image and Video editing, for the retina display and they pay a big price for these chips.

A integrated audio/NIC got optimized away because compute got so much better. iGPUs and co are not compensated through CPU compute but because putting them together makes it cheaper. The iGPU still has normal GPU components.

A M* Chip from Apple is HUGE and f* expensive. If it wouldn't be for people with deep pockets, it would be a lot cheaper to build the hardware yourself with normal GPUs. Mac Studio? 6k vs. same setup without Mac hardware: 4k and less + upgradable etc.

[Dalewyn]

>The iGPU still has normal GPU components.

That's not a useful delimiter since integrated audio and NICs are still discrete components on the motherboad.

[Meganet]

Thats often enough not true. They mostly are just integrated

I know the distinction feels very thin but come one, a GPU chips complexity is far beyond a sound or nic chip and i don't think that comparision is fair at all.

You are not adding a network card to your desktop pc to have significant better network.

And they don't even make new soundcards since 2021.

[Dalewyn]

What part of discrete components do you not understand?

[Meganet]

Why so snarky?

There are mainboards who integrate this type of stuff onto their mainboard controller

[Dalewyn]

I would implore you to look closer at motherboards. Most if not all have discrete components for the audio, NIC, USB, et al. on them.

The integration of those functions into the motherboard merely did away with the bulky physical connectors that take up space and complicate designs.

[acdha]

> Apples customer demand GPU power for Image and Video editing, for the retina display and they pay a big price for these chips.

I know “too pricey” has been a telling point for Mac forum threads since the turn of the century but you really should check the numbers before saying things like this. The M series chips meant Apple had a multiyear period of being notably cheaper because an integrated chip saves money - the correct angle for criticism is limited customization options.

Your pricing for the Mac Studio is high by 50% but also misses the point: that’s not competing with gaming rigs or home PCs (the $600 Mac Mini is that market) while the Mac Studio is aimed at people who need expansion options like video editors - note how it had hardware acceleration for the ProRes codec they use, support for 8 displays, double or triple the Thunderbolt and USB ports, etc.? You’re not buying that to play Call of Duty, you’re buying it to connect 8K cameras. The Mac Pro is even more of a specialist design with the PCI-X slots.

https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=Mac-mini-M2,Mac...

[Meganet]

The M1 chip was a game changer. This is true and for whatever reason, a MacBook Air is at a exceptional price/value point.

But not with a Mac Studio: You can build your 8k super trible all bells and whistles with a lot less money than giving it to apple. The difference is volumne. A Mac Studio is probably 5-10x smaller.

The point is still valid: You do pay a big price for these chips. Apple pushes you to a Mac Book Pro due to RAM.

Its not bad critisism, don't get me wrong. My company laptop is really good but it costs 3k.

The normal consumer market, outside of an Apple ecosystem high price bubble, actually starts a lot lower. YOu can get a normal laptop for 300 while the MacBook Air starts at 1000.

But before the M chip, this was totally different. I would now try to convince people 'if you can afford it, save uup a little bit more and get you an macbook air' i would not have said this a few years back.

[acdha]

> The normal consumer market, outside of an Apple ecosystem high price bubble, actually starts a lot lower. YOu can get a normal laptop for 300 while the MacBook Air starts at 1000.

That $300 “normal” laptop was worse in almost every way and had significantly shorter service life - I still remember people making those comparisons claiming spinning metal drives were the same as SSDs. What you’re conflating is that there isn’t a single market segment but several, and Apple relies on used kit for the lower end price points. When you compare equivalent hardware capabilities, things have been roughly even since the switch to Intel, although it got tricky during the end of that when Intel struggled to ship low-power parts and you really had to decide how much you valued battery life.

[Meganet]

The problem ist not that its shit, the problem is that in our world there are a lot of people who can't afford a $1000 laptop and Apple doesn't cater to these people at all.

Smartphones helped here a lot though but are not always an alternative. A young person barly making enough for studing (a person who needs a keyboard).

[acdha]

You were previously saying that you could get the same thing much cheaper, but now you’re talking about how you want something different. That’s a valid topic but conflating the two won’t help.