[whynotminot]

I actually really don’t see the point. Yea, in this consumer smart phone, there are limits on what you can do with this chip because the operating system is tuned for phone stuff, not workstation stuff.

But there’s good news — this architecture will end up in MacBooks, Mac minis, Mac Studios etc.

It’s like complaining that they put a good engine in a civic when you can also buy that good engine in other configurations that will let you do more with it.

So why insist on doing it on a phone?

[alex989]

The limit is artificial. That's the entire point. There is no laws or bible verse telling apple it's illigal to let you use the cpu on your phone for workstation workloads. Wouldn't it be nice if you could hook up your phone to a usb dock, boot Linux/windows/macos and get a workstation that's faster than a 2000$ laptop? Sure you can buy a Mac mini, but iphone owners already have one in their pocket.

[whynotminot]

In a vacuum any added capability seems nice. And it seems so simple: "just let me go into desktop mode."

In practice, the engineering effort to enable that just doesn't seem worth it. And in a zero-sum world of engineer time, a cost better spent elsewhere. Let my laptop be a laptop, and focus on making that experience the best it can be. And let my phone be a phone, and focus on making that experience the best it can be.

I think people fundamentally don't understand Apple when they want them to engage in the same kind of "jack of all trades master of none" pursuits that led to subpar Windows experiences and the fragmented Android ecosystem.

You can kind of see Apple dabbling with this a bit with iPadOS. And it's an absolute mess. My least favorite operating system Apple makes. All available evidence right now points to Apple simply not being able to neatly converge different computing paradigms. They are right to show restraint with their most important product.

I'm ok with them experimenting with this with the iPad, because frankly, the iPad does not matter. But I do not want Apple to mess up the phone for the two people on hacker news that want to hook theirs up to a thunderbolt dock.