“Mac fans hoping for new hardware this year have been given one possible explanation for the delay, and some hope that 2019 will see some updates,” Ewan Spence writes for Forbes.
“Tucked into the notes from Tim Cook and Luca Maestri that were included with Apple’s quarterly earnings were a few choice remarks directed at Intel,” Spence writes. “First up, Maestri highlighted a lack of supply: ‘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.’ Then Tim Cook drew out the impact of the constraints and that he believed it to be short term: ‘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.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: And the door to Apple-designed ARM-based Macs opens wider.
SEE ALSO:
Performance shootout: Apple’s Intel vs. ARM systems – April 19, 2019
Macs may need ARM processors to survive – April 17, 2019
Steve Jobs predicted the Mac’s move from Intel to ARM processors – April 8, 2019
Intel execs believe that Apple’s ARM-based Macs could come as soon as 2020 – February 21, 2019
Apple’s Project Marzipan could mean big things for the future of the Macintosh – February 20, 2019
Apple iPad Pro’s A12X chip has no real rivals; it delivers performance unseen on Android tablets – November 1, 2018
Ming-Chi Kuo: Apple A-series Macs coming in 2020 or 2021, Apple Car in 2023-2025 – October 17, 2018
MacBooks powered by Apple A-series chips are finally going to happen soon – September 18, 2018
Apple A-series-powered Mac idea boosted as ARM claims its chips can out-perform Intel – August 16, 2018
Did Apple just show its hand on future low-end, A-series-powered MacBooks? – July 13, 2018
How Apple might approach an ARM-based Mac – May 30, 2018
Pegatron said to assemble Apple’s upcoming ‘ARM-based MacBook’ codenamed ‘Star’ – May 29, 2018
Intel 10nm Cannon Lake delays push MacBook Pro with potential 32GB RAM into 2019 – April 27, 2018
Why the next Mac processor transition won’t be like the last two – April 4, 2018
Apple’s ‘Kalamata’ project will move Macs from Intel to Apple A-series processors – April 2, 2018
Apple plans on dumping Intel for its own chips in Macs as early as 2020 – April 2, 2018
Apple is working to unite iOS and macOS; will they standardize their chip platform next? – December 21, 2017
Why Apple would want to unify iOS and Mac apps in 2018 – December 20, 2017
Apple to provide tool for developers build cross-platform apps that run on iOS and macOS in 2018 – December 20, 2017
The once and future OS for Apple – December 8, 2017
Apple ships more microprocessors than Intel – October 2, 2017
Apple embarrasses Intel – June 14, 2017
Apple developing new chip for Macintosh in test of Intel independence – February 1, 2017
Apple’s A10 Fusion chip ‘blows away the competition,’ could easily power MacBook Air – Linley Group – October 21, 2016
Not sure, but shipping a Mac Pro for the last 4 months would probably have helped.
No, Mac Pro sales are a percent of a percent of total Mac sales. The lion’s share of sales are in the mobile space where Intel’s inability to deliver hits Apple the most. Apple primarily uses Intel’s highest performing mobile processors and those are the ones they can’t produce in large enough quantity for the entire industry.
You really hate all things Mac, don’t you?
If you honestly believe that the only headless desktop Mac that Apple needs to offer is a Mini, then please troll elsewhere. You have no reason to comment further, as you are not a power user. You should focus on iOS blogs.
Timmy and you might not realize it, but the reason that desktop sales volumes are relatively lower isn’t because they are less profitable, it’s because companies like Apple have created a self-fulfilling destiny of offering dead-end designs that cost too much. While Apple sat on its Trashcan, other makers keep pushing up the benchmarks. For the few pros who stuck with Mac, OWC makes all the money that Apple could have captured if it had good hardware designs. Microsoft is valued as highly as Apple as a company because, duh, it supports high power computing users and enterprise and so forth in partnership with several computer makers that deliver performance first, fashion last.
So you claim performance doesn’t matter, portability is all that people want. Some people agree, and they back up their opinion by seeing what gadgets fill Apple and Microsoft retail stores. Well those are indeed low performance goods. Nobody bothers to count the workstations that are bought by the thousands by universities and corporations with a much higher profit margin on them.
But anyway, let’s ignore the lost revenue from Apple having no good workstation and just concentrate for a second on Apple’s choice to match but not outcompete the chips everyone else offers in their middle range computers. Both Apple and Microsoft have whined about chip availability, with some reason, but neither are feeling the pain enough to buy AMD chips or other alternatives. That says something. Both Apple and Microsoft’s own hardware are all focused on mid-range laptops. Not high end, so that’s where the processor supply crunch is. They ceded low end to Google and others long ago. Problem is, Apple still thinks its hardware is gold plated. Frankly, Apple has more serious design flaws in its laptops an major unaddressed gaps in its Mac lineups that it needs to correct ASAP.
Also, the broken record of die size not shrinking fast enough is a total canard. 99% of computer buyers don’t care the die size of the CPU they run. They want it to run fast, secure, and trouble free — and they all have access to a wall socket if they are pro users who need high performance. So while Intel haters wag their fingers and chastize Intel for not delivering 10nm Cannon Lake chips on their preferred schedule, nobody else is offering higher performance chips of any size for laptops and desktops. On any architecture.
Instead of waiting 4, 5, or 6 years between updates, Apple could have implemented Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, or Whisky Lake chips in new Macs, not to mention a thousand other non-CPU improvements (NVIDIA GPUs, anyone?????) Instead Apple sat on its fat non-innovative ass and has let all its hardware get stale. Poorly designed chassis are reused repeatedly despite known limitations. When Apple finally does step forward with an update, it pushes fashion over performance, leading to thermal throttling, junk keyboards, and unergonomic designs. Apple prices itself out of the market and then complains it can only capture 10% of the market because the same supplier every other leading computer maker uses isn’t building enough chips? Bull.
By the way, last December Intel announced Sunny Cove, which is a 3D chipmaking technology that nobody else has. Turns out while ARM fanboys can only gloat about linear die size, Intel was playing the long game, laying the groundwork for an entirely new architecture that will arrive in the forthcoming Ice Lake chips. If Apple was smart, it would have new chassis ready to go with oodles of interior space for future improvements. Instead Apple squished all its laptops AND desktops into uncompetitive designs.
Oh, one more thing: Geekbench multicore scores, while not the end all be all, are highly indicative of what overall performance different computing architecture offer.
Here is the best each platform offers when matching core count (Intel chips as you should know can offer 56+ cores):
weak: iPad Pro 12.9″, A12X chip, 8 cores: 17937
strong until thermal throttling: iMac Intel Core i9-9900K @ 3.6 GHz, 8 cores: 48009
Apple doesn’t have an 8-core workstation laptop but its top dog laptop scores thus:
pretty good: MacBook Pro 15″ 2018, Intel Core i9-8950HK @ 2.9 GHz, 6 cores: 22619
better direct laptop comparison: Dell Precision 5530, Intel Core i9-8950HK, 6 cores: 27126
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=precision+5530&sort=multicore_score
So neither is ARM up to Intel standards, nor is Apple able to get the most performance out of the Intel chips it uses.
Tell us again why ARM chips are supposedly superior for high power computing users?
I didn’t read the whole thing, just skipped down to the bottom of your post to see what your point was and… my post doesn’t mention anything about ARM. If you REALLY wanted to paraphrase, a good alternate read would be that Intel’s inability to ship Cannon Lake processors in 2016, 2017, 2018 and, as of yet, 2019 is MORE damaging to Apple than any other vendor. My post didn’t mention ARM OR superiority OR Pro users… Are you feeling ok?
Well there is no point in communicating if your style is to ignore the data that is presented to you.
In short: your posts almost always claim that Desktops are dead, ARM is the only future.
You are, as always, 100% wrong.
Apparently not ALWAYS, because this post, the one before it in this thread, AND the one before are about Intel’s inability to ship Cannon Lake.
Normally I find anything “Wrong Again” writes to be disgusting dribble. But I have to admit, I didn’t find anything wrong with his first post this time.
These essay-length “comments” are appropriate for YOUR OWN BLOG. Vomiting words all over a thread is a great way to have your sperg out skipped over.
Mike, excellent post.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the ONLY thing that can be holding up new Macs (including the Mac Pro) is an architecture change. There’s no other logical explanation.
I think that when it finally comes out, it’s going to be a radical beast of many A12X (or whatever moniker) of Apple-designed ARM chips strung together in some clever way that is the fastest thing out there. I’m no engineer, don’t know how that all works fundamentally. But I think it’s going to happen.
Def a possibility If so, it could be a paradym shift in desktop computing providing a leap in processing power and potential of merged OS environment. They key will he transition / migration management for legacy software. If anyone can do it, Apple can. Or at least, the ‘old’ Apple
And there you have it. Pipeline Timmy standing out front with……………… MORE EXCUSES.
“REAL ARTISTS SHIP”
We are well past applying some intellectual honesty to the Pipline Timmy situation.
It’s time for him to go.
The trouble with all these ARM-based Macs, regardless of how fast they are, is they will not be compatible with the Intel-based software without emulation which will kill the speed. They will be pretty toys that nobody will buy.
I disagree. People will eat them up. They will be very fast (even in emulation mode), 100% cross compatible with iOS, super secure and private with a ground-up (not tacked-on) curated App Store like iOS. iPads will be given mouse control and better file management and in this way, Apple will achieve what MS could never get quite right in their effort to have one OS rule all devices in the platform.
Apple probably know how many Mac users need the windows compatibility. We know that a lot of consumers buy Macs over PC and most of those do not need or use windows.
On the business side, the need for compatibility will be greater, especially those in web and game design.
Any transition to an ARMs based Mac will include an interim period where both model types are available. As with the PPC / Intel change, Apple had both types of the Mac OS available and provide system emulators to allow PPC program to run for years.
I,for one, would be interested how speedy an ARM based Mac would be. Would it also enable Apple to be more competitve on price at the low end. Although unlikely, it would like Apple to come out with a low end ARMs Macbook that demonstrated the capabilities with reduced cost. Shave 100-200 bucks of the price and the competition will be heavily pressured in that market. Apple’s MO is to release new tech at the high end which I get. Still this will create a schism for those users who are more likely to need window compatibility.
It isn’t just Windows compatibility. All the existing Mac software is Intel-only as well, and would have to be run using emulation until the developer (whether Apple, third-party, or in-house) could cross-compile a new version and debug the inevitable hardware dependencies. The new processors would need to be quite a bit faster than the old ones in order to run the old software at a decent speed.
Don’t care Mac user since 1999, and a Amiga user before that, Windows like Windows phone still sucks.
That is…one ARCHITECTURE to rule all devices on the platform.
The first stage is denial.
The second stage is anger.
…
yeah, it’s Intel – that’s why nobody else is shipping updated laptops…oh, hold on…
Exactly!
If they deviated from the “The next product must always be thinner” rule they seem to be stuck on, they could have accommodated other processors AND ports people are asking for in a slightly thicker housing.
Apple should use newer processors. Intel probably slowed down or totally stopped making obsolete processors when they divert their resources to make newer faster and more capable processors.
Just like it’s my fault when my software goes all to crap every time Apple rolls out an update, and I haven’t updated (if there is an update available yet) my software….or hardware.
Even in the Timmy era nothing compares to Wincrap. went it comes to rolling out software. Make work for IT department.
You and Wrong Again’s broken record is tiresome. You can’t demonstrate any current Mac that can outperform an equivalently priced Wintel box. And you know very well that ARM processors aren’t even in the same league as x86-64 chipsets by practically any performance measure. But that doesn’t stop your haterade……
When Apple bought PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Anobit, and started to design mobile chips for Apple smartphones the Intel-Motorola-Qualcomm Geeks were up in arms, it will happen it is just a matter of when….Motorola, IBM and now Intel soon to be gone……
It’s not MY broken record, it’s Intel’s. 🙂 2016, 2017, 2018 and now 2019, it speaks for itself! If there was a Cannon Lake based Windows laptop, I’m fairly certain it would beat a similarly configured macOS Cannon Lake based laptop. Unfortunately, I’m unable to buy the systems and run that test NOT because I don’t have the money to buy the systems… care to guess why I can’t speed test a Cannon Lake Windows system versus a Cannon Lake macOS system?
Apple never shipped anything late of their own accord, have they?
FACT: nobody makes more powerful laptop and desktop chips than Intel. If you find one, be sure to tell us all about it. I posted Geekbench scores above to show you how far ARM was behind x86-64 chips, and how far behind Apple’s thermally constrained flagship MBP was behind equivalent chip laptops, but Wrong couldn’t be bothered reading it.
Next thought: what makes you think ARM chip foundries have the spare capacity to make Mac chipsets, which will require at least about double to cores of what iOS devices do today in order to run all the background emulation and processing to execute current Mac software? Pooof went your imaginary cost and schedule savings, now you’ve got iOS product delays too.
Intel hasn’t shipped their mobile 10nm high performance CPU, yet. So, there’s nothing for them to slow down on 🙂 They ARE still shipping obsolete 14nm CPU’s though. Every mobile processor shipped today is based on 2016 or before tech. Because they just can’t do mobile well.
They are 2 years late? TSMC was behind but they are not NOW!
Intel are three years late and counting. They feel they’ve finally nailed it this time, but I don’t think they are going to have nearly enough quantity for everyone. AMD still has another year or two to continue making gains on Intel.
I am a content creator for major brands and use my macs for music you hear on radio, movies you see on theaters, graphics you see in magazines/billboards and many tv commercials. ALL my friends in Chicago, Nashville, LA and NY are REALLY frustrated with the neglect Apple has given the pro community. Even MANY manufactures in audio/video/graphics are pissed off at Apple. For a company the size of Apple to not build a new fresh device for over 6 years (and not even offer a pro display) is REALLY unacceptable. IF anyone with a brain was THINKING, they would have had 6 updates to that trash can by now and the chips would be able to be swapped out easily. High-end pro users will spend the money to update their computers yearly if it saves us time. Think of ANY 6 year span under Steve Jobs, and compare the lack of vision/hardware under Tim Cook. When you have BILLIONS of dollars, a good smart leader would diversify the staff to focus timelines for R&D, manufacturing, marketing and distribution to meet the demand. Keeping the MacPro/Display cycle fresh would account for about 1% of total gross cost to Apple, yet would bring in a much larger percentage in the pie-chart of revenue. It also would increase credibility with high-end users who create much of the content the world sees and buys.
“REALLY frustrated with the neglect Apple has given the pro community.”
Yet, they continue to use macOS? All the people I helped get off of macOS 3 years into the Mac Pro situation are all better off and are no longer frustrated with what Apple’s doing. In my opinion, anyone that’s frustrated but not doing anything about it must just like being frustrated. This IS hindsight, and there was a time when I was thinking that Apple might step up and all these folks would be asking me how they can get back on macOS but fortunately/unfortunately Apple continued to fail in this area 😛
“IF anyone with a brain was THINKING”
They’d have stopped using macOS a looooong time ago. Maybe 1 year, two years… possibly 3 years. BUT after six years, is it still really on Apple? They’ve been fairly consistent about their lack of pro attention.
“bring in a much larger percentage in the pie-chart”
No, a billion times no. MacPro/Displays would go to a percent of a percent of the Mac buying public. Any increase there wouldn’t even amount to a 1% increase in the revenue pie chart. (Assuming revenue of 93 billion, 1% of that would be 930,000,000. Display tech revenue in all of 2018 was just over 3 million. Soooo, yeah. The truth is the vast majority of Macs in use today are seriously overpowered for their users.
I have been contemplating a new MBP but am NOT going to buy one until they fix the keyboards. And if these new MBPs are paper thin, that may also be a deal killer for me.