The Mac is resurgent. New Macs coming online are equipped with clearly superior Apple Silicon. Last quarter, sales of Apple Mac computers topped $9 billion, a record for the company, and its U.S. PC market share surged by three percentage points, a significant gain.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Some have pinned the Mac’s recent growth on COVID-19 and the sale of more work-from-home devices. But late last year the company also released its first Macs with processors designed in-house. That shift away from Intel technology is likely an overlooked driver of surging sales.
Personally, I use a 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2019 — the latest available model. It’s Apple’s top-end laptop and uses an Intel chip. Nearly since the beginning of using it, I’ve found that the computer randomly slows down, has a fan that spins like a jet engine, overheats and freezes when running what I don’t consider to be tasks too advanced for a Pro notebook. Those are issues plenty of Mac users have faced, but they’re also commonplace enough in the world of PCs that most people don’t find them strange.
MacDailyNews Take: Here, the constant barrage of fans whirring in our 16-inch Intel-handicapped MacBook Pros is a very noticeable, very unwelcome change. (We can’t wait to get rid of them.) We went from a dual machine per user setup (the smallest, lightest, quietest Mac – the 11-inch MacBook Air, one of our very favorite Macs ever – on the road with iMacs on our desks to the 16-inch MBP for both the road and the desktop. The Intel i9 CPUs just run too hot stuffed inside a thin MacBook Pro. We use Turbo Boost Switcher Pro to disable Turbo Boost and keep the fans running within reason. We can’t wait to see the Apple Silicon 16-inch MacBook Pro!
Contrast that with the experience of using an iPhone or an iPad. I’d bet if you polled 1,000 Apple phone or tablet users, barely any would have serious complaints along the lines of what I’ve experienced with my Mac. And as Mac computers move away from Intel chips and over to the same underlying technology found in the iPad and iPhone, users could see speedier and more reliable systems…
I’m looking forward to the next wave of MacBook Pros with Apple chips. PC makers and Intel, meanwhile, should probably be worried. So far, the early reception of Apple’s chip move has been mostly positive. If Apple nails the performance on its high-end Macs, you might see the company’s Mac revenue (and market share) take even further leaps.
MacDailyNews Take: Behind the scenes, Apple Silicon has already shaken rivals far and wide. They have no good response and they know it.
Apple Silicon is a very good thing. Hopefully it will wake up the one’s that have been coasting. And it will, and that’s a good thing.
It’s a very good thing alright – probably the most significant and brilliant thing they’ve done in the approx. 30 years I’ve used Macs!
I just wish Apple didn’t hate ports and didn’t have such extortionate prices for RAM and SSDs.
If it were user replicable I would totally agree with you, but I will stop just shy.
And yes, I meant replaceable.
You are eminently replaceable, AplpleScumnic
And hopefully the App Store will be soon enough as well.
Apple Silicon will shake up computing but that little deviant Apple Cynicom is as slimy as a used silicone breast implant. A shameless snail who loses his shell, is asked how he feels, whereupon he responds “a bit sluggish”, accidentally telling the truth for the first time, ever.