Sleeepwalking Towards AI
Apple Intelligence, and to a lesser degree Apple Silicon, were the stars of the latest iPhone launch. Apple’s newest features say as much about the state of the AI market as they do about Apple’s products.
Category Archives: Apple
Why is Apple Making a Data Center Chip?
Of course Apple is designing its own AI chips for its data centers. This will give them an end-to-end, cloud-to-edge, AI system that its competitors will not be able to match any time soon.
How Productive Are We?
We looked at revenue and operating income per employee for the big semis companies, and since that was so much fun, we looked at another dozen companies. Broadcom and Apple are in a league of their own. It is good to have a software or licensing business.
Apple M3 and the State of CPUs
Apple’s M3 launch stood out for its focus on how people actually use computers, the lack of AI acronyms and the fact that they launched 3 chips all at once. It is only getting harder to compete with them.
PC CPUs get more interesting
Microsoft is opening up the market for Arm-based laptop CPUs. This is bad news today for Qualcomm, and potentially bad for Intel over the very long term
The Bad Romance of Apple and Qualcomm
Apple’s antipathy towards Qualcomm pre-dates the launch of the iPhone and seems to be deeply ingrained in their culture. Qualcomm would probably be very flexible to normalize the relationship, but has limits to what i can offer, especially around IP.
Will Handheld Gaming become a Thing?
We are going to start hearing a lot more about Handheld Game devices (PC grade graphics in devices smaller than a PC). This will not supplant phones of PCs, but could be a good segment for a few companies.
It’s the Software…
Somebody needs to reignite excitement in the software ecosystem for phones. The semis vendors have an opportunity to rejuvenate the industry, but the changes it would require for their organizations likely means someone else will capture the opportunity.
Qualcomm lives to fight another day
Apple has signed up to keep using Qualcomm’s modem. We would never say ‘We told you so’, but this development does not come entirely as a surprise. Building modems is hard.
Our $0.02 on Apple Vision Pro.
The Vision Pro looks like Apple has once again delivered something magical. We have a lot of questions as to how it will work in real life, but our first impression has searching through our couches to come up with a spare $3,500.