Why Are Apple and Microsoft Using Such Old Processors in Their New Computers? | Hacker News Reader

Why Are Apple and Microsoft Using Such Old Processors in Their New Computers?

gizmodo.com

55 pointsrobertwalsh027 comments

What kind of bizarre thinking is this? There is surprise that a laptop released at the end of October is not built with a chip released in September?? WTF? Even if the chip is fully 100% slot compatible, neither MS nor Apple would or could take that at face value. The power requirements are different, that alone is cause for a redesign of the board.

The author seems to be living in a fantasy land, it takes time to test, purchase the processors, build the laptops, ship the laptops, and I'm sure I'm missing about 10 other bottlenecks in the process. The Pascal GPU was only released in May, and that is still too soon to have been designed around.

Missing are examples of computers that have shipped in high volume using 1-4 months old components. Missing is some realization that if both MS & Apple are doing the same thing, there's probably a good reason.

Also, I think Microsoft got burned by power management problems with Skylake in Intel's IGP drivers. I don't think they want to take the same chance with Kaby Lake.

The problem is Intel's execution, not Apple or Microsoft. The original retina Macbook Pro launched with Ivy Bridge less than two months after that chip came out. But Intel managed to launch that with a full suite of SKUs. With both Skylake, Intel released the chips in trickles, with ULV parts appearing in August 2015 and Iris Pro parts appearing in May 2016.

CPU's don't show up from thin air. Partners can release compatible boards on day 1 making the official release date kind of irrelevant.

Laptops don't either, it's highly probable the specs were locked down completely for more than 2 months, chances are the components were already purchased and shipped an in-house before Kaby Lake was available, chances are the components were already purchsed and shipped an in-house before Pascal was available. This makes the release date completely relevant, because there simply wasn't enough time to purchase, stock & manufacture using the new CPUs.

I don't know specifics about either Microsoft's or Apple's manufacturing & shipping processes, but I have worked on a product that shipped from Asia, and everything was done, completely done, two months before the product could hit the shelves. Moreover, that two months was the software deadline, the easiest thing to change. The hardware, materials, components, design, that was all done and locked a year before the product shipped.

Intel does not start manufacturing the CPU on release day either. Partners can have access to the 'final' product well before the official release day.

The vast majority of companies don't qualify for this, but MS and Apple are not most companies.

Yes, you're right, Intel has a lead time too. Which means the difference in shelf date between Intel's chips and Apple's laptops is probably roughly representative of the difference in lead time starts too.

No idea, but I would speculate wildly the MacBook has a longer lead time than Intel CPUs do, the laptops being a more consumer product and for various other reasons.

Either way, access != volume, Apple can't ship Intel CPUs until it has them. But, it's clear you understand the issues. And so I assume it is obvious that having a laptop on the shelves with a chip that is less than 2 months old is not even realistic, right? You're not arguing that either company actually could have used Kaby Lake, right?

The author says all the same things in the article - are you sure you disagree with it?

Well yes, but the question posed in the article is stupid. Apple and Microsoft aren't using "such old processors". They are using the previous generation, because that's what was available to them.

Both companies, according to the article, where in fact using the very latest GPUs and CPU on the market, had Intel and Nvidia not released new chips just as Apple and Microsoft where beginning production.

Pretty sure, given the title and the goading, incredulous comments throughout, like "What's up with that?" and "Why?" and "I asked reps from both companies why they’d elected to go with older CPUs and GPUs when the new ones should have been able to slot into their devices with relative ease." and "In the case of Microsoft, it’s frustrating, because that old GPU is significantly slower than the Pascal GPUs available. The gorgeous Surface Studio appears hamstrung as a consequence."

Apple would have received early samples of Intel & nVidia's chips under NDA months before they were publicly announced.

And I'm certain both companies called out here have those samples and have been testing with them. There is a reason they didn't ship with them yet.

Samples don't do anything for high volume manufacturing, and a couple of months simply isn't enough time. You have to remember that the release date for MS and Apple products means those laptops are on the shelf. To get to the shelf, they shipped from Asia, which alone takes weeks. Before that they were manufacturing and stocking, before that they were testing like crazy and hotfixing everything they found for a couple of months, and simultaneously purchasing and shipping the components to the manufacturer. It's easy to see that component lockdown has to happen several months before the product is on the shelves, which means there is literally zero chance Kaby Lake was even a choice.

Yeah, it's enough if Intel said "we can provide 1 million Skylake chips before October, but only 200k Kaby Lake chips by the same date", and Apple doesn't get a choice in that regard.

How does that help Apple or Microsoft to ship a product when the samples aren't available in quantity yet? Should they have waited for the new chips sometime next year. Surely no one would have complained about that delay.

Is this article seriously asking why Apple didn't put a processor that was publicly announced in September in laptops that consumers could buy one month later? How about asking the author why they didn't write this article on the day of the mac event? I get people's disappointment in the new macs, even though I think it's mostly unwarranted, but this is taking it to an extreme.

Its a form of clickbait in that I assumed the article would explain why the lead time has increased continuously since 1985 or so.

Instead there isn't really a story at all.

For utter noobs to modern technology: If the pipeline from daydream to press day is X months and a new widget was released Y months ago then if X > Y you don't see the widget on press day. Don't matter if its a jet plane or a nuclear reactor or a laptop.

When the new skylake hardware came out all the drivers where crap. People with new Surface Pro 4s, Surface Books, Dell XPS 13s, etc... where having all kinds of problems.

All these machines work great now, but I wouldn't want to go through that pain again just for the sake of getting a little more performance (for average use).

Also, I personally get nervous when asked to buy a crap hardware+drivers combo on the promise that the drivers will be fixed later and the hardware's full power will be released... what guarantee do I have that there won't be a fundamental hardware issue that drivers can't hack around?

I've got a machine that has a wireless card with the draft version of the wireless N standard, and presumably some promise that updates could fix it when the real thing came out. The real thing came out, and the card's N support has never worked. Fortunately there's a somewhat-deeply-buried setting for both Linux and Windows that lets you turn it off entirely and have the card degrade into a perfectly-functional b/g card, because once real N networks came out it tries really hard to connect to them. And it almost works. You can get about a megabyte or so over the N network before the connection somehow fails. Then another couple hundred kilobytes about 10 seconds later, and so on. Terrible.

How much more concerned about that I would be if I intended to ship a few million such units out. The "fixed drivers in the future" promise isn't that reliable.

Many have questioned whether or not Apple could have made a MBP with more than 16GB of RAM given Intel's current CPUs. Gruber's discussion with Apple and subsequent analysis was that Intel don't have a part that they can use (e.g. one that supports 32GB of RAM), which get into the power and weight envelope they considered acceptable, and that envelope trumps all else at Apple.

Hitting that power and weight envelope is a hell of a lot easier when you make your own CPUs.

(http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/10/31/intel-mbp-ram)

Yeah... so maybe not keep pushing an weight/thinness envelope that few seem to want if they could trade if for performance & battery... at least that's what I'm guessing, maybe the mainstream consumer care about showing mm's of their laptop but I kinda doubt it, at least battery performance seem more important

I don't understand the thinness, especially for the iMac, but I suspect they've researched how people respond to seeing them in person in stores. I definitely want light though, and I highly doubt a large number of users using a laptop will notice the difference between 16GB and 32GB compared to the storage now being twice as fast.

Other complaints include a loss of magsafe? I highly prefer being able to purchase numerous non-proprietary chargers for home, work, car, airplane rather than carrying a brick in my bag. Plus, anyone who wants the power connection to be breakaway can get whatever USB C equivalent there is or will be to ZNAPS[1].

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041610927/znaps-the-9-...

alt. title -- "apple and microsoft choose not to rush products to market" Processors will march forward getting better each year, the tick-tock of intel's design process is a staple in the tech industry, so today's best is tomorrows garbage. but unless the plan was to dump your computer after 6 months usage, this shouldn't bother you much. And instead you get a system that is thoroughly tested and thoughtfully designed. I'd take a well designed 2 year old laptop over a flimsy garbage box with the freshest processor any day.

tldr; Apple and Microsoft want to use the high-powered variants, which have yet to be released, whilst other manufactures are happy to use the low powered variants.

Sticking with the more powerful, but power hungry CPUs is one of the few things that allow the MacBook Pro to keep the "Pro".

High-powered meaning power consumption? Or speed? The new chips use less power, right? Guess I need to read the article. :-)

Edit: the new CPUs use less power, but the new GPUs use... more?

Only 15W Kaby Lake SKUs were released.

I hear the excuse that the chips are too new, but the Razer Stealth has 7th gen Intel. There once was a time when Apple literally purchased the entire world's supply of a part, and everyone else had to wait for more. Apple just doesn't care anymore.

Then the Razer Stealth has a chip that doesn't do Iris Graphics making it inappropriate for the 13" MacBook Pro. And it is a 4.5W or 15W dual core part so it isn't appropriate for the 15" MacBook Pro. Just because one or two 7th gen parts are shipping doesn't mean they all are.

>Then the Razer Stealth has a chip that doesn't do Iris Graphics making it inappropriate for the 13" MacBook Pro.

Razer uses it to drive a 4K 100% Adobe RGB display. Seems appropriate enough to power the lower res Macbook 13" displays.

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