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Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

Back in the early 2000s Apple was getting crushed because Moto/IBM's PowerPC couldn't keep up with the 880lb gorilla Intel. Who could have predicted even a few years ago Apple would wind up in a similar situation, yet this time for having bet on Intel?

Could the 8 core Mac Pro have been $3650 with a $650 Rome CPU, vs. the reality of $6k with a $3k Xeon?

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> Could the 8 core Mac Pro have been $3650 with a $650 Rome CPU, vs. the reality of $6k with a $3k Xeon?

Huh? That Xeon in the base-spec MP is a $750 part: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/193739/...

I doubt Apple pays anything close to list price for CPUs.

> Could the 8 core Mac Pro have been $3650 with a $650 Rome CPU, vs. the reality of $6k with a $3k Xeon?

The mac pro uses workstation parts (Xeon W) not workstation parts. It doesn't use a $3k xeon for the base configuration (the 8c16t is a $750 chip) and probably wouldn't use an EPYC either (it'd use Threadripper, which hasn't been announced yet for Zen 2 but the 12c24t Zen+ is $650).

>The mac pro uses workstation parts (Xeon W) not workstation parts.

I think you mean *server parts

While not addressing your points specifically, which I agree with, and more for anyone else reading as I assume you already are aware...

It is important to remember that the (relatively) high-core-count Zen2 Ryzen chips do differ from Threadripper by more than just core count.

TR has a lot more PCIe lanes and it's quad channel memory (as opposed to Ryzen's dual channel).

(As someone who buys Apple since 25+ years) Apple pricing has never been cost driven, but value and brand driven.

> but value and brand driven

What value?

Value on a few parameters ( these are relative of course) : - Stability - Security - Ease of use - Looks I’m sure the millions of users have found a combination of these factors valuable

Perceived value? If their customers value their products at $X and value their competitors less, they should pay more for Apple than their competitors. Some of this is subjective (branding, UX, etc), other parts have to do with the value add of combining multiple Apple products into one ecosystem (macOS + iOS is more valuable if you use the shared ecosystem).

Is it worth spending $1-3k on a Mac if you just want to browse the web? Probably not unless you're really into their branding. Is it worth it if you have an iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch and use many of Apple's shared services? Probably, and you get even more value out if it if you use popular software that targets macOS like Adobe products. If you're buying the ecosystem, the price is a lot more justifiable.

Personally, I don't own any Apple devices and I primarily use Linux, so my only one case for macOS is the iOS simulator and XCode so I can build and do basic tests for apps on that platform. And honestly, since that's the only extra value I'd get from them, their hardware seems a bit overpriced (I'm already paying for the developer license and sharing profits, hardware costs and lack of selection are salt in the wound compared to Android).

Economic value = maximum amount a customer is willing to pay for something. It does not matter why. Usually economic value is little higher than market value.

"Apple: Does more, costs less"

Why am I being downvoted for exactly quoting apple marketing from the past?

Because it doesn't apply anymore.

^ said apple have always been like this, which is false as demonstrated by their advertising for what I believe was the OG Mac?

In fairness, they are in a much better situation. They could swap to AMD with no real arch changes but I imagine they also would prefer their own CPUs. The fact of the matter is that these CPUs are built on the same exact process as the A12 by the same fab. I would expect, at the scale they are working, a next Apple ARM cpu could be scaled to Rome core counts and have “close” performance at hilariously lower prices.

That’s not really true. Most of MacOS is optimized for intel processors. Things like branch prediction and media encoding/ deciding are extremely different at a low level on AMD/ Intel, and Apple would need to make an enormous investment to rewrite all their perf specific components for AMD.

isn't most of that stuff already implemented for iOS?

I suspect apple will release comps with amd cpus, but hackintosh with amd is already good to go

They are stuck with intel because of thunderbolt.

actually Asrock release X570 for ryzen2 with PCIE4 and thunderbolt 3 (https://www.anandtech.com/show/14455/asrock-x570-aqua-heavie...).

Now that’s some great news. I want an AMD Apple system now.

The downside is the motherboard is pretty expensive. And I don’t think many people would buy a motherboard more expensive than the cpu on board. ASRock might offer a few more X570 mb with tb3, but I haven’t checked

If it's baked into an iMac / Mac Pro, what proportion of the potential market are actually going to delve that deeply into the components? I'd wager probably single digit %.

It seems they are also coming out with a Thin-ITX form factor motherboard, which up until now has been limited to Intel platforms.

Thunderbolt is an open protocol now. They are not stuck.

Is that true though? As far as I know the Spec has been donated to USB and will be included / published as USB4 by the end of this year.

So until USB4 is out, it is not Open "yet". And even if USB4 is out, there is no guarantee USB won't mess up with only USB4 4x4 that support Thunderbolt 3 40Gbps.

That's my understanding as well, we only have Intel's word at this moment that TB would be open but it's USB4 that'll have the open "TB features" and they will co-exist; not USB4 replacing TB at all.

Here's the Verge article[1] that also speaks to this:

> Although USB 4 will integrate Thunderbolt 3’s features, Intel says that the two standards will coexist. While USB 4 is open, Thunderbolt 3 is not, and Intel requires manufacturers to be certified to use it. It also offers these manufacturers more support with reference designs and technical support. USB 4 might have the same specs, but Intel provides other Thunderbolt 3 services that go beyond the hardware itself.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/24/15685096/intel-thunderbol...

Intel is known for aggressive licensing terms with their business partners, so I'm sure Apple can't do it anytime soon.

I doubt that, think of the amount of r&d they pour into arm for mobile. ARM will be their next platform for Macs.

If apple complete the switch to arm I guess the hackintosh will go into hiatus for a long time. But the recent release of Mac Pro might delay the change for sometime. However this also depends on whether the t2 chip will be forced on in later os

Probably correct but making mobile CPUs is still a level below making the monsters our desktops are blessed with(Think of all the different SIMD etc. extensions the average Intel CPU) has these days

Virtualization support as well.

Practically all mobile chips support virtualization. In fact, Qualcomm always runs your OS (on both Android phones and Windows laptops) under its own tiny hypervisor.

> Think of all the different SIMD etc. extensions the average Intel CPU

Most programmers don't care whether a CPU has AVX512 support. Most programmers will use a library or an OS service that'll abstract that away and pick a certain code path appropriate to the running CPU.

I don't think a human being can get a full understanding of a modern x86 without major brain surgery that is not yet available.

(sidenote- I extremely appreciated the 880 pound gorilla joke)

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