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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

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AceJohnny2

Cook's Apple got you:

- Apple Watch

- Airpods (& Pro) & Beats

- Apple Silicon

- Vision Pro

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No, Apple had been doing their own silicon (presumably you mean for their phones) while Jobs was still CEO, and he bought PA Semi in 2008 which put them on the path to do their own CPU cores (iPhone 5 with Swift CPU was released the year after he died so he'd obviously seen the core design process through from the beginning to likely initial tape-out or very close to).

Where do you draw the line? Apple Silicon as a high powered replacement for Intel as a concept was all under Cook's tenure, from initial investigations to product ship. By your logic where would we stop the attribution?

Draw the line for Apple silicon? With Jobs. I'm not sure what was unclear about my previous post. Jobs introduced Apple silicon. That's my logic. Jobs began the SoC design for iPhones and he began the high performance CPU initiative with the purchase of PA Semi. That's my logic.

Putting their CPUs in laptops wasn't an incredible initiative from Cook either, it was basically an inevitability that mobile class cores would eventually intercept high end CPUs for performance after Dennard scaling ended, and it was widely predicted by many Apple watchers even before their own core came out, but particularly after the first ones came out.

Some thought it would be sooner, some later. If Intel hadn't shat the bed for a decade, and/or if the PA Semi team and subsequent Apple CPU team turned out to be in the Samsung or Annapurna tier, then it might have taken many more years, or they might have switched over to an ARM Ltd core IP. But the trajectory for how things turned out was set in motion squarely by Jobs. Who brought up the CPU group and introduced the first high performance Apple CPU silicon.

Yes and even before that they had PowerPC. The only reason that even stopped is because R&D was done by Motorola and IBM and they ended up going in other directions which made working for Apple has a sole client not much of good deal.

If Apple had enough money back then to bankroll full R&D on both the chip design and the foundry, they would have never gone with Intel in the first place. Intel won because of massive volume PC sales got them with a similar amount of money thrown into PowerPC it would probably stayed competitive.

Apple Silicon share many similarities in design philosophy with PowerPC and Apple had invested in ARM way before Cook was even considered as a CEO replacement.

The best thing we can say about Cook is that he managed to not fuck it up. In practice he is just a greedy snake that is very good at sucking every last drop of profit of anything Apple manages to create. He has very little positive influence on the vision and roadmap side of things.

The fact that people keep praising Cook is just reflection of the times, where money in itself has become a goal and the sole worthwhile target.

Cook was COO through all of that too. He’s been at Apple since 1998.

Okay but the context was about things that were done under each CEO. Apple's Cook did a bunch of things, and he had other COO under him too.

"Put them on the path" is nothing compared to the plan and decision to switch CPUs. Any CPU family switch is a giant bet with massive implementations issues. Exactly like the other CPU family switches were massive bets (although they did prepare the following ones - for sure). PA Semi was only a tiny step in that direction. Credit to Cook then.

This is moving the goalposts to somewhere... which also appears to be not Cook. Apple came out with Apple silicon and switched to Apple CPU cores under Jobs.

Jobs oversaw Apple silicon, Jobs switched to using Apple CPU cores.

Laptop and desktops switch to ARM CPUs in 2020 (Cook)?

Previous switches were to Intel around 2006 (Jobs), with last one in 2023 (Cook). And to PowerPC around 1994 to 2006 (Jobs)?

Seems to me the 2020 switch went mostly seamlessly thanks to the work done with the earlier switch to Intel.

Phones and iPads started with ARM and are still ARM to this day.

We're talking about two different things. OP was not talking about ARM ISA, but Apple silicon. Mobile switched to Apple silicon under Jobs with iPhone 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_silicon. Apple designed cores were added later, also under Jobs. Apple silicon, Apple cores => Jobs.

Moving laptops to ARM ISA with Apple cores can be credited to Cook, but it was not a big move or a risky step like standing up their own CPU design team was. From the release of Swift and onwards, all the punters were speculating about when (not if) it would happen, and you could really plot a performance line for Apple vs Intel/AMD CPUs and make a pretty educated guess when it would happen.

And yes, the powerpc and x86 switches gave them a lot of experience doing the ARM switch, with fast emulation, fat binaries, etc., and others like IBM had implemented TSO modes in weakly ordered CPUs and others like Transmeta had special instructions for x86 flags emulation. It wasn't really a huge technical gamble beyond what Cook inherited to move to ARM.

If the Vision Pro were $1000 I'd buy it without hesitation.

At $1500 I'd eventually talk myself into it.

At $3500 I'm just waiting.

It's a product category that will be really interesting in ten years (no sarcasm), when the hardware actually catches up in usability to the concept.

Vision Pro is underrated. The issue is that it’s not at a stage where it can go mainstream but the tech is insane. Apple silicon is huge and the only reason I am considering a macbook pro and waiting for the M5 max/pro series.

I think people are underestimating cook because none of these replaced the iPhone and because of the significant degradation in Apple software.

Apple also invested heavily into EV. Though not succeeded, they at least put money into new areas.

Is it worth mentioning that there are almost countless Chinese EV brands nowadays? I wonder if Apple was really trying. I’m sure it’s difficult, of course, but it seems like every week there’s a new car manufacturer. To quote Clarkson ‘how hard could it be’ ;)

Maybe they tried and didn’t find that they could be competitive with the hundreds of Chinese EV producers. The market was crowded, and they didn’t see what special value they could add? I mean, it’s already cliche that xiaomi decides to release one, but they released a heat pump as well, their stores in the mall are pretty confusing.

Interestingly enough if apple really wanted they could acquihire one of the currrent EV brands and do a beats/siri on it. Theres probably a lot of churn currently before the field stabilises , and probably the entry point for a new entrant would be currently closing.

What value could apple add though? They would just be diluting their brand. Even the beats acquisition is confusing.

Yeah, even the industrial design angle seems a bit on the wane.Most likely move to open a new product lineand integrate it into the apple ecosystem. At this point they havent had any new product lines or innovations rather than thinner and custom chip designs , if they want to go that way.Although i think a better fit for them would be one of the humanoid robot firms and apply some of that industrial design they are(were) famous for.

I guess I could go with an apple bot...especially if they partner with someone that really does AI. The Chinese techs however are better positioned to do this, even if a trade war cuts off access to the USA, they still have the rest of the world. One wonders what could have happened if Google didn't get rid of Boston Robotics.

Beats started without Apple. They bought the existing brand.

I read the comment as Cook acquired Beats which, in addition to the hardware, became the basis for Apple Music streaming and growing service revenue.

And it perfected iPad.

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