Let me explain how the tech world works for Intel. It isn’t that they made “a wrong decision” or “were late embracing new materials” or whatever journalists wrote recently under the influence of the Apple marketing machine. Sure, we all would have loved a David and Goliath story, or something truly exciting and revolutionary in the processor world.
But it doesn’t work like that.
The tech world has suffered too much from “move fast and break things”. Apple’s M1 chip is a typical example of just that. They botched a way to make it sort of work well enough on some applications. Including Intel memory ordering or dedicating cache to Javascript however won’t cut it when you are making a serious buying decision. It hardly makes it for a private user if you think about it. I outlaid some of my objections here in a way that anyone that has seen Apple operate before should understand and believe.
There is a reason the planet does not run on Apple machines. And it was never about price. Apple simply hasn’t got the people, resources or will power to collaborate on the global scale that Intel does. Most people don’t even see this work. While Apple toys with its users by changing power adaptors or connectors, Intel has people on committees making sure that the new USB will work on 90 percent of the planet’s computers. Not work “sometimes”, not “work pretty well”, it has to work exactly as expected every time. Apple can shoot off variations of Bluetooth of its own. Their iPhone users will put up with it. Intel can’t and won’t. From space exploration to bank infrastructure, our planet relies on technological solutions that have been developed through long term collaboration. And that is never, ever from Apple.
Serious tech companies work with other serious tech companies to ensure that everything works. I remember putting my ten year old IBM laptop next to a fully loaded Mac G4, both had been bought around the same time. My PC ran everything perfectly, even MS DOS software written decades ago. The Mac was practically useless. Microsoft and Intel are boring. Yeah, sure. If you consider reliably working boring. They don’t just announce that 64bit is the future and throw a switch. They find ways to communicate with tens of thousands of other companies. Through trade shows, committees, working groups and a million other ways. There are many candidate technologies. Most fail. Somehow we need to make sure that the ones that really fit best are the ones that are supported. Yes of course, that delays implementation. And so it should.
Sure, if you have a very small investment recoup window and a very specific task in hand that justifies an M1 laptop, go ahead. If only you depend on the acquisition, play with it all you like. But if you need to bet your life, company or future on the silicon you are about to buy, Apple is definitely not the company to trust.
Apple was, is and will remain a fringe player. Don’t be fooled by the hype. They may make loads of money but it is from their lifestyle products, not their RnD. We all know the ARM moves were through acquisition, nothing internal. Apple doesn’t innovate technologically but in marketing. They bought a chip company and used them for this gimmick now like they have done with many other companies over the years. Look again at the numbers. Whether it is iOS or personal computing, they never get a big piece of the pie. They don’t want to. They can’t handle it. The company recently paid a fine for batterygate and laughed at the amount it came to in total. But that is only because their user base is so small. 90percent of the planet doesn’t care, we don’t use Apple devices and never will.