Unlikely - being able to have full control of your roadmap is a huge strategic advantage. Profits and revenue are nice, but if Apple was interested in that they could dual source x86 from AMD and drive cost down.
You don’t think companies like Oculus are envious of Apple’s flexibility from not having to rely on Qualcomm for their mobile SoCs? It’s not just about profit margin.
> Profits and revenue are nice, but if Apple was interested in that they could dual source x86 from AMD and drive cost down.
If Apple could do that and play it to their advantage, they would have done so a long time ago.
Higher margins and profits are the drivers in the end. Strategic control or not is just a way they use to achieve that. It is a publicly traded company, after all.
> You don’t think companies like Oculus are envious of Apple’s flexibility from not having to rely on Qualcomm for their mobile SoCs?
I doubt Oculus cares given their goal. There are pros and cons of vertically integrating an entire company into one.
Genuine question: unless you run a datacenter with thousands of CPUs, does it really matter?
Apple has zero presence in data centers.
I read people here writing "double the battery life" without any source, but even if that was the case I own a laptop that does 2 hours on battery, I use it to run models on a discrete GPU so power efficiency goes out of the window anyway, it's really not achievable.
The other one can handle average workloads for 12 hours and weights a bit more then a kilo, if it was smaller or lighter it would be a much worse laptop than it is (if it's too light it has no stability and you fight constantly to keep it steady on your desk)
> Genuine question: unless you run a datacenter with thousands of CPUs, does it really matter?
I think it does. Other than double the battery life (which I wouldn't really need, but my Dad who travels a lot would absolutely love), the big thing is thermals (which were specifically mentioned in the keynote).
The biggest constraint on Laptop performance is thermal throttling. That's why gaming laptops have huge bulky fans, and a current MacBook has pretty decent performance for short bursts, but if you are running something (say a compiler) at full throttle for a few minutes then it gets significantly throttled.
Better thermal performance (which is directly proportional to power usage) could well be the key to unlocking close-to-desktop performance in a laptop form-factor. Which could be a pretty big win for the MacBook Pro market.
For customers, both average users and developers it will be a pain with little to be gained.