What is most surprising here is that Apple's share growth is worse than other PC makers. It seemed like Apple was going to continue to gain market share in PCs with Apple Silicon effortlessly. But this didn't happen in Q1.
I'm going to speculate why:
* People are going back to buying cheaper laptops due to the economy, inflation, and exchange rates. Apple suffers in this environment because they're generally less flexible when it comes to dropping prices.
* M2 was late by ~8 months (assuming they want to release a new gen every year).
* M2 Pro/Max, consequentially, was also late by 4 months.
* M2's performance increases did not knock it out of the park. No Ray Tracing support. No drastic increase in ST. Still using a node in 5nm family.
* Ideally, we should be on M3 right now.
* M1, Pro, Max were so good that people will wait for M3 or M4 to upgrade again. I'm in this camp.
* Still no MacBook SE to capture the value Walmart/Costco Windows laptop buyers
* Still no 15" Macbook Air, which will very likely become the #1 selling Mac when it's released
* RAM and SSD are expensive upgrades and 8/256 as the baseline is finally not enough.
The most frustrating thing about following Apple Silicon over the last 2 years is just how passive Apple's strategy is. Hopefully, Apple is learning a lesson here and will be more aggressive going forward. No more delays. No more holding back. Less stingy on RAM and SSD.
> M2's performance increases did not knock it out of the park.
I can't understand where people got their idea that M2 had to absolutely be an OMG moment. That's literally what Apple has been doing since forever: release a major upgrade, iterate on it for a few years, repeat.
> Ideally, we should be on M3 right now.
M1 was released in November 2020, less than three years ago. How the hell are we supposed to be on M3 now?
> I can't understand where people got their idea that M2 had to absolutely be an OMG moment. That's literally what Apple has been doing since forever: release a major upgrade, iterate on it for a few years, repeat.
Maybe not so much that people were expected to get their socks knocked off once again but mostly that M1 Max/Pro are more than enough for years to come for the majority of the people that got them.
Heck, I have a M1Air and a M1Max16. I can't even max it out with my current usage. Hard to justify the slight bump for the M2 given the cost in the EU. Even if M3 would double the performance and battery life would still be a hard sell.
the market for M2/3 chip machines is not those with M1s but those people who are still on the Intel machines. People don't usually replace their MacBooks annually. Most people keep them for several years.
>M1 was released in November 2020, less than three years ago. How the hell are we supposed to be on M3 now?
Marketing. Consider why Chrome and Firefox increase their major version number every release for the smallest change now.
When Intel and AMD are both bumping up their version numbers every year or two, Apple sitting on M1 for three years looks out of fashion to the simpler people.
This isn't to say Apple (nor Intel and AMD for that matter) should release new CPUs or bump the number up anyway every year, but human psychology is undeniable.
They are major version numbers, for example the latest Firefox is v111.0.1 and Chromium is v114.0.5708.0.
Yes, the most miniscule of minor changes is reflected with lower-level version numbers, but the major version number still gets bumped up for next to no reason other than marketing.
>I can't understand where people got their idea that M2 had to absolutely be an OMG moment. That's literally what Apple has been doing since forever: release a major upgrade, iterate on it for a few years, repeat.
That's right. That's part of the reason why sales fell so drastically.
>M1 was released in November 2020, less than three years ago. How the hell are we supposed to be on M3 now?
There is a lot of evidence that Apple wants to release a new M series every year. There were many reputable reports that suggests M2 was ready long before the M2 Air design was ready to go. Another piece of evidence is that the video files for the M2 Pro/Max suggests that they were ready as soon as October 2022. They were delayed by 4 months.
Ideally, the timeline should have been:
M1: Fall 2020 (uses A14 from iPhone 12)
M2: Fall 2021 (uses A15 from iPhone 13)
M3: Fall 2022 (probably would have used A16 from iPhone 14 but with delays to M2 and delays to TSMC's 3nm, it'll likely skip the A16 and go straight to A17 from iPhone 15).
The above timeline did not happen for various reasons including supply chain bottlenecks, delays to the M2 Air redesign, and 3nm delay from TSMC.
* An Apple executive said recently that they want to release a huge upgrade every year. They don't want to hold back.[0]
* M1 used A14. M2 used A15 (even though A16 was already out). This seems to suggest that Apple wants to make use of every A series iteration. The A series gets a new gen every year.
* It seems to make sense business-wise that the base M will at least get upgraded once a year. It isn't too much more effort since the iPhone funds most of the development. The base M chip goes into the following: Macbook Air 13", Macbook Air 15"(expected to come out in a few months), iPad Pro 13", iPad Pro 11", iMac, Mac Mini, iPad Air. It's valuable to update these devices once a year.
* We weren't in "normal" years. Covid, supply chain issues, work from home, gigantic demand followed by demand collapse likely contributed to delays.
> * M1, Pro, Max were so good that people will wait for M3 or M4 to upgrade again. I'm in this camp.
This is me. I was dominating a 13" mbp m1 base model in startup mode for almost two years. I only upgraded to a 16" mbp m1 base model for the larger screen and higher refresh rate. The moment they release m3 or m4 or whatever without the display notch and even more improvements, I'll upgrade.
I'm fully expecting both my 13" and 16" m1 machines to still be almost as productive as I need them to be in a couple years...but this alien technology deserves to be purchased.
> The most frustrating thing about following Apple Silicon over the last 2 years is just how passive Apple's strategy is.
Apple had problems but not much they could do. There were "delays" at TSMC. There was talent loss e.g. with some members moving to Nuvia (now acquired by Qualcomm).
M2 ideally could have been much better but it was out of their hands.
Genuinely interested why you expected an iterative change (M1 to M2) to be as drastic as an architecture change (Intel to Apple Silicon)?
I have an M1 Max MBP and an M2 Air - both machines are great, I can’t tell the difference between the chips on short work loads but the M2 Air form factor is the best Mac I’ve had (15 year Mac user so I’ve got a few to compare it to)
I wasn't expecting Apple to follow an Intel tick-tock model, they had ground to makeup against Intel for stagnating for so long. M2 is an incremental improvement, and not by much. Given how small it was, they should have phased out M1 and just silently-ish slipped M2 into the stream. Push the remaining M1s into ipads and low end macbook airs.
They could have pulled off another step function, widening the path to main memory, more cache, more efficiency cores, doubled the width to the SSDs. There is about 18 months of time between front end design that goes into the next version. The chip design is cut off before everything you want to go in, goes in. That makes it into V2 before V1 has even shipped. It isn't until V3 that one gets to incorporate changes from the field into the next chip design.
Basically, I was hopeful that Apple chip dev team was going to go as hard as possible to gain distance against the competition, but they pulled the MBA maximum market extraction play but the market softened and the perf increase wasn't there. They bet wrong.
* An Apple executive said recently that they want to release a huge upgrade every year. They don't want to hold back.[0]
* M1 used A14. M2 used A15 (even though A16 was already out). This seems to suggest that Apple wants to make use of every A series iteration. The A series gets a new gen every year.
* It seems to make sense business-wise that the base M will at least get upgraded once a year. It isn't too much more effort since the iPhone funds most of the development. The base M chip goes into the following: Macbook Air 13", Macbook Air 15"(expected to come out in a few months), iPad Pro 13", iPad Pro 11", iMac, Mac Mini, iPad Air. It's valuable to update these devices once a year.
* We weren't in "normal" years. Covid, supply chain issues, work from home, gigantic demand followed by demand collapse like contributed to delays.
I'd be surprised if annual releases were a high priority given the lower volume vs iPhone and the lack of annual release cadence expectations for macs in general. 16-18 month cadence is the norm right now - just look at Nvidia for example.
I'm going to speculate why:
* People are going back to buying cheaper laptops due to the economy, inflation, and exchange rates. Apple suffers in this environment because they're generally less flexible when it comes to dropping prices.
* M2 was late by ~8 months (assuming they want to release a new gen every year).
* M2 Pro/Max, consequentially, was also late by 4 months.
* M2's performance increases did not knock it out of the park. No Ray Tracing support. No drastic increase in ST. Still using a node in 5nm family.
* Ideally, we should be on M3 right now.
* M1, Pro, Max were so good that people will wait for M3 or M4 to upgrade again. I'm in this camp.
* Still no MacBook SE to capture the value Walmart/Costco Windows laptop buyers
* Still no 15" Macbook Air, which will very likely become the #1 selling Mac when it's released
* RAM and SSD are expensive upgrades and 8/256 as the baseline is finally not enough.
The most frustrating thing about following Apple Silicon over the last 2 years is just how passive Apple's strategy is. Hopefully, Apple is learning a lesson here and will be more aggressive going forward. No more delays. No more holding back. Less stingy on RAM and SSD.