Nobody tell Intel about Apple Silicon! Or that Apple's sales are increasing while they rest of the industry is in a slump.
Apple's laptop segments have been decreasing massively since their switch to custom chips, actually. Could just be timing, or could be that people don't want the hassle.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/18/kuo-macbook-sales-down-amid-no-new-products/
Probably becuase people bought new Mac’s in 2020 and don’t feel like upgrading.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/10/30/apple-says-strong-mac-sales-led-by-macbook-pro/
They swapped to M series chips, what, two years ago? This says sales this year are down due to no new Macs.
Hassle?
The M1 series was super good and Apple just hasn’t released anything since then worth upgrading to if you have an M1. They’re gaining market share though slowly, which indicates that their sales slump is lower than the market average.
Their selling points for the previous generation are now moot though, so that's why people aren't buying or re-upoing generations:
There's just tons of stuff that makes it unattractive to developers. My particular job requires building multi-arch containers and binaries, and it's just a nightmare to dev and test locally. The argument to this point might be "just use cloud", or "use a remote CI build system", bit the point is you shouldn't have to. I can have a machine that does everything I need it to do with another vendor, with way less hassle, and for way cheaper.
Do you have numbers? Cause I'm thinking at at 8.6% worldwide, it's not really a big chunk of the pie. Especially as the article states, it's declining compared to the year before.
The article you linked pretty much sums it up.
Apple’s Mac market share increased to 8.6%, reporting year-over-year shipment growth of 10.3%, the only major manufacturer to do so.
The year-over-year Mac shipment growth comes even as the broader market and competitors notch sharp declines in shipments, and as the Intel transition wraps up.
Lenovo, HQ, Dell and Acer all had year-over-year drops in shipments, according to IDC data.
Of course intel would be the last company to admit x86 is dying. It just doesn't make sense to keep doubling down on it anymore, Apple has proven ARM is more power efficient and in many cases more powerful than x86. I wanted to buy a new laptop this year but it makes no sense to do so considering Windows ARM machines are right around the corner and will triple battery life and increase performance.
Intel is a licensed ARM manufacturer. They’re just doing PR but are capable of playing both sides.
This seems to be doggedly persistent rumor. Apple's M chips are better due to better engineering and vertical integration.
There is no inherent benefit to the underlying isa
Intel is finally innovating because of increased pressure. Don't let the Pat Gelsinger's calm tone fool you, he knows exactly what the competition is bringing. Apple has proven what Linux users have known for a few years, the CPU architecture is not as directly tied to the software as it once was. It doesn't matter if it's x86, ARM, or RISC-V. As long as we have native builds (or a powerful compatibility layer) it's going to be business as usual.
the CPU architecture is not as directly tied to the software as it once was
Yeah it used to be that emulating anything all would be slow as balls. These days, as long as you have a native browser you're halfway there, then 90% of native software will emulate without the user noticing since it doesn't need much power at all, and you just need to entice stuff that really needs power (Photoshop etc), half of which is already ARM-ready since it supports Macs.
The big wrench in switching to ARM will be games. Game developers are very stubborn, see how all games stopped working on Mac when Apple dropped 32-bit support, even though no Macs have been 32-bit for a decade.
The game support was pretty much crap even before then and a lot of the blame lies on Apple.
Let’s file this in the cabinet of company quotes that come back to haunt them
Blockbuster also didn't think Netflix would make a dent in the entertainment industry. Guess where they are now? 😂
Even AMD showed just how power hungry and thermal inefficient intel generally is
As Arm develops more every year, laptop OEMs will eventually switch just because of the insane power and thermal benefit.
I hope RISC-V gets its chance to shine too
Current gen AMD laptop CPUs rival apple silicon in performance and power consumption on mobile. x86 is nowhere near as close to dying as people think.
Aye exactly, Apple's marketing, which is often basically lying, has a lot to answer for in the prevelence of this idea. They'd have you believe that they're making chips with 14 billion percent more performance per watt and class beating performance. Whereas in reality they're very much going toe to toe with AMD and other high end ARM chip vendors
No laptop manufacturers would switch to arm until a good x86 compatibility comes along. People would make huge fuss if they can't use their favorite apps or if those apps don't run decently
RISCV is going to be huge, but it will take at least another decade for performance version to catch up with Intel and ARM. Hopefully by that time we know how to deal with architecture changes in consumer gear because of the ARM switch and can just painlessly move over.
Intel is doing all the things dying companies do.
I hope I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.
Underestimating the competition is often a path to failure
Will Intel exist in 2026? NVIDIA and AMD are making ARM chips for 2025, China is investing heavily in RISC-V, and AMD already released a CPU that rivals Apple's M2 which is x86. Who knows how things will turn out once they release an ARM chip.
Things are shaping up to become an NVIDIA vs AMD arms race with some Chinese company becoming a dark horse and announcing a RISC-V chip in 2-3 years.
There was a company that announced a major technological advancement in chip fabrication in the US, but I can't remember who or what it was. My maggot brain thinks something with light-based chips or something? I dunno... that might also be something to look out for
Edit: it was intel: Intel Demos 8-Core, 528-Thread PIUMA Chip with 1 TB/s Silicon Photonics
It will take at least another 10 years to get a majority of the market off of x86 with the 20+ years of legacy software bound to it. Not to mention all of the current gen x86 CPUs that will still be usable 10 years from now.
Honestly, we just need some sort of compatibility layer. Direct porting isn't completely required yet.
You don't really need the majority of the market to have moved before things start to get tricky for Intel. They're a very much non-diversified company; the entire house is bet on x86. They've only just started dabbling in discrete GPUs, despite having made integrated GPU SOCs for years. Other than a bit of contract fabbing, almost every penny they make is from x86.
If ARM starts to make inroads into the laptop/desktop space and RISC-V starts to take a chunk of the server market, the bottom could fall out of Intel's business model fast.
Posturing. It's already obvious that Arm is kicking ass. It may not take over, but it's more than made a dent.
And if it won't be ARM, it might be RISC-V
A brief history lesson relating to Intel and ARM.... Intel made ARM processors. They were not great. Of course, this was many many years ago, but even compared to others of the same from the same generation and year range, they were kind of poo.
The product was Intel Xscale. Manufactured starting in 2002, and only lasted about 3-4 years before being dropped. Right before there was a big smartphone boom. The processors found their way into the smartphone predecessor, the PDA. Notably, I purchased one device with this type of processor right before the whole thing collapsed.... A Dell Axiom x51v. It ran Windows Mobile, which later turned into Microsoft's attempt to compete with the likes of Google and Apple in the smartphone space, and it's obvious how that worked out for them.
Intel is saying this because they have to believe it's true. They've abandoned all ARM development and seem to have no intention of picking it up again. They failed in the ARM space, creating fairly poor versions of the chips that they did produce, and they seem to have no intention of repeating that failure.
Mark my words, Intel will likely go all in on RISC-V if anything. They'll continue to build x86, they have way too much invested in that space and it's one of few that they've actually had significant success in, but when it comes to mobile/RISC, ARM isn't something that they will be picking up again.
So bluntly, this is true... For Intel. They must believe it because they have given themselves no alternative.
As a owner of an ARM laptop: wtf are they smoking?
They already have with Apple M1 Macs
ARM just makes sense for portable devices for obvious reasons, x86 isn't dying though. For the average person who needs a laptop to do some professional-managerial work ARM is perfect.
whatever the new architecture ends up being, at some point we will see x86 relegated to a daughter board in the machine while we transition, or x86 will live in a datacenter and you'll buy time on a "cloud pc" like what microsoft will already sell you in azure
Ah yes, the “the weather is clear now” argument for not putting up an umbrella because you fear you’re going to get wet if you’re wrong is peak copium.
See how well that worked for Sears, Blockbuster, Dial-Up providers, TV… etc.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger doesn't seem worried about it yet, as he said on the company's most recent earnings call (via Seeking Alpha).
"Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally, they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business," said Gelsinger.
Ideally, Arm-based PCs promise performance on par with x86 chips from Intel and AMD, but with dramatically better power efficiency that allows for long-lasting battery life and fanless PC designs.
Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon chip for PCs, the 8cx Gen 3 (also called the Microsoft SQ3), appears in two consumer Windows devices.
Even if Gelsinger is wrong, he's trying to spin the rise of Arm PCs as a potentially positive thing, saying that Intel would be happy to manufacture these chips for its competitors.
Right now, TSMC has an effective monopoly on cutting-edge chip manufacturing, making high-end silicon for Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and (tellingly) Intel itself.
The original article contains 521 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Non x86 has been tried at least twice before on windows and failed. While this is certainly the best attempt yet, there is no guarantee of success. Sure would be nice however to get more competition.
The main difference is that Alpha and Itanium came from the high end, where they struggled with low quantities, horrible yields and poor economies of scale.
ARM comes in from the low end, and suddenly the shoe is the other foot. There are more ARM processors in use right now than the number of x86 processors that were ever made in the entire history of computing. They are cheap, they are power efficient, they are everything the market screams for.
The writing is on the wall if Intel doesn’t get its ass in gear and gets substantially better very quickly. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but best case they will remain the king of a shrinking, increasingly irrelevant market until they are acquired.
1 - laptops usually ship windows out of the box 2 - windows ARM has some trouble due to partnerships 3 - not all apps will have equal parity between older arch to ARMs
Changes are bound to happen. They don’t want to pay for the ARMs fees probably. And if they don’t bring something at Apple Silicon level, it would be an issue to intel: Intel giant producer of CPUs Apple new to laptop/desktop grade cpu designs Kinda shameful
People are going to start to wonder what they have all the Windows OS for when all they do is run a browser. If someone makes a less hassle Linux distro...that runs well on Arm... Well we could finally have some advancement in mobile computing. ChromeOS was almost it but Google made it all cloud and Google only.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
