Apple – Ultra expensive.

Apple smacks Intel, AMD and Nvidia across the chops.

• Apple held its “peek performance” event where the star of the show was a Mac Mini on steroids with a hefty price tag.
• There is not a replacement for the Mac Pro as Apple stated that there is still one more to come.
• Once again, Apple leaves Intel, AMD and to some degree Nvidia, with some catching up to do.
  • Mac Studio
    • The big news here is not the device but the silicon that powers it.
    • The latest addition to the M1 lineup is the unimaginatively named M1 Ultra.
    • This is effectively two M1 Max chips fused together with a 2.5 Terabits per second interconnect between the two.
    • This is fast enough for the two chips to effectively behave as if it was just one leading to some impressive figures.
    • The only device that will contain this chip is the new Mac Studio which looks like a Mac Mini but about twice as thick.
    • Most of the footprint of this device is for fans and cooling revealing just how small the electronics have become.
    • This comes with a new 27” monitor which is optimised for video calls with a much-improved camera, microphone and speaker array.
    • Apple took the opportunity to take a swipe at both Intel and Nvidia calling out how much better its performance was and also how much less power the device consumes.
    • Most of the swiping was done at Intel and AMD but Apple was also keen to point out that its onboard graphics delivers the same performance as Nvidia’s RTX 3990 but consumes 200 watts less power.
    • However, this does not come cheap with the Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra starting at $3,999 with another $1,599 for the new display.
    • The premium the user is paying for the new silicon is $2,000 (The Max version is $1,999) which I suspect represents some extremely healthy margins for Apple.
    • This is a product for Mac lovers who are into editing video and so the YouTube crowd who review Apple products and edit video all the time are bound to love it.
  • iPhone SE.
    • The A15 Bionic chip and 5G are added to the iPhone 8 combined with a price rise to give the latest iPhone SE.
    • This represents a good proposition at the price but there is lots of competition at this price point.
    • Here Apple typically wins on software but loses on hardware meaning that not much is going to change.
  • iPad Air
    • This device also gets the M1 chip and 5G and so it will be a very fast tablet for $599.
    • It also gets 5G and a new colour but everything else remains pretty much the same.
• Apple’s migration to its own silicon is now almost complete and so far, it has been a stunning success.
• The boasts that it has made in its marketing videos have largely been proven largely accurate in independent testing and there is no reason to think that the same will not also be true here.
• This leaves Intel, AMD and to a lesser degree Nvidia with some work to do.
• Intel is being bested both in terms of performance and power consumption while Apple is claiming it can do the same as Nvidia but at much lower power.
• This leaves Intel and AMD with the task of proving that the x86 processor design is not obsolete.
• I suspect that when x86 is available on TSMC’s 5nm process(as it will be this year), then this issue will become much clearer.
• Intel still has a hill to climb and, in this climate, its shares do not look secure at $47.
• AMD looks even more precarious as it does not have to buffer of a low valuation should it suddenly find itself bested by Arm.