(serious question, not trolling)
Which are?
Making the best desktop and mobile operating systems in the world.
Lots of companies can make cars, AI, movies, etc. Nobody else even tries to make great operating systems. Unless we all want to go back to Microsoft or try to make Linux work.
1 Like
Does this mean you donāt view hardware design and manufacturing as core competencies for Apple too? Put another way, that makes Apple and Microsoft equivalent from a strategy perspective. Appleās AI efforts, then, should be seen as a bet-the-company priority.
There is a precedent in Appleās history for such a path: the Michael Spindler-Gil Amelio era when officially licensed Mac clones were available. Iād say it can be argued that the licensing program ended up leading to an iconic hardware design for Apple, the original iMac.
2 Likes
Apple generates money by selling hardware. Reviews from time to time have suggested Apple hardware is among the best available. But that is not why people pay a premium price for Appleās premium quality hardware.
The sales gimmick that sells Apple hardware is the software it runs. Apple software lets people benefit from Apple devices with a much less steep learning curve than competitors.
The underpinnings of Apple software are important, but the critical distinguishing component is the user interface. The Macintosh did not change the world not because it had a graphical user interface. It changed the world because Appleās closed environment allowed the User Interface Police to force developers to conform to Apple standards. This resulted in the first GUI which was very nearly the same for each application. This meant that when users learned one application, they had most of what was needed for each other application. This flattened learning curve meant computers could become a tool for people who did not have the time or inclination to become experts on computers, as well as whatever else was their main interest. The Macintosh was the computer for the rest of us.
Facilitating use of enabling technology is Appleās first core competence.
When Steve returned from his Next sojourn Apple was a mess. Too much research, even though it was very good research, did not lead to a salable product, and thus from the perspective of corporate health was waste. Even research that did lead to a good product was not coordinated with sales and manufacturing, leading to many potentially wonderful opportunities missed. Steve cut projects not directly leading to a product, and had Tim rationalize manufacturing and sales operations. Even better, research supporting multiple products was encouraged.
Appleās second competitive edge is to rationally focus on salable products.
I think these two guiding principles have been clearly visible in Appleās development. I think they still are.
Perhaps one more should be included. Apple does not sell more product by making things that are about like what can be had from other vendors. Apple products are differentiated by being different. And different in meaningful ways, not just a cute new color or shape. Apple research leads to innovative uses for, and ways of using, technology.
Appleās third competitive edge is to think different.
I think thatās absolutely a reason why people pay the premium for Apple hardware. Appleās core competency is the marriage of software and hardware, not one or the other.
3 Likes
People choose Apple (or any other brand) for a wide variety of reasons. I donāt think it is reasonable to say what āmostā peopleās reason is without actually polling customers or citing a study that conducted such a poll.
Some reasons that I have selected the Apple ecosystem include:
-
The hardware isnāt really premium-priced. At least not in the configurations I use.
For example, if I go to Dellās web site and look for a machine comparable to my Mac mini (M4, 32G RAM, 2TB storage for $1800), I end up with something like this system (Intel Core Ultra 7, 20 core, NPU, integrated graphics, 32GB RAM, 2TB storage, Wi-Fi, no keyboard/mouse/display) for $2110. And that system is in a larger case and consumes more power.
-
The reason I originally switched to the Mac platform was because I was looking for a Unix desktop system. With Mac OS X, I was able to get that and also leverage Appleās great hardware-software integration and large library of commercial software (neither of which applies to the Linux world today).
Although I primarily work with Mac apps these days, having a Unix environment running natively is really useful. Microsoft has recently provided Linux capabilities via WSL, but itās not the same thing. Itās a Linux container (sort of like a lightweight VM), and is not the systemās native environment.
-
The tight integration between my Mac, my iPhone and my Apple TV is worthwhile to me. I canāt get that level of integration with products from other vendors.
Although the PC world has some integration (e.g. Firefox will let me sync sessions between multiple devices), there are certain things that I absolutely canāt do there without installing and maintaining third-party software. Like a desktop Messages app that integrates with my phoneās SMS texts. Or a shared clipboard, so I can copy from one and paste to the other.
-
The computers do last longer. I typically get 8-10 years life out of a Mac. My experience with PCs is that they start needing upgrades or repairs after about 5 years. Yes, there have been exceptions, but those exceptions have gone both ways on all platforms. The overall trend, however, seems to be as Iāve described.
6 Likes
For me the core competences of Apple under Steve Jobs were (a) software that ājust worksā, and (b) elegant and reliable hardware. Originally this meant Mac computers but even in Jobs lifetime phones, tables, and tv streaming were added and to some extent integrated with the Macs.
These competencies have continued under Tim Cook to a degree. I find annoying variations in macOS and app features from release to release and some hardware design appears to place form over function (Iām looking at the power port on the Magic Mouse, slippery plastic for AirPods, and what is this fixation with thinness?).
I switched from Windows PCs to the Apple ecosystem for several reasons. When my children went to college they wanted MacBooks so I had to learn OSX (as it then was) to answer questions. After I retired I began to audit physics and computer science courses at my local university where every professor used a Mac and programming worked best in Unix. Finally, I became fed up as in-house tech support for the daily Windows problems my wife encountered. Switching her to Macs reduced this workload dramatically.
I can easily provide a list of software, hardware, and service annoyances with Apple but the increasingly tight integration across the platforms is a real benefit and, for me, a strong incentive to remain within the ecosystem.
3 Likes
Yep! Thatās why I said āa reasonā not āthe reasonā.
My earlier reply was to the title of this thread. I had not read the longer thread from which this topic had been branched off. Now realizing that the point was to ask how Apple core competence can apply to AI, I can comment more directly.
As others have noted, Apple keeps very quiet about new technology nearing release.
One area that has not been so secret is Appleās push to debug macOS, including the āsoon to be discardedā (I donāt think so) variant that runs on Intel processors.
A related push has been to debug functions associated with the āsecure enclave,ā initially provided by the T1 and T2 chips. These complex operations have recently been at least partially figured out by Howard Oakley. Security features provided by the T2 far beyond the obvious face or fingerprint recognition include, among others, validation of code before it is allowed to run, and of RAM before it is allowed to be used. The complexity of validating security is why so many functions have been constrained to the startup disk. Tightening of T2 security explains some of the many problems users have experienced with āexternalā storage devices, including mounted on PCIe cards as well as USB attached. Other problems have been due to plain old negligent Quality Assurance in debugging, a management issue which also seems much improved. A recent benefit is improved security in the just-released A19 and A19 Pro chips.
Howard says āthe T2 has ā¦ a Public Key Accelerator for signing and encryption/decryption using RSA and ECC methods.ā This suggests variants of the Secure Enclave will apply ECC methods to memory, perhaps beyond the memory on a single M-series chip.
Appleās in-house experience with the need to use ECC in complex calculations goes back to 2003 and the Big Mac, a surprisingly powerful and inexpensive supercomputer produced at Virginia Tech by a cluster of PowerMac G5s. The calculations came out wrong until the PowerMacs were replaced with Xserve G5 servers, which used ECC RAM.
Appleās core competence by which it dominates is developing unique enabling technologies, incorporating the technology into products which disrupt markets, then efficiently manufacturing and selling the product. Using unique enabling technologies means Apple marketing competes by the fact that Apple products are different. Technology enabled by M5, M6 and later M series Apple Silicon likely will have the potential to disrupt the AI market.
Apple Silicon processors provide technology example where expanding innovations have enabled a long series of products and market disruptions. Assembling recent bits and pieces of news suggests Apple will continue pursuing this core competence. Hearing rumors some time ago, but nothing recently, may suggest an M-series server is immanent. Maybe not, but it would fit the pattern of Apple arriving late, then leaping to the forefront.
What have we heard?
The M series includes an increasingly powerful Security Enclave. This seems likely to enable more secure use of more RAM.
Increasing complexity in successive M generations leads to lower manufacturing yields, as well as increasing difficulty in design improvement. Within each M series generation, processing power has been increased by making the chip larger and more complex. This development, manufacturing, and marketing combination results in the top of the line of one series level reaching market at about the same time as the lowest level of the next M series. Buyers must choose between last yearās design with all the bells and whistles, or the new state of the art, just out of the door and far from fully enabled. Manufacturing which has been ramping up and refining last yearās M series, now starts over with the new M series.
Meanwhile, a different approach to processors has been developed (by AMD and others?), in which separately produced āchipletsā are assembled. Adopting this design and manufacturing approach could significant affect availability of M5, and later, Apple Silicon.
Greatly increased rate of production of Apple Silicon would be needed to meet the potential high demand for a market disrupting M5 (or M6?) Apple Silicon server. Matching manufacturing and product availability to demand for a market disrupting new product is an Apple core competence. News we have seen possibly related to preparations is Apple increasing its manufacturing capacity.
An Apple Computer Data Center (ACDC) server cluster would be distinguished from existing products by its much lower energy consumption. Lower consumption of energy and other resources are Apple core competencies. Mother Nature is watching, and she has not been very happy with a lot of recent server operations. Neither have utility customers, who are balking at rate increases and resource consumption for the benefit of data center owners. ACDC alternatives would be favored by both environmental and business communities.
Apple is focused on its core competencies. What I see holding Apple back is the difficulty of expanding manufacturing capacity sufficiently to meet future demand.
Wouldnāt it be great if somehow political support increased for expanded manufacturing capacity? 
What variant would that be? macOS 26 is sill Intel-compatible. So thereās going to be at least three more years of support for that CPU architecture. Maybe more, depending on what Apple decides for macOS 27.
Yes, macOS is nominally nearly the same on all Apple hardware on which it is designated to run, but the object code compiled for different devices varies. These differences accommodate variations in hardware capabilities. The tricky part is how well the compiled code uses these varying hardware capabilities. Compiled code which runs on Apple Silicon hardware enhancements such as Neural Net processors is largely absent from code which runs on Intel Macs, and there are many other differences in processing features. Apple Silicon enables security enhancements as discussed above, which seem beyond Intel capability. But much of these security enhancements (the Secure Enclave) have been only applicable to relatively small systems, such as the iPhone, laptops and restricted size desktops. While Apple has focused on developing the security of its small systems, support for Intel systems has been neglected. I have a MacPro7,1 (2019, Intel), and an M1 MacBook Pro. Many bugs I see on the MacPro do not exist on the MBP.
For years macOS (Intel) has been becoming increasingly defective. I was not hostile, but disappointed. Quality Control seems better now, but still has a way to go. My hope is that improvements in the M series will extend Security Enclave protection beyond the startup disk. That will enable systems large enough to do seriously long large calculations, enabling AI processes and making it worth the effort to thoroughly debug the code. With a more assured future, macOS (Intel) development might be brought up to the level of macOS (Apple).
Nobody is doubting that the two platforms have different features and different system libraries are used to drive the features that are common.
But you used the phrase āsoon to be discardedā. What do you think will soon be discarded? Or since you said you donāt think so, what opinion are you disagreeing with?
Good questions.
I said āsoon to be discardedā thinking of Appleās shift to emphasis on Apple Silicon, combined with their ongoing, and until recently seemingly increasing, neglect of Intel code. Even though Apple claims to continue support, for a long time Intel macOS has been in decline. The pattern of allowing malfunctions to accumulate to the point of seriously interfering with usability suggested to me support for Intel code had already been dropped in practice, just not not yet completely.
I said āI donāt think soā for the same reason Apple loudly proclaimed when they went from PPC to Intel. Apple should include the ability to run the huge mass of software written for Intel processors, so that customers purchasing Apple hardware could still run Intel-coded applications. This strategy to recruit new customers will work much better if macOS (Intel) is less buggy.
The opinion I disputed was my own inference that someone or something, whoever, whatever, thought Appleās neglect of macOS (Intel) was a good idea. I think maintaining properly functioning macOS for Intel processors is important for the future of Apple.
A core Apple competence is the ability to run source code on varying types of processors. If increasing functions of the Secure Enclave implemented in M series Apple silicon allow secure use of āexternalā memory (meaning other than on the startup disk), fitting MacPros with currently unimaginable amounts of RAM (better because itās āsecureā?) may become possible. This could facilitate porting of existing AI software to the Mac. But not just to āa Macā. How about to an ACDC LAN of a thousand or so āinexpensiveā (itās a relative term) M5 Mac Pros? In cost as well as many aspects of function, this could differ significantly from existing AI cloud hardware. This technical innovation would demonstrate many of Appleās core competencies.
Another core competence may be playing out in clear site. Leading research and development wins in academia, but Apple is a business. Businesses win by manufacturing and selling product. History has taught Apple not to reveal innovations until a product implementing and benefitting from the innovations can be manufactured and sold, at a level commensurate with disrupting the market Apple plans to enter. Insufficient manufacturing capacity currently delays Appleās entry into the AI market. As TSMC ramps up M5 and later M series Apple Silicon, Apple will become increasingly competitive in AI, at the cloud ACDC, local LAN and individual desktop levels.
This is an interesting question, one worthy of thought.
- System level design of consumer/end user-focused products. This includes hardware/software tradeoffs, something few other consumer focused companies can do. (Having worked in the defense/aerospace world, I know how hard it is to do this well, when you do have control over hardware and software.) Itās not quite clear Appleās approach would transfer to other classes/āspacesā of software-intensive systems, including manufacturing/factory automation, government, health, etc. But it is clear in the space where Apple competes, theyāre unmatched.
- Consumer electronic manufacturing at scale. That includes supply chain management, allocation of functionality across business units and subcontractors, maintenance of interfaces between contractors in the supply chain.
- Human factors (although they do seem to be slipping a bit)
- Software development (and here I think they are definitely slipping)
- Supporting social factors while not compromising business execution. Itās not all about the bottom line.
- Managing expectations from investors, politicians, etc, etc.
- Running the business for the long run, with returns in years rather than quarters. (This is tightly coupled to āmanaging expectations.ā)
Thatās my quick list.