alt Hacker NewsWith the power of M-chips, this would cannabalize MacBooks via iPad Air / Pro. They are sitting on a golden cash flow and not willing to revolutionize computing again (as the iPhone did).
Just as a N=1, I would rather pay a recurring fee in the Disney-Netflix range to Apple to get more liberty in usage from my machines. But I think they don’t dare to go those routes, because they need the broad market base and cannot extract the current cash flow from a smaller base, while setting expectations that the Googles, Samsungs can copy.
Industry leaders dilemma. Apple currently settles on market differentiation via physical products.
Replies
On the contrary, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to part with macbooks if they could retain their developers. But then you could probably kiss your binary freedom goodbye.
But Mac sales pale in comparison to iPhone, and are similar to iPad numbers. So whatever revenue they would lose by not selling Macs with macOS, they could easily make up from additional sales of iPhones and iPads with macOS.
Besides, they've increasingly been expanding iPadOS to have more desktop-like features, so it wouldn't be far-fetched to offer full-blown macOS on these devices. It's not a hardware issue at all at this point.
> With the power of M-chips, this would cannabalize MacBooks via iPad Air / Pro.
Only for the truly low end. The thermals alone are a serious difference, you can't expect an iPad-class device to support the same power dissipation as a legit MacBook.
Historically, cannibalizing has always been the right choice when it comes to such things. That was a major point of the first iPhone, that it was a full replacement for your iPod, which was instrumental in its success. All this thinking does is cloud ones judgement and let competitors succeed.
Not saying you are wrong, this may be the reason Apple operates nowadays, but I maintain it is shortsighted.