As many of you know.. Intel, the company that
for many years enjoyed a monopoly over the CPU industry, isn’t doing so well anymore.
Consumers who once defended Intel with all of their might on various internet forums have slowly
faded away.. And the worst part is that the future for Intel is starting to look incredibly grim..
But to be honest.. This shouldn’t surprise
anybody. We’ve known that Intel was in trouble for years.
In fact, back in 2019, almost a full year before Apple officially announced
their transition from Intel chips.. We made this video.. And the funny thing about the thumbnail
is that it’s actually starting to become reality..
In that video, we made a couple of predictions on how Intel would eventually end up fighting for
the life of their business, and so far.. Half of it has already come true, so let me quickly some
of the key points in that video before I get into how bad of a situation Intel is already in today.
And to make things interesting, I’m gonna be referring to the five stages of grief
to chart where Intel is at each point in the story, so let's get right into it!
In the early 2000s and 2010s, Intel enjoyed the bulk of the CPU market share,
especially for gaming, so they got a bit cocky in 2013 and announced a very optimistic CPU roadmap,
promising that they’d be shipping 10nm chips in 2015.
To do that, they were gonna use a brand new chipmaking technology,
against the wishes of some of their engineers.. And it ended up getting
delayed.. Over and over and over again, all the way out to 2019.
By the way.. Intel was in the first stage of grief during that time.. Denial.
Now while that was happening, AMD came out of the shadows with their impressive Ryzen
and Threadripper CPUs which caused some serious pain to intel,
and we know this because they started lowering the prices of their chips to compete with AMD.
On top of that, within just a couple of years, they very quickly upped the
core count on their desktop chips from four cores, all of the way up to 10,
all while using the same old 14nm chip architecture.
This caused a lot of pain for Apple because the company literally redesigned their 2016
super thin and light MacBook Pro with Intel’s 10nm chips in mind, which were supposed to be ready by
2015, but they weren’t, and because of that major delay, Apple’s MacBook Pro’s started having major
overheating issues.. And Apple took the blame for all of the disappointment by their consumers.
But thankfully, in June of 2020, Apple made perhaps the best decision they could’ve
ever made, they announced the switch away from Intel over to their own Apple Silicon chips,
essentially the same chips that come in an iPhone or iPad.. Just suped up for high performance.
And now.. We know just how good of a decision that was by Apple, because Intel’s brand new 11th-gen
desktop CPUs are STILL being built on a 14nm process, which is just shameful at this point.
And by the way.. 11 days before Apple announced the transition,
Intel’s lead chip chip architect resigned, showing that they knew what was coming..
And at this point in the story.. They were well into the Anger stage of their grief.
And then of course, later in 2020, Apple revealed their new M1 chip, and ever since then,
it’s been an absolute slaughterfest for Intel, with the M1 Macs completely embarrassing every
Intel-based Mac machine out there in terms of performance, power usage and value.
And based on the incredible sales data for Apple’s new M1 Macs..
it looks like consumers are all for the ditching of Intel for Apple’s new custom chips.
Oh and By the way.. Intel got rid of their CEO, Bob Swan earlier this year.. More anger.
And now here we are in April of 2021..
And Intel is doing things that we’d never in a million years thought they would do.
They ACTUALLY stole the Mac guy from Apple’s most famous ad campaign and turned him against the Mac,
showing that he’s beginning to prefer Windows-based laptops instead. This is
perhaps the biggest act of desperation that Intel has ever displayed.. Once again.. More anger.
But here’s the thing about Intel’s new campaign that many people don’t realize.
Intel doesn’t actually make Windows-based laptops. They simply make chips for any platform. So they
made an ad campaign against Apple products, even though they don’t make any products of their own.
It should’ve been Microsoft, the creators of Windows,
who ran this ad campaign, not Intel, which is ironic.
So Intel is basically sucking up to Microsoft and Windows-based laptops, which shows how desperately
Intel wants to keep their business. Just look at this image telling you to quote.. “Go PC.”
But wait.. It gets even worse.. And this is where the bargaining stage of grief comes in.
Just days after their anti-Apple ad campaign launched,
Intel’s CEO mentioned that they want to manufacture Apple Silicon chips in the future.
Yes, they actually had the guts to say this in public after that ad campaign,
which shows how desperate they are.
Now why would they want to do this? Well, for security. If their own x86 chips
start to lose market share, at least they’ll be able to survive
by producing the very chips that led to their demise.
But in my opinion, I don’t think there’s any way that Intel is getting Apple’s business
ever again.. And here’s why.
Apple got burned many times by Intel in the past, from the whole 10nm chip delay
causing them embarrassment due to overheating MacBooks, to the various Intel security flaws
that Apple had to take the heat for.. I don’t think Apple wants to play with fire again.
And by the way, Apple has already reserved chip orders with TSMC,
the most advanced chipmaker in the world, which seems to be the most resilient
to the global chip shortage we’re currently going through.
And since Apple is TSMC’s number one customer, they will do everything possible to keep up
with the chip demand, specifically for Apple, so there’s really no point for them to go with Intel,
especially since they’re behind in terms of chipmaking technology.
So yeh, Intel is desperate, and the worst part of all is that Apple is just getting started.
Yes, the M1 Macs are killing it.. But it’s the M1X MacBook Pros which are going to revolutionize the
entire industry and finally put the last nail in Intel’s Coffin.. And put them into the next
stage of grief.. Depression.. So let’s get into why the future looks so grim for Intel.
Laptop manufacturers have already started to offer AMD CPU models alongside Intel versions
of their laptops, so they’re already losing market share on that front.
However, Apple’s M1 Macs are so impressive that some laptop makers are reportedly looking forward
to ARM-based chips instead of x86, but they haven’t seen ‘nothing yet.
Based on our own estimates, the M1X MacBook Pros coming sometime this fall
should be able to easily outperform every Intel-based MacBook, at a fraction of the price.
But the most important detail to consider is that the power efficiency of these MacBooks
should be incredible thanks to how efficient Apple’s ARM-based chips have proved to be,
so there’s a very good chance that the M1X MacBooks will be the best laptops ever made.
And sooner or later.. The entire laptop industry will begin moving over to using ARM-based chips,
and right now.. Both Samsung and Qualcomm
are quietly sitting in the shadows with their ARM chips.. Waiting for this to happen.
And even worse.. The folks over at Microsoft, the makers of Windows, have already announced
that they’re gonna be making ARM-based chips of their own, and going even further.. They’ve been
focusing more on updating their ARM-based version of Windows ever since Apple made the switch.
This is very bad news for Intel because if Microsoft makes the switch to ARM-based chips,
it’s gonna show where the entire industry is moving, since Microsoft will be incentivized
to make the ARM version of Windows the best that it can be to compete with Apple.
So if the entire industry begins the transition to ARM-based chips, then Intel will
basically be screwed because their 13th generation Raptor Lake chips coming in 2022 seem to still be
using the same x86 10nm process as 12th-gen Alder Lake, which by the way, isn’t even here yet.
This puts them in the worst possible position because it’s clear
that they’re STILL not working on ARM-based designs. If they were,
they would have announced it already in an attempt to make their investors happy, but they didn’t.
And their main competitor, AMD, is reported to be
already working on some ARM-based chips of their own to battle Apple’s M chips.
So when they do eventually announce that they’re working on ARM chip designs,
it’s probably gonna be too late.
Now I know that some of you will say that Apple was only a small part of Intel’s business,
so it’s not gonna matter sales wise, but one thing is very clear. The user sentiment towards Intel
has been rapidly changing to the negative side, and that is more important than anything else.
And just in case you’re gonna say that the bulk of Intel’s business
is actually the server or workstation market.. I’ve got some more bad news for you.
The fastest servers in the world are already using ARM-based designs, and Intel’s future Xeon roadmap
is also x86-based.. And here is where the other side of the danger lies.
Companies who host massive servers require many computers, which causes a couple of problems
that need to be dealt with… First, there’s the huge amount of power that’s required to run the
computers. And second, there’s the huge amount of heat that the computers output, so they need
massive cooling systems in order to keep them cool.. Which also use huge amounts of power.
We already showed this off when we compared the performance per watt
of Apple’s M1 Mac mini to the Intel-based Mac Pro.. the difference is massive.
So If ARM-based chips require less power and less cooling while still having awesome performance,
why wouldn’t the server and workstation industry move over to ARM? They’re gonna
save massive amounts of cash just in electricity and cooling expenses alone.
Scaleway is already offering cloud services using Apple M1 Mac Minis for only 12 cents an hour,
compared to Amazon’s web services which use Intel Mac Minis for over a dollar an hour,
and people are already surprised by the price, and it’s all due to the power savings of the M1 chip.
Oh, and by the way, Amazon has already announced that they’re gonna have M1 Mac Minis available
soon as well, so it looks like the server industry is already slowly beginning to switch to ARM.
So to sum up this entire video.. Apple has basically triggered the death of Intel
with their Apple Silicon transition, and at this point, it’s looking like Intel’s
only way out will be to start work on ARM-based designs as soon as possible, but at this point,
they haven’t been.. So I guess we’ll just have to see what the future holds.
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