Apple with rockets
I was watching a video, I think related to Ifixit, where they disassembled a macbook air with M1. What stunned me is how little components there are. That is, the motherboard practically does not exist, the SoC (system on a chip) from Apple is pretty big, but in reality it's all in there. The rest of the motherboard were RAM chips that are now completely unrecognizable from the iconic "memory banks" we've come to know since the 1980s.
Even the heatsink (the macbook air has no fans) was everything you don't expect. A plate, I presume of steel, linear even if modeled to fit in the aluminum body. Here, too, nothing to do with the dissipators of which one would be inclined to imagine oneself hearing this word. No fins or dissipation pipes. Beyond the fact that the Apple SoC does not heat up much, it is clear that a very large heatsink was under their nose, that is, the entire body of the laptop. And today we see more or less the same concept on the recent iMacs.
These days there are rumors about the next M1 which could be called M1X or M2. The name is now a mere question of marketing, adding a letter or increasing a number means impacting sales by pushing one product or the other.
Basically, if the news is confirmed, there is talk of an increase in cores. Today there are 8, on the next there is talk of 10. But it would be their composition to change, in fact today those assigned to the low energy impact, that is the simple jobs to be done, are four, tomorrow they would be two. Probably they have found a square to be able to exploit with the software for what is enough to use these two cores more intensively, pushing the remaining eight cores to full power, probably suitably modulated. That is, the number of performance cores may vary in the number of working use. On the other hand, if they are writing the operating system software on their own, it is clear that these "tricks" can and should be used.
The maximum amplitude of the RAM would even reach 64 Gigabytes, against the current 16. This suggests that the real Achilles' heel, or GPUs, are under development. In fact, even that sector draws on the RAM since the SoC being one "sucks" from the same tank for all operations. That is, those relating to the CPU, the GPU, the Neural Networks, any external sensors / devices, in addition to the part dedicated to the encryption of security, which they call "secure enclave".
Objectively I don't know how the CISC world, that is Intel / AMD + Windows to understand each other, can parry such a blow. The only field that he can certainly manage with serenity is that of economic models, which however by its very nature is a seaport, that is, people who buy without knowing what they are doing, or people who really have a low budget. It is no coincidence that Windows is more concerned than Google with Chrome OS than Apple.
The other, the mid-range / high one, there is no story. Apple is going to cover all areas, and it does so with a huge technological competitive advantage. It takes him no less than five years to fill it with a competition that must be fierce and cohesive. And by definition the sector is aggressive but not cohesive. That is, an HP or a Dell even if they try their best, they find themselves with the underlying related to processors and various systems, which even if it were the non plus ultra would stumble ruinously on the operating system and drivers. So the five years, which in the sector are a blunder, are actually at least ten.
And this window will be used by Apple to build that narrative that becomes popular jargon. That is, today if you say the word "tablet" it is indisputable that you think visually of an iPad. If you want to buy a tablet, the first choice and perhaps the only one you want to make is to buy an iPad. In five years, when you think of a laptop or a fixed, the first choice and perhaps the only one you will want to make, will have the symbol of a severed apple in the body.