hnjim

I actually upgraded off cycle due to the satellite SOS feature. Including the hardware and 2 years of service was impressive. The new watch was also exciting hitting a segment that was previously unaddressed by any prior Apple Watch.

And the move to 5nm for the A14 (sampling since 2019) will yield more chips per wafer. Either way, Apple is very forward looking on supply chain and has been planning this for a decade. Remember when they owned the majority of the nand market due to long term supplier contracts?

For vendors using metal it could be seamless. There would also be gains had through ML and neural engine in image, video and audio processing. Not to mention dedicated video hardware decode. Time will tell, but I don’t see adobe being punitive there. They make money on software subscriptions and are already bringing native photoshop to iOS.

I suspect that for every customer they lose for someone needing to boot natively they will gain more than one from performance, cost and form factor flexibility enabling much more desirable machines. Batteries add both size and weight so you can get thinner and lighter and still have a functional keyboard.

I believe this will enable new form factors given PPW and higher performant systems free of power and thermal constraints on desktop. It may take some time, but I think this will lead to significantly greater long term sales and market share. Apples lead is rather significant in this space and the only computer with that soc will be a Mac.