I think it would be extremely interesting if Apple went with a unified app/games ecosystem between their Macbooks, iPads and iPhones. They really could run the exact same code. It could end up being quite amazing, really.
Ryzen processors are better in every market now - desktop, server, and now they also completely dominate in laptops. I mean, you are getting an 8-core, 16 thread chip in the mid range, with each of those cores being faster than Intel's. You are also getting AMD's Vega graphics on that chip that's twice as fast as Intel's, and has much better driver support. Ryzen is also much more power efficient under load. There is nothing that Intel can compete with at the moment.
Intel has contracts with the OEMs though. OEMs also have preferential prices for going Intel in their flagship series. If they use Ryzen chips now, they will have to pay full price for future Intel chips and be at a competitive disadvantage compared to other OEMs who stuck with Intel and thus can get their Intel chips at lower prices. OEMs are scared that Intel might make a comeback in the future and they'll have to pay big money for that then. Intel loves buying loyalty and scare tactics, and It's really scaring businesses into not going with the competition now.
Then you have people who order Intel at their jobs to play it safe, because "nobody got fired for buying Intel". Then there's the image of being associated with low-cost/low-quality products in the past - AMD is still somehow seen as the unproven option, even though their chips weren't the cause for those laptops being low quality - they were dirt-cheap laptops and AMD had the cheapest chips for OEMs to go with them. That reputation stays if you aren't following tech news though. For servers, some businesses use proprietary software that was optimized for Intel. A lot of reasons, a lot of fuckery.
I can see how it turns political when it comes to allegiance to one over the other. I never thought about the momentum shifting back to Intel because the past year or two has just been all AMD's show when it comes to being praised by reviewers.
This was the Razer Stealth review I was talking about from Dave 2D:
He says it's a good gaming laptop but still wishes it had a Ryzen chipset. At 5:10 he moves on from simply reviewing the machine and starts talking about Intel vs AMD a bit.
Another YTer I follow intentionally ble like $7K on Samsung devices and tried to get in to the Samsung/Bixby ecosystem with different devices:
Needless to say, he ended up thinking a lot of it was garbage, save for a few gimmicks that the Samsung notebook had, like being able to wirelessly charge other devices using the trackpad. Which made me think what is Samsung trying to do with Bixby? Google clearly owns the voice control/digital assistant sector with Google Assistant. Siri was the first to do it but Assistant is still head and shoulders above Siri, but Siri is at least still in the mix just because of the number of iOS devices out there (and Macs, too, although I never use it). What is Bixby doing, though? My S10 has a dedicated Bixby button that I ended up disabling. Many Samsung users just remap the button to bring up the camera, or something. But Samsung is still trying to make it a thing by continuing to put it on their phones and then on the appliances they make for the home, like microwaves.
I guess Smart Things is somewhat popular, though. I don't know how Bixby integrates with that but I read a lot about people using Smart Things for their home automation needs because it uses Z Wave and those are pretty streamlined compared to WiFi smart devices and much "cleaner" to get them all connected. But Bixby is still a thing and that's puzzling.
One thing we've known about for a few years but we didn't mention in this thread when discussing the appearance of ads in Samsung phones was the shady practices Samsung got busted for a few years back where their TVs would record audio and send it back to Samsung and other companies. While doing some research on TVs, I also read that Samsung TVs had ads, too. It was something brought up in the video I linked but I had kind of forgotten about it. Now with the reports of some people getting ads on their Galaxy devices, it's no surprise Samsung would eventually start to shit on their mobile lineup as well. If you paid attention to their TVs and what they were caught doing with those, it was only a matter of time for it to hit their phones.
Samsung has a similar marketshare as Apple in the US. Apple might actually be considerably more popular, but Samsung is a comfortable #2 overall in the US and #1 for Android by a large margin. They probably feel they can do whatever they want at this point and there's no real competition for people looking for an iPhone-alternative running Android. Plus, most users are casual and would just roll over and take the BS Samsung is pushing these days because they don't know or care that much about those things being prevalent on their phones. So with that being said, I don't think Samsung is going to back down from these practices because the pushback would only come from a minority of their users. And would that minority even leave Samsung for another Android OEM, like LG or Moto? Would they take the drop in QC of LG devices or opt to get the mid range Moto offerings just to stick it to Samsung? I doubt it. This is like what I read Xiaomi users complaining about with the ads on their devices. Fanboys and casual users alike will excuse the OEM's shitty practices and just let the brand go down the drain until they're left with users that would switch OEMs with zero issue when it comes time for a new phone.
As for Apple blending iOS and macOS, I think this has been in the works for over a decade. Maybe slightly less but I think I remembered reading about this in 2012 or so, but it was separate from the ARM rumors, which also existed since back then. I think there were talks by Apple fans about macOS/OSX running some sort of emulator built in to the OS that would blend the apps of macOS and iOS so they could run on both. So the plan to have both OSs sharing an app store and catalog have been around for some time. Maybe only in the past 3 or 4 years when the ARM rumors became more commonplace and seemed more likely did the rumors become more about one standard architecture and iOS and macOS devices both being built around said architecture. So if the rumors are true, that is what might inevitably happen.
If I'm not mistaken, there are some Windows OEMs that run on ARM tech, right? They may not be as good but Apple wouldn't be the first to sell a computer with the benefits of ARM tech. They may just do the usual of testing it out with the entry level Macs, like the Airs and then gradually move up the lineup to the Pros once developers have more time to optimize their apps for Pro users. I don't know if it will ever reach the levels of the current architecture, and you've mentioned it before, but it may be good enough. Or Apple may just simply "find a way" to make ARM apps perform as well or better than current iterations. I doubt Apple would take two steps back by going ARM and then not have a plan to make those apps work better than they did before. I don't think Apple would be OK being regressive like that and letting Windows go in a different direction and add a selling point for Windows over macOS. If anything, if Apple can pull it off, we might see PC OEMs shift to ARM as well. They may just be taking a wait-and-see approach, like the headphone jack removal, camera notch, etc. Now everyone is focusing hard on wireless audio, including OEMs themselves like Samsung.They just might be waiting to see if Apple finally whiffs on making a big shift like ARM. Sort of like Apple dropping USB completely and going the TB3/USB-C route, which was not a good idea.
