Apple Is at the Cutting Edge of a Revolution in Chips

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Tracy, I had a thought, and it might be a little controversial, but what if...

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

You with a controversial thought, never.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

No, it's like, I know, I'm just gonna throw this out there and tell me what you think. What if we made it so that Odd Lots wasn't about market and finance anymore, but just about the semiconductor industry?

Would you be cool with that?

Tracy Alloway (0:40)

Could we maybe start with a semiconductor series before we completely rebrand the podcast?

Joe Weisenthal (0:48)

We'll revisit the question of a total rebrand, but I don't know about you, but I found our episode a couple of weeks ago with Stacey Raskin from Bernstein about the decline of Intel to be fascinating. And after that, I was like, I just wanted to talk more at Chip. I just, that really sort of, it really whet my appetite.

Tracy Alloway (1:08)

It was definitely a lot more interesting than I had been expecting. I think I mentioned when we recorded it that I hadn't been following all the ins and outs of the semiconductor industry, except of course, as it pertained to the US China trade tension. So I wasn't aware of some of the competition between the big makers, like just how bad things had gotten for Intel. And I wasn't aware of some of the strategic decisions that were going into the making of their chips and the way that some other chip makers have proceeded in a very different direction.

Joe Weisenthal (1:47)

Yeah, right. It's that different direction that's interesting because I mean, we talked with Stacey, a lot about the sort of manufacturing issues that Intel has been facing as it tries to unveil its seven nanometer chips.

But there's more to the story than just faster and smaller chips. There's also a fundamental shift happening in what chips are and how they're used and how they're designed. It goes beyond just sort of manufacturing problem.

Tracy Alloway (2:18)

Yeah, and I guess the big news on that front is Apple and its new series of Mac processors. That news came out this month, and everyone, as far as I can tell, all the technologists that have YouTube channels are very, very excited about what exactly this means.

I don't completely understand the technology, but I am interested in learning why everyone else is so excited and why a lot of people are saying this is a game changer. I heard one, there was one guy on YouTube who was talking about how this is going to make Apple computers basically on a different level to other types of computers. So in the way that we don't necessarily compare Apple phones with Androids anymore, we will no longer be comparing Macs with your average PC. It's just like two different types of equipment.

Joe Weisenthal (3:10)

Yeah, there was like a Medium article about the Apple chip that went viral on like articles about chips don't typically go viral.

But that I think sort of gives you an indication of the enthusiasm, the excitement that people have for all this stuff. So definitely a lot to talk about. But I have to admit, I still don't like really get it. Like I'm trying to read about this stuff and understand it, but I don't totally get it.

Tracy Alloway (3:35)

Yeah, I'm in that same place.

Joe Weisenthal (3:37)

So today we are going to be talking more, as anyone could have guessed, about chips. And I'm very excited because in addition to being a sequel of sorts to that other chip episode, our guest who writes on this stuff and he's prominent on Twitter, et cetera, we're going to do something we've never done before.

He's going to dox himself on this episode. So he's been writing under and tweeting under a pseudonym, but he's agreed to come on and with this episode actually tell us who he is. So this is a totally new thing for us. I don't think we've done this before.

Tracy Alloway (4:13)

No, we definitely haven't. And we should just stress this is a voluntary self-doxing. We haven't forced him into it or anything like that.

Joe Weisenthal (4:22)

That's exactly right. So we're going to be speaking with the author of the newsletter called Mule's Musings.

He tweets under the handle at full all the time. Great stuff on the matter of chips, but we are going to find out now who he is. So Mule, thank you for joining the Odd Lots podcast. Who are you and why are we listening to?