Comments on: Why Apple could be getting closer to building its own Mac chips

By: Bazz

Bazz — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 04:03:03 +0000

To protect their IP Apple should make their own CPUs.

By: devosdiscovery

devosdiscovery — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 04:32:15 +0000

Has the Apple Age Come to an End?
http://devosdiscovery.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/has-the-apple-age-come-to-an-end/

By: sam

sam — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 02:52:21 +0000

The new google chromebook laptops have ARM now, not Intel, so the trend has already started

By: Ravi

Ravi — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 01:40:38 +0000

Thanks. same thoughts here.

By: Lestra

Lestra — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 23:45:10 +0000

There is no doubt that Apple will transition its desktop computing to the ARM processor.

Apple is the master of transitioning from one platform to another. Motorola 68000 -> PowerPC > Intel > ARM. Apple will no doubt develop an emulator to handle legacy OS X apps.

The whole world is going ARM, from the smallest devices to the largest data centers. Apple will develop a new ARM processor with many more cores than you’d find in a processor optimised for phones.

Processor development always accelerates where the money is. Apple found out in 2005 when its IBM-made Power PC processors were late getting out the door, because even though the IBM processor was a superior architecture, at the time the money was behind Intel, which could bring its product quicker to market.

Now the money is going to dry up for the development of future Intel x86 processors, causing x86 revision cadence to slow down. That will further hasten the world’s transition to ARM for all uses.

By: Lucian Armasu

Lucian Armasu — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 23:32:08 +0000

TSMC.

By: Isaac Gozzo

Isaac Gozzo — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:46:38 +0000

People seems to forget that before 2004 (aprox) every Apple Mac came with their own in-house processor (more powerful and less power consuming than Intel at the time), since 2004 they opted to go the Intel way just because of the popularity and that the in-house processor was less compatible with popular PC software because the big names didn’t want to change the functions in their software so it worked for the Mac OS and processor and since the Mac wasn’t popular for non tech people every software was build for Intel and Microsoft OS (Windows). That’s why Apple changed to Intel after that but now they are just going back to making their more powerful and power efficient in-house chips again. Hope everything goes the way it should since now they have more popularity than in the 90′s.

By: jjj

jjj — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:23:47 +0000

This theory is a few years old (so nothing new at all) and the main driver is the need to unify the OSes, more than anything else.
One major thing that is being ignored is that Apple doesn’t care much about Macs anymore.It’s pretty low volume and the future of this category is not all that bright.A transition could be possible as early as 2014 but it remains to be seen is they believe the investment is worth it or if they delay it and if that delay makes it irrelevant.
Tim Cook seems more focused on tablets anyway (just between us he’s wrong there since tablets are a stop-gap device that will be gone as soon as the screen tech evolves).

By: Patrick Sullivan

Patrick Sullivan — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:15:42 +0000

Or, this could be a clever way to force Intel to start making lower power designs

By: Jon M

Jon M — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:55:03 +0000

The big question is who is going to Fab Apple chips?