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Apple to switch notebooks to ARM?
- Thread starter iMacmatician
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Carrying that around is not optimal, and the cases made for the iPad with keyboards are all cramped and feel like a netbook.
You can buy a full priced notebook for $499.... the same price of an iPad. What's your point?
My point is, I can see a market right now for a notebook where Apple takes a MacBook, puts it on ARM, and makes it thinner and much lighter.
Take a MacBook Air, modify the body to differentiate between the two product lines, offer color choices (not needed, but might help sell the product and help differentiate secondary devices and primary devices), put an ARM processor that is faster than the iPad in it, have it have 10 hours of realistic battery life, install full-fledged Mac OS X on it which runs on ARM, simply call it a MacBook, sell it for $699. Booya.
The perfect secondary device for everyone, it is more flexible than the iPad, but won't necessarily completely cannibalize the iPad because of the price and a Touchscreen device is still better in some scenarios such as couch web browsing and the gigantic App Store appeals to people.
You might say, well, why don't people just buy a full fledged notebook for $699? Show me a notebook with the design and lightness of an Air and 10 hours of realistic battery life. Atom netbooks don't count because what the netbook market today is is basically cheap, crappy notebooks. They aren't good at anything because of their cramped keyboards, and their performance is hideous.
Hell, Apple probably has Mac OS X already implemented on ARM as of two years ago, just like how they had OS X on X86 in their labs in 2001.
What if Apple's ARM chips replace Intels Atom chips? If Intel is thinking that its Atoms were losing against the ARMs, then why not just go into a joint venture with Apple where Apple takes over the design work, and Intel fabs them? I mean, who is going to know more about what is needed in a chip suitable for phones and tablets than Apple?
Apple gets control over their CPU chips. Intel is in a joint venture with Apple instead of competing against Apple. The joint venture becomes another profit centre for Apple. Apple is not going to mind selling chips to other companies, because in Apple's mind nobody can put together the complete HW/SW package as well as they can. So, if their competitors are going to be buying chips to put into inferior products, they may as well buy their chips from Apple, eh?
... just idle speculation....
Apple gets control over their CPU chips. Intel is in a joint venture with Apple instead of competing against Apple. The joint venture becomes another profit centre for Apple. Apple is not going to mind selling chips to other companies, because in Apple's mind nobody can put together the complete HW/SW package as well as they can. So, if their competitors are going to be buying chips to put into inferior products, they may as well buy their chips from Apple, eh?
... just idle speculation....
Apple is thinking about switching again? The PPC line up was a nice processor for its time. I think switching to Intel was a good move when they did it. However the Intel Ivy Bridge was just released a week ago, and it may be in use by what next year? The ARM 5 may be fine for the iPad 2, but I don't think that it's so wise to ditch Intel in favor of ARM and whatever they may be working on with them.
I meant an Apple notebook. Why get anything else?
If you don't want to waste your money. Why spend £800 on a notebook if it isn't going to be you're main computer? I'd rather spend £300 and live with the aparent awfulness Windows puts users through.