Well it certainly makes sense in the short term to do a new product line. However long term Intels days are numbered. Even if Apple stays i86 they maybe forced to go AMD simply because AMD is very willing to do custom. In the end it is all about what goes on the chip.
I have yet to see ONE person tell me what the BLEEP Apple needs with a "custom" chip! What is Apple doing that needs a custom ANYTHING? They don't do a single thing that is special and requires custom anything. They fetch email and text and run MOSTLY *STUPID* *WORTHLESS* Apps. WTF wants a desktop/notebook platform based on STUPID? I sure as hell don't, but that's what the iPad IS. It's a browsing/email/movie/music player that has apps that check sports scores and play slot machine type garbage games. THAT is what we want on the desktop system? I don't think so. You iOS types are living in another Universe. A texting Universe where iPads are SOOO awesome and you think the desktops should be SOOOO awesome when in fact they've been able to do everything an iPad can plus 100x more from before the iPad was even invented.
iPads don't get hot? My iPod 4G gets HOT AS HELL. Myth BUSTED as to lower/cooler power use. It's complete nonsense. The battery didn't last that long either. My 1st Gen iPod Touch gets 5x the battery time as my iPod 4G. It didn't get more efficient. It got more powerful and sucked battery juice accordingly.
We're going to get 8 lower power CPUs instead of 2-4 high power ones? What good is THAT? MOST Apps don't even do TWO threads very well, let alone 16. A Mac Pro may be good at video encoding/decoding, but how much better does it run Office or even a game? Not very because it's hard to get Apps to do a whole bunch of different things at the same time when they're dependent on previous things being processed already, not at the same time. Parallel computing SUCKS for the most part. It's a bad solution to the problem of not being able to make single CPUs significantly faster any longer. The problem is it only helps so much with a single given app, especially ones that are not well suited to parallel processing and require a LOT of work on the developer to even make SOME use of them.
Now there's this talk about saving $300 off the cost of a notebook I saw in this thread. Apple once said they weren't going to do $600 notebooks. $300 of is only a $800 notebook and yet competitors have been doing $600, no even $300 notebooks for a LONG time now. There's no barrier to Apple getting a lower performance cheaper notebook out there like everyone else! They stated they DID NOT *WANT* to engage in that low-end low-profit margin junk fest market because it will bring ALL Macs' reputation down with it. So what do you guys think a low-end A8 iPod-in-a-box notebook is going to do????? It will split the Mac market into multiple CPU variants again (confusion and a mess galore just like with PPC/Intel at the same time only worse since they would be sold at the same time, not just a transition period) and all to gain an iPod-in-a-Box. WTF for?
Again, you guys are obsessed with iOS or something. That would be about the worst move Apple could make since Johnny Ive's crayon-colored iOS update. Well, wait there's this ridiculous BEATS purchase. Hey, it's all starting to make sense now. Cheap crappy headphones pushed by celebrities that have mass market appeal is what Beats is. So now they want cheap crappy slow ARM based notebooks pushed by the same celebrities and made mass market friendly and that will be the "New Apple". The problem is the rest of their market will abandon ship and all the high-end stuff (which has already been jumping ship for some time now with slow Mac Pro updates, the abandoning of servers and pro software updates, etc.) will finally leave Apple once and for all. Macs used to be a market for creative, high-end and think differently types. It's clear Apple wants to go MASS MARKET instead. They became #1 by being mass market? No. They didn't. They should think about that before they destroy Apple once again. I think it's inevitable, though. Tim Cook can't think his way out of a paper bag, let alone innovate. Johnny Ives thinks crayon colors is innovation? It's a make-up job. Neither apparently knows how to actually INNOVATE. They scream DESPERATION for anything that looks DIFFERENT even if it's worse.
Then you have the CPU-armchair-quarterbacks on here that all seem to know what the difference are between CPU designs and are writing x86 as ancient and ARM as new and innovative without having a freaking CLUE about them in any meaningful way. They crunch binary numbers, people. They're not alien technology. What you DO need to know is that Windows runs x86, not ARM and Windows compatibility and easier application porting is the best selling point of changing from PPC to x86. PPC was a wasteland compared to the amount of software available now and all thanks to Intel. Go to ARM and you gain millions of stupid GARBAGE "fart" apps and lose all your meaningful software. Yeah, some will convert their software, but why bother? It sends a bad message that Apple is UNSTABLE and might go to yet another CPU in the future or even back to PPC. They can't make up their minds over short-term gains? Ridiculous.
The TYPE of CPU isn't what made OS X special, but screwing with the market over a control issue is dumb. What happens to Apple if their new fancy "custom" ARM comes out and Intel creates their next "AMD Killer" (like Core2Duo did) and leaves Apple's ARM in the DUST? Instead of "control" the'll have a "custom" SLOW POS that NO ONE will want. Using Intel or even AMD ensures they stick with the flow since the rest of the market is using it. You don't want to cost 2-3x as much and be SLOWER like they were with the G5 in the last days of PPC. It makes your platform look BAD as does constantly switching CPU types without a good enough reason to do so.
As iOS gets more powerful, it should be moving towards OSX proper, not the other way around. You don't needs desktops and notebooks running dumbed-down LESS CAPABLE operating systems and software. You run that software because you need those lesser systems to function. But as they get more powerful and control methods (like voice input) improve, they should move more towards the powerhouse OSX and away from the primitive iOS. Yes, you can add functions in OSX that make sense from iOS, but you don't turn OSX into iOS and you don't slow down your platform and go rogue just because you're a control freak and that is the way Apple comes across sometimes when they eliminate choices for no other reason (e.g. the whole sync over USB option being removed from OSX that went over like a ton of bricks).
