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This story is just rubbish...

Apple threaten Intel and tell them their CPUs need to be better, Intel snap into line?! I think not

Intel would have just told Apple, "...see how many Macs you'd sell for the rest of the year without any of our chips."

What you fail to realize is that most consumers don't care what's in the gut of the machine. They just want it to work. Apple would then be forced to make it work with AMD, ARM, or whatever. And they would (I'm sure with some initial issues). Though I agree that Intel is and should be their best choice. A dual chip Intel + ARM to run Mac OS X and iOS is a possible route I see Apple going.
 
Wouldn't Intel have recognized this on their own, as part of being forward-looking and prudent? Or are the major non-Apple industry players really as dumb as they seem?

This story is just rubbish...

Apple threaten Intel and tell them their CPUs need to be better, Intel snap into line?! I think not

Intel would have just told Apple, "...see how many Macs you'd sell for the rest of the year without any of our chips."

I'm probably answering my own question above.

Always assume Apple's hardware form-factor-to-power requirements are a cut above the rest.

I wouldn't be surprised if Intel needed some direction in this area. Apple's designs lead the industry, and the industry is following Apple's lead. Apple is way ahead of the game in the form-factor-to-power area.
 
Smart move for Intel

Finally, I'd like to add that Intel realized where the market was going so that was partly the reason they're bringing the wattage down. Who want's handheld devices that use 30-45w of power. That's be awesome speeds on that thing, but the battery technology isn't there yet. Now we just need Apple to yell at the battery companies.
 
Worldwide PC share doesn't mean anything. What share of those PC's are AMD's? What share of those are Dell, HP, Acer, etc..? How much money does Apple give to Intel per year vs any of those companies? Apple also works with Intel to improve on their offerings. Does Dell do that?

Also, using Dell as an example, if you check out their current "Popular Laptop" deals here...

http://www.dell.com/us/p/popular-laptop-deals?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

3 out of 5 of those deals are i3 systems. The lowest end MacBook Air uses an i5. The 15"+ MBP's use i7's.... Is it really Apple that buy's Intels cheapest offerings, or could it be others?

In terms of talking about low sales of Mac Pro's, how about Dell, HP, etc.. sales of high end work stations and servers? How many of those systems are also running AMD's?

There's a lot of variables and your comment cannot be accepted for anything other then flame bait.

Worldwide share of PCs is in direct proportion to the share of Intel chips bought by specific customer. AMD is just a little blip in the market share and yes, Apple does not buy the most expensive Intel chips (Mac Pro may be easily discounted as, once again, it's just a blip compared to real workstation sales and server sales). Free PR? Have you watched Apple news lately? It' a really bad PR, I am not sure any decent company even wants to be associated with Apple publicly nowadays.

The only reason Intel is slightly interested in Apple is because it wants Apple to switch iOS devices to Atom. This will happen eventually but might take some time (remember, switch from PowerPC also did not happen over night).
 
The first two words reveal the obvious about Apple. "Apple Threatened"

Instead of saying, "Apple works with Intel". Oh No. It's got to be bully style.

That's the scary part of Apple getting so big...
 
Where is the proof?

On new motherboards you can't undervolt them. And even in the latest core2 cpus you couldn't go lower than 0,9V or something like that, because <0,9V it's low wattage cpu area, and intel doesn't like that people get their normal cpus too cool. Without a hardware mod (specially in apple laptops with soldered cpu) there is no known way to undervolt them in laptops (were it matters the most).
Most likely intel locked it tight. Even my old laptop has a hardware mod to go lower than 0,9Volts. Go have a look at notebookreview.com.
 
This just shows you what lazy sloths the Win PCs makers are. It takes tiny Apple (on market share basis) to force Intel to make more efficient chips. The Win fans can hate on Apple all day, but the fact remains, but-for Apple going Intel, PC hardware would be as horrible now as they was ten years ago.

apple is one company that WILL get their way
 
The first two words reveal the obvious about Apple. "Apple Threatened"

Instead of saying, "Apple works with Intel". Oh No. It's got to be bully style.

That's the scary part of Apple getting so big...

OR, they're keeping their partners nicely in line.

I hope MBA users are enjoying their lovely notebooks that are the envy of the industry. Thanks to Apple's "bullying."

I look forward to more proactive Apple "bullying" so more best-in-class tech finds its way into consumers' hands. When Apple drops the hammer on partners it means they actually give a damn what they put their name to.

Appreciate it. It's quite rare these days.
 
Not sure if this was mentioned yet or not but the report I read mentioned Apple moving to Arm 64 bit cores by 2013.
 
I think Intel capitulated because there is nothing better than having a innovative leader pushing your own standards also. The chips that Intel produced because of Apple will also benefit Intel's research and therefore their products.
 
what do some of you have against ARM processors? Their higher end processors fair just as well, but they use less energy.

IBM's latest break through technology is supposed to be amazing, if they can get a usable version quick enough.

AMD's Bulldozer is supposed to theoretically get a 20% improvement over sandy bridges according to the last claims they made (not rumors). I am not an AMD fan, they have not fared well against intel in the past. Even a 10% improvement over ivy-bridge would make me proud to get an AMD Processor.
 
On new motherboards you can't undervolt them. And even in the latest core2 cpus you couldn't go lower than 0,9V or something like that, because <0,9V it's low wattage cpu area, and intel doesn't like that people get their normal cpus too cool. Without a hardware mod (specially in apple laptops with soldered cpu) there is no known way to undervolt them in laptops (were it matters the most).
Most likely intel locked it tight. Even my old laptop has a hardware mod to go lower than 0,9Volts. Go have a look at notebookreview.com.
I would talk to Apple about that and not Intel. Undervolting is possible but the power state finesse under Core 2 is missing.
 
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I really don't feel that AMD can scale well enough, or would want to play in an Apple ecosystem. I love AMD, but not sure it would be a good fit for Apple.

I really hope Apple doesn't burn an other bridge with a Processor manufacturer.

I actually feel like AMD could have played into Apple's ecosystem better than Intel. Here's why:

Apple put forward a lot of effort creating the OpenCL standard and promoting OpenCL. For a period of time every single Mac Apple shipped supported OpenCL on the GPU, and it was beginning to establish a huge potential customer base for OpenCL programs. Then Intel banished Nvidia from the chipset business, and now Apple's low end Mac Mini, the Mac Mini Server, the Macbook Air, and 13" Macbook Pro use Intel's integrated graphics, and as a result no longer support OpenCL on the GPU.

Meanwhile AMD's "fusion" CPUs have GPUs on die that do support OpenCL -- and I mean they support it across their entire product line, all the way down to cheapo $100 CPU motherboard combos. If Apple had gone with AMD OpenCL could be in a much stronger position than it is today.

I realize it is possible to program OpenCL for Intel's CPUs, but there is little point. What you end up doing is writing each kernel twice, once for the GPU and once for the CPU. And on the CPU end of things you don't end up with better performance, instead you just end up constrained to a programming model that is better suited to the GPU.
 
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ARM is why they are threatening...A6 is supposed to be quad core right??

I'd bet a bunch that Apple has a full Mac OS X Lion system running on ARM right now. Eventually As ARM improves Apple will see that ARM out perfomrs Intel. This will take two things, (1) Mac OS X to be making beter use a multi-core procesors and (2) for ARm to gain even more cores.

The only good reason not to move to ARM is that people like to boot Windows on their Macs. Eventually that need will disappear
 
This story is just rubbish...

Apple threaten Intel and tell them their CPUs need to be better, Intel snap into line?! I think not

Intel would have just told Apple, "...see how many Macs you'd sell for the rest of the year without any of our chips."

Did you miss the part where it was an Intel executive who said this? Why would they make this up?
 
Is it just me or Apple is slowly becoming the voice in the IT market?

I don't think so. Almost sounds like they are taking a page from the Microsoft playbook. Throw stuff out there and see what the reaction is.

I think moving from an Intel based line-up for laptop and desktop systems is a veiled threat.
 
It's obvious that power usage across the board is not apple's primary concern. They just switched their macbook pro line over from 35W to 45W CPUs.

They think that the Air market segment is the place to grow and where all PCs will end up. In that realm, their threat is valid as a 4 core cortex A15 CPU can approach desktop processors in Dhrystone MIPS numbers (40K, which would put it near the Phenom 940). http://www.itproportal.com/2011/03/14/exclusive-arm-cortex-a15-40-cent-faster-cortex-a9/
 
I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with Apple, as I believe Intel could cut the TDP a tad here and there, but asking them to cut their TDP to 33% is pretty drastic. Typical Apple kicking and screaming to get what they want.

As if 7 hours isn't good or something, I know consumers want more, more, more, but somethings gotta give.

I won't be happy if they move to ARM, unless we see performance gains AND lower TDP. Otherwise, if it's not broken don't fix it.

Um. huh? I have no idea how you get that a reduction from 35-40 watts to 15 watts would be a 33% reduction (?!?) Reducing from 40 to 15 would be a 62.5% reduction, while going from 35 to 15 would be a 57.1% reduction.
 
Sometimes I think these rumors are put out there by Apple just to ease the trauma of switching to new chips. Whichever chip that may be, in our subconscious we are already prepping for the adjustment.

I don't care what chip goes in, as long as I don't take a performance hit, and it doesn't require me to repurchase all of my software again. I don't care if there are 16 A5s soldered on, just make the thing "work".

And exactly when does Apple not make things work? Considering who they are I for one am impressed how they tend to be a game changer when they put their mind to it. :D
 
It's obvious that power usage across the board is not apple's primary concern. They just switched their macbook pro line over from 35W to 45W CPUs.

They think that the Air market segment is the place to grow and where all PCs will end up. In that realm, their threat is valid as a 4 core cortex A15 CPU can approach desktop processors in Dhrystone MIPS numbers (40K, which would put it near the Phenom 940). http://www.itproportal.com/2011/03/14/exclusive-arm-cortex-a15-40-cent-faster-cortex-a9/

Impressive chip. But lets put it into perspective shall we. Still for Air's that would be a nice chip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second
 
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