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Apple emphasize on profit margin a lot, which translates to their practice of ignoring minority customers. The demand of 17" laptops are not big enough for Apple to maintain their expected profit margin.

Well, it's not only the profit on the hardware, but also a completely lost customers if we switch (back) to Windows. Which means a lost customer of OS X software.

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The issue for Apple would be similar but more extreme: That's a big policy change for just a few people. If the numbers were high enough, they would just make a 17" for you in the first place.

If they licensed OS X to, say, Panasonic (to deliver, say, a Toughpad 4K 20" with OS X), they (Apple) wouldn't need to spend a dime on engineering the new hardware iteration. On the contrary - they'd receive money from the licenser.
 
So overall, You make a lot of very good points, and I do agree with you actually.



Apple is the kind of company that can make a sleek and sexy desirable product that will draw lots of people, even though there will be poor compatibility with earlier applications. As most people would buy such device, and have absolutely no idea what ARM or x86 or emulation means at all. and most applications running on said ultra-thin notebook would be stock apps, safari, mail, itunes, etc. and then 3rd party applications would be simple ones like word processing ones. So I think such a product could be successful, I don't think it will be this year though.



A couple things I just want to throw out.



the PPC---x86 transition, was going from a weaker CPU to a more powerful and more advanced CPU.



the x86--ARM transition is going from a great CPU- to a slightly weaker and a lot more power efficient processor.



that said I am personally very optimistic about the performance to come from ARM processors. .... I am also very optimistic about the power efficiency and graphics performance of future Intel processors.



Also, Rosetta was cool, and it worked ok, but had issues with lots of complex software and games.

And I am not 100% about this next sentence so correct me if I am wrong.... But I understand that Rosetta wasn't exactly an emulator but rather a translator for only the G3 processor and the G4. So if apple were to create something like Rosetta for this transition I feel it would be a lot more complicated as there is a whole range of x86 Processors that Mac OS is running on.



In conclusion, you have definitely sparked interest for me, and now I am thinking about getting an ARM based ultrabook and playing with it and some x86 emulators and see what is like. Personally, as I am a power user and gamer, I am hoping for broadwell/skylake in future MacBook Airs


I'd guess that like Rosetta there would/will be issues. X86 emulation is not a guess on my part it is real and you can read about it.

I do want to correct something you said. ARM is not a slightly slower platform it is slightly faster if you compare chips with the same die size and power consumption. ARM started out as a desktop chip (like PPC) but found new life in the embedded market so that for many years the only designs made prioritized power usage overspeed. Apple is the first company to have real incentive and ability to change that. MS also saw the potential there but they don't have the control (for better or worse) over their product ecosystem to effect the change. Apple wisely waited until ARM fabricators got within spitting distance of Intel's fab capabilities. They also have custom chip design abilities and a tight control over their ecosystem.

Anyway. I'm rambling. Look around and you'll see a lot of evidence that watt-for-watt ARM is superior for performance. So it would be much similar to the x86 transition than it seems superficially.
 
I would much rather have a 13 inch air retina then 12.2 that they keep bringing up. the current air is 11.6 so 11.6 to 12.2 isnt as big as it sounds.

this forces me to buy basically a 11 inch air instead of 13. the whole reason why i didnt buy the 11 inch air is because its too small. the 12.2 will be too small as well. .8 in size difference doesnt help. oh well. guess I will have to find a decent windows laptop that is basically a 13 inch air then when it comes time to upgrade.
 
If we do get a 12" rMBA that is ulta-slim fanless, has retina display, etc.
I would be very skeptical about the battery life of this notebook, and I don't see apple releasing a new notebook with less than 7/8 hours of battery life

You almost have that with the Asus Zenbook Prime. It's geared up more like a 13" MBP in an MBA shell. It's a 15" device, which will make for the biggest difference, but it can last about 7-8 hours on a charge through Windows.

Accounting for the smaller body and the accompanying smaller battery, higher demands from the screen, and the fact OSX is a little less heavy on the battery than Windows is, I'd say you could expect roughly the same battery life out of a 12" Retina Air. It'll obviously considerably less than the 12-14 hours the current Airs offer, but considering what you get in trade, it might be worth it for some people.

The only thing I think it won't be able to do is go entirely fanless. Apple could design the body in such a way that the entire thing acts as a really efficient heatsink, but still...where's it gonna dissipate all that heat? Right into your lap?

----------

I'd guess that like Rosetta there would/will be issues. X86 emulation is not a guess on my part it is real and you can read about it.

Yeah, it's real. And it's inefficient and slow. Not something you'd want an ultrathin laptop that's meant to last all day on a battery.

I do want to correct something you said. ARM is not a slightly slower platform it is slightly faster if you compare chips with the same die size and power consumption.

No, it's not. You could make a guesstimation based upon synthetic benchmarks and say they're roughly equal in certain circumstances, but thus far, nothing in the ARM catalog matches an i5 or i7 in raw performance.

edit: I know you're gonna want proof, so...here you go

Synthetic geekbench scores:

Apple A7 64-bit single core - 1414
Apple A7 64-bit multi core - 2564

Intel Haswell i7-4770K single core - 4405
Intel Haswell i7-4770K multi core - 16774

As the article states, judging benchmarks between different architectures should be taken with a grain of salt, but still...that's a considerable difference. A single Haswell i7 core is roughly 3 times as fast as as the Apple A7. It's about on par with a Core i3. Which is impressive. It shows how fast the platform has grown over the last 5 years. But it's still not an even match on the high end.
 
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The only thing I think it won't be able to do is go entirely fanless. Apple could design the body in such a way that the entire thing acts as a really efficient heatsink, but still...where's it gonna dissipate all that heat? Right into your lap?

----------



Yeah, it's real. And it's inefficient and slow. Not something you'd want an ultrathin laptop that's meant to last all day on a battery.



No, it's not. You could make a guesstimation based upon synthetic benchmarks and say they're roughly equal in certain circumstances, but thus far, nothing in the ARM catalog matches an i5 or i7 in raw performance.


Yes, emulation isn't ideal. It is just expected to be a stop gap. A stop gap Apple has used several times in the past successfully. So one they are likely to use again. At the risk of sounding like a broken record if you consider Apple's past strategy this all makes sense. Start with a low-end machine where the buyer is less likely to run very demanding software in emulation and they are less performance sensitive. Also bundle with the machine a full sweet of native apps (aka iLife and iWork). Iron out the kinks while developers port over their more demanding software packages.

And you are right there is a bit of "synthetic" guesswork to my prediction but not much. ARM is a RISC based processor and there are still high performance RISC based processors out in the wild. The difference is in the past they weren't cost-effective compared to Intel. I think that is changing. I'm not the only one. AMD, Nvidia, others are already looking to ARM as more than a mobile platform.
 
I can't imagine that Apple would release a laptop that can't run some of the basic apps people run now on MBA's. Those would include not only Aperture, iWorks, etc., but also Photoshop and Light Room. This is not going to a machine that you will use Premiere Pro, etc., but Apple and CC programs for photography and coding have to be a given.
 
AGAIN, maybe I'm wrong but you're aren't proving me that the idea is absurd. Unless you having compelling evidence that x86 is a better platform at the rumored wattage? Remember Apple software will work from day one and all the consumer stuff is now free.

You are asking all the wrong questions. The first and foremost question should be - what would be the compelling reason for Apple to undertake a massively expensive and resource-draining transition of their ultrabook line from x86 to ARM. It can't be the power efficiency - the current Haswell MBA already supports paractically all-day long battery. Broadwell 14nm processors will give Apple ever better peformance per Watt. Apple will need that extra CPU/GPU processing to offer Retina in the current Air form-factor, while preserving its all-day battery life.

ARM does not perform in the same class as current Core i3/i5/i7 processors - it's an order of magnitude slower. It may catch up in a few years but it's not there now. Intel is obviously closing the gap in terms of power efficiency. But processor transition is not just about simple power/performance numbers - it's all about applications compatibility, ecosystem, peripheral support and other "platform dependent" factors.

The cost/benefit analysis doesn't add up in ARM's favor for a general purpose ultrabook platforms. A transition would be a multi-billion dollar endeavor. It would be a huge drain on Apple manpower and would steal their focus away from (future) wearables, iOS, iPhone/iPad - products that actually account for over 70% of Apple's revenues. At the end of the day, Apple needs something better than "gee, wouldn't it be cool" type reasons to undertake this transition. In the days of PPC, that decision was clear. PPC was a dead-end, and Intel was the future. The situation today is not even remotely similar.

You can look no further than Surface RT project to see how well a similar endeavour turned out for Microsoft. Surface/Windows RT are abject market failures. It failed because Microsoft tried selling a underpowered general-purpose computer that had no ecosystem. Even Microsoft has realized that and have now focused their developement on Surface Pro (x86 Surface). Apple is too smart of a company to go down the same rathole.

iPad apps would likely run at native speed with some kind of UI emulation.

You don't get it. No one needs to run iPad apps on a MacBook Air. We already have a platform for iPad apps - it's called an iPad.
 
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This is almost word for word what people said (myself included) before the x86 transition.

Yes, ARM is powerful enough to run a full OS X. That isn't secret. ARM server clusters are gaining in popularity. ARM processors geared for performance over ultra low wattage are very robust. The real metric is power per watt these days and ARM arguably leads.

It is entirely within Apple's already demonstrated capabilities to customize/optimize ARM cores to run at higher wattages for more power. The dual core A7 already matches or exceeds a Core Duo ruining at twice the speed (in GHZ) and using over 10x the power.

Couldn't they have both Apple Ax and Intel in one machine even on the same package?

That way the stuff that runs 24/7 looking out for activity. Can run on low power ARM, stuff that runs when ever the user is active (mail, music, safari) can run High power ARM. Stuff that runs when the user is focused on a task runs x86.

Intel have said they'd be willing to build SoC around their Core IP and they can fab ARM chips. Have the Apple Ax replace the Platform Hub on the Intel package. Then Apple can use the work they do for iDevice wifi, touch pads, secure zone and touch ID on the Mac as well.

Have the system dynamically choose between them. Keep core system running on the ARM chip, also core Apple apps that are open most of the time could stay running on the ARM core (Mail and such). Network, notifications.

If an App isn't suited then the system would fire up x86 cores and that focus app would have free rain on that resource. But Apps using XPC processes or similar could even run between two processors. Apps might need a recompile so the compiler can flag ARMable processes.

Would be surprised if that wasn't at least in Apples test labs as an option.
 
Yes, emulation isn't ideal. It is just expected to be a stop gap. A stop gap Apple has used several times in the past successfully. So one they are likely to use again. At the risk of sounding like a broken record if you consider Apple's past strategy this all makes sense. Start with a low-end machine where the buyer is less likely to run very demanding software in emulation and they are less performance sensitive. Also bundle with the machine a full sweet of native apps (aka iLife and iWork). Iron out the kinks while developers port over their more demanding software packages.

Yeah, but now that we're in the midst of the age of computer efficiency, it might not fly as well as it has in the past. In a perfect situation, one that assumes the emulator is as efficiently coded as possible, you need a machine that can provide three times the amount of processing power as the target platform. To simplify it to probably a too extreme degree, a program that needs a 1Ghz x86 processor will need roughly a 3Ghz ARM prcessor to run it equally as well. And that's assuming x86 and ARM are equivalent on performance.

That'd mean your ARM Mac will have to run a lot hotter and a lot faster to run that x86 app, which means less battery life overall. If we assume that Apple would move to ARM due to better performance per watt, that would moot their entire reason for doing so. Native apps would run fine, but there won't be as many native apps at first. It'd take at least a couple of years before it'd catch up, and that's assuming it sells well enough to justify the cost of porting a bunch of high end apps to a new architecture.

Also, like I said before, the Mac brand name has certain expectations behind it. This is especially true in these much lauded post-PC days, when people buy laptops with the intentions of doing something specific with it. If they go out and buy an MBA thinking they can run Photoshop or Office with it, only to figure out...hey, they can't yet, it's just gonna piss em off.

Apple will find itself in a situation where a new Mac doesn't sell because people buying Macs these days know what they're getting into. They'll want to wait for the software to catch up before they commit to the new platform, buying older Macs in the meantime, while the people porting the software will wait for sales to justify porting to another architecture.

Things are different these days. Yeah, Apple could do it, and maybe pull it off. It won't be immediately as nice, but it could catch up. Thing is, are the advantages worth the downtime? If you ask me, they're not. It's a lateral upgrade at best. The biggest disadvantage is that there's no real advantage to making the move.

And you are right there is a bit of "synthetic" guesswork to my prediction but not much. ARM is a RISC based processor and there are still high performance RISC based processors out in the wild. The difference is in the past they weren't cost-effective compared to Intel. I think that is changing. I'm not the only one. AMD, Nvidia, others are already looking to ARM as more than a mobile platform.

I'm not saying ARM's bad. It's fine, and would make for a great platform...were it built from scratch. This is something Apple can't do with the Mac, even if they were to introduce an MBA-Lite alongside the normal MBA. With the competition so fierce these days, any setback could cost you your product line. And with the PC scene being smaller and more focused on the middle-high end, the people it's designed to sell to just won't buy it.

Also, From what I understand, Intels are called RISC-likes these days. They use CISC instruction sets, but are built more like RISC processors. I'll have to wait for someone more knowledgeable about CPUs to pop in and explain what that means, cuz I don't quite get it myself. Only that one type of processor doesn't necessarily have as many advantages over the other like they used to.
 
You are asking all the wrong questions. The first and foremost question should be - what would be the compelling reason for Apple to undertake a massively expensive and resource-draining transition of their ultrabook line from x86 to ARM. It can't be the power efficiency - the current Haswell MBA already supports paractically all-day long battery. Broadwell 14nm processors will give Apple ever better peformance per Watt. Apple will need that extra CPU/GPU processing to offer Retina in the current Air form-factor, while preserving its all-day battery life.

ARM does not perform in the same class as current Core i3/i5/i7 processors - it's an order of magnitude slower. It may catch up in a few years but it's not there now. Intel is obviously closing the gap in terms of power efficiency. But processor transition is not just about simple power/performance numbers - it's all about applications compatibility, ecosystem, peripheral support and other "platform dependent" factors.

The cost/benefit analysis doesn't add up in ARM's favor for a general purpose ultrabook platforms. A transition would be a multi-billion dollar endeavor. It would be a huge drain on Apple manpower and would steal their focus away from (future) wearables, iOS, iPhone/iPad - products that actually account for over 70% of Apple's revenues. At the end of the day, Apple needs something better than "gee, wouldn't it be cool" type reasons to undertake this transition. In the days of PPC, that decision was clear. PPC was a dead-end, and Intel was the future. The situation today is not even remotely similar.

You can look no further than Surface RT project to see how well a similar endeavour turned out for Microsoft. Surface/Windows RT are abject market failures. It failed because Microsoft tried selling a underpowered general-purpose computer that had no ecosystem. Even Microsoft has realized that and have now focused their developement on Surface Pro (x86 Surface). Apple is too smart of a company to go down the same rathole.



You don't get it. No one needs to run iPad apps on a MacBook Air. We already have a platform for iPad apps - it's called an iPad.


I disagree. If Apple wants a slimmer all day machine with a retina display it's going to have to paradigm on the power that that low-power arm does perform just as well or better than x86. Surface RT didn't do well but it was also an older variety of chips. With the a seven Apple is proved that it has an edge on arm chip design. Also using arm designs gives Apple more control which is something Apple always likes. It also gives them more control over cost. Intel's chips are getting more expensive as they move to more advanced manufacturing.

Besides if you want to talk about surface the Intel surface tablets had fans which according to the rumor this new Apple laptop won't have. Therefore it is clearly using a different chipset. Either an extremely low voltage Intel chip. Or a higher voltage more powerful arm chip.
 
I'd guess that like Rosetta there would/will be issues. X86 emulation is not a guess on my part it is real and you can read about it.

I do want to correct something you said. ARM is not a slightly slower platform it is slightly faster if you compare chips with the same die size and power consumption. ARM started out as a desktop chip (like PPC) but found new life in the embedded market so that for many years the only designs made prioritized power usage overspeed. Apple is the first company to have real incentive and ability to change that. MS also saw the potential there but they don't have the control (for better or worse) over their product ecosystem to effect the change. Apple wisely waited until ARM fabricators got within spitting distance of Intel's fab capabilities. They also have custom chip design abilities and a tight control over their ecosystem.

Anyway. I'm rambling. Look around and you'll see a lot of evidence that watt-for-watt ARM is superior for performance. So it would be much similar to the x86 transition than it seems superficially.

I believe you, I don't doubt that ARM is faster per Watt. Which makes sense why ARM could be a better platform long term.

You make some more good points in the text that I bolded, I didn't think of those things but they are very true.

I did some research on ARM emulating x86, and I was pretty underwhelmed... for now atleast.

No, it's not. You could make a guesstimation based upon synthetic benchmarks and say they're roughly equal in certain circumstances, but thus far, nothing in the ARM catalog matches an i5 or i7 in raw performance.

edit: I know you're gonna want proof, so...here you go

Synthetic geekbench scores:

Apple A7 64-bit single core - 1414
Apple A7 64-bit multi core - 2564

Intel Haswell i7-4770K single core - 4405
Intel Haswell i7-4770K multi core - 16774

As the article states, judging benchmarks between different architectures should be taken with a grain of salt, but still...that's a considerable difference. A single Haswell i7 core is roughly 3 times as fast as as the Apple A7. It's about on par with a Core i3. Which is impressive. It shows how fast the platform has grown over the last 5 years. But it's still not an even match on the high end.

Wow, please tell me you are not comparing a desktop CPU to a smartphone CPU???

I can't imagine that Apple would release a laptop that can't run some of the basic apps people run now on MBA's. Those would include not only Aperture, iWorks, etc., but also Photoshop and Light Room. This is not going to a machine that you will use Premiere Pro, etc., but Apple and CC programs for photography and coding have to be a given.

If Apple did release something like this...(I don't think they will) They would first rewrite the apps that you mentioned for ARM and work with 3rd party devs to get apps written for ARM.

You are asking all the wrong questions. The first and foremost question should be - what would be the compelling reason for Apple to undertake a massively expensive and resource-draining transition of their ultrabook line from x86 to ARM. It can't be the power efficiency - the current Haswell MBA already supports paractically all-day long battery. Broadwell 14nm processors will give Apple ever better peformance per Watt. Apple will need that extra CPU/GPU processing to offer Retina in the current Air form-factor, while preserving its all-day battery life.



The cost/benefit analysis doesn't add up in ARM's favor for a general purpose ultrabook platforms. A transition would be a multi-billion dollar endeavor. It would be a huge drain on Apple manpower and would steal their focus away from (future) wearables, iOS, iPhone/iPad - products that actually account for over 70% of Apple's revenues. At the end of the day, Apple needs something better than "gee, wouldn't it be cool" type reasons to undertake this transition. In the days of PPC, that decision was clear. PPC was a dead-end, and Intel was the future. The situation today is not even remotely similar.

You can look no further than Surface RT project to see how well a similar endeavour turned out for Microsoft. Surface/Windows RT are abject market failures. It failed because Microsoft tried selling a underpowered general-purpose computer that had no ecosystem. Even Microsoft has realized that and have now focused their developement on Surface Pro (x86 Surface). Apple is too smart of a company to go down the same rathole.

My thoughts exactly,
also I just realized that Microsoft is the only manufacturer still making windows RT systems.... hahaha fail.



Depending how the next couple years play out, how ARM and intel chips evolve, and the rest of the mobile, and notebook ecosystem evolve. I see there is a possibility of Apple making ARM based Macs, but not anytime soon
 
I disagree. If Apple wants a slimmer all day machine with a retina display it's going to have to paradigm on the power that that low-power arm does perform just as well or better than x86.

You can disagree all you want, but facts are facts. Broadwell puts a thin, retina-enabled, all-day-battery laptop squarely within Apple's reach. All without breaking x86 application ecosystem or undertaking a multi-billion dollar platform transition.

There is not much point in arguing about this further. As I said to the other poster - all you have to do is wait a few months and you will see. There will be no ARM-based MacBook Air in 2014 - you can take it to the bank ;)
 
Wow, please tell me you are not comparing a desktop CPU to a smartphone CPU???

More the iPad vs. desktops, which are roughly more comparable. Like I mentioned, it isn't perfectly fair, but it does give you an idea of how far it'd have to scale to equivalent performance.

And hey, it's kind of what everyone is doing now. The A7 works so well in my iPad, why can't it work just as well in my Mac?
 
Synthetic geekbench scores:

Apple A7 64-bit single core - 1414
Apple A7 64-bit multi core - 2564

Intel Haswell i7-4770K single core - 4405
Intel Haswell i7-4770K multi core - 16774

As the article states, judging benchmarks between different architectures should be taken with a grain of salt, but still...that's a considerable difference. A single Haswell i7 core is roughly 3 times as fast as as the Apple A7. It's about on par with a Core i3. Which is impressive. It shows how fast the platform has grown over the last 5 years. But it's still not an even match on the high end.

Yes, "on the high end" comparing a 22nm 35W vs 28nm ~5-8W processor. Also the Haswell is a generation ahead of the A7. Look how the A7 compares to the higher wattage previous i5. You are right these are synthetic comparisons and, again, that's why you would start with a low-end, ultra low wattage machine where they two processors are more neck-and-neck and ARM's power development really shines.
 
this the way it will go down, finally a breath of brains

Possible lineup?
12" screen in 11" footprint - MBA with IGP or Iris gfx
14" screen in 13" footprint - MBP with Iris or Iris Pro gfx
16" screen in 15" footprint - MBP with Iris Pro or dGPU

While I am enthusiastic about the power savings in the NVidia 8xxx series of dGPUs, I think Apple will undoubtedly reserve dGPUs for only the highest spec'd and priced MBP model.

dumping the bezel, saves costs, it will be Apples most cost effective, smartest, way to go to turn the "AIR" line into APPLES TOP SELLING LINE!
ALL 3 WILL HAVE a version of IRIS, NOT RETINA
Bring em on!
These don't trip your trigger, go PRO, me 11" or 12 ":apple:
 
Yes, "on the high end" comparing a 22nm 35W vs 28nm ~5-8W processor. Also the Haswell is a generation ahead of the A7. Look how the A7 compares to the higher wattage previous i5. You are right these are synthetic comparisons and, again, that's why you would start with a low-end, ultra low wattage machine where they two processors are more neck-and-neck and ARM's power development really shines.

The wattage is the most important thing to focus on here. Do you think a 2.8Ghz ARM would still be running at 5-8W on a desktop machine? Would it be able to do the same tasks just as quickly at considerably less wattage than it's Intel equivalent?

ARMs are quickly becoming better performing chips. Each generation is a huge leap and bound over the previous. On the flip side, Intels are very quickly becoming more power efficient in order to compete. Eventually, we'll come to a point where they meet in the middle.

So if you have a situation where one isn't necessarily better than the other, why shift your entire platform over to it and break application compatibility for something that doesn't give you any real benefit over what you already had?
 
Yeah, but now that we're in the midst of the age of computer efficiency, it might not fly as well as it has in the past. In a perfect situation, one that assumes the emulator is as efficiently coded as possible, you need a machine that can provide three times the amount of processing power as the target platform. To simplify it to probably a too extreme degree, a program that needs a 1Ghz x86 processor will need roughly a 3Ghz ARM prcessor to run it equally as well. And that's assuming x86 and ARM are equivalent on performance.

That'd mean your ARM Mac will have to run a lot hotter and a lot faster to run that x86 app, which means less battery life overall. If we assume that Apple would move to ARM due to better performance per watt, that would moot their entire reason for doing so. Native apps would run fine, but there won't be as many native apps at first. It'd take at least a couple of years before it'd catch up, and that's assuming it sells well enough to justify the cost of porting a bunch of high end apps to a new architecture.

Also, like I said before, the Mac brand name has certain expectations behind it. This is especially true in these much lauded post-PC days, when people buy laptops with the intentions of doing something specific with it. If they go out and buy an MBA thinking they can run Photoshop or Office with it, only to figure out...hey, they can't yet, it's just gonna piss em off.

Apple will find itself in a situation where a new Mac doesn't sell because people buying Macs these days know what they're getting into. They'll want to wait for the software to catch up before they commit to the new platform, buying older Macs in the meantime, while the people porting the software will wait for sales to justify porting to another architecture.

Things are different these days. Yeah, Apple could do it, and maybe pull it off. It won't be immediately as nice, but it could catch up. Thing is, are the advantages worth the downtime? If you ask me, they're not. It's a lateral upgrade at best. The biggest disadvantage is that there's no real advantage to making the move.

First of all, emulations would be stop gap and, as they did in the past, Intel machines would be sold concurrently for several years. Many people would complain. I'm not saying if Apple switches to ARM mana will fall from the sky and everyone will get free healthcare. You wouldn't emulate unless you had too and you wouldn't buy this computer unless you thought you wouldn't need to emulate much and often. x86 emulation is NOT as good as the real thing and that's why Apple wouldn't force people to switch. Yet.

Why do it? Because Apple loves control. Because Apple loves slim & svelte. Why did Microsoft try to do it? Because convergence is happening. I've got my own issues with it but it is happening. Apple skates to where the puck will be but they've learned the hard way to not get there too fast. Most Apple's really innovative technology flopped because consumers weren't ready for it and/or technology hadn't progressed to where Apple could make it elegant. Microsoft fell over themselves trying to "get there" before Apple did but Apple's goal isn't to use ARM because it's cool but because it will (I believer this year) make the most sense.

The A7 shows that Apple's chip design teams have come up to speed. Creating a faster, higher wattage variant wouldn't be a "multi billion" dollar endeavor. It would an extension of their existing multi-billion dollar investment that will save them billions (in the long run) of payments to Intel. When they buy Intel they buy IP as well as fab. When they have TSMC and Samsung (or whoever) build AX chips they pay just for fab—in a competitive market. Heck even Intel has hinted they may start fab'ing ARM chips in the future.

Control also means less complexity (everything Apple would run on ARM it just needs a different UI and system resources). Control means being able to design chips around products (like they do with iOS devices) instead of products around chips (like they have to do with Macs). With the Power PC Apple didn't have control. They were reliant on their partners like IBM and Freescale who were more interested in servers, embedded machines, and gaming consoles to make chips for Apple. Intel now has an increasingly different set of priorities than Apple.

I've enjoyed this discussion but I think I've made my point and I think those who really don't see it won't ever see it. Meanwhile I need to get back to work on my old school 2009 Mac Pro (which I planning on keeping for years even if I am right). So this will be my last post on this thread. It's been fun, thanks!
 
Possible lineup?
12" screen in 11" footprint - MBA with IGP or Iris gfx
14" screen in 13" footprint - MBP with Iris or Iris Pro gfx
16" screen in 15" footprint - MBP with Iris Pro or dGPU

While I am enthusiastic about the power savings in the NVidia 8xxx series of dGPUs, I think Apple will undoubtedly reserve dGPUs for only the highest spec'd and priced MBP model.

dumping the bezel, saves costs, it will be Apples most cost effective, smartest, way to go to turn the "AIR" line into APPLES TOP SELLING LINE!
ALL 3 WILL HAVE a version of IRIS, NOT RETINA
Bring em on!
These don't trip your trigger, go PRO, me 11" or 12 ":apple:

not retina?? lol wut?
 
First of all, emulations would be stop gap and, as they did in the past, Intel machines would be sold concurrently for several years. Many people would complain. I'm not saying if Apple switches to ARM mana will fall from the sky and everyone will get free healthcare. You wouldn't emulate unless you had too and you wouldn't buy this computer unless you thought you wouldn't need to emulate much and often. x86 emulation is NOT as good as the real thing and that's why Apple wouldn't force people to switch. Yet.

Why do it? Because Apple loves control. Because Apple loves slim & svelte. Why did Microsoft try to do it? Because convergence is happening. I've got my own issues with it but it is happening. Apple skates to where the puck will be but they've learned the hard way to not get there too fast. Most Apple's really innovative technology flopped because consumers weren't ready for it and/or technology hadn't progressed to where Apple could make it elegant. Microsoft fell over themselves trying to "get there" before Apple did but Apple's goal isn't to use ARM because it's cool but because it will (I believer this year) make the most sense.

The A7 shows that Apple's chip design teams have come up to speed. Creating a faster, higher wattage variant wouldn't be a "multi billion" dollar endeavor. It would an extension of their existing multi-billion dollar investment that will save them billions (in the long run) of payments to Intel. When they buy Intel they buy IP as well as fab. When they have TSMC and Samsung (or whoever) build AX chips they pay just for fab—in a competitive market. Heck even Intel has hinted they may start fab'ing ARM chips in the future.

Control also means less complexity (everything Apple would run on ARM it just needs a different UI and system resources). Control means being able to design chips around products (like they do with iOS devices) instead of products around chips (like they have to do with Macs). With the Power PC Apple didn't have control. They were reliant on their partners like IBM and Freescale who were more interested in servers, embedded machines, and gaming consoles to make chips for Apple. Intel now has an increasingly different set of priorities than Apple.

I've enjoyed this discussion but I think I've made my point and I think those who really don't see it won't ever see it. Meanwhile I need to get back to work on my old school 2009 Mac Pro (which I planning on keeping for years even if I am right). So this will be my last post on this thread. It's been fun, thanks!


Thank you for your time and thoughts, you made a very good argument and stated it clearly
 
I've enjoyed this discussion but I think I've made my point and I think those who really don't see it won't ever see it. Meanwhile I need to get back to work on my old school 2009 Mac Pro (which I planning on keeping for years even if I am right). So this will be my last post on this thread. It's been fun, thanks!

Thanks to you as well - you made good points in your last post. Ultimately, though, I don't see there being enough "bang for the buck" for Apple to transition MacOS to ARM.

Time will tell.
 
Possible lineup?
12" screen in 11" footprint - MBA with IGP or Iris gfx
14" screen in 13" footprint - MBP with Iris or Iris Pro gfx
16" screen in 15" footprint - MBP with Iris Pro or dGPU

While I am enthusiastic about the power savings in the NVidia 8xxx series of dGPUs, I think Apple will undoubtedly reserve dGPUs for only the highest spec'd and priced MBP model.

dumping the bezel, saves costs, it will be Apples most cost effective, smartest, way to go to turn the "AIR" line into APPLES TOP SELLING LINE!
ALL 3 WILL HAVE a version of IRIS, NOT RETINA
Bring em on!
These don't trip your trigger, go PRO, me 11" or 12 ":apple:

Since you quoted my post .... ;)

I do think Apple could retain the Retina Hi-Res screens while preserving battery life, especially if (1) Broadwell proves to be as efficient as Intel has announced and (2) Apple incorporates IGZO technology (likely at some point). I highly doubt Apple has introduced hi-resolution screens just to rescind them; rather, the next frontier for Apple will be screens with a 4k resolution. The only question is, when?
 
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