Cult of Mac’s John Brownlee addresses persistent rumors that Cupertino might have designs on dumping Intel and switching to custom-made, ARM-based chips in its laptop lines instead, with a recent report from an Apple intern who claimed to have worked on porting OS X to ARM devices back in 2010 adding fuel to the speculation. Brownlee observes that even Intel has mused publicly it would be remiss of them to dismiss the possibility that ARM might steal their Apple business.
Brownlee contends that while ARM really is a threat to Intel’s silicon dominance, the challenge is in the popular transition into Apples Post-PC world, and in his estimation there is next to zero likelihood that Apple will replace Intel chips with ARM-based ones in Mac computers any time in the next five years, and that there’s even the chance the exact opposite could obtain, with Intel chips eventually powering iPhones and iPads by then. He explains why in considerable detail, and interestingly, the argument harks back to the old RISC vs. CISC debate that characterized the rivalry between Apple/Motorola.IBM’s Power PC and Intel’s x86 CPU technologies in the ’90s and early ’00s, only ARM doesn’t fare nearly as well up against Intel’s current Core i silicon as the G3 and G4 did back in the day.
However, Brownlee observes that ARM doesnt need to replace Intel CPUs in Macs to beat Intel, pointing nout that while Mac sales are booming, iPhone and iPad sales are exploding, with Apple’s Mac business representing a diminishing share of the overall pie.
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