ARM-Based MacBooks By The End Of 2014 Or Early 2015 – Seeking Alpha

A Seeking Alpha blog comments on recent rumors that Apple is planning to switch it’s Macs (yet again) from the Intel processors it’s used since 2006 to the family of CPUs by ARM Holdings that it uses in its mobile devices. The author asks rhetorically whether this rumor is simply an Apple tactic to exert leverage in pricing negotiations with Intel, or a real possibility, and concludes that it’s both.

The article notes that there would be substantial efficiencies and synergies realized by using just one family of processors across Apple’s entire hardware lineup, including a retionalizition of software development productivity around a single platform (hello, iOS/OS X convergence). However the author deduces that what Apple really wants is lower processor prices, and a switch to ARM would open the door to multiple CPU suppliers, and argues that for technical reasons switching from Intel to ARM should be much simpler than the transition from PowerPC to Intel.

Of course that would have to be weighed against kissing goodbye the Mac’s current status as the only PC that can natively run OS X, Windows, and Linux.

The author summarizes with a guess that Apple will offer a MacBook with an ARM processor by the end of 2014 or early 2015, but thinks that Apple’s best strategy is to continue playing Intel against ARM and keeping them both guessing, and that can’t be done on rumor alone.

For the full commentary visit here:
http://goo.gl/mdK0J