[wiremine]

I understand the business logic, but as a non-hardware guy, I've often wondered at how this would look in reality:

- Apple has proven they can switch out hardware stacks, so that part seems straight forward enough. Especially given how mature XCode is.

- But: can they really get to a point where they complete with Intel directly? Would they try and use ARM or roll their own ADM64?

[JustSomeNobody]

At this point do they HAVE to compete with Intel? The other thing Apple is REALLY good at is telling people what they want. Apple would likely be able to convince enough people that an ARM base laptop is perfect for them.

[jsprogrammer]

Most Apple customers have no idea what ARM or ISA mean. Apple's not big on publishing detailed specs, so this doesn't even seem like a marketing issue. Apple will just put it in and people will buy it based on Apple's reputation alone.

[JustSomeNobody]

Excellent point.

[jsprogrammer]

I wonder how many Apple customers were even aware of the PPC->X86 switch several years ago, let alone how many customers still remember it?

[wolfgke]

> At this point do they HAVE to compete with Intel? The other thing Apple is REALLY good at is telling people what they want. Apple would likely be able to convince enough people that an ARM base laptop is perfect for them.

In my opinion it was mainly Steve Jobs who was brilliant telling people what they want. So I personally doubt whether this strategy still works with Tim Cook as CEO.

[rarepostinlurkr]

And in all honestly, they are probably correct in telling people that.

People are already using incredibly low power/perf laptops (new MacBook).

I'm not convinced anyone doing content consumption would notice if the chip swapped out for an ARM instead. After all, ARM's already power their content consumption devices (all of iOS)

[nsxwolf]

That would be a bummer for me and a lot of other developers I'm sure. I know we're not the target market, but I like using Apple hardware and OS X, but for work I am always running multiple VMs with Windows and Linux.

I'd be sad if my upgrade path became some big, noisy, inelegant HP Xeon box.