It's significant that the author at Semi Accurate works for a British company and ARM is a British company. Also, the author ( Demergian), formerlly was an editor of publication that had a reputation for spreading false rumors and untrue stories. IMO this calls for an investigation and possible indictment .

I think you're missing a relatively obvious possibility here (one which I would strongly hope is being worked on):1. Apple has mastered the art of video source switching in laptops (high performance, hight power discrete GPU switched on-the-fly to low power CPU chipset integrated GPU).2. Apple has OSX running on both big footprint (x86) and small footprint (ARM) systems. It's a micro-kernel OS with great scalability. They've proved they can do a lot and make it feel fast on an ARM core CPU and they've also proved that by hard coding much of the multi-media acceleration needs, they can deliver excellent video performance with great power savings.3. Apple has done well with everything they've vertically integrated. Here's the next phase:Apple should be integrating an A5 MCU with GPU into their modern laptops for the times where you're just typing, just using Word or Powerpoint, just watching a movie or listening to music, just browsing a website [sans flash], or just reading something. Those scenarios require almost nothing from an x86 CPU but to use it requires keeping the CPU chipset online, the RAM cranking at high speed and the high power general purpose GPU (whether integrated or discrete) online.By adding the ability to seamlessly transition from x86 to ARM and back depending on what the users' needs are gives potential HUGE runtime savings. Yes, the laptop screen's bigger than an iPAD, but it's got maybe 50% higher power consumption while sporting a battery 10x the size. Imagine adding a touch screen to all mac laptops so they can migrate between regular OSX and iOS on the fly? 24hour movie marathons? Bring 'em on!

Wouldn't surprise me in the least for Apple to do this. In fact I'm surprised they haven't already or come up with their own custom silicon. They have bought up to seperate microprocessor design teams in the last couple of years

as a computer science who is mastering in operating system design. It is too difficult to switch that drastic of tecnhologies on the fly for the savings you would see.further any application that was granted system access (while not many are) would have to be rewritten.Apple moved to X86 because all major software was being produced in one form or another to run on x86. A move from X86 would make the development cost for apple systems extremely expensive, even more so without software layers like java or flash which apple isn't exactly a friend of. Apple hasn't really mentioned it but I imagine that a secondary motif for retaining the x86 line is competition. Intel has to fend of AMD, maybe Nvidia, and others developing their technology. This is why we see sandy bridge etcIf the article had stated that apple will different their lines even further by having the macbook air and standard mac book run on atoms or neo's from amd that would seem much more highly likely. This switch would increase the batter life while maintaining performance and offer high profitability. Further it increases the gap between the stander laptops and the MacPro which also increases that lines desirability and I can safely assume that the margin on the Pro is greater then the standard.

lol, that actually is kinda crazy when you think about it lol. http://www.anon-toolz.at.tc

Pro tip: if you want to sound smart, write proper English.

I thought you would have proof of your assertion, your assertion aren't anything that's not obvious. Yes trigate is neat, but lets see it perform before we use it as a talking point.SemiAccurate is hit and miss. I think like Boot Camp, Apple is looking to maybe couple Intel CPUs for complicated computing, while the ARM could provide a sufficient experience with great battery life.

Yes, I'm pointing out common sense reasons why a shifty report may be wrong. There's nothing wrong with that And maybe Apple will start including mobile chips in future laptops, but that still doesn't mean Intel chips are going to go away completely — that's my point.

In my they would not take such action. It tarnished their reputation, and will bring great losses

I agree, if you want to sound smart *use* proper English (and saying something smart doesn't hurt either .

I would have to agree. It would be a mistake for Apple to move to a different platform with their success with the original Intel move. They have huge momentum with their current product line. Why risk it as a business? Remember Rosetta and how poorly it performed on none native code? How much of a pain would it be running VirtualBox/Parallels/VMware for x86 on a ARM based platform?

I'm pretty certain Apple will unify the processor families across all their platforms, which at this point means a move towards their custom A* processors. Doing this will allow them to unify the OS as well, with future versions of iOS providing more desktop-like functionality. Backward compatibility with OS X will not be an issue as developers will simply produce new iOS versions. OS X will eventually go the way of Mac OS 9.

Here's a thought. Apple maybe Apple will enter into an exclusive foundry deal with Intel to fab ARM based processors using Intel's new “Tri-Gate” transistor technology. Such an exclusive deal would give Apple a serious edge over other ARM licensees and would give Intel the foothold in mobile processors that has so far eluded it.

Why is everyone saying that this Tri-Gate is something that is essentially exclusive to Intel? AMD has FinFET. Tri-Gate is an example of MuGFET and other manufacturers can use a very similar manufacturing process as Intel. Though Intel will get there first without a doubt.

I think when you look at how limited A ARM chip is. You would realize that it could never run a modern OS like OS X. It is one reason there is limited multi tasking and limited OS functions.It's not that lower powered chipset will not become more popular in devices. Its just that I have noticed the laws of physics have limitations. These lowered powered chips are slower and they have less general abilities. That may eventually change. But nobody will buy a Macbook Pro that actually decreases in performance from one model to the next. Apple is all about putting performance first. That is why it did not use Flash in its phones and iPads and why it choose Intel over the Power PC chip to power its computer lines. I have seen nothing to change this.

You see a conflict of interest based on the country of origin of the author of the article? That's really stretching it.

Look at today's price on
You think his touting a stock from a country based in his home country. ?
is stretching it ? That's ludicrous.
ARMH. Demergian's reporting pushed the stock up $1.79 per share.
Besides, he claims the change to ARM chips will not occur until. 2013 .
It looks like he is using the media to manipulate stock prices, possibly
for his own benefit !
His former job was with the ” Inquirer” That says a lot for his honesty !

I stopped reading the article when you said -50% in power consumption for the CPU basically equals double the battery life. That's so far from the truth. You need like an order of magnitude less power consumption on the CPU to double the battery life of the whole system.According to Nvidia their 1.5 Ghz quad core Cortex A9 chip is already equal to a 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo chip. So a 2.5 Ghz quad core Cortex A15 should be at least twice as powerful. What you don't understand is that the fact that Intel chips are more powerful is irrelevant! What matters is that the chips are “good enough” for something like a Macbook air. If many people thought a Core 2 Duo at 1.4 Ghz Macbook Air was already more than enough for them, and could even prefer it to a Macbook Pro, why wouldn't they want one with an ARM chip that is just as powerful or more and will actually offer double the battery life of the current Macbook Air?If Microsoft was “visionary” enough to see the future is ARM chips, do you think Apple who started not one but two ARM based revolutions in the industry, isn't?Also, pro tip: learn about disruptive innovation. You seem to need it.

“It is too difficult to switch that drastic of tecnhologies on the fly for the savings you would see.”With experience, these are words often regretted in hindsight. Everything we use today was too difficult or not economical 3 years ago. Turn the problem around and work out how it could be done.

@dmbass it's pretty ignorant to assume smart people have English as their first language.

The web browser. That is all that 95% of Macbook users do with their Macbook. Why should Apple want to continue forcing them to use a $1000+ Intel powered Macbook if most of what most users want can be done through the HTML5 web browser and a new type of high-end app store for $500 or less.

I never mentioned power consumption statistics in this article, so… Did you even read it? Microsoft is looking to ARM as a way to bring Windows to tablets and netbooks. It's not replacing x86 for all Windows laptops, which is what the source is saying about Mac laptops.

@postmaster in the short to medium term a mixed chipset also provides Apple with a simple path to a hybrid iPad <-> MacBook. Eg. Reversible/detachable screen is an iPad, like the novelty hybrid tablet/laptops of a few years ago, but practical.

Your scenario has the following requirements: (a) he should be assumed to own stock in any British company that he reports on, (b) he crafts reports with the expectation of moving the stock price in a way that benefits him, (c) he then sells the stock while the price is still affected by what's almost certain to be a short-term bump, and, oh yes, (d) he owns enough stock in the company to make this worthwhile but not enough stock that the sale has to be reported.Also, it's “Demerjian,” and are you even sure he's British? His bio says he's worked in Minneapolis since the 1980s, and he was described by his former editor, now at Thinq, as the Inquirer's “US Correspondent.”I'm just saying, engage your brain before flipping your lid.

With all respect, I don't think you're clear on the history. Apple moved to x86 because they were no longer IBM's primary customer for the PowerPC chip. The PPC line wasn't improving fast enough for desktop use, and with Microsoft and Sony both using Power architecture for their gaming consoles — but not in the same chip families that Macs were using — Apple had gone from being the major PowerPC customer to a small one.The “development cost” for software was relatively immaterial; after all, the PowerPC had (and has) Java, Flash, and lots of other technologies, and in all but a small number of cases porting your PPC Mac software to Intel Macs is a matter of checking a different box in the compiler. I don't think Apple is going to switch to ARM architecture, either, but it's certainly not because they'd be worried about making things difficult for their developers. As anyone who's developed for Macs for a while can tell you, that has *never* been something Apple's worried much about.