In discussions with analysts, Apple’s Tim Cook has all but put the kibosh on rumours that Apple would switch its notebook lines over to an ARM architecture.
ARM’s the architecture underlying the wildly successful iPad, and it’s been rumoured for a while that Apple might flip its computer lines over to ARM so as to work under one unifying operating system — presumably iOS or its descendants. It’s in part fuelled by the fact that Apple’s selling a whole lot of iPads, and it might make good sense to switch to a single platform.
In a meeting with Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner on Friday Apple CEO Tim Cook
reiterated his view that rapid innovation on the iOS platform (and mobile OS platforms in general) will significantly broaden the use case for tablets, eventually pushing annual tablet volumes above those of traditional PCs.
The note further goes on to speculate
We have wondered whether Apple might offer an ARM-based version of MacBook Air at some point; we walked away from this meeting with the impression that Apple feels iPad satisfies–or will soon satisfy–the needs of those who might have been interested in such a product.
That’s not an absolute no, but it’s a pretty strong indication that Apple’s not quite abandoning x86 in favour of ARM just yet.
[CNET via Macrumors]
VOOK
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 3:04 PMWho asked for this?!
Richard
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 9:26 PM“It’s in part fuelled by the fact that Apple’s selling a whole lot of iPads, and it might make good sense to switch to a single platform.”
For it to be viable ARM would have to have chips that would also be suitable for higher end systems such as the Macbook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro. Theres no point porting it just for the Macbook Air alone, none of the software on the App Store or Mac App Store would function and given the different form factors currently the advantages would be pretty minimal really.
They’d just segment the current market and instead of unifying the family they’d be creating a third; the ARM Based MBA which would go with their touch based ARM devices and traditional Intel based systems.