Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Apple rumors

OK, so the little one is GLASS TRACKPAD and the big one is NON-INTEL CHIPS.

Some on ars technica are speculating that a tiny display would go under the glass trackpad, but I'll be dipped if I can figure out what you'd do with that. And I had a Palm PDA for close to five years.

Non-Intel: Well, typically Apple dumps a chipmaker when they're pissed about something. IBM lost interest in keeping the Power architecture viable for portable computing and essentially told Cupertino to ante up the money if they wanted something comparable to Centrino. As far as anyone knows, the relationship between Apple and Intel was pretty cozy. Personally, I think the MBA is a poor choice as a business computer, but I do respect what Intel managed to do as far as energy consumption and form factor are concerned.

So, the question is: what advantage do you get by leaving Intel? Here are the conspiracy theories, all in a row.
  1. Apple wants to kill the Hackintoshes and cloners.
    An interesting theory. Change the architecture enough and move to something less easily emulated on another platform.
    Downsides to this theory: Parallels and BootCamp have sold hundreds of thousands of Macs, and pulling the plug on this bridge to the Windows market isn't insanely great, it's insane. Moreover, Apple was given ample tools from Intel (TPM, EFI) to crack down on clones and hasn't made it a priority.
  2. Apple isn't pleased with Montevino not being available for their platform and intends to pull an AMD.
    Now that they own a chipmaker, this is plausible...but unlikely. Intel's fabbing capacity was a linchpin to Apple's ability to churn out Macs to meet worldwide demand.
  3. The control freaks of old have resurged at Apple and want to create proprietary boards and chipsets again just like the late 80s/early 90s.
    Possible, given the fact that Apple stubbornly retained their mobo design staff through the Intel transition...except that the relationship with Intel and reuse of the standard northbridge/southbridge architecture has been a profitable one for them.
  4. Apple isn't ditching Intel CPUs, they just want to design their own mobos and chipsets. This requires the least tinfoil to believe. For one thing, even with the standard PC mobo, the MacBooks have custom keyboard firmware (no internal PS/2 connector), so they've already trod in this ground.
    Downside to this theory: technically Apple's agreement with Intel doesn't allow them to pick and choose what components Intel supplies, with the exception of the big three (audio/video/networking).
Drama is everywhere in the chip industry. AMD is declining even while its ATI is on the rise against Nvidia. Intel has generally gotten good marks for the last five years, and so has Apple.

For once, I can't begin to guess what's going on with this "major transition" mentioned to board members.
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