Does Apple have ARM based desktops in their sights?
An intern who found a place working at Apple has shown how the Cupertino based corporation are potentially seeking to make a shift with OSX based devices to an ARM chipset, kicking the relatively recent move to Intel in 2005/6 into touch.
The interns name is Tristan Schaap who was seemingly involved in a 12 week internship with Apple at their “platforms technology group” in 2010, and while doing this internship at Apple, managed to put down enough information based in the work to create a thesis, this was loosely based on making the “lower half” of Mac OSX work on an ARM processor.
Submitted in 2010 but only just release due to its content, the report seems to suggest that Apple could be looking to shift their desktop/laptop processors to the power saving ARM option, however Tim Cook would lead us to believe otherwise by saying that if you want an ARM based macbook go get an iPad.
But who knows where Apple will go with their processors, in some ways a unified processor option makes sense and in other areas it looks less significant.
Apps drive convergence:
All this talk of unifying Apple processors does have some reasoning behind it though when you see just how similar Mountain Lion is to iOS compared to earlier versions of the desktop operating system.
In a very recent interview in the WSJ Tim Cook talks about how OSX and iOS are morphing in ways that seem natural:
“We see that people are in love with a lot of the apps and functionality here,…so, anywhere where it makes sense, we are going to move that over to Mac.”
And with the release of Mountain Lion, OSX makes no bones about wanting to be more iOS like in its functionality and overall look and feel, and will extend the iPad like functionality that saw gesture control features and integrated apps ported into OSX Lion more than in previous incarnations of the wonderfully slick operating system.
I look forward to giving it a try!
Anthony Munns