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Comment by dman | Hacker News Reader

Wish apple was as enthusiastic about processor specs for the mac lineup as they are for the iphone lineup.

Especially since there's not much effort from Apple needed to keep the Mac lineup modernized. Intel does much of the work for them.

Apple could just drop new Intel chips into their existing MacBooks as they get released, and easily be getting improved speed + efficiency each year. The new Kaby Lake chips even do hardware 4K video and VP9. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/intel-unveils-kaby-la...

sigh

Really? do they all use the same CPU socket? no updates required to motherboard? EFI? Apple's custom SMC firmware? power management? kernel work? etc.

If only Apple had resources to do that. They must be struggling.

Isn't "beleagured" the word you're looking for?

Also forgot to mention Steve Jobs/Tim Cook.

Steve Jobs/Tim Cook

Isn't that what they were doing for a while? And then Intel slipped the date on the Kaby Lake chips?

They have a lot more control over the mobile processors. The laptop processors have to maintain compatibility with all the software that people run on their laptops; effectively, that means they're stuck with other people's processors.

The problem is, they're not even keeping up with the other people's processors.

That's not really true. x86 emulation is a solved problem at this point, and Apple has shown willingness to use emulation to bridge an ISA transition in the past.

I think the real reason is some combination of (a) ARM isn't competitive (or only recently became competitive) at the high power/high performance point that Intel CPUs excel at; (b) the Mac line generates so much less revenue and operates at so much smaller of a scale than iOS devices that it isn't worth developing CPUs in-house for them, not to mention the fixed costs associated with undergoing a transition.

You think it's straightforward for Apple to emulate x86 on their own chips with enough performance to rival Intel's own chips? That's a bold claim!

No, I'm claiming that they could use emulation well enough to survive a rapid transition to native ARM apps.

You need a faster processor to hide the emulation overhead. Good luck beating Intel by a big enough margin.

I'm only claiming that they could survive a transition to native ARM apps, not that emulation would be a long term solution.

I guess Apple could 'survive' releasing a new generation of laptops which run slower than the previous ones to facilitate a user-invisible component sourcing decision, but it seems like a bad move.

It'd be temporary and only for third-party apps, not Apple-supplied ones. But yes, I do agree that it's not worth it for them--this is part of what I mean by high fixed costs of switching.

You might get what you are wishing for. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple dump Intel chips.

I would - only because of the investment required. Over the past few years, Apple's been very involved in its iOS ecosystem, while investing comparatively little in its Mac lineup.

Dumping Intel chips would take a ton of effort and resources, in an area where Apple isn't interested in making an effort or investing resources.

You're right, it would take a huge investment in effort and resources. You will know they are doing this when you see the Mac lineup sit unchanged for a long time...

Others are thinking they see clues...

http://macdailynews.com/2016/09/30/macos-sierra-code-suggest...

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