Submit to Hacker News

A lot of articles have been hitting the web today about how Apple went and innovated the hell out of the MacBook Air – all except the CPU. That CPU, in fact, is the exact same old chip that Apple used in the last MacBook Air model – and even more surprisingly, the new 11.6″ model has an even slower processor speed than the current and former 13.3″ MacBook Air at around 1.4Ghz.

This fact is producing headlines in the blogsphere such as “Apple Thinks Intel’s New Lightweight Processors Suck” and “Apple bolts chastity belt on super svelte MacBook Air“, detailing how Apple’s decision to recycle the old Core 2 Duo CPU is a slap in the face to Intel’s new Arrandale chipset design and a big vote of no confidence.  There’s excuses floating around about thermal cooling of the CPU and not wanting the integrated GPU and prioritising NVidia’s seperate GPU instead and all this other nonsense as reasons why Apple made the strategic decision that they did.

What a load of crap.

What everyone keeps forgetting is that Apple want to own all aspects of the Apple computing experience and that they are forever trying to figure out ways of being able to weed out the externally sourced components and use their own instead.  You only needed to watch Apple’s “Back To the Bank Mac” event to realise that Apple’s eventual strategy with Mac and Mac OSX is to use it’s own chip designs instead of Intel’s in the Mac and what they announced (and what came out under the radar) point all signs towards this.  The MacBook Air CPU controversy is just a part of that.

And you know what – with ARM’s new A8 Cortex CPU design in the final stages before being released to licensees, now’s a good time for Apple to strike and be able to credibly run a full operating system with a mobile CPU.  This could get really interesting.

Firstly, you need to remember that Apple are looking to reposition the MacBook Air as the new entry level MacBook computer and that it will now be marketed as more of a lightweight MacBook / iOS iPad with a keyboard hybrid device.  Naturally, the MacBook Air would be the first laptop to try and use an Apple A4/A8 processor in it because it would have the lowest expectations of speed and battery life.  It therefore needs to be said that the true motive of ‘crippling’ the MacBook Air with a crappy, outdated Intel CPU would be so that in 18 months time when the next MacBook Air gets released to market with an Apple CPU inside, Apple can say “hey look, it’s FASTER and uses less power than the old MacBook Air when our own chip is inside of it!”.  This of course, would be an unfair fight, but THIS would be exactly why a Core 2 Duo is still inside the MacBook Air as of right now.  For the non-technical people who buy this stuff, they just see ‘faster’, ‘better’ and ‘more powerful’ and think Apple are amazing for it.  It’s an ingenius strategy and I can’t believe I’m the first person suggesting this as to why Apple made this CPU decision for the Air.

Now, I know that Apple have this whole problem that all Mac OSX apps are written directly for either the PowerPC or the Intel processor, but you only need to look more closely at everything else Apple announced this week to realise that they are putting all the pieces in place to solve the whole Mac OSX / Intel CPU dependancy problem at the same time, advancing the possibility of Apple CPU’s making their way into Macs:

1. The Mac App Store is the way Apple will solve the whole “software written for the Intel CPU” problem.  Apple went and openly said that their goal with OSX Lion is to get as much funtionality of iOS back into the Mac.  Why?  Because apps written in Cocoa and XCode can be recompiled and translated by Apple CPU’s. It makes perfect sense then that Apple want everyone to once and for all forget about Carbon and all these other methods of developing apps for the Mac and focus on Cocoa instead – when it comes time to release that first MacBook Air, Apple can boast and crow about how all of the apps in the Mac App Store work so well with an Apple CPU inside and that by choosing an Air, you still have a huge choice of apps to use on your new computer.  Of course, none of these other Intel Mac dependant apps will work, but for the MacBook Air, this won’t matter because apps like Photoshop and Premiere aren’t the reason why people buy MacBook Air computers in the first place.  Furthermore, when Mac software developers start seeing that their apps won’t even work on the next wave of Macs to hit the street, they’ll be forced to get their nose in joint and develop using Cocoa instead, so that their apps work on ALL Mac OSX devices.  Apple can start positioning Cocoa as a way to build apps for a huge installation base – 125+ million iOS devices, 150+ million Macs, no other type of computer whatsoever… it’s a smart move and creates more Apple lock in and platform loyalty.
2. Speaking of Apple lock in, Apple also announced that they will stop shipping Java with OSX now, throwing it in the junk pile besides Adobe Flash.  The reasons?  You can build Java apps that work on all operating systems and Apple aren’t interested, sure.  The other reason, of course, is that Java apps won’t work on OSX computers with Apple CPU’s in them unless an all new JRE was built specifically for OSX and the Apple CPU.  Do you think Apple can be bothered helping people write applications that work on Mac OSX as well as other operating systems?  I DON’T THINK SO. App Store App Store App Store, Apple Apple Apple.  Get it through your thick skull you chunky laptop using neglected poor soul.  The fact is that Java apps on an Apple CPU would probably be too sluggish anyway and expose Apple CPU Macs as too unreliable, so better to now start getting it out of people’s heads that Java is a dependable way to develop for the Mac.
3. Apple are running out of ways to get better battery life out of their laptops.  Remember, Apple are trying to promote this ‘cool’ culture of wanting to you to throw away your computer every single year and re-buy it over and over again.  For notebooks, battery life is a big reason why they are able to get people to do it.  Intel CPU’s, of course, are battery draining albatrosses.  It was pretty pathetic then, that the MacBook Air was announced this week as having 5 hours of battery life for the 11.6″ and 7 hours for the 13.3″ model.  What’s up with that?? Clearly, Apple think that they can make laptops with significantly better battery life with their own CPU’s inside running apps written in Cocoa. It’s so obvious that as a result, Apple are focused on making this a reality, as it comes to mind that if they can’t keep getting better battery life out of their laptops, people will be happy to stick with their Macs for a year or two longer and not repurchase them as often.  There’s also the problem of the next version of Windows looking like it’ll offer wicked battery life and boot times for all form factors, as well as being at least partially embedded directly in a System on a Chip (SoC), so Apple need to really move the needle on this one and fix the CPU ‘problem’ to fix the battery problem.  Of course, I’m sure they would be welcome to use Android on their computers instead to get better battery life, but now I’m just being a comedian.
4. Those damned externally sourced suppliers and manufacturers keep leaking Apple’s gear to the press and the new MacBook Air was no exception. When was the last time Steve Jobs’ “one last thing” tiring trick truly surprised you?  It’s somewhat of a farce now and Jobs would be more motivated than ever to ditch every single externally sourced equipment supplier to keep their products super secret and make his presentations super exciting for Apple enthusiasts.  The CPU is just one thing on the checklist to ditch – SSD’s and flash memory will be next.  How long till Apple buys someone like SanDisk?  I’m curious.

So there you have it folks.  Don’t buy into the BS you read from people with ulterior motives.  Apple want to control everything about their devices and it’s smart of them to do, quite honestly.  Good luck to them.

Related articles

• Apple Thinks Intel’s New Lightweight Processors Suck (businessinsider.com)
• Apple bolts chastity belt on super svelte MacBook Air (go.theregister.com)
• MacBook Air Still a Difficult Purchase to Justify (pcworld.com)
• New MacBook Air Is the Future of Notebooks (nytimes.com)
• MacBook Air extras: OS X on USB drive, new CPUs, HDMI cable (electronista.com)