

Apple to expand CPU design group beyond iPad A4 - Bud
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/31/apple_to_expand_cpu_design_group_beyond_ipad_a4.html

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ams6110
The acquisition of NeXT really gave Apple a lot of flexibility. Even in the
1990s, the NEXTSTEP OS ran on M68K, Sparc, and x86. Apps could be compiled to
"tri-fat" binaries so one binary distribution worked on all platforms.

I have no doubt that Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel from day 1, as well
as PowerPC. That legacy gives them a lot of flexibility in processor choices.

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SamReidHughes
They did. This was revealed when they did the Intel switch-over. Or at least
they claimed so.

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wriq
Rhapsody's (OSX's codename) first two developer releases were available for
X86. It wasn't until OSX Server 1.0 that Apple only publicly released PowerPC
versions of OSX.

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grantheaslip
Quick rule of thumb: if it's on AppleInsider, it's probably speculative
bullshit. Doubly so if it's written by Daniel Eran Dilger, whose articles
usually are in the following form:

Recent news item \+ A bunch of tangentially related, usually revisionist
details about Apple's history \+ Some tangentially related, laughably biased,
usually revisionist shots at Microsoft/Google \+ (Sometimes) An insane,
impossible-to-read graph/chart = Unsubstantiated conclusion that reads like a
wish list for what Daniel _wants_ Apple to do, not what the evidence shows.

He recently wrote an article explaining that he thinks Apple is going to port
Cocoa to Windows and release a Windows app store:
[http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-
rel...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-release-an-
app-store-for-windows/)

~~~
cubicle67
and yet... I see you can't help but read them

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grantheaslip
Total red herring. Sure, I've read some of his articles in the past, and I
even skimmed this one to make sure I wasn't wrong, but that doesn't change a
thing about the substance of them.

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Bud
Note that the Newton's soul really does live on in the iPad, according to this
article.

Long live the Newton!

~~~
mmphosis
But does the iPad recognize handwriting as part of the operating system like
the Newton did?

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ugh
Why would you want that? Handwriting is slow, certainly slower than the
keyboard iOS provides. I’m honestly puzzled why handwriting was ever a favored
input method.

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bosie
You are right about speed. However, I would like to have handwriting simply
for symbols and drawing (i.e. mindmapping). How are you going to enter math
formulas faster with a keyboard than a pen? Same goes for marking and
annotating things. IMO, precision and speed for marking/annotating is pretty
bad with iOS.

But I don't see how apps like Omnifocus can make use of it.

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masklinn
You'd need a thin stylus for that, and Apple doesn't ship one which means
they're not going to built it into the OS.

But surely it wouldn't be too hard (where too hard means technically
infeasible) to create an application based on hand-written input (Graffiti or
Rosetta/Inkwell-type technologies).

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glhaynes
And there are indeed apps that do that. (I don't know the name(s), but I've
seen at least one running on a friend's iPad.)

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hackermom
It won't stop here. Apple _will_ put ARM in their laptops, and they will help
usher in a new era of more power efficient computing in a way that x86 simply
cannot, in whatever shape. Just wait and see.

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chrisaycock
ARM claims their new Cortex-A15 will provide five times the performance of
existing smart phones. So the resources and interest are definitely out there.

[http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.p...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.php)

~~~
protomyth
Probably just as important for a MacBook replacement: "The introduction of
Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) enables the processor to access up to
1TB of memory."

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spicyj
I think that refers to RAM, not disk space.

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protomyth
uhm, yeah, and that's why it is so important as it breaks the 4gb ram barrier
on ARMs.

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spicyj
Sorry, didn't realize that ARM was previously limited to 4GB.

