
What is the Apple Star N84? ARM hybrid, touchscreen MacBook, just a new iPhone? - rbanffy
https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops/news/apple/144651-what-is-the-apple-star-n84-arm-hybrid-touchscreen-macbook-or-just-a-new-iphone
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Mononokay
"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work.
Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.

It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and
after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work,
it's ergonomically terrible.

Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads.

For a notebook, that's why we're perfected our multitouch trackpads over the
years, because that's the best way we've found to get multitouch into a
notebook.

We've also, in essence, put a trackpad -- a multitouch track pad on the mouse
with our magic mouse. And we've recently come out with a pure play trackpad as
well for our desktop users.

So this is how were going to use multitouch on our Mac products because this
(he points at someone touch laptop screen) doesn't work."

 _-Steven Paul Jobs, Oct. 20, 2010_

~~~
melling
Who says a laptop needs to have a vertical screen.

Invent a better computing device. Leap Motion + eye tracking + voice input +
Google Soli + ...

[https://atap.google.com/soli/](https://atap.google.com/soli/)

Even after the stock buyback, Apple has plenty of remaining cash to invent the
future.

~~~
roryisok
I say it. If it doesn't have a vertical screen it might be a great device but
its just not a laptop anymore, as far as I'm concerned.

Before anyone trots out dictionary definitions, I just mean the world
identifies a laptop as a device with a horizontal keyboard and a vertical
screen. Even ones that rotate the screen aren't called laptops anymore,
they're called tablets or convertibles

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roryisok
Apple make the lions share of their profit from two lines of arm devices, and
they build their own processors. It makes absolute sense for them to start
stuffing arm in macbooks, especially given how powerful arm chips are these
days.

In five years time we'll probably see the end of Intel macbooks, maybe Intel
macs entirely.

~~~
wilsonnb
Thus far we've only seen ARM chips that can compete with the low end of
Intel's offerings. An ARM processor in the 12" Macbook makes sense. I don't
see Apple switching the MacBook Pro line to ARM in the next five years,
though.

~~~
skellera
A dual processor MBP would be interesting. A higher performance Intel chip
along side an Apple chip. Would allow for a lot of power savings on the go. It
could also take advantage of the AI chip that's included in the iPhone for
various things.

Other than that, it's a big jump from the A series chips to something like an
Intel i9. Maybe if they can make a 10-20 core version of their chip but I
don't know how well high core count ARM chips work.

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willstrafach
This is not a mystery. It is a new iPhone device. The original reporting
greatly misinterpreted some technical information and assumed the device to be
something else.

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wpdev_63
Until arm can compete with x86 in single thread performance, which might be
never, it won't replace intel.

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qop
An ARM64 Macbook would be the line where i jump into an apple product.

~~~
ketralnis
Why would the processor architecture change your mind about it?

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qop
Because I don't buy intel. Not a single intel chip in my home today.

~~~
roryisok
I think that makes you an edge case. Apple are not building an ARM laptop to
capture that 'people-who-refuse-to-own-intel-chips' market.

~~~
qop
Wow what a revelation, thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Of course I am an edge case. I never made a contrary claim, just dropped my
two cents in the bin, but of course I've been HNed for doing so.

~~~
roryisok
> HNed

Not familiar with that. I know 'slashdotted' but what's HNed?

Why won't you allow intel chips in your house?

