Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
What is the Apple Star N84? ARM hybrid, touchscreen MacBook, just a new iPhone? (pocket-lint.com)
9 points by rbanffy on June 1, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 16 comments



"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


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/

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


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


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.


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.


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.


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.


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


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


Why would the processor architecture change your mind about it?


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


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.


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.


> HNed

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

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


If they change to ARM for Macbooks I'll never buy one again


I think we have a dilemma




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: