Tag: Macbook

Intel thinks it has Apple by the short and curlies

Intel Q4_14_ResultsIt is rare that a company claims to have control of Apple, but it seems that Intel believes that it has Jobs’ Mob wrapped around its little finger.

After ten years working with Apple, there are rumours that Jobs’ Mob is considering ditching Chipzilla and will start making its own Mac chips.  After all Apple already creates its own chips for the iPhone and iPad based on designs from ARM and then has manufacturers like Samsung build them.

The Tame Apple Press thinks that eventually Apple’s ARM chips will be so powerful, Apple won’t need Intel anymore.

But in an interview with Business Insider, Intel’s CFO Stacy Smith brushed off those concerns and  claimed that Intel is so far ahead of the competition when it comes to PC processors that Apple – and just about every other PC maker – has no choice but to use Intel chips.

Smith said that Apple was a  “great partner of ours” and like Intel they like bringing really cool stuff to the market.

Intel’s leadership over the rest of the industry is extending. We’re not delayed relative to the industry. Intel is ahead of the industry, Smith said.

For Jobs Mob that means that if it abandons Intel it will have to lose lots of performance in its new Macs.

Intel thinks that Apple customers would have to take such a big step off performance if Jobs’ Mob abandoned Intel it is not worth it.

Of course, Smith fails to understand that if Apple decided to walk away from Intel, it would simply tell its customers its solution was better and the Tame Apple Press would agree with it. Apple has never been about performance, it has always been about the design and the Apple logo.

 

 

Why you need to put a MacBook in the oven

603716_com_hpim3203aFor a long time I have been suggesting that a hammer is the best cure for all things which emerge from the Apple Cargo Cult, but it turns out that I might have been wrong and it is better to put them in the oven.

Sterling over at iFixIT was having huge problems with heating problems on his MacBook Pro.  Apparently, the geniuses at Apple decided that people would pay more money for a laptop which sets your groin on fire.

While most Apple fans are happy to live with this poor state of design rather than get a real computer that works, Sterling spent the weekend trying to improve on Apple’s design instead.  Now since this is considered heresy in the Apple world, where you are not even allowed to replace a battery without permission from Steve Jobs without voiding your warranty, it is fairly clear that Sterling did not care. On an average day, his laptop hovered between 80 and 90ºC. One time he saw it climb as high as 102 C which was hot enough to make a nice cup of tea.  Apple fanboys would tell you that this is an additional feature.

In March, in living proof that you get what you pay for, it died and his novel answer was to reflow it.  This involved heating it up until the balls of solder melt back into their assigned spots.

He disconnected all eleven connectors and three heat sinks from the logic board, and turned the oven up to 340º F. He baked it for seven minutes.

After it cooled, he reapplied thermal paste, put it all back together, and cheered when it booted. It ran great for the next eight months.

Then, two weeks ago, it died again so he rebaked it and it ran again.

 

Apple to suffer on iPad sales

gala_appleApple sales of the iPad are likely to fall because people buying its products are moving to larger iPhones and those are cannibalising the market.

That’s according to the research unit of Digitimes which estimates that shipments of iPads will fall to about 55 million units in 2015, way down from sales during this year.

Other researchers believe that the iPad market has reached maturity in the so-called developed markets, and people are unlikely to buy a new and expensive tablet when their current iPads are powerful enough for most purposes.

But there’s a silver lining to every cloud and the research outfit believes that a combination of Sony exiting the notebook market and Apple cutting prices will see Macbook shipments growing by 15 percent next year.

Apple is expected to release a 12.9 inch iPad during 2015 and also ship 12.2-inch “Retina” displays but that won’t do very much to stem the decline of its very profitable iPad lines.

Meanwhile, Apple, as we reported elsewhere today, is toying on when to release its iWatch for the best possible selling period.