[citation][nom]theabsinthehare[/nom]Arm will do well in the consumer market if Apple says they will, because people who buy Apple hardware aren't concerned with the tech specs of their machine; they simply want something that works. As an "Apple Zen" fanboy myself (I mean to say I'm a fan of Apple's "vision", innovation, etc., but not of actually spending my own money on their desktop hardware), I can say that most of the people who buy their computers aren't buying them for computation heavy tasks; they're buying them for FaceTime, iLife, Garageband [it's been years and I still haven't found a decent replacement for Garageband since I switched to Windows], AngryBirds, and those sorts of things. The group of Mac users that are interested in powerful computing are going to buy a Mac Pro, and this article is only talking about laptops for the moment.[/citation]
Hate to say it, but Id agree. Apple, whom i dont really like, is all about "elegance, design, power efficiency, style......". Nobody in their right mind buys a Mac for heavy computational tasks, unless they are into the arts (rendering, CS5, so on), where Mac features do help. If Apple made all their mobile devices ARM based by say, 2013, think of how much easier coding things would be for them. If they made everything ARM by 2015, where it will likely start to catch up to x86 in performance,it would be a brilliant move. Not only are ARM systems incredibly cheap, they are (supposedly) easier to code for, and much more power efficient. This is incredibly important for laptops. What would you rather have, an Apple Laptop that can run for 2 days straight, but not score quite as high in Cine, Sys, and so on, or an x86 that last for 7 hours and can max out those synthetics? For the average person who uses a word processor, the internet, and a few apps here and there, the choice would be clear. Not only that but this can help Apple make more money for their greedy selves, ARM systems cost less, so im sure Apple will charge the difference for "saving the enviroment with ARM efficiency".