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February 1, 2008

business

PC vendors eye the tiny MacBook Air processor

Posted Feb. 1, ’08, 10:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Business

MacBook Air processorOne of the most significant exclusive features of the MacBook Air is that 60% smaller Intel Core 2 Duo processor powering it and enabling the svelte form factor. According to Steve Jobs, Intel bent over backwards to shrink the existing Core 2 Duo processor to the smaller size in order to meet Apple’s constraints.

However, once you’ve achieved a new milestone, you’re definitely not going to keep it exclusive to one company with a small market share, no matter how cool they are. According to the Mothership, Intel does not intend to give Apple the benefit of being the only company to employ these tiny processors: Apple got the head start but other notebook makers are soon going to release their own machines driven by these new processors.

I feel kinda sorry for these guys, actually. They’re the ones who’ve been patrons of Intel’s processors all these years, dutifully sticking those ugly promotional stickers on their machines for slight discounts and to promote Intel’s products. Apple, meanwhile, has been rude to Intel for the better part of its existence, consistently deriding the company’s products in its advertisements. Suddenly, Apple decides to go all pro-Intel and the company practically lays itself at Apple’s feet while all these other guys look on. Hilarious!

Coming back to the topic at hand, Apple will still have significant lead in terms of the hardware design and the exclusivity of Mac OS X, but the forthcoming notebooks of those other companies, specially Lenovo and Fujitsu, might soon pose serious threats to the unprecedented thinness of the MacBook Air. We look forward to some worthy competition in the thinness arena. If nothing else, they might encourage Apple to lower the MacBook Air’s price to saner levels and we’re all game for that.


4 Comments

jackfrost said:

There's no way Intel would've invested time and effort into shrinking a processor if they didn't know they had more than one customer lined up at the door.

Also, from a technical perspective, it's not really a big deal to shrink a processor. This happens with every chip that Intel designs. After a chip is designed and sold, subsequent generations of the same chip will be made smaller and more efficient. It's no different for this one. The only difference is that Steve Jobs made it sound like it was an exclusive deal.

February 1, 2008 10:59 AM
krye said:

It doesn't matter if those other companies employ the new, smaller C2D chips. Their harware design won't come close.

February 1, 2008 11:07 AM
LexM Author Profile Page said:

This is a blow to the naysayers who insist that the MacBook Air is the underpowered second coming of the Cube. If the MBA is underpowered, why are the PC makers so eager to follow suit?

February 1, 2008 4:24 PM
Dave-O said:

Now you've gone and confused jackfrost. The processor isn't smaller, the packaging is smaller. Take a look at the picture. The gray box in the middle of the two chips is the processor--it's the same size. The packaging around it has been rearranged to shrink it down. As Steve said in the keynote, "The same die on a smaller package... The same chip in a package that's 60% smaller."

February 2, 2008 4:12 PM

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