Is Windows for ARM a Dead End?

Over at Cult of Mac, John Brownlee has an in-depth explanation of why it seems unlikely that Apple intends to ditch the Intel chips inside Macs for ARM-based ones akin to the processors it uses in the iPhone and iPad. His reasoning is long and technical–though he does a nice job of explaining it clearly–and it boils down to the fact that Macs need more computing horsepower than current ARM processors can provide.

By the time ARM chips get faster, he says, Intel ones will have become more power-efficient–and Intel should have the overall lead when it comes to zippy performance and respectable battery life.

Brownlee quotes my friend David Kanter of Real World Technologies, who knows more about the insides of computers than I ever will:

The fact is that there is no ARM processor today, nor any that will be coming in the next five years, that are suitable for Apple’s existing models of laptops and desktops…On a deep and profound level, there is no technical advantage right now for Apple to switch to ARM across its laptops and desktops.

The story leaves me thinking that my instinctive take on things–that ARM-based Macs are a real possibility–isn’t well grounded in technical reality, at least if you define “Mac” as “A desktop or laptop computer running the current version of OS X and existing OS X applications.”

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