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The Future is ARM

A segment of the Apple community has been up in arms over the lack of "Pro" updates this past month. It seems that Intel might be the cause of some of the issues, such as the lack of 32GB of RAM, which of course sparked further talk about Apple moving to ARM. The iPhone 7 and iPad Pro Ax chips are getting more powerful everyday and already boast great battery life. Just imagine what could be done battery, performance and price wise if Apple were to put the guts into a laptop.

The worry is that with a switch to ARM we might have to go back to emulation (hello VirtualPC) instead of virtualisation for Microsoft Windows and such. Mary Jo Foley recently interviewed Microsoft Executive Vice President of Windows and Devices Terry Myerson who said:

So we're going to continue to invest in ARM and cellular. And while I'm not saying what type of device, I think we'll see devices there, Windows devices, that use ARM chips. I think we'll see devices that have cellular connectivity.

Microsoft tried an ARM device for the Surface RT which didn't pan out too well but it's nice to know that they're keeping the Windows on ARM project alive as there's the potential to still have a Bootcamp-esque experience if both Apple and Microsoft went down the ARM route. Oh and there's Ubuntu Server for ARM too.