Will Apple switch to ARM chips?

What do you think about the rumored news which claim apple will change to ARM chips. Any problems for the future of hackintosh?

sources:
9to5mac.com
macbidouille.com (original, french)

Personally I don't think so, at least not entirely, unless something changes drastically with ARM technology in the near future.

What I could see happening is a two-tier product lineup with ARM powering the low-end MacBooks and Mac Mini, and perhaps even a low-cost multimedia iMac that would be TV-sized.

ARM could allow OS X to run in a whole array of new devices and applications which could extend Apple's reach into new markets.

But if you think of the high-end workstation market, which is what a lot of people use their iMacs and Mac Pros for, an ARM chip just isn't going to cut it, and nobody really needs the ultra-low power consumption that ARM brings in those environments.

I believe Xeon chips will be under the hood of high-end Macs for a long time to come, and as long as that is the case, Hackintoshes should remain relatively easy to build. If on the other hand, Apple decides to go ARM at the low end and develops an entirely new architecture to truly differentiate their desktop machines at the high end, then all bets are off - that will require quite an investment to develop, however.

I can see a switch to a powerful ARM MBA type product in the future. The changes provided by XCode and "Swift" will allow the developer to program apps without regard to processor type.

Include that changes in programming with Apple's push to have all apps sold through the App Store and one can see the average MAC user really won't care what processor is in their machine.

Of course the change will not happen overnight

I don't think ARM architecture will come to life in the Apple ecosystem anywhere in the near future.

Apple design pretty descent low-power chips themselves. Take iPhone for example - I'm sure they have a quad-core chip up their sleeve and hopefully we'll see it in iPhone6. They already are 64bit, so why use someone elses technology, when they have designed something good?

If we are willing to trust the rumors - GSM Arena for example - we can see the quad core AppleA8 chip in the iPhone6 specs. Why not power an AppleTV with it? My guess is it will be more than up to the task.

MacMini COULD fall into that category as well. With 4 cores and 2 or 4 gigabytes of memory I don't see a reason not to be able to watch videos, do some spreadsheet work, etc. ... hell - why not even a little Photoshop for some small stuff like web images?

Bottom line - if Apple goes low on power on either AppleTV or MacMini - it will be with the A8 chip, I think, not ARM

I think a dual processor system would be idea.

ARM apps would offer, say 40+hours of battery life and if you ran an x86 app, it would kick on the intel processor and give you ~12 hours.

this will never happen because a ARM chip can't perform like a core i5 or i7 does its really for portable devices such as iPhones iPads and iPods also it would be the death of apple!! apple will never do this and tbh if they did then the performance wouldn't be good ARM chips won't compete with a core i7 or i5 neither a xeon so i think its just rumours tbh

See this discussion: http://www.tonymacx86.com/bat-cave/1...tml#post851997