Continuing on what seems to be "The Week of the iPhone" here on TomsTechBlog here's a story about Steve Jobs saying Apple will design its own mobile processors in the next generation of iPhone...
South Korea-based Samsung has long been central to Apple's handheld efforts (), supplying the primary SoCs -- or system-on-chips -- for everything from the iPod nano to the iPhone. Meanwhile, Intel has been in the running to assert its Atom processors at heart of a larger iPhone-like Multi-Touch internet tablet that's also under development at the Cupertino-based electronics maker, and was at one time believed to have sealed the deal.
Unfortunately for the two industry heavyweights, Apple appears to have other plans to further innovation around its Multi-Touch platform that will reduce its reliance on chip designs conceived largely by third parties. In an interview following his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Jobs told the New York Times' John Markoff that his firm's recent $278 million acquisition of a small fabless semiconductor company called P.A. Semi was an investment in the future of its handheld products.
The reason I post on this, to be honest, is to make myself look good. Because just a couple days ago I posted this...
Why this should give people pause: Jobs' crowing over how the 3G and GPS chips were fit into the iPhone without increasing the size was just the NeXT monitor all over again. I have no doubt there was some amazing and very time consuming engineering behind that accomplishment. The question is whether that was the best use of Apple's resources and if anyone would care that the phone was 1/4 of an inch thicker than the original. Because I suspect that other things got the shaft because of that feat of engineering.
Designing your own processor is stupid because no one cares and it's a huge resource drain.
Lets say they do have a fantastic design team and they do manage to eek out a whole second or so of faster processing time. Ask yourself, is it going to matter to the consumer? Is it going to matter more than Video Chat, MMS Messaging, or a host of other features they could easily produce with an Intel chip?
Of course it isn't. Consumers don't care about processors unless the performance increase is huge. Want Proof? One example springs to mind and that example is...Apple.
Remember the days when Apple was using the PowerPC chip? They'd trot out a Mac, put it next to a PC and amaze onlookers as the PowerPC Mac easily bested the equivalent Intel PC. Then they sold millions and millions of Macs and eventually defeated the PC in the marke...oh wait, no they didn't.
What they did was eventually move to Intel chips because no one cared that the PowerPC was faster and their refusal to switch was backing them into a corner on the hardware front.
Now Apple has another revolutionary product and It's looking more and more like Old Apple is back with its "Not Invented Here" syndrome fully intact. I can see the press conference now: Apple will trot out its new iPhones, put them next to the equivalent phone on Intel architecture and amaze onlookers as the iPhone easily bests the other phone. Then they'll sell millions and millions of iPhones and eventually defeat...oh wait...
Yeah...that's my point.