Apple

If the speculation about a new MacBook Pro is on the money, the step up to Intel's quad-core mobile technology would have a profound impact on this vaunted line of Apple laptops.

Is a Core i series Apple laptop on the way?

(Credit: Apple)

So, why would Apple adopt a Core i processor in a laptop? The short answer is OS X Snow Leopard. The new operating system is designed to be better at wringing more performance out of multicore processors--and the Core i chips pack four cores.

The long answer is the Core "i" chips themselves. The Core i, a.k.a. "Nehalem," is a brand new Intel microarchitecture brimming with performance improvements over the current Core 2 design.

For starters, the recently announced mobile i7-820QM processor integrates a hefty 8MB of cache memory--compared with the 6MB in the fastest Core 2 Duo that Apple currently offers on the MacBook Pro. Generally, the larger the cache memory, the better the performance.

But Intel has done a lot more than just up the transistor count via a larger cache. While the quad-core i7-820QM is rated at 1.73GHz, a single core can be "overclocked" to 3.06 GHz. Intel does this with a technology dubbed Turbo Boost, which speeds up and slows down individual cores to meet processing and power-efficiency needs, respectively.

Need more convincing? The Core i7 also comes with Hyper-Threading, which can double the number of tasks--or threads--a processor can execute. You won't find that in the Core 2 chips.

Digital media creation also gets a boost. Intel claims up to 81 percent faster video encoding.

And the mobile Core i7 is not a power hog--relatively speaking. The i7-820QM is rated at 45 watts, less than a third of the power envelope of the desktop Core i7. With such a powerful processor, heat would be an issue of course but the 45-watt power envelope is manageable.

That said, there are reports that Apple is not bringing out any more products this year. So, along these lines, alternatively, Apple could opt initially for the upcoming "Arrandale" Core i chips--due by the beginning of next year--that are based on a more advanced 32-nanometer manufacturing process. (Current Core i processors use a 45-nanometer process.)

Arrandale integrates graphics silicon into the same chip package as the main processor--a first for Intel. Because of this high level of integration, Arrandale, however, is a dual-core chip.

But probably the closest thing to a rumored MacBook Pro refresh is the iMac, which has the same space-constrained characteristics of a laptop. The quad-core Core i7 in the new iMac "boosts application performance up to 2x over the previous-generation iMac," according to Apple--and that's what consumers can expect with a Core i series laptop.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

It's probably time you said goodbye to your PowerPC-based Mac.

Adobe confirmed Tuesday that future versions of its Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Mac computers. There will be no support offered for PowerPC-based systems.

The company's decision follows Apple's announcement in June that it was discontinuing support for the PowerPC in its new operating systems, starting beginning with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). With Apple's future development focused on Intel Macs, Adobe is aligning its resources accordingly.

According to Adobe, existing customers who own Creative Suite 3 and Creative Suite 4 will still be able to use the software on either a PowerPC-based Mac or an Intel-based Mac without having to make any changes. However, Adobe will provide support for these two suites only to address critical issues that may arise.

Creative Suite is Adobe System's collection of well-known industry-standard graphic design, video editing, and Web development applications. These applications include Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Flash, and many others.

While Snow Leopard has not been released yet, and the new version of the Creative Suite hasn't been announced, either, Adobe decided to announce these changes now so its customers will have time to plan their migration strategy accordingly. This means you should go get yourself an Intel-based Mac if you haven't done so already.

For more information on the discontinuation of support, check out Adobe's FAQ.

This story has been corrected. See below for details.

Apple, a company that's rarely namby-pamby about making technological changes, has put its foot down once again with its Snow Leopard upgrade to Mac OS X due in September.

When the new operating system arrives in September, it'll work only on Intel-based Macs. That means Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, will be the end of the line for those with Macs that use PowerPC processors.

Though the move led to some teeth-gnashing among those who felt left behind, it's not unreasonable in practice.

First, it was four years ago that Apple first told the world it was switching from PowerPC chips to Intel's x86 chips. Even though PowerPC models arrived afterward and the first Intel-based Macs didn't start arriving until 2006, three years is still a long time in computing history. Anyone who hadn't upgraded by now isn't the sort who demands cutting-edge technology.

Second, much of what's important about Mac OS X 10.6 isn't consumer-oriented features, but rather underpinnings to let Mac software take better advantage of new processor directions--Grand Central Dispatch for multicore processors and OpenCL to use graphics chips for general-purpose computation. Although Apple sold high-end PowerPC-based machines with two dual-core processors that could benefit from Snow Leopard's abilities to juggle multiple jobs at the same time, it's likely that many people with that large a computing demand moved on to modern machines.

Apple's Bertrand Serlet touts Mac OS X at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

And supporting new operating systems on older hardware is expensive. Bug fixes and security patches must be tested on a much wider array of systems. The expense is even higher with the complexities of supporting multiple processor families.

What will PowerPC users miss?
Mac OS X 10.6 has other features, to be sure, and Apple drew more attention to them than to the lack of PowerPC support this week at its Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. For example, Snow Leopard gets built-in support for Microsoft Exchange servers, which will make Macs coexist more easily in corporate networks and let people avoid Microsoft's Entourage software. Also arriving is a method to more easily shift among one application's open windows is another, a faster and more flexible Finder to browse files, faster backup with Time Machine, and higher-resolution video chat.

But the way I see it, those extra features are more refinements than revolution, and the new low $29 Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade price (or $49 for a household with up to five Macs) is a good incentive to move people to an operating system that will help Apple as much as the customers themselves.

Infrastructure that will help tap into multicore processor power is important. I'm still not expecting any free lunch for developers--it'll still be hard to write software split into parallel chunks that run independently in separate threads--but providing an operating system foundation that handles some multithreading chores stands to help the Mac ecosystem broadly. The fact that the only Macs available today with more than two processor cores are Mac Pro models costing at least $2,499 indicates that Apple recognizes the today's limits of multicore chips for most users.

But Apple likes to focus on the future more than on the past, and it's clear that multicore chips are the future. Wringing performance out of them is crucial to the success of any software.

Breaking with the past
Maintaining backward compatibility is a tough act in the computing market, where hardware changes faster than customers upgrade. Microsoft, with larger market share, has extended support for elderly software such as Windows NT 4.0 and Windows XP, but Apple has been willing to draw the line on many other occasions besides the Snow Leopard change.

Here are some examples:

• The move from PowerPC to Intel chips was not Apple's first change. The company switched from Motorola's 680x0 family of processors to the PowerPC line in the mid-1990s. To ease the transition, Apple provided translation software that could run older programs for 680x0 chips on the newer machines.

• After leading the charge for years with 3.5-inch floppy disk drives that were significantly smaller than the 5.25-inch models in PCs, Apple ditched the built-in floppy drive altogether with the 1998 introduction of the iMac. Need a floppy? Get an external drive.

• Also going by the wayside with the iMac was the Apple Desktop Bus, which had been used to connect keyboards and mice. Apple embraced the USB technology that began its life on the PC side of the industry.

• FireWire, standardized as IEEE 1394, is perhaps something of an exception. The Apple creation had superior data transfer speed compared to USB, but Apple no longer embraces FireWire universally. Today, MacBook Pro laptops have FireWire ports while the MacBook Air doesn't and consumer-oriented aluminum MacBook models introduced in 2008 didn't.

• ExpressCard, which inherited the the expansion-slot throne from the PCMCIA standard, is another victim of Apple's calculus. The company's newly announced MacBook Pro line ditches it in favor of an SD Card slot for flash memory cards. Only a "single-digit percentage of customers" was using the ExpressCard slot, said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in his speech at WWDC.

• When it comes to connecting external monitors, Apple anointed DisplayPort when seeking a successor to the mini-DVI port in earlier MacBooks, passing over an entrenched alternative to DisplayPort, HDMI (High-definition Multimedia Interface). Adapters can help bridge the gap, though, for those who need to support incompatible displays.

Innovation's consequences
Not everything is an either-or proposition. Apple's gradual transition to a 64-bit operating system--a transition it says Snow Leopard completes--was eased by compatibility for older 32-bit drivers so older hardware didn't suddenly break. In comparison, Microsoft has strained hard for years to try to get hardware companies to release 64-bit drivers to let Windows communicate with their products.

But often, change does come at the expense of last year's technology, and it can be rough on customers when companies decide it's time to move on. I recently sold off an old Vista-incompatible Wacom graphics tablet I'd used for a decade, long after the PC industry had abandoned the serial port it required, and I was sad to see it go.

But change comes, and when it does, Apple's relatively small market share and low penetration into businesses actually is something of an asset.

Microsoft has to update Internet Explorer 6, a browser introduced eight years ago, in part because so many businesses don't want to rework processes that rely on it. Apple can move ahead to Safari 4 in a much more liberated way.

Apple wraps itself in the flag of innovation, and if you're a Mac user, you should expect both the ups and downs of that philosophy.

Corrected at 7:26 a.m. PDT to reflect that Apple's sole remaining MacBook model does have FireWire support and 1:57 p.m. PDT to reflect that the household upgrade price is good for up to five Macs.

Intel's Shane Wall (left) and Pankaj Kedia probably shouldn't apply for jobs at Apple anytime soon.

(Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)

Updated 4:30pm with additional background on the ongoing saga of Apple and Intel.

Intel issued a "correction" Thursday regarding comments one of its executives made earlier this week slamming the iPhone as incapable of working correctly with the Internet.

It's hard to see this as anything other than an formal apology to Apple and ARM for comments made by Intel's Shane Wall and Pankaj Kedia at the company's Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, as reported by our sister site ZDNet Australia. Among other things, the executives resurrected Intel's lame "ARM chips can't handle the Internet" argument and singled out the iPhone as an example of a smartphone that could be really awesome if it only used one of Intel's low-power x86 architecture processors, known as Atom.

But in a posting to Intel's Chip Shots blog Thursday afternoon, Anand Chandrasekher, the head of Intel's low-power efforts, threw his fellow executives under the bus in admitting that Intel's current low-power x86 processors don't even come close to matching the power consumption numbers--a vital design parameter in smartphones--of those made by ARM's partners, which are used in smartphones like the iPhone and over 90 percent of all the mobile phones in the world. The post follows in its entirety.

Anand Chandrasekher issued a correction on comments made by members of his team yesterday at Intel's Developer Forum in Taiwan. As general manager of the Group responsible for Intel's ultra-mobility products, he acknowledged that Intel's low-power Atom processor does not yet match the battery life characteristics of the ARM processor in a phone form factor; and, that while Intel does have plans on the books to get us to be competitive in the ultra low power domain - we are not there as yet. Secondly, Apple's iPhone offering is an extremely innovative product that enables new and exciting market opportunities. The statements made in Taiwan were inappropriate, and Intel representatives should not have been commenting on specific customer designs.

Whoops.

Apple has made it pretty clear that it doesn't buy Intel's argument that since the PC-based Internet experience runs on x86-architecture processors, the best way to bring that experience to the mobile world is to adopt x86 processors. Apple purchased the engineers of P.A. Semi earlier this year to start working on processors based on ARM's cores for future iPhones and iPod Touches, rather than waiting for Intel's Moorestown product--the chip Chandrasekher was referring to in his post--to arrive.

Intel has been making this argument for over a year, but it had avoided slamming high-profile ARM-based smartphones such as the iPhone during extremely public events like IDF. And now we know why; a certain Apple executive said to be close friends with a certain Intel executive was unlikely to be pleased by Intel's comments just as Apple was reporting blowout iPhone sales.

The apology raises the question of just how strained the relationship between the world's largest chip maker and Apple, who have now been partners for a little over three years, has become this year.

For the most part, the relationship has been mutually beneficial. Apple got the notebook processors it desperately needed to upgrade the iMac and the MacBook, as well as a totally committed chip partner, and the results have been stellar. For its part, Intel hooked up with a partner that wasn't totally dependent on the chip company for innovation and that had dramatically more sex appeal than Hewlett-Packard, Dell, or Acer.

Ever since June 2005, Intel executives have been positively giddy about their relationship with Apple, p romising that all sorts of whiz-bang-cool gadgets would soon arrive jointly developed by the style wizards in Cupertino and the engineering wizards in Santa Clara and Oregon. The two companies were said to have engineering staffs that bonded over a common love for innovation, and Intel salespeople were ecstatic at showing off how their technology could be used in leading-edge designs.

But Apple doesn't toe Intel's line the way the rest of the PC industry does. It doesn't need Intel's marketing war chest, it doesn't need its cadre of design engineers, and it doesn't need Intel's brightly colored stickers to help sell its products, as CEO Steve Jobs reminded the poor reporter who dared ask last year why Apple doesn't participate in the Intel Inside program.

Apple has shown that it is quite willing to follow its own path. The purchase of P.A. Semi was a clear signal that Apple had taken a look at Intel's future road map for low-power processors, and decided it had to take matters into its own hands regarding future chips for the iPhone and iPod Touch. And while Apple is unlikely to dump Intel's processors anytime soon from the Mac lineup--especially given the struggles of Advanced Micro Devices this year--its decision to use Nvidia's integrated graphics chipsets in the newest editions of the MacBook underscores what everyone in the PC industry knew anyway: Intel's integrated graphics chipsets are the bottom of the barrel.

Meanwhile, the Intel-based gadgets co-designed by Apple and the chipmaker are nowhere to be found. Intel had probably hoped that it could sell Apple on the Netbook or Mobile Internet Device concepts that it has been flogging for the past two years, but Apple has sensibly concentrated its efforts on the iPhone and Mac rather than helping Intel get its ideas for mobile computing off the ground.

So where does that leave the two companies? They'll be fine, although Intel is sleeping on the couch tonight. This week's exercise, however, is an interesting example of how much power Apple wields over one of the most important and historic companies in technology.

Intel has never apologized for slamming IBM's Power server chip--a competitor to its Itanium processor--while simultaneously selling IBM Xeon chips for a different class of servers. But one offhand remark surfaces about Jobs' iPhone, and Intel bends over backward to smooth things over.

Intel's Shane Wall, at left, explains why he thinks the iPhone suffers from its use of an ARM chip, while Intel's Pankaj Kedia listens.

(Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)

Intel's romance with Apple appears to have gone sour.

Company executives have decided to start including the iPhone as one of their prime examples of smartphones that don't run "the full Internet" because they don't use an Intel chip, according to a report out of the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei from our friends down under at ZDNet Australia. This specious argument--that ARM-based chips aren't man enough to run the Internet--is nothing new from Intel, but the decision to highlight the iPhone as part of that argument is.

Intel has been trying to wedge its way into future mobile computers by taking on ARM, which designs cores that power more than 90 percent of all mobile phones in the world. Its argument is that since the PC-based Internet experience is run by Intel's x86 architecture, that's the only possible solution for future sophisticated mobile computers.

But as Engadget points out, say what you will about the iPhone, but few people complain about its inability to run "the full Internet." The most frequent criticism of the iPhone's Internet-running ability is probably that it can't play Flash content, but that has more to do with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' belief that Adobe's Flash Lite isn't good enough for the iPhone than any technical limitations on the part of the ARM processor. In fact, Adobe is believed to have a Flash player for the iPhone all ready to go if and when Apple decides to approve its inclusion on the iPhone.

When it first broached this argument last year, Intel refused to publicly identify specific smartphones it used to produce a PowerPoint slide for an IDF keynote damning ARM-based smartphones as error-prone when browsing the Internet, saying it didn't want to embarrass anyone. At the time, it probably thought that it could one day win Apple over to its side when the Moorestown chip arrived, and it was still smitten with its hot new paramour that made old lovers Dell and HP look impossibly lame.

But Apple decided not to wait for Intel, doubling down with its bet on the ARM architecture by snapping up chip design firm P.A. Semi and putting them to work on future CPUs based on the ARM architecture for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It then took the further step of dumping Intel's integrated graphics chipsets from the MacBook, highlighting (once again) just how far Intel has to go to make a competitive graphics chipset.

And so, suddenly the iPhone is a prime example of a smartphone that just doesn't have what it takes, according to Intel's Shane Wall. "Any sort of application that requires any horsepower at all and the iPhone struggles," he said.

The thing is, developers, customers, and carriers don't seem too bothered. As The Inquirer's Paul Hales observes, "ARM has chips in over a billion mobile internet devices and Intel's are in, ooh, half a dozen or so."

Hell hath no fury like a chipmaker scorned.

The latest MacBook Air masks a lot of new electronics under an old skin.

To me, the new MacBook Air (MBA) is truly a second-generation product despite its unchanged appearance. But before I explain why, let me clarify where I am coming from.

I have been using an MBA for the last eight months. Why the over-priced Air? I am a minimalist when it comes to computers (though not necessarily when it comes to spending money on computers). The more spartan the laptop is, the better. In a well-executed design this translates to more portability, which, for me, takes priority over performance and ports.

And this is especially true for the Air. The economy of design dictates lower performance and fewer connectors than mainstream laptops.

Updated MacBook Air has new processor, chipset, graphics, and solid state drive

(Credit: Apple)

Having said that, the new Air seems to have made significant gains in performance. (Again, this is a preview, so only benchmarks will bear this out.) The Air uses Intel's newest Penryn-architecture low-power mobile processors, not the older Merom processors--which were, let's be honest, already dated even way back in January when Apple launched the Air.

Penryn-class processors come with 6MB (versus the Merom's 4MB in the previous Air) of cache memory and faster front-side bus speeds (1066MHz versus 667MHz). Of course, other MacBooks use Penryn chips too but it is significant that these powerful mobile processors are now being squeezed into the Air's form factor.

The widely reported use of Nvidia's GeForce 9400M graphics is another big plus. This is a step up from Intel's integrated graphics, which for too long has really been the only choice for subnotebooks and ultraportables. Better game playing and the ability to drive Apple's new 24-inch LED Cinema Display as well as the 30-inch Cinema HD Display are other benefits. (More on the GeForce 9400M here.)

And let's not forget memory. The Air uses DDR3 memory versus the DDR2-specified chips of the previous Air. DDR3 delivers better bandwidth and lower power consumption than DDR2.

Storage. Generally speaking, solid-state drives are faster than hard disk drives, especially when reading data. The Air and the ThinkPad X300 legitimized SSDs. The new Air takes this to the next level with a larger 128GB solid-state drive (versus the previous model's 64GB SSD). The newer 128GB (and larger-capacity) solid-state drives are based on multilevel cell technology. MLC allows larger capacities at lower cost. But MLC-based drives typically don't deliver the performance of single-level cell (SLC) drives. Dell, for example, offers its Latitude E4200 ultraportable with both high-performance SLC drives and lower-performance MLC SSDs.

Last but not least is price. OK, so $2,499 is not a steal (for the 1.86GHz model with a 128GB SSD). But look at it this way, you get a lot more for the same price as the previous Air. You get a faster processor, better graphics, speedier memory, and a larger solid state drive. Though I wouldn't call this a great deal by any means, Apple could have priced it higher. (Apple has been known to push the envelope on pricing.)

Longstanding Issues

Let me also address some longstanding issues I've had with the Air. I currently use one of the original models--launched back in January--that comes with a 1.8GHz processor and 64GB solid state drive. The Air's aluminum body is wonderful, but it hasn't maintained the tolerances that it had at first. Specifically, the seams just below the keyboard sometimes creak (for lack of a better word) and, at times, noticeably expand and contract. Let me be clear: this is not a big issue and is noticeable only occasionally. Most users probably wouldn't notice this.

Heat. I hesitate to cite heat as an issue because every laptop I have ever owned has had heat issues--some much worse than the Air's. It's a little like complaining about your car's engine block getting warm. But because the aluminum body itself acts as a heat sink of sorts, excessive heat can become an issue when the Air is pushed to its limits. That is, a lot of open applications and a heavy workload.

Screen response time. This could be subjective to some extent but the LCD's response times seem to be slower than, for example, the response times I get from my other laptop: the 3.3-pound HP 2510p. In other words, whenever I go back to working on the 2510p after working on the Air for a while, I feel that the screen response times are better on the 2510p.

But overall the Air is an amazing piece of engineering and a delight to use.

(For another MacBook review, go here.)

Despite the tanking economy, Apple's new MacBooks due to be unveiled Tuesday are creating some buzz (see Techmeme) and propping up Apple's stock price. The latest alleged pictures in the wild are of the new aluminum case (above) of the forthcoming systems posted on MacX.cn.

According to AppleInsider.com, the new higher end MacBook Pro will include a mini-DVI connector and a single FireWire 800 connector.

Overall the changes don't look major other than the shift to aluminum and the rumored substitution of Intel's chip set of Nvidia's graphics chip set, as reported by AppleInsider.

The MacBook might be getting changes inside and out in the next several weeks.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple might have decided its partnership with Intel doesn't mean it has to use all of Intel's products.

AppleInsider reports that Apple could be using a chipset from a different company--or even an internally developed one--in the next iteration of the MacBook, expected to arrive in the next six or eight weeks. Like other notebook vendors, Apple had been using Intel's mobile Centrino chipsets in its MacBook line ever since 2006 but it's going to pass on the Montevina version of those chipsets this time around, according to the report.

Intel has done an excellent job reinventing the company around mobile processors, starting with the original Pentium M design back in 2004 and carrying forward to today's Core 2 Duo. But it has done a much less stellar job with the integrated graphics chipsets that connect those processors to the rest of the system, such as the memory chips and hard drives.

Most notebooks use integrated graphics chipsets over discrete graphics chips to cut down on power consumption, but the graphics performance of Intel's chipsets leave a lot to be desired. Microsoft was less-than-thrilled about the performance of the chipsets that were scheduled to arrive with Windows Vista, and Intel has had problems getting other chipsets to live up to their promise.

If it's an internally designed chipset that Apple has in place for the new systems, history would be repeating itself at the company, which used to design much of the internal hardware that went along with IBM's PowerPC chips back in the day. Apple recently acquired a passel of chip designers from P.A. Semi, but Steve Jobs has said those folks are working on future chips for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

AppleInsider thinks Apple might have contracted with Advanced Micro Devices or Via for the new chipsets, but offers no details on what might actually be inside the new systems. Given Nvidia's huge mobile chipset problem this summer, it is probably not in the running if Apple's looking at other suppliers.

In other pending MacBook news, Computerworld reports that the new systems will arrive in September with glass touchpads, which seems a bit curious. Glass might allow for all kinds of trackpad-oriented multitouch goodness, but it seems like a warranty nightmare to me.

The new notebooks are expected to borrow design cues from the MacBook Air and bring the aluminum casing on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to the MacBook.

The PC and mobile-computing industries are getting together to propose a standard for computing on graphics processors, and they are going to start their evaluation with Apple's OpenCL technology.

The Khronos Group, an industry consortium that already administers well-known standards like OpenGL, announced the creation of a Compute Working Group on Monday to develop an industry standard for allowing software developers to tap into the performance offered by graphics processors, or GPUs.

Many familiar names dot the list of founding members, including chip companies such as AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, mobile industry representatives such as ARM, Motorola, Samsung, and TI, and Apple.

GPUs are perhaps best-known for rendering realistic mayhem in the never-ending sequence of PC shooter games, but they are taking on new roles. Newer operating systems like Vista are placing more graphical demands on the PC, and programmers in the scientific community are also interested in using the power of GPUs to process certain types of applications.

GPUs are very good at taking specific tasks, breaking them down into pieces, and solving them at an extremely high rate of speed using multiple processor cores. But they aren't good at handling the random assortment of software that we all have on our PCs or Macs, which in turn hasn't been programmed to take advantage of multiple processor cores, for the most part.

To that end, companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have all been working on ways to make it easier for software developers outside of the scientific computing industry to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the GPU.

In typical fashion, however, they all came up with different implementations. Nvidia has CUDA, AMD has Stream Computing, and Intel has its Larrabee project, which actually hasn't been released.

When Apple unveiled Mac OS X Snow Leopard last week during its Worldwide Developers Conference, the company noted that the operating system would feature a technology called OpenCL to make it easier for software developers to access graphics processors. The Khronos Group will evaluate OpenCL as a proposed standard, but there's no guarantee that all companies will eventually head down that path.

That's because there's a notable company missing from the founding members of this group: Microsoft. If Microsoft chooses to go down a different path with the next implementations of Windows and Windows Mobile, it will be hard for the chip companies to resist following suit.