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schlack said:

how long bf they swap out the intel chip in the macbook to an arm processor? dropping in two A10X chips would make it a powerhouse and likely be cheaper than the single intel chip. arm compatible apps wouldn't necessarily be a problem. apple could help recompile existing apps to work on arm chips. even just converting MSFT Office, Safari, and iTunes will cover 90% of what people do with MacBooks anyways.

You'd lose the ability to emulate Windows at a decent speed, which was a major factor in helping Windows switchers since 2006. Even though most switchers stop emulating Windows after a few months, knowing it's there if they need it helps a lot. There are also a fair number of die hard Windows users that use their Macs as a Windows machine, and that, too would go away. Even if Microsoft was magnanimous enough to compile Windows to the A chips ala RT, most Windows Apps are still x86 binaries. That all said, binary translation is possible (like Rosetta stone), and it would be interesting if Apple had their own CPUs. Then we wouldn't have a decade of SkyLake let downs and wouldn't be stuck with HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2. And I still feel Apple switching away from x86 is more a question of when than if.

Sounds like Apple just ran late with the major upgrade components, so they had to throw in a 6SS model, much as Intel now has a tick-tock-tock model.
But if they really jump from "iPhone 7" to "iPhone 8" that could annoy some iPhone 7 buyers.