Opinion: Jean-Louis GassĂ©e believes that we are facing the “twilight of the PC” – and perhaps Intel

What to do with the news and rumors that reached us in these weeks? Three-dimensional chips from Intel! Mac OS X running on ARM processors (1, 2, 3)! Jean-Louis Gasse ruminated a little on this information and arrived at what appears to be a technological crossroads: at the same time that Tri-Gate technology seems to be what will do the Chipzilla become relevant in the mobile segment, such 3D chips will only prove that they are more than a trick of press release when installed on real machines, producing a lot and consuming little.

Gray Apple Logo

But let's imagine for a moment that Tri-Gate processors are not that holy grail of mobile computing: would Apple fragment Mac OS X between x86 and ARM chips, in the same way that Microsoft intends to do with Windows? Taking into account the maximum power achieved by the architecture employed in the A5, it would be difficult to cover high performance fields, so only a double-life operating system could sustain MacBooks Air and Macs Pro.

Going back to Intel's dramas in the mobile segment, “now that the PC market is in its twilight” (words by Gasse himself), like the Chipzilla could you participate in the booming mobile gadget market? Perhaps it would be more advantageous not to row more against the sea and soon adopt ARM architectures, freeing Apple instead of an abusive relationship with Samsung. Intel itself would manufacture the chips to equip iGadgets, thus resolving his absence in this segment and perhaps preparing the bed for when the oil decides to lie down. We return to the reasons why Apple would not deliver Mac OS X into the arms of ARM.

The best thing to do, after all, wait to see what will happen. We have less than a month to know the future of Apple software and about a year for Tri-Gate chips to take shape not so long.

(via MacRumors)