Jobs' Lion to marry Mac OS X and iOS

Move to ARM?

The convergence of Mac OSX and IOS (which I predicted long ago) may be a step towards moving the MacBook line towards using ARM processors instead of x86.

Apple has changed processor architectures for their Macintosh line before: They started in 1984 with Motorola 68K, moved to PPC in 1994 and to x86 in 2006. So another change is not unthinkable. The move from PPC to x86 was motivated (according to Jobs) by lower cost and power use of x86 compared to PPC. Since ARM is both cheaper and uses less power than x86, this would argue in favour of such a move. Currently, ARM is not quite as powerful as x86, but the gap is getting smaller with multicore multiMHz ARM processors coming out. And the ability of Apple to build their own SoCs around ARM cores is another benefit that such a move would give.

So my prediction is that within 5 years we will see ARM-based MacBooks.

Funny how it's only Apple that makes people panic

Windows Marketplace and Games For Windows Live Marketplace have both been around for ages, quietly failing to find an audience. Oddly enough, I've never heard a rumour about it becoming impossible to install Windows apps any other way.

Personally, I think this is just an attempt to counteract the jump Steam just took on them in the desktop gaming arena.

The whole vision of the future relies on an Internet that's years away

Sure I use my Mac Pro for the usual web, email, photo, iTunes nonsense that everyone else does but my hobby is music creation using Logic and 3rd-party plug-ins, quite a few of these are over 100GB's to install and are supplied on dozens of DVD's or even come on their own hard drive. Just can't see how all these things could be contained and wrapped up in a simple 'there's an App for that' distinction all via a single vendor.

So what 'apps' could be on the App Store, can't be just talking widgets and ports of iPhone games?

So what order...

Will OS XI/11/whatever be named after?

I call Rodentia.

App Store

I've been using an app store for years.

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox

Convergence

Convergence around duo core Atoms or their own in house built dual core arm chips isn't out of the question. They're already doing it with the iPhone and iPad. Seems inevitable that they will do it with the Macbooks, but the Mac Pros will definitely need the horsepower of desktop class chips for some time, due to Intel's iCore CPU's. But if Intel can figure out a way to make their Atoms more powerful while using less power, who knows?

It's also a natural progression to converge iOS with OSX since they are already related. That would also make porting apps between them all, very easy.