In an opinion piece in The Register, columnist Cormac O'Reilly speculates that once IBM sells its PC division it will stay in the personal computer business by buying or joining Apple.Excerpts:
Once publicly free of the PC division IBM will either buy, or form a close joint venture with Apple to sell its PCs, which coincidentally are now built around IBM's PowerPC chip.Just think how many positives for IBM such a marriage would provide. IBM would give the same credibility to the Macintosh computer, and its Microsoft-beating operating systems as it provided for the PC in the first place, thereby opening the flood gates of corporate demand.Hitching up with Apple would provide IBM with a real inroad into the fast growing 'lifestyle' market, something the men and women in blue suits kind of missed.
[Update:] A short item at CNET reports that IBM's contract with Lenovo for PC sales requires, with some exceptions, that IBM and its subsidiaries not sell or manufacture personal computers for five years, apparently ruling out the deal with Apple discussed by Cormac O'Reilly.
Apple appears to have prematurely revealed the name of its rumored lower-cost MacBook model, which is expected to be announced this Wednesday.
A regulatory document for a "MacBook Neo" (Model A3404) has appeared on Apple's website. Unfortunately, there are no further details or images available yet.
While the PDF file does not contain the "MacBook Neo" name, it briefly appeared in a link...
Apple today announced the "MacBook Neo," an all-new kind of low-cost Mac featuring the A18 Pro chip for $599.
The MacBook Neo is the first Mac to be powered by an iPhone chip; the A18 Pro debuted in 2024's iPhone 16 Pro models. Apple says it is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks than the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5, up to 3x faster for on-device AI workloads,...
Benchmarks for the new MacBook Neo surfaced today, and unsurprisingly, CPU performance is almost identical to the iPhone 16 Pro. The MacBook Neo uses the same 6-core A18 Pro chip that was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro, but it has one fewer GPU core.
The MacBook Neo earned a single-core score of 3461 and a multi-core score of 8668, along with a Metal score of 31286.
Here's how the...
