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Video iPod: The Fruit Of Apple's Transition To Intel?
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2005-07-12 12:38:30
A recent post on Mac on Intel brought to our attention a most insightful look at the motivations behind Apple's transition of the Mac to the Intel processor platform, presenting the situation in a rather new light. While most analysts have been, logically, focused on what Apple will gain from the Pentium line of processors sitting at the heart of future Macs, there has been little discussion about another processor asset that Intel holds: the Xscale.
An evolution of the StrongARM processor that powered the Apple Newton MessagePad 2000, the Xscale processor is compatible with, and offers far more power than, the iPod's current 80MHz ARM7 core. The long-rumored "video iPod" would need much more CPU muscle than the current iPod has in order to handle the high-quality video playback demands that such a unit would offer.
From the original Ars Technica article:It's critical to understanding the switch that you not underestimate the importance of Intel's XScale to Apple's decision to leave IBM. The current iPods use an ARM chip from Texas Instruments, but we can expect to see Intel inside future versions of the iPod line. So because Apple is going to become an all-Intel shop like Dell, with Intel providing the processors that power both the Mac and the iPod, Apple will get the same kinds of steep volume discounts across its entire product line that keep Dell from even glancing AMD's way.
If you think XScale is too powerful for the iPod—it's used in powerful color PDAs—then you're not taking the device seriously enough as a portable media platform. The XScale is plenty powerful enough to do video playback, and I have reason to believe that Apple is currently working on a video iPod to counter the Sony PSP. (My guess is that we might even see it in time for Christmas.) When the video iPod hits the streets, Apple will have an iPod product that plays each of the media formats (music, pictures, video) represented in its iLife suite. It is clear that a major part of Apple's future is the iPod, and continually improving and enhancing it over time is crucial to keeping the iPod at the head of the pack. Scoring a low-cost deal on Xscales for future iPods as part of a product-wide platform transition would be a real coup for Apple. We are most anxious to see what lies ahead.
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