This guy just killed Intel's chances. Apple doesn't take kindly to these types of criticisms, and Apple has the technical expertise to go elsewhere (i.e., they easily could design their own chip).

What's a representative from Intel supposed to say, that there's no advantage to going to an Intel processor? This is marketing, not news!

I bet the Atom could solve that problem.
/sarc

I'm not arguing intel has better chips now but Apple needed huge quantities 2 years ago, the iPhones internals won't change the next year.

The major problem with the Atom is that it's still far more power-hungry than ARM chips.

There are good reasons all phone manufacturers, including Apple, use ARM chips, and the low-power (and lower-cost / lower-premium) market is something Intel have only just woken up to.

We'll only be able to make a real and meaningful comparison between the performance of the two systems once they've got equal power consumption - otherwise it's as meaningless as comparing an Atom and Core 2 Duo on raw performance.

it very well could be that Intel's new line is more capable than the ARM. But, Apple had been working on the iPhone for years based on ARM technology, and the Intel Atom just came out.

It could be in the future that Apple will switch to the Atom. And, if it's all Intel claims to be, we will have faster and better iPhones. Remember, the iPhone is a platform, just like the Mac, and it will continue to evolve and get faster processors and more memory and upgraded software.

So, if the Atom is the future, I say "bring it!"

-Rick

I didn't realize I was having problems with my iPhone..... Glad Intel told me.

So if Intel's chips are 2-3 times faster, does that mean battery life will be reduced? I'm going with yes. an iPhone with a max 2 hours battery life is not something that anybody wants.

When I was a windows guy using an HP Pocket PC a few years ago, I was amazed at how slow it was to do basic tasks. Large Word Documents choked, as well as complex spreadsheets.

Still, it was a handy device. Right now, the iPhone can do about 60% of what my pocket PC could do (still need a good word processor and spreadsheet)...but if someone can create a decent ray tracery (iTrace), there may be hope yet for some business tools like project management or flow charts.

sorry, how many ball/maze games do we need.

ARM Processor in iPhone:
0.45 mW/MHz power draw (with cache)
Intel Atom Processor:
2.5W for the N270 processor

That may be the reason for using the ARM processor. Intel is finally starting to produce processors that are power efficient. ARM specializes in doing just that. Don't count Intel out yet, when they put their mind to it, they do a good job. (the Current Core2 processors are really nice)