“This week Apple confined developers to a specific set of tools (XCode),” Steve Cheney blogs for steve’s blog. “A lot of people think this is to kill Adobe Flash. Sure, that is a tactical reason, but there are much broader strategic reasons. By telling developers to move to XCode tools, Apple is setting the stage to potentially switch architectures.“
“History often repeats itself: In 2003, Apple advised developers to switch to XCode tools,” Cheney writes. “This was not a coincidental move—2 years later Apple moved to Intel across its entire Mac line. Developers who complied could simply press a button and applications would run natively (full performance) on new Intel Macs.”
“Now consider this – Apple may have already switched without people knowing. Here’s an anecdote – the innards of Apple’s A4 (powers the iPad) have been speculated ad nauseum by experts, but the reality is no one knows what’s actually inside. This week, there was very surprising analysis that the A4’s die size far exceeds what it ‘should’ be (single core ARM Cortex A8 with a 64 bit memory bus and GPU).
“This analysis is not yet mainstream, but will add tremendous fuel to the fire that perhaps the A4 is NOT an ARM architecture,” Cheney writes. “In fact, it’s highly possible that the A4 is a dual core Power Architecture, which is what the PA Semi team worked with, prior to Apple buying them in 2007.”
“If this is indeed the case, then iPhone OS 4.0 would bring incredible speed improvements to the iPad, since it would no longer run applications on an ARM processor emulator,” Cheney writes. “Can you imagine if OS 4.0 improved the iPad’s speed by 50% on day 1? Apple would be heralded as a software God. But in order for these speed improvements to be realized, apps would need to be written in objective C—which is exactly what Apple is now telling developers to do.”
Cheney writes, “We will likely find out what’s really inside the A4 soon. But one thing is already clear: Apple is sowing the groundwork to make architecture changes seamless—developers will only need to flip a switch to give their apps blazing, native performance… I find it fascinating that Apple has been so good at diverting attention to the Flash argument, that people don’t see the true genius behind Steve Jobs’ vision…”
Full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Jack” and “jax44” for the heads up.]
That’s what I’m talking about.
If only Adobe would listen to them and use xcode for their CS suite.
Sheer brilliance !
Say it’s so, Stevo…
This makes a lot of sense.
Adobe’s poor pitiful me routine doesn’t.
Peace, I feel a bathing of bright, soothing light now.
If true, this would be the best “one more thing” that Apple has ever kept secret.
Not to mention some amazing programming.
Whatever.
I just can’t wait to download iPhone 4.0 and end this unitasking madness once and for all.
It’s amazing how Apple surprises the world, and blindsides the rest of the tech industry, seemingly on a daily basis. It’s a bit mind-boggling just how far ahead the company thinks, prepares and then actually releases all this stuff.
It would interesting (to say the least!) to have a little peek at Apple’s road map for the next 3 to 5 years.
The irony is
that objective-c / cocoa is relatively easy to code, as programming languages go. The fact that Adobe is so slow in embracing it is a testament to their laziness.
When I read the full article and the comments on that site, I am starting to wonder how accurate this theory really is. There are some pretty smart people commenting over there.
My sense is that Apple has had a long-term strategic plan in place for quite some time now, whereas the
Adobes and MSs of the world are staring at the puck as it sits on the ice awaiting a face-off…or something
like that.
I am by NO MEANS knowledgeable about processor construction, but when they say that the PA Semi’s chips were based on Power Architecture, does that mean Power PC? If so, I thought that those were bad for mobile. Isn’t that why Apple switched to Intel? Because the future was laptops, performance per watt was much more important, and the Power PC road map wasn’t heading in that direction. That was only 2005, right? So how the hell could Apple be squeezing 10 hours out of a dual core Power PC chip now?
I don’t know what development tool has Adobe been using, but whatever it is, it obviously isn’t XCode. Migration from one tool to another would mean completely re-coding the entire CS package, from the ground up. There would probably be some copy/pasting, but most would have to be re-engineered, because there are surely a lot of differences between the tool sets, which somehow have to be overcome.
Adobe simply does NOT have that many engineers in their Mac group that could do this. More importantly, the current tool of their choice is more than likely chosen for easier porting from Windows, and not for efficiency on Mac. Adobe wants to stay dual-platform, and for that reason alone, they will stick to whatever development tool they’re using, until Apple eventually makes it impossible for them to stay.
@c.mac
You answered your own question in your first 9 words.
@c.mac – No, the “Power” in “Power Architecture” means that the A4’s core is actually made of old Apple PowerBooks that have been ground down into a fine paste. Although no one knows, I’m betting the chip makeup is approximately 35% ground Wall Street and 65% ground Lombard, but I could be wrong.
Sounds like this guy knows nothing about Chip design nor Software Architecture. He sounds like a fool to me.
First of all, if the A4 was a ARM and then they switched to Power PC all the apps would either have to be recompiled or they would have to run in emulation mode. Emulation mode is a real performance hog, and Apple would never do that, therefore the programs would have to be recompiled and tested for the new chip architecture. There would be no “flip of the switch”.
Since the iPad and iPhone run the same unmodified apps, they must therefore be using the same architecture–therefore the A4 cannot be a PowerPC.
Whoever this guy is that wrote the article is clueless, and in time you will see he’s a fool, and so are you for believing him.
@ c.mac
I have the same questions. Ignore the bozos.
Adobe needs to use a cross platform tool XCode is not that tool. It would be nice to see Adobe take better advantage of OSX, but they have done a better job than Quark. I remember their CEO telling customers that complained about not having an OSX version to switch to a PC.
If you read the comments on the original article, they are fairly convinced that the whole premise of the article is wrong.
It really is an ARM 8 processor and Apple really didn’t want Adobe to control the iPad App quality and update-ability.
And we are suppose to trust Steve Jobs after he lied to everyone saying that the first gen iPhone was not able to run multitask and now people have proved him otherwise? LMAO…
Good One Steve. Keep it for the Fanboys will ya!
Apple and Steve Jobs – Masters of media manipulation.
Whether this is true or not, the tech media will be discussing and debating this in great detail, giving Apple even more attention.
@ SouthRoad
You’re not thinking it through. First of all, Power Architecture is the overarching category that includes PowerPC, but whatever the A4 really is, it is NOT PowerPC. And secondly,
> Since the iPad and iPhone run the same unmodified apps, they must therefore be using the same architecture
Intel Macs can run PowerPC apps using Rosetta. So there’s an example (one from Apple) of the “same unmodified apps” running on two different architectures. And just like Intel Macs running PowerPC apps through Rosetta are usually faster than (most) PowerPC Macs running the same apps natively (because a Core 2 Duo Intel Mac is much faster than single-core G4 or G5), it is quite reasonable to speculate that a “Power Architecture” A4 can run iPhone apps faster than an ARM-based current iPhone.
I’m not saying all of this stuff is true. I’m just saying your argument against it is more unrealistic than the article you are ridiculing.
You’re a buzz kill.
Am not!
R2!
@c.mac
Apple could not wait for PA Semi to ship its low power Power PC chip. That came out about two years after apple made the switch to Intel. The chip they came out with has been the fastest adopted chip by the US military. It is used in devices for every branch of the military, in fact the US Gov. almost blocked Apples purchase of PA Semi.
I would be surprised if apple switched to the Power PC architecture for it mobile devices, but it would give them total control and no other manufacturer would have access to anything similar. They would not however benefit from work done by ARM or any other design company, it the chip failed to meet expectations it would be a disaster.
There has been a lot of work done in transcoding in the past few years so it could be possible it is a Power PC. If that were true though there would be a huge speed increase under iPhone OS 4.
Also see http://www.technomicon.com/Tech_Chat.html Look at his posts for weeks 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11.
He (also a Mark but not me) believes the A4 is an updated PA Semi PA6T chip that is running an ARM emulation (just like Apple is running an ARM emulation on the Mac for their SDK). The PA6T uses the POWER Architecture – which would be exactly what Mark Papermaster, Apple’s new head of “iPod” engineering, would be a specialist in. Apple recruited Mark from IBM.