YEY...more competition = better products+ lower prices for us the consumer....

Will Apple become a semiconductor manufacturer? Only time will tell.

this article is true in so many ways. I can't wait to see this in mobile devices but by knowing apple, it'll probably only be found in apple phones

It's a matter of time before Apple changes their Macs to run on this new instruction set. After all, they've been on x86 for a few years now, and that's really pushing it.

Interesting development, is apple gonna try to get in on the CPU business? Or at least the ultra mobile processing sector. Future iPhone/iPod touch CPU here? Would they license it out for others to use in their products? What kind of instruction does it use? Was it inspired my PowerPC CPU's at all? ARM??? btw, i still can't get over the name "iPad" every time I think of.. well you know what

I don't see this, I just see it powering the next wave of APPLE branded devices, not any other brands.

This new A4 sounds good compared to other cell-phone processors, but shouldn't we really be comparing it to netbook CPUs? At $630 to $830, Apple is pushing this thing far out of the reach of any comparable 3G smart-phone running Snapdragon. Without the Apple hype machine this is just one severely over-priced e-book reader.

you are forgetting one major thing... Its Apple. The term "lower prices" is not in their dictionary. Since this obviously is not going to be priced for the mainstream, it will not much affect other processors which are already priced decently.

Sweeeeet... I was tired of the lack of competition in the cpu business. Apple should go into the business of RISC based processors.

Now they need to force them to use them in a mac since osx requires apple hardware to be installed.

$499 is pretty good for something with as much capability as a netbook.

^ This.

But.......Will it run......Crysis?

You can't really compare this to a netbook. Last time I checked a netbook has a keyboard.

Considering that an Atom struggles to Play HD video I doubt:

calm down people -take note - it runs iPhone apps. Unless Apple are using some dynamic translation of instruction sets - it's running on an ARM CPU. Apple are rumoured to have licensed the ARM architecture so most probably it's an ARM A9 CPU with GPU from Imagine surrounded by some custom silicon from Apple. Not exactly breakthrough - Nvidea have already released a dual A9 CPU which looks just as/far more intriguing.

I agree with snurp85. Apple doesn't compete, they carve out their own market segment. The only things you'll see running this processor are iPads, iPhones, and iPods. You won't be able to buy anything else with this processor. Therefore, prices on other ARM/RISC chips will not go down. Instead, you'll just see other companies releasing poorly made copies of Apple products trying to cut their way into Apple's market.

It's not like Intel releasing Atom (which could be put in anything). Apple's new chip will only be used by Apple for Apple products. In fact, other ARM chips might go up in price, since Apple won't be putting them in millions of iPhones and iPods anymore.

Interesting to see them take even one more step into total control over hardware as they're becoming even more self-reliant.

They've got the cash, but now they're getting into the AMD/Intel arms race. It feels like the equvilent of the Cold War buildup for the US and the USSR and China saying, "Hey I want in too! Point some missles my way!"

Is this article a joke? The A4 won't power HD playback for 10 hours. They said the iPad has a battery life of ten hours (which means more like 6-8) and they’re certainly not quoting that with HD playback. Also how do you know it out performs the Snapdragon? No tests have been done and the Snapdragon processor can also power devices with HD resolutions. Know your fact before you write junk like this. You must be a complete Apple fanboy.

I don't consider this comparable to a netbook if I can't install the applications I want, only the ones Apple approves. Besides, $499 is WAY too much to pay for a netbook. That much will get me a 2.2GHz laptop with tons more screen, storage, and RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834220693

I'm not normally against everything Apple does, but $500 to read the NYT while listening to music is ridiculous. If Apple wants to push their new CPU out to third parties and allow some competition to the iPhone and netbook market I'd be happy, but that wasn't part of today's over-hyped press event.

"In fact, at its current spec and frequency, the Apple A4 can play back HD video for 10 hours before requiring a full battery charge."

This is kind of misleading because it implied that all this playback is being done in software. There is almost certainly a dedicated H.264 chip in these things or a dedicated 264 block on the processor.

You realize its:

a) not a cpu it's a soc
b) its based of dual cortex a9 (arm) right?

So, yeah, maybe delete that article and start again?

Interesting...I was no expecting this. I am curious to see how this all plays out.

Apple said at the event, that it can read a book, do browsing, or watch videos, for 10 hours. And they even said on their website for the iPad:

"# Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music. Testing consisted of full battery discharge while performing each of the following tasks: video playback, audio playback, and Internet browsing using Wi-Fi. Video content was a repeated 2-hour 23-minute movie purchased from the iTunes Store. Audio content was a playlist of 358 unique songs, consisting of a combination of songs imported from CDs using iTunes (128-Kbps AAC encoding) and songs purchased from the iTunes Store (256-Kbps AAC encoding). Internet over Wi-Fi tests were conducted using a closed network and dedicated web and mail servers, browsing snapshot versions of 20 popular web pages, and receiving mail once an hour."

Maybe you should get your facts straight?

/ Tuan

And for the record, I said the iPad seems dull to me in the article.

I agree with most here that Apple probably won't share their new A4 chip, but only time will tell.

Doesn't matter how good that chip is. We all know there's a group of people that will flock to and buy this chip wether it's a crap one or great one.

Is everyone drinking the Cool-Aid? What about Tegra 2 with TWO OUT-OF-ORDER cores. I'm also thinking the GPU could destroy this processor while using less power. Did everyone forget about all of the tablets that were released at CES last week? The only thing that makes this "better" is the fact that Apple made it. No wonder so many doctors prescribe Ritalin these days.

I was really hoping for something that actually used full blown OSX; like a touch screen MacBook Air? This is good attempt at a great product but it seems to me like a glorified iPod Touch. I'll have to see how good of an e-reader this will make in day light since other e-book readers are specialized for day light.

One slightly important difference between the Snapdragon and the A4 is the latter of the two is missing a baseband processor. I'm pretty sure we've seen the end of the days where smartphones contain a discreet cellular modem; single die implementations are simply far more power efficient.

The A4 actually does have a baseband processor in it. It's just in the cheaper version, it's disabled.