Re:Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
by giantrobot on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @07:24PM
(#45033574)
IIRC Apple originally invested in ARM during the development of the Newton. The original Newtons used ARM 610 CPUs. I don't know exactly when they sold their ARM stake but they kept their architecture license.
The Newton was long before the iPaq, the MessagePad was released in 1993.
Re:Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
by ljosifov on Wednesday August 27, 2025 @02:27PM
(#45043193)
On selling of the ARM stake - asked ChatGPT:
Q> And latter - was it that it looked that Apple maybe in danger of going under, and then they sold their ARM stake and got a cash injection that way?
A> And yes. In the late-1990s turnaround, Apple sold down its ARM stake in multiple tranches after ARM’s 1998 IPO, realizing hundreds of millions of dollars that helped shore up finances (alongside the well-known $150 million Microsoft deal in Aug 1997).
I remember iPaq PDA fondly. Wrote a demo to select a song from a playlist with few thousand author-album-song with voice query. The WiFi add-on was a big plastic "sleeve", that the iPaq slid into, not the other way around. Could run the ASR engine for about whole 10 mins before it drained the battery flat, haha. :-)