The iPad mini was defense. So I credit Cook with the speed of timing more than anything. Zero games. We asked for it, we got it. When has that ever happened in Apple's history?
Only Apple could make this kind of huge transition as they've worked for years to be able to put an OSX-derived OS on a tiny iPod form factor (and thus creating the iPhone and iPod touch).
Bringing that back to the laptop world would be truly awesome. They have the ecosystem, toolchain, and numerous successful similar transitions from 68000->PPC->Intel already.
There's only one way to go thinner, smaller, or lighter on their laptops at this point, outside of some huge breakthrough in battery technology.
What doesn't make sense, though, is apps (built for x86)... Though an app-store-only model (and requiring ARM builds for inclusion in the app store) is not entirely out of the question, iOS style. Back to the Mac, indeed.
I don't know if an x64->ARM translation layer for the transition is feasible, performance-wise, though - perhaps someone with more knowledge of the architecture can chime in here.
It's completely feasible. The problem I see is that mapping 64-bit addresses into a 32-bit space is expensive. I can't think of anything in ARM that will make things more performant at the moment, but I'm sure there's some sort of way to pull it off. If OS X binaries are relocatable by default, that'd be an easy solution.
Apple has the expertise to be such a client. They're a very significant customer of ARM, and also (unless things changed when I wasn't looking) a major shareholder.
Emulating intel code on the ARM is feasible, though going to be 5x-10x slower for high performance compute code. However: most apps are not high performance compute code; and given that native ARM for most apps is not a lot more than a recompile away, that might not be a problem.
(With notable exceptions like Adobe - I'm sure Apple can solve these individual problems well enough to make that into a non-deal-breaker)
But, who knows? My sample set is fairly small. I'm sure Apple have a better idea than me about the truth of any these suppositions.
The times, they are a-changing.
> Cook yesterday unveiled the long rumored iPad mini, a move the purist Jobs condemned just two years ago... Cook reacted, quickly plugging the final hole in Apple’s consumer electronics empire.
Steve Jobs routinely panned the product configurations and strategies of other companies, only to turn around and release something that entirely contradicted his earlier stance. This was a guy who slammed Intel at every single keynote, showing off whatever benchmarks his team could think of to emphasize the PPC's superiority over x86 – until he announced WWDC attendees could order an Intel-based developer box because the times, they were a-changin'.
So while this article would have us believe that Cook initiated a crash program to build a 7 inch iPad immediately upon Jobs' death, what I think is more likely is that the form factor has been in progress since it was understood that the iPad was a hit.