Papermaster is a cool last name.

Everyone hatin' on Apple not using Samsung ARMs, sheesh. So PA Semi used to make ARM CPUs before they made PPC stuff and has an experienced low-power embedded CPU design team. Apple bought them for their ARM and design experience, not for the PPC designs.

What's better than a low-power CPU? One that you can customize yourself to fit your specific application! I mean, if Apple's not using parts of Samsung's ARM chip and would really like other enhancements, why not roll their own? Apple surely isn't Samsung's only ARM customer so it's not like they can order Samsung around.

What happened the last time Apple was dependent on an outside CPU vendor? Motorola screwed them and IBM was indifferent. Apple's safe with Intel because Intel has excellent execution and designs (let's just forget aboot the P4 era) so it's not like Apple will be at 400 MHz while windows-based PCs are at 1 GHz (like the old G4 era). So it makes sense to bring in the iPhone CPU tech in-house so they can customize it as need be.

Someone was yapping about being able to play divx/xvid/h.264 natively, being sarcastic. What if Apple's new design team can add that type of acceleration onto the CPU itself with decent performance and minimal battery drain? That's the type of stuff you have to be a bit excited about, not dour.

I don't understand why doing an in-house CPU is raising so many propietary hackles. Does AMD or Intel give away its CPU designs for free? No? Does Samsung? Keeping out the competition? Is that why Apple has an App Store bringing in a ton of money and an SDK for people to use to develop applications for their platform? If Apple wanted to keep out competition, they would deny them the ability to sell their wares on the App Store (which they are) and a propietary CPU would have no effect on that ANYWAY. Does making a tweaked ARM prevent people from, I dunno, buying a mod chip from play-asia.com so they can run imports on their iPhone? No, really, what's the big deal?

It doesn't matter what CPU or hardware is under the hood as long as people can access it in a device-independent manner, which they can through an SDK. The fact that Apple is interested in customizing the CPU itself is kind of exciting as they might do some interesting things with it.

Well, my two cents on it, at least.

Why not keep using Samsung ARMs? The only reason I can think of is that Apple wants to have proprietary stuff that no other company can use. Apple has always been about keeping out competition, and what better way than to use proprietary hardware? They could really have unique functionality then.

Yeah that last paragraph Cyril is sortof bringing it together. A custom, Apple-designed CPU to power future iPods instead of the Samsung-made ARMs in them now? Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. What's wrong with using Samsung ARMs?

Does this mean that future touch's will be able to play dvix/xvid/h.264 natively? pfffff, LOL! I made a funny!