Comments on: Apple to build its own chips http://www.p2pnet.net/story/21115 p2pnet.net - reader powered Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:54:51 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Eric http://www.p2pnet.net/story/21115/comment-page-1#comment-973124 Eric Fri, 01 May 2009 18:08:55 +0000 http://www.p2pnet.net/?p=21115#comment-973124 Apple should have built its own chips in the late 1970s when they broke away from Atari to make computers. Then they would not have tied themselves to existing manufacturers, and they could have had 16-bit Macs by 1982 (and possibly even 32-bit Macs by 1985!) But there was an impetus to stay away from chips. When Jobs and Wozniak worked at Atari, one of their bigger projects was the arcade game Breakout, which in using too many of the kind of chips available at the time, was far too expensive. Their task was to design discrete hardware for Breakout so as not to use so many of the chips. The end result was not very pretty: The resulting hardware design used virtually no chips and couldn't be duplicated by other engineers, even though it worked! But someone else had to redesign it as a result. Apple should have built its own chips in the late 1970s when they broke away from Atari to make computers. Then they would not have tied themselves to existing manufacturers, and they could have had 16-bit Macs by 1982 (and possibly even 32-bit Macs by 1985!)

But there was an impetus to stay away from chips. When Jobs and Wozniak worked at Atari, one of their bigger projects was the arcade game Breakout, which in using too many of the kind of chips available at the time, was far too expensive. Their task was to design discrete hardware for Breakout so as not to use so many of the chips.

The end result was not very pretty: The resulting hardware design used virtually no chips and couldn’t be duplicated by other engineers, even though it worked! But someone else had to redesign it as a result.

]]> By: Reader's Write http://www.p2pnet.net/story/21115/comment-page-1#comment-973037 Reader's Write Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:21:14 +0000 http://www.p2pnet.net/?p=21115#comment-973037 There are enough apple fanboys to make so-called "trusted computing" pervasive. Apple is worse than Microsoft. There are enough apple fanboys to make so-called “trusted computing” pervasive.

Apple is worse than Microsoft.

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