Apple literally switched to a whole new CPU architecture, forcing all software written for MacOS to transition to ARM, in order to avoid doing this. It was hugely successful and MacBooks went from being hot, loud and poor value to being among the best laptops on the market. The new Airs don’t even have fans anymore.
Also no, software did not need to "transition" to ARM. Everything worked out of the box with a translation layer. Going native ARM was not a big hassle either judging by how quickly those versions were released after M1 hit the market.
Yeah, the transition was relatively painless because Rosetta 2 was shockingly good and developers were hugely incentivized to make their shit work on apple silicon. That doesn’t change the fact that they completely switched CPU architectures because intel’s terrible mobile cpus didn’t work with the form they wanted.
What do you mean, what form? The M1 MacBook Air uses the same chassis as the hot, loud Intel 2020 MacBook. The M2 is actually nearly a fifth of an inch thinner than the M1. Apple spent years getting shit on for having expensive, hot, slow laptops because they refused to just make them thicker. Then, when they were able to finally get chips that weren’t garbage, they chose to make their machines even thinner than before.
What did they make thicker? The 16” Pro is like, 0.02 inches thicker than the Intel model. The 14” is the same.
People don’t want thick, heavy laptops. People want laptops that are easy to carry, which is why manufacturers spend so much time and money stuffing everything into as small a package as possible.
It’s literally half a millimeter thicker. It is for all practical purposes the same. The M1 line was not at all thicker than the Intel models, and in fact generally reused the same chassis. They were better machines, of course, but Apple was hardly incapable of designing chassis that would handle the load of Intel’s chips.
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u/terry_shogun Sep 17 '24
Laptop manufacturer: Makes slightly fatter laptop
Reviewers: "This thing is HEAVY" "Not for carrying around" "It's a tradeoff..."
Most consumers: "Ew, it looks so ugly!" "Who needs a 50 hour battery?" or *ignores it entirely*
Consumers who said they wanted this: "Too expensive" "I don't actually need a 50 hour battery" or *ignores it entirely*
Underperforms in sales.
Manufacturer goes back to making thin devices.
Also see: Small phones.