Time To Arm The PC?

Apple’s shift to its own M series computer processors has accelerated the adoption of ARM-powered PC notebooks

- Shawn Chung

Tech trends often take a while to build up. Take, for example, Apple’s recent shift to using developments of their smartphones to power the new generation of Macs and MacBooks. Which I wrote about in this column back in August 2020. While in one way it’s a bold step forward, in another way, it’s actually a trend that’s been around for a couple of years now.

Yes, Apple weren’t the first to try powering notebook PCs with smartphone chips - there have been a number of low-end products since 2007, such as netbooks with limited capabilities as they were powered by lower-end processors for the educational sector. In fact, in the last couple of years, there have even been a few of much higher-end products called Always On, Always Connected PCs (ACPC) from HP, Samsung, Asus, Lenovo and Microsoft that leverage on the longer battery life, and connectivity of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors.