Back to Mobile View

Skip to Content

Intel betting big on 'Ultrabooks' after Apple threatens to dump it

by Chris Rawson Aug 11th 2011 at 5:30PM

According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is investing heavily into "Ultrabooks" -- thinner and lighter PCs similar to the MacBook Air. The company has made a US$300 million commitment to the technology and hopes to "define" the category the same way it defined the netbook category a couple of years ago.

Two of the chief requirements for the Ultrabook label are a thickness of no more than 21 millimeters and a wake-from-sleep time of seven seconds or less. By contrast, the MacBook Air's maximum thickness is 17 millimeters, and any newer Mac that takes more than seven seconds to fully wake from sleep probably has something wrong with it (or is experiencing a relatively widespread Wi-Fi bug introduced in OS X Lion).

Intel's new focus on Ultrabooks goes alongside a renewed focus on reducing power consumption in its CPUs. Reportedly, Apple threatened to switch to another chipmaker if Intel didn't drastically reduce the power consumption of its chips. The threat of losing one of its main customers has prompted Intel to refocus its product roadmap on reducing power consumption from its current level of 35-40 watts all the way down to 15 watts.

Intel's Ultrabooks will be arriving in three phases, tied to ever-lower power consumption in successive chip generations. The first Ultrabooks should be debuting later this year. While they'll likely be marketed as competitors to the MacBook Air, Apple will have access to the same technology and will likely use it to focus on improving the battery life across its entire notebook range.



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Mac

According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is investing heavily into "Ultrabooks" -- thinner and lighter PCs similar to the MacBook...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

12 Comments

Filter by:
Roger Cotton

I just paid $22.87 for an iPad2-64GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $675 which only cost me $62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, BidsGet.com

August 13 2011 at 12:58 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
MarcBook

Seven seconds to fully wake from sleep?! Maybe I'm too used to the Mac experience, but the MacBook Pro I had in 2006 only took a couple of seconds to wake from sleep when it was running Tiger.

Anyway, although I'm all for the progression of 'ultrabooks' (MacBook Air-like computers), the MacBook Pro-type computer is the only kind that'll satisfy my needs. As a 'power user', dedicated graphics, high-end CPUs and larger, high-res displays are what I need. The MacBook Pro is the perfect combo of power and portability, in my opinion.

If Apple ends up switching to ARM, I'm not sure how I'll react. So much software I use depends on x64 (Mac and Windows). If, however, Apple makes such a transition as (fairly) smooth as the PPC to Intel switch, I think I'll be able to live with it.

August 11 2011 at 7:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to MarcBook's comment
Jasoco

I'm pretty sure Steve was touting the near-instant wake from sleep capabilities of the PowerBook G4's when they were first released 10 years ago.

August 11 2011 at 10:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
trevorde

I suspect any switch to ARM will have no 'legacy' support for x64 apps as the emulation/translation experience will be unacceptable for the user. Any switch will mean a new architecture, only Apple approved apps via the App store and total lockdown of the platform.

August 12 2011 at 6:14 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to trevorde's comment
Minicapt

Since Apple has made such a change twice, and provided migration tools and options each time, your prognosis would be representative of standard anti-Apple fantasies.

Cheers

August 12 2011 at 7:18 AM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down
Jrbsman

Finally someone has pointed out what every other article about these ultra books has failed to: Apple has the same access to the technology. So if Intel pushes the size and power requirements down to help windows laptops, Apple gets the same benefits.

An article a few weeks ago stated that Windows manufactures will have trouble hitting the MacBook Air price point unless Intel lowers the cost of the processors. Guess what- if Intel lowers the price then Apple gets the same price advantage. This is the benefit from spending an incredible amount of money experimenting with manufacturing.

August 11 2011 at 6:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Jrbsman's comment
Mabhatter

Intel still misses the point here. Apple doesn't want "ultrabooks" defined... APPLE has already done that. What Apple wants is simple! They want a 17" MacBook Pro, with the SAME PERFORMANCE as thin as an 11" MacBook Air.

This goes back to Steve's comment to Nike about "don't make crap". A design like Atom is "crap" and it takes away resources that should be used to bring BEST stuff out. Apple understands that notebooks are good enough for the vast majority of users.. Intel has wasted it's resources for years making desktop CPUs that are just shy of melting, then trying to make those into notebook processors. Core 2 Duo was a step in the right direction, but with Core i Intel went right back to their old ways, AND tried to lock OEMs onto no choice of graphics. I get the hint this is the last time Apple will be Bullied into taking crappy graphics to hit their design target... What is intel protecting by forcing integrated graphics?? Their own agenda? To sell the public poor battery life, or crappy hardware... That's not a "choice" now... People want 8 hours battery on Final Cut and Dev tools... Not word processing.

August 12 2011 at 8:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mabhatter

I think the problem is that intel sees these as "premium" the average retail for a laptop is well under $1000 now... Except for apple that's selling the Air (starting) at that point instead of some Atom based machine at half the price. Intel thinks Air should be MORE expensive, because that processor caters to Sony, Lenovo, etc, not "consumers".

Most of Intel's chips are for "junk" machines that arent any faster OR more efficient than the year before.. That's why Apple wants to beat them up on this.

August 12 2011 at 8:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Billy Razzle

Man, Apple has some serious pull these days.

Also, I want one of those new 11" MacBook Airs really bad. I hope they upgrade the graphics cards in them next time.

August 11 2011 at 5:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Billy Razzle's comment
Erik Rogers

The HD3000 is actually quite good. I play casual games on my 11" MBA without issue, including Spiral Knights and Anomaly Warzone Earth. Starcraft 2 runs well on medium.

Portal 2 and CS:Source ran just fine on the 320M, I can only imagine they'd run even better with the i5.

If you're trying to seriously game on an 11" MBA, then you bought it for the wrong reasons.

August 11 2011 at 6:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Erik Rogers's comment
Billy Razzle

I know. But what sucks is that you can't go up from that unless you move up to the 15" MacBook Pro, which is a huge jump in size & price.

August 11 2011 at 6:42 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down
mrWONGSTA

Does it really run well on medium for Starcraft II? I was tempted for an upgrade because my later 2009 MacBook 13" only runs Starcraft II on low and still it slows the game down occasionally :(

August 11 2011 at 7:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
Buy an ad here

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.