A4, A5 - what’s in the chip itself? It’s an Cortex A8 with a PowerVR combined. Most companies pair the PowerVR with an A8. The A5 is similar - it’s an ARM core with a GPU. Others haven’t mixed the two together like that - but not because it’s exclusive to Apple. That technology is available to other vendors, they choose to do things differently.
CNC aluminum bodies? You mean no one else can machine aluminum bodies? That technology is not available to other vendors? Or do other vendors choose to do things other ways?
Please address what I said, not what you thought I said - Apple doesn’t use anything that is not available to all other vendors. Whether those vendors use that technology or not is the vendor’s choice - not Apple’s.
EFI - maybe because for most consumers it adds zilch? How many actually flash their BIOS? What’s the benefit for the typical consumer versus the costs associated? And actually EFI has been supported in Windows since XP SP2. It’s been out for over a decade - but what’s the benefit for most consumers?
Thunderbolt? What’s the market? What’s the real-world advantage over USB 3.0 that consumers will really notice? Why do you want a different, incompatible hardware connector that will require new cabling and adapters when USB 3.0 is available? Will it help the consumer connect to most of their peripherals - printers, scanners, cameras and phones?
All these technologies have been available to all other vendors - they’re not exclusive to Apple. Apple can sometimes buy enough of a certain product to get a short-term “exclusive” simply by buying up all items - but that technology was still available to others, and usually well before Apple knew about it. You think LG and Samsung display groups don’t let their own cellphone groups know of their breakthroughs first? ;)
Apple chooses different mixes, sure - but it’s not exclusive to Apple. It’s just different. That was my point - and you’ve kind of reinforced it.
Can sometimes? Surely you jest! Apple has more cash on hand than any other tech company in the world. They can always. Apple is the best customer many if these companies have. Intel gives Apple first rights to its processors. . . and several months exclusivity in some cases on the high end. Apple is given forknowledge of upcoming products. You don't piss off your best paying customer by keeping it in the dark about your upcoming technology, not if you want them to remain your best paying customer! Where are the other phones with retina displays like the iPhone4, Sidelines? It's been a year and a half since Apple unveiled the high density display. How Cooke no one made such a display available on another phone? Not one!
CNC aluminum bodies? You mean no one else can machine aluminum bodies? That technology is not available to other vendors? Or do other vendors choose to do things other ways?
Uh, no. . . Sidelines, a couple of months ago, several PC makers were planning to produce alluminum monobloc laptop computers. They couldn't. Why? They found Apple had purchased almost all the production capable milling machines capable of producing such cases available to turn out their MacBook airs, MacBook, and MacBook pro laptops! It would be over a year before there would be sufficient machine tools available... So it would be either back to plastic, carbon fiber, or stamped metal.
It's not just the ARM and PowerVR parts you choose, but how you design the overall SoC. The A4 and the Samsung Hummingbird were so fast for their day because of the expertise of a chip design company called Intrinsity, which specialized in high-performance, low-power designs. Only Apple and Samsung got those advancements, although the two designs were still somewhat different. Then Apple bought Intrinsity and another chip designer, P.A. Semi. Thus the advancements of the A5 are exclusive to Apple.
CNC aluminum bodies? You mean no one else can machine aluminum bodies?
Not in mass production quantities. Apple has basically purchased all of the available CNC capacity. Foxconn bought those thousands of CNC machines just to handle Apple's demands.
EFI - maybe because for most consumers it adds zilch?
EFI can programmatically handle things like sleep and suspend. It can recognize boot volumes over 2 TB. And for ease of use for consumers, it can give you a GUI before the OS boots since it loads video and mouse drivers (in a multi-boot Mac you choose your boot volume with the mouse), and even network drivers. It also has inherent lights-out capability, since it is a fully-functional mini-OS that boots before any OS.
Thunderbolt? What’s the market? What’s the real-world advantage over USB 3.0 that consumers will really notice?
Unlike USB, Thunderbolt is essentially your PCI bus over a cable. Plug ONE cable into your laptop, you can have that connected to two high-resolution displays, external hard drives or RAID boxes (that will transfer much faster than USB 3) and even external video cards.
Apple can sometimes buy enough of a certain product to get a short-term “exclusive” simply by buying up all items
And that makes it Apple-only. Nobody else can get it if Apple has bought all of the capacity.