Apple admits to eating 'iPad chip designer'

Yes, Apple has borged Intrinsity, the Texas-based chip outfit that (supposedly) played a role in the design of the chip driving the iPad. Today, the Jobsian cult confirmed the buy with the New York Times. Previously, profiles posted to the social networking site known as LinkedIn indicated that Apple had borged at least a trio …

[Jerry H. Appel]

Resistance is Futile

Once again Star Trek-isms have infiltrated the lexicon. I guess this makes Steve the hive queen.

What bothers me is the attitude that Apple is doing something not quite cricket. There was a time when the entire non-Apple milieu denigrated Apple for its in-house only mentality. The Steve/hive queen returns, opens things up, and that is also a basis for bitching?

And another thing, the iPhone is a smaller version of the iPad? It sounds like the author has been asleep for the last three years. Besides the iPod Touch is what gave birth to the iPad after the iPhone gave birth to the Touch.

With the corrections out of the way, the meat of the article is interesting in that it is just another example of the global economy: California company buys Texas half of Austin-Korean SoC team. This is now the norm.

[RSD]

Cade Metz- please grow up!

I quickly tired of your repeated use of the word 'cult'.

It may come as a surprise to you, but there are many folks who use Apple products simply because they are quite high quality, and are a pleasure to use (compared to the typical PC).

Furthermore, it may also surprise you to know that, just because people are enthusiastic about a product, does not make them 'cult followers'.

If the tight integration of hardware and software, and complete lack of virus cr#p were available in a PC, I might look at one, otherwise, I'll keep using Macs.

Get over your Apple envy, just join us and be happy. :)

[Ben 4]

RSD - please get a sense of humour

Come on, he says cult three times, hardly an offence. And if anyone or any company is a cult in the IT world, it's Apple and its fans.

If you want straight dull reporting, why are you reading ElReg?

[Radelix]

Sounds like a believers response to me

see title

[SlabMan]

No ARM done

Perhaps leaks about this deal were the origin of the ARM-purchase rumours? It's funny - years ago the rumours were always about who was going to buy Apple.

[Jerome 0]

Resistance is... wait, what?

Steve opens things up? Are we living on the same planet here?

[ThomH]

I think they mean Steve circa 1998

You know, ditching ADB, Mac-style serial ports, etc, OpenDoc, Appletalk, Quickdraw 3d, etc and transitioning the Mac to USB, an OS with an open source kernel and lots of other bits of open source in the stack that talks SMB and OpenGL and draws in PDF, and specifically courting Microsoft to ensure a new and continuing commitment to Office:Mac. So that, generally speaking, Macs talk to the same peripherals and the same networks and work with the same files as PCs.

You know, company saving, pre-iPod Steve.

[Eddy Ito]

@ThomH

"You know, company saving, pre-iPod Steve."

A ha! It all makes sense now! There was something in that original iPod when it fell from the alien vessel, got stuck in an infinite loop and crashed in Cupertino. That _thing_ is slowly infecting the global population; poor Steve was just the first to fall under _their_ control.

[MinionZero]

This is now making more sense.

This could be where the Apple + Arm rumours are stemming from. Apple are in effect getting an Arm based company, (but thankfully not Arm itself) as Apple are going after the 1GHz Arm Hummingbird chip. I'm sure getting closely involved with Hummingbird development will be very useful to Apple's long term plans. At that speed its very useful for a lot of tasks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah well :)

It made me snort with laughter..."been eaten by the cult" LOL Love it. And your clever change of direction with the iPad / iPhone / iBlah. Great. Keep up the good work :)

[FoggyDC]

I wonder how much Acorn got into Apple

Maybe none at all but I do recall being shown a WORKING Acorn Pad sometime around 1997/8 - but I cannot be certain of date. It was DEFINITELY pre 1999. Like Apple, Acorn had a tight well written OS integrated very closely with the hardware. There was no need for a graphics card and having the core of the OS in ROM provided a good level of protection from viruses.

Often when I read of what Apple or ARM are doing my mind is taken back to items I was shown at Acorn - sometimes officially & sometimes unofficially. There was a huge pool of talent within Acorn and its ISVs, IHVs etc. many able to write major applications completely in machine code. Compared to application size today they were tiny.

Sometimes it is a pity that we can't live in the past because SOME things were better

[Stevie]

Bah!

Just tell 'em not to leave it in a bar.

[Anonymous Coward]

EXPONENTIAL!

I used to work there! I Donated my only working ECL PPC 9500 from the lab to the computer history museum! The exponential patents were sold to S3 I think it was?

It was Gordy who started this, from chips & technology days. Remember them?

Wow. Them were the daze...........

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cult of Apple

I like the design of most of Apple's products, but that’s as far as it goes. Compared to the PC market (think Games hardware here) Apple PC's are nowhere near as flexible or configurable, this is a consequence of both Hardware and Software restrictions, although less so Hardware these days.

As for usability, I've always disagreed with MAC aficionados on that, I much prefer Windows and the wealth of applications that are available for it, sure out of the box XP is pretty vanilla, but you can customise it with third party tools to the point where it's 'much' more useable than any MAC OS.

Windows 7 is a pleasure to use, there are some things I don’t like, but anything can be changed, reconfigured, updated or modded etc. Easily.

So, no thanks, I won’t be 'joining' the Apple crowd, I'm happy where I am.

[Russ Tarbox]

Am I the only one that had to look up the definition of "borged"?

I thought it was something to do with Swedish chefs...