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One of the first MacBook Air rumors of the season alludes to internal changes but few external tweaks.

A fresh report from the not-always-reliable Taipei-based Digitimes claims the "industrial design will not see any major changes" in 2013.

Apple introduced the accentuated wedge aesthetic in late 2010 (see photo above), so about a year and a half will have transpired if new MBAs are introduced in the first half of 2013.

The report makes no mention of displays, but that's an area of intense focus for Apple. The high end of the MacBook Pro line now sports … Read more

Intel today disclosed technology that it hopes will get more of its silicon inside smartphones and tablets.

At the International Electron Devices Meeting, Intel laid out its next-generation 22-nanometer "SoC" system-on-a-chip technology. An SoC puts most of a device's core functions onto one piece of silicon and is typically used in mobile devices where space and power efficiency are paramount.

"In the past...we were focused primarily on developing transistors with ever higher performance," Mark Bohr, an Intel senior fellow, said to journalists in a teleconference. "Now we're developing technologies with a much … Read more

Intel is on a mission to cut the power consumption of its chips. But that's not only future silicon. The current Ivy Bridge chip will get throttled down too.

Intel will cut power consumption "significantly" for future versions of the chip, an industry source familiar with the chipmaker's plans told CNET.

Intel's most power efficient Ivy Bridge chips today -- used widely in Windows ultrabooks and Apple's MacBook Air -- are rated at 17 watts.

A future version of Ivy Bridge would be rated well below this, the source said. Processors able to throttle … Read more

The end of the desktop is near, according to reports trickling out over the last few days.

Changes in the way Intel connects its processors to the circuit board may signal broad changes to the desktop PC as we know it today.

Desktop processors are attached to the PC's main circuit board (aka motherboard) via a socket. Intel processors compatible with that socket are then inserted by the end user, be it an enthusiast or PC supplier.

This is the design that is in danger of disappearing, reports claim.

Mobile processors, on the other hand, are soldered directly to … Read more

The success of the iPad and iPhone is a problem for Intel's next CEO.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini seems to be exiting in the nick of time. His successor will face an increasingly hostile world of customers like Apple fashioning chips for their own purposes.

Apple is a big Intel customer. Macs are all Intel-based. Problem is, most of Apple's growth is happening in tablets and phones.

This is not a trivial issue for Intel. As Apple ships more iPhones and iPads, more R&D and money flow to Apple's internal chip development -- in the … Read more

Apple is starting to release some scary-good silicon. But can it muscle out Intel?

Last decade, the question was, will Apple go Intel? After years of speculation, that finally happened in 2006, when Apple dropped the PowerPC for its Mac line.

So are we now on a similar trajectory, as a Bloomberg story speculates, with Apple eventually evicting Intel from its Macs and using its own internally developed processors?

A quick look at the latest Apple silicon shows the company is on the right track. The A6X is a serious piece of silicon that makes the newest gen 4 iPad … Read more

So, just how thin will future touch screen ultrabooks get? Intel provides plenty of guidance on how to get there.

Ultrabooks these days typically range between 17mm (0.66 inches) and 20mm (0.78 inches) in thickness. With the emergence of Windows 8 tablet-esque ultrabooks with touchscreens, Intel wants to shave off a few more millimeters.

At its annual conference today, Intel released a slide (above) showing a touch screen ultrabook with a thinly-sliced 2.5mm keyboard (Microsoft's Surface tablet has a keyboard that is 3mm thin by comparison), a sub 0.5mm touch panel, and a 5mm hard … Read more

Apple take note. An Intel executive says everything is going the way of touch.

"Intel has put its money where its conviction is" and invested heavily in touch screens, Rob DeLine, director of Ultrabook product marketing at Intel, said in an interview.

DeLine pointed out that although there are plenty of touch screens that are 10 inches and smaller avaialable, that isn't the case for larger sizes.

The larger-screen ecosystem "really didn't exist," he said. "The ecosystem for 10-inch and below for tablets is pretty mature. So, we've made investments to ensure … Read more

It's been a bad week for Intel.

The earnings warning today capped a week that began ominously when Apple sent out invites for an event -- widely expected to be the unveiling of the iPhone 5 -- that could bury Intel's biggest annual conference.

Call it bad luck, but the three-day Intel Developer Forum will peak on September 12, the same day of the big Apple event (which, by the way, CNET will be live-blogging).

And it's probably not a stretch to say that Apple's announcement will generate a mountain of news before, during, and after … Read more