Report: Apple notebooks to switch to ARM in 2013

There has long been speculation about Apple using ARM processors in its notebooks. Well, Charlie Demerjian of SemiAccurate now says it's a done deal. Citing sources with purportedly impeccable track records, Demerjian says Apple will transition its laptops away from x86 some time around mid-2013, right after the first 64-bit ARM chips turn up.

Demerjian expects Apple to use a "generic ARM black box" for the first wave of laptop-bound ARM chips, with more customized designs to follow later on. Apple, of course, already has a whole team of in-house chip designers—the same folks who've brought us the A4 and A5 chips featured in the past two generations of iPhones ...