Technology Android

[dilla]

Yeah I just don't get how Android is supposedly getting more and more efficient and Doze is a thing, yet battery sizes continue to steadily increase.

You'd think we'd have a 10 hour SOT phone by now with how efficient Android is.

I wonder if it has to do with the change in contracts in the US and other countries. Before, people were dying for their 2 year contracts to end so they could get a new phone but now with installment plans, you can keep your phone as long as you like, and once it's paid off, your bill goes down and you just pay for service. Since many phones are, at minimum, $20 a month per phone, that could be $80 off for a family of four once the phones are paid off.

And so long as those phones are still working and no one has an upgrade itch, they'll have a cheap as hell plan with a phone that still holds up 3+ years after its release. People are still using their S5s and S6s. And iPhone 5Ss and 6s as well speak.

 

[dilla]

I've talked shit about it. But I'm probably going to get it anyway. It looks really nice. Definitely a big enough physical departure from the S7 to warrant an upgrade.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordon...e-samsungs-new-design-confirmed/#3d154bc720fc

We'll see what big features Samsung adds since Android features now are just....underwhelming.

 

[masta247]

You'd think we'd have a 10 hour SOT phone by now with how efficient Android is.

Android is not a battery efficient mobile OS. Even iOS is still more battery efficient, and that is not THAT efficient too, and it's not been getting any better in that regard, with iOS 8/9/10 having been better. iPhones have comparatively tiny batteries yet last pretty much as long. Add to this the fact that mobile components are using efficiency gains almost exclusively to increase performance, and at the end the gains are coming mostly from increased battery capacities, more efficient displays and the fact the faster processor spends less time.. processing, as it gets routine processes done faster.
Tizen was much more battery efficient, Bada was infinitely more battery efficient, heck Windows Phone was more energy efficient. Android is a brute force mobile OS that at its core runs everything at all times, even if you don't need it, and things such as Doze work on top of it to try to cool things down by making those things waste battery less often.

I wonder if it has to do with the change in contracts in the US and other countries. Before, people were dying for their 2 year contracts to end so they could get a new phone but now with installment plans, you can keep your phone as long as you like, and once it's paid off, your bill goes down and you just pay for service. Since many phones are, at minimum, $20 a month per phone, that could be $80 off for a family of four once the phones are paid off.

For sure, but I think more people would have that itch to upgrade if the new devices were more meaningful upgrades. It doesn't make any sense to pay 700$ for a phone that can do pretty much the same stuff as a phone you already have, but if we went back to the days of bigger upgrades and more reasonable prices (so anytime before 2015 or so) people would be much more likely to want to upgrade. I know I would be on a new phone right now.

I've talked shit about it. But I'm probably going to get it anyway. It looks really nice. Definitely a big enough physical departure from the S7 to warrant an upgrade.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordon...e-samsungs-new-design-confirmed/#3d154bc720fc
We'll see what big features Samsung adds since Android features now are just....underwhelming.

It still looks like a tweaked S8, but I believe that's what it's going to be now - if you make small, iterative updates, after a few years of such eventually you'll get a device that's better enough to make you consider an upgrade. I'm also thinking it might be it for my S6 finally. I have high hopes for the single lens camera, that it's hopefully finally an upgrade, as the S8 had the same camera quality as the S7, so did the latest Note. If anything, Samsung wouldn't let the Pixel 2 hold the crown in that regard.
I'm quite disappointed Samsung might be late to the game with the in-display fingeprint scanner. I don't know what went wrong with that. Having that on the back is really inconvenient for me.

 

[dilla]

Android is not a battery efficient mobile OS. Even iOS is still more battery efficient, and that is not THAT efficient too, and it's not been getting any better in that regard, with iOS 8/9/10 having been better. iPhones have comparatively tiny batteries yet last pretty much as long. Add to this the fact that mobile components are using efficiency gains almost exclusively to increase performance, and at the end the gains are coming mostly from increased battery capacities, more efficient displays and the fact the faster processor spends less time.. processing, as it gets routine processes done faster.
Tizen was much more battery efficient, Bada was infinitely more battery efficient, heck Windows Phone was more energy efficient. Android is a brute force mobile OS that at its core runs everything at all times, even if you don't need it, and things such as Doze work on top of it to try to cool things down by making those things waste battery less often.




For sure, but I think more people would have that itch to upgrade if the new devices were more meaningful upgrades. It doesn't make any sense to pay 700$ for a phone that can do pretty much the same stuff as a phone you already have, but if we went back to the days of bigger upgrades and more reasonable prices (so anytime before 2015 or so) people would be much more likely to want to upgrade. I know I would be on a new phone right now.




It still looks like a tweaked S8, but I believe that's what it's going to be now - if you make small, iterative updates, after a few years of such eventually you'll get a device that's better enough to make you consider an upgrade. I'm also thinking it might be it for my S6 finally. I have high hopes for the single lens camera, that it's hopefully finally an upgrade, as the S8 had the same camera quality as the S7, so did the latest Note. If anything, Samsung wouldn't let the Pixel 2 hold the crown in that regard.
I'm quite disappointed Samsung might be late to the game with the in-display fingeprint scanner. I don't know what went wrong with that. Having that on the back is really inconvenient for me.

Having the scanner on the back seems silly. I haven't used one before but people complained about it and it just doesn't look right to me.

What will the benefits be for an in-screen scanner? I know rumors were swirling for the iPhone X having it but ultimately it got pushed back supposedly because it wasn't all that reliable as yet. Or it didn't work as often as it should have. I think you might be the first person I have seen wanting Android to attempt to do the same thing.

I think the S9 will be a big enough upgrade for you to upgrade your S6. If it's not slowing down, you might as well still hang on to it but if newer versions of Android are slowing it down, it may be time.

I've been lazy about calling American Express and seeing if they will cover the cost of a battery replacement from Samsung under their extended warranty terms. If they do, I think I will seriously hang on to my phone and wait as long as I can to upgrade.

 

[masta247]

Having the scanner on the back seems silly. I haven't used one before but people complained about it and it just doesn't look right to me.



What will the benefits be for an in-screen scanner? I know rumors were swirling for the iPhone X having it but ultimately it got pushed back supposedly because it wasn't all that reliable as yet. Or it didn't work as often as it should have. I think you might be the first person I have seen wanting Android to attempt to do the same thing.



I think the S9 will be a big enough upgrade for you to upgrade your S6. If it's not slowing down, you might as well still hang on to it but if newer versions of Android are slowing it down, it may be time.



I've been lazy about calling American Express and seeing if they will cover the cost of a battery replacement from Samsung under their extended warranty terms. If they do, I think I will seriously hang on to my phone and wait as long as I can to upgrade.

As is, the S6 is still working well for me, and I replaced the battery in it so it lasts like new. New versions of Android won't slow it down.. as it won't get any new ones anymore - it will be stuck on 7.0 I am fine skipping Oreo though - there's nothing I care about in it.

Regarding the in-screen fingerprint scanner, the S8 was supposed to have it already, and the silly location on the back was apparently a last minute change, which is why I'm very surprised it didn't make it for the S9:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/1/15147998/samsung-galaxy-s8-fingerprint-reader-location
https://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-patent-fingerprint-sensor-under-screen/

It's especially embarrassing as apparently the first phone that will have it is.. a Vivo, and it will be out before the S9 will:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...16/vivo-fingerprint-sensor-embedded-in-screen

Such a good argument to the point about flagship makers slowing down leaving space for the Chinese ones to catch up.

The in-screen fingeprint scanner is mostly for convenience, as there's no home button on the front anymore and Samsung "built in" the home button into the display, just touching the screen to unlock the phone would be by far more convenient than pressing the unlock button and then trying to find the scanner on the back of the phone with your finger.

 

[dilla]

I see how that could work. But would a cracked screen basically make your phone useless if there's no home button? I guess there would still be a power button.

Samsung is teasing the next Exynos. https://twitter.com/samsungexynos/status/946365117888892929

Reddit is saying the S9 likely won't be intro'd at this even because they wouldn't want to share the spotlight. Makes sense but I'm really hoping Samsung has something big up their sleeves for the S9. I've come to expect less but hope for more from Android with each new iteration but I honestly can't tell you the feature differences between, LMN and now, O. And I'm on N. I hope Samsung has something revolutionary in the hardware department. We're so starved here in the US, that announcing the Exynos is coming to the US variant S9 would be good enough for me. Now I know why so many people were clamoring for the International variant of the S7 on the S7 subreddit. They're getting timely updates and with the update history of the S6, I bet it and the S8 get updated for at least 3 years after their initial releases.

 

[dilla]

I never thought of it this way, but I saw a headline that said the future of Android tablets was actually Chrome OS. And it makes so much sense, I just never thought of it that way.

I wish they'd get a move on it, though, because the Android tablet market is dead, at least in the US, and the iPad dominates the market for those that do use tablets. Unless you count Windows 2-in-1s, and I'm seeing more of those now, but still...

Chrome OS is just as readily accessible to OEMs as Android, right? Acer, Samsung, etc. all make Chromebooks. Can't they push out a tablet with some solid stats to compete with the iPad? I remember using whatever Samsung's flagship tablet was in 2013 at a Best Buy once and it had a stylus before the iPad Pro had the Pencil and it worked wonderfully.

And ChromeOS doesn't have the fragmentation issue Android does, right? That should be another pro for ChromeOS that erases the deficit between the iPad.

I'm sure I'm missing something that makes this a not-so-simple solution, but what is it? Have we really given up on the tablet in favor of 2 in 1s and whatever crowd that wants a tablet just gets an Air or Pro iPad? OEMs just wrote it off as a lost and dying cause?

 

[dilla]

How about that Intel vulnerability that has been around since the Summer of last year?

Some saying AMD might also be affected and there's no patch for it.

 

[masta247]

The new Exynos is in the "Holy shit" category.
"Single-core performance is enhanced two-fold and multi-core performance is increased by around 40% compared to its predecessor."

If true, that is an unheard of performance increase and would make it faster than the latest Apple chip. If this gets used in the S9 (why else would they now announce a flagship chip usable only in 2018 phones) I can't see this used alongside the apparently much slower 845.

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_launches_its_flagship_exynos_9810_processor-news-28981.php

How about that Intel vulnerability that has been around since the Summer of last year?



Some saying AMD might also be affected and there's no patch for it.

The Intel vulnerability is due to their universally hated management engine - the backdoor into their chips that is built into their platforms that only Intel (and apparently NSA) had access to. Locking their chips through ME is also how they kill compatibility of their otherwise compatible processors between motherboard generations, as even motherboard makers have no access to the ME.

Through the vulnerability, anyone with a hack (that is now public) can access your computer and do pretty much everything with your hardware, regardless of which OS you're running, and a patch issued by Microsoft or whoever else would not be able to fix it, as OS has no access to the management engine on chip. The chip's BIOS would have to be manually flashed, and some desktop-PC board makers provide such patch to users that Intel provided to them. I applied it on my computer, but lots of people are still out of luck.

Obviously AMD doesn't have the Intel Management Engine, so it is not in any way vulnerable. Tech people were boycotting the Intel Management Engine as it's all around evil and the hack based on it was long overdue, as the ME is by definition an intentional backdoor, except until recently it was only used by Intel and intel agencies (ironic, lol).

 

[masta247]

To add to the CPU hacks to the Intel ME that's been out there for a while, the other ones are the "Meltdown" hack affecting Intel CPUs and some ARM CPUs, and "Spectre", which affects all CPUs ever made, but will likely be very rarely exploited. Spectre is the only one of the 3 hacks affecting AMD CPUs. The nature of Spectre is that it has to be initiated locally and is "read-only", as in it can only get unencrypted information from another program, but cannot make your computer behave in a malicious way, such as by corrupting it or holding a device hostage by encrypting the files. It makes it fairly low-harm and not too profitable for hackers.

Meltdown apparently can reach deeper into the OS and potentially execute malicious code. The funny thing is that a complete fix to Meltdown, however, will likely require Intel to re-design their future CPUs and hit performance, as the vulnerability takes advantage of Intel's performance-increasing techniques deeply rooted into the Core architecture. Anandtech assumes an up to 30% performance hit. It is likely to put the performance of their future CPUs further behind AMD. At the moment AMD is already at an advantage as their current CPUs are more secure as is, offer merely 10% less per-core performance than Intel's finest but pack more cores to more than compensate.

Surely the worst backdoor is the one I mentioned in the previous post, which affects all modern Intel CPUs, allows hackers to do virtually everything with the PC without the knowledge of the user or the Operating System (so Apple/MS can't protect you with a patch) and is well documented through the NSA leaks in case a hacker intends to use the exploit.
Despite Intel's limited effort of providing BIOS patches, considering they have to be applied manually by the user, I can imagine a very limited amounts of users going out of their way to do that, leaving a vast majority of systems vulnerable, and even if the users do apply the BIOS patches, the Intel Management Engine still exists, being a backdoor by definition, it is likely vulnerable to other future attacks.

 

[dilla]

So despite all this, how serious is a threat for people to start to embrace chipmakers outside of Intel? It usually takes several heavy blows to change the status quo, especially in tech where the average user doesn't know or care about the technical side of things, so at what point does the average person see this and wonder why advertising usually boasts about a computer having a Core i5/i7 processor and why that is all they know and judge a machine by?

Because I don't see Intel giving a shit about this even though their CEO or something is also under investigation for suspicious timing of dumping Intel stocks.

 

[masta247]

So despite all this, how serious is a threat for people to start to embrace chipmakers outside of Intel? It usually takes several heavy blows to change the status quo, especially in tech where the average user doesn't know or care about the technical side of things, so at what point does the average person see this and wonder why advertising usually boasts about a computer having a Core i5/i7 processor and why that is all they know and judge a machine by?



Because I don't see Intel giving a shit about this even though their CEO or something is also under investigation for suspicious timing of dumping Intel stocks.

To me the fact that people are buying into Intel marketing is incredible. They are morally horrible, they are an anti-technology company and now they also have inferior (in performance AND quality) products that have backdoors installed in them.

I have an Intel CPU in my Surface and a SFF PC that I build before Ryzen was fully out, and Intel was one of my clients in Vancouver.
I love Ryzen and recommend Ryzen but don't even have one yet, so I hope I don't strike as a fanboy. I like technology, so I originally was into AMD chips due to AMD being a very decent company offering their chips in very balanced and fairly priced products, which are also higher quality than Intel's (they are soldered for life, which keeps their temperatures much more stable than Intel's cheap thermal paste-smearing solutions). I always heard about Intel not doing a thing unless there's competition, cutting costs to the max and disabling features to sell a cheaper CPU (such as the desktop i5 being just an i7 with hyperhtreading disabled, instead of the i7 actually offering something technologically superior over the i5) but after I read a few articles about Intel I decided I'll never buy their chips again due to the kind of company they are.

I have a highly interesting video to recommend. This is a very well researched video regarding most of Intel's asshole actions (it lists all resources used that you can just go through on your own too). It can get very frustrating at times, but illustrates why I'd rather buy any alternative:

 

[dilla]

You forgot to link it, it seems lol. I see the ":" but no link after.

I don't think any of us really research the companies for things we use daily, unless we really care about that field. Tech might be one we may look more in to but there are plenty of other industries outside of that.

One statement I read during the recent FCC plans to repeal net neutrality that made a lot of sense was that companies/corporations are never on our side as the consumers. It's nothing groundbreaking and despite being common knowledge for most, we don't really understand it on a deeper level. Like Netflix now stating they were ready to take the FCC to court over NN doesn't mean they're fighting for their subscribers but instead for themselves. Apple is a mixed bag of opinions. I'm preaching to the choir on this forum about Apple having negative press for its working conditions and business practices (the recent battery fiasco) but they also get praised for their environmentalism, or perceived caring for the environment. Also, a seeming commitment to user privacy. But it's all rooted in their self-interest in the long run. People get mad at Google's invasiveness once they find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes with their reach into user data, but at least they're upfront about it. But it still doesn't change the fact that Google and Facebook are more or less the same with the user as the product.

You mention marketing and that's exactly what it is. I don't think I've seen a commercial on TV for any other chipmaker other than Intel. and Intel's commercials are never tech-heavy and full of jargon for knowledgeable people; it's always has bright colors, a lot going on in the background and just much easier for the layman to consume and get the name "Intel" in to their heads, as if it wasn't already the only processor company they knew vs AMD or even ARM.

So people won't care. They'll think Intel is the standard much like many thing "iPhone" is a standard for smartphones. Before the iPhone, it was BlackBerry, and people just referred to smartphones as BlackBerries. We recently bought a new car and were given cables to incorporate with Android Auto/Apple Car and the dealership gave us both Lightning and microUSB cables. But he had the Lightning cable out first assuming that's what we had. I had to ask if there was one "for Android" and he said "yes, but I've never met someone with an Android before." My mom and I had our S7s in hand as he said this. Probably an exaggeration on his part but even when setting up the car, the lady that was in charge of getting buyers acclimated with the features and the menus didn't know that Android Auto had to be installed on Android phones in order for it to start up when plugged in to the car. I guess iOS just has the software baked in? But I wasn't aware either until I thought about it while she was talking and just casually mentioned it. Luckily, it's simply enough to figure out on your own and download it yourself but even tech advisors aren't well-versed in Android despite it being their jobs. Maybe most of the buyers they saw were iPhone owners? Still no reason to ignore the set up process for Android, but it seems to be an issue. And I doubt it was just that dealership that had that mentality towards Android but it still speaks to what the perception is towards Android and how much Apple's marketing has helped it. I have yet to hear people I know get upset about the Apple battery/performance throttling fiasco. I'm sure they're all affected but they seem to be taking it in stride with no complaints.

So I guess we humans are just naturally apathetic, but to a certain extent. There are people that seem to take solace in constantly bemoaning politics and following every little thing Trump is doing. I couldn't care less and I think most people, again, are the same way no matter how alarming/exaggerated a headline may be

 

[masta247]

Well, I can see that mechanism in action a lot. People get on their autopilots and assume things without making an effort to care or research.
I think there is an extent to which it applies to me - it isn't possible to care for everything at a level that it requires. I also eat mcdonalds and have no idea who the ruling party is - I completely don't care about politics as it strikes me just as a social construct, but there is an extent to which I have to care, as even politicians can deal with issues that affect humanity and its progress (or affect us as individuals). Sort of like when their government starts sabotaging them by choosing conservative bias over progressive thinking, maybe dropping Net Neutrality - I think everyone cares about that, or at least heard and recognized it as a bad thing. I would make my decisions accordingly and not choose that political party.

I hope everyone has something they care about, that they're educated about and spend a moment to help others make the right choices in. If I have no clue about cars or the pharmaceutical market, I am happy if an expert friend helps me out by preaching about which one is the best choice, so I can make the better choice for myself but also for everyone by not supporting a shitty company.
To me, that thing I am passionate about is technology, as outside of the fact that it's my hobby and my job, I believe it's the single most important field for humanity to progress in (even if I'm biased).

Regarding companies not caring about the people - that's the sad side of capitalism, together with the fact we have technologies, people and materials to make the world a better place, but we don't because of the numbers. They are scared to run out of business, so pretty much every company makes decisions considering money first.
That sabotages the progress in the fields of clean energy, medicine, education and many other areas that simply grew out of capitalism and our progress there is sabotaged by the system that they have to obide to, that started expiring there after the industrial age ended. If we can cure an illness but someone makes more money by keeping people sick and curing the symptoms instead, or burns limited resources if they can get energy from infinite sources due to lobbies, that is a sign that those things should be removed from the commercial model and brought to some form of a global effort system that would not allow them to go out of business and not make "for profit" decisions. But that is just ranting unrelated to the topic.

The video I originally wanted to link is here:

 

[masta247]

CES News:

Intel CEO starts it off by saying it's a difficult time for the company. They missed the 10nm schedule again, will be stuck on 14nm for time being and Intel CPUs will be hit by a "up to 30%" performance penalty due to Meltdown, AMD not affected. There's also news that Intel knew about vulnerabilities before Coffee Lake came out and didn't fix it due to rush to get Coffee Lake out to better compete with Ryzen. Intel CEO is also under investigation for selling his Intel stock.

In the meantime, AMD goes on stage and announces Ryzen+ to hit the shelves in April on a 12nm process and "low hanging fruit" performance improvements and.. states the Ryzen 2 design has been already completed and will be out in 2019 on a 7nm process. That's a huge announcement. Basically when Intel cancelled their fabled "tick-tock" yearly cadence and prolonged it with the "process-architecture-optimization" one, and then failed to meet even that, AMD is doing both a "tick" and a "tock" together every year by improving the architecture AND moving to a smaller process node each year.

Vivo announced a phone with the Synaptics in-screen fingeprint scanner, leaving Samsung and other flagship Android OEMs fingerprint scanners behind (literally and figuratively).

 

[dilla]

Yup, about that in-screen scanner, came to post this: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...t=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Looks interesting.

About Intel, I wonder if this is big enough for Apple to think about putting AMDs in to their machines now. Apple has had its share of security vulnerabilities in the past few months so maybe they look at ending their exclusivity with Intel and branching out a bit.

Or not.

 

[masta247]

Yup, about that in-screen scanner, came to post this: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/1/9/16867536/vivo-fingerprint-reader-integrated-display-biometric-ces-2018?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter



Looks interesting.



About Intel, I wonder if this is big enough for Apple to think about putting AMDs in to their machines now. Apple has had its share of security vulnerabilities in the past few months so maybe they look at ending their exclusivity with Intel and branching out a bit.



Or not.

The fingerprint scanner best illustrates what I meant by Chinese makers catching up to flagship OEMs like Samsung. Samsung let go in terms of innovation since the S7 days it seems, and became more conservative - in a way like Apple, although not as much yet.

In terms of Intel, the problem is they have ironclad agreements and partnerships with hardware makers that in some cases could make it a one-way street, and tech giants are sometimes still afraid to go all-in AMD, as it's a much smaller company that is also less predictable - sometimes they make amazing products, sometimes they don't have money to make one because Intel fucks them over. From a tech point of view it's an amazing time to partner with AMD, but I'm sure the risk management dudes would give a red light to such deals, as they would lose the Intel "loyalty" discounts and tie themselves with a smaller company that is also riskier if analyzing historical data of the last few years when AMD was down.

I'm sure if Apple gives a boot to Intel, they would first consider their own chips. They already make capable ARM chips and I wouldn't be surprised if they were considering making desktop chips too. It could be a good opportunity to consider.

 

[dilla]

The fingerprint scanner best illustrates what I meant by Chinese makers catching up to flagship OEMs like Samsung. Samsung let go in terms of innovation since the S7 days it seems, and became more conservative - in a way like Apple, although not as much yet.

In terms of Intel, the problem is they have ironclad agreements and partnerships with hardware makers that in some cases could make it a one-way street, and tech giants are sometimes still afraid to go all-in AMD, as it's a much smaller company that is also less predictable - sometimes they make amazing products, sometimes they don't have money to make one because Intel fucks them over. From a tech point of view it's an amazing time to partner with AMD, but I'm sure the risk management dudes would give a red light to such deals, as they would lose the Intel "loyalty" discounts and tie themselves with a smaller company that is also riskier if analyzing historical data of the last few years when AMD was down.

I'm sure if Apple gives a boot to Intel, they would first consider their own chips. They already make capable ARM chips and I wouldn't be surprised if they were considering making desktop chips too. It could be a good opportunity to consider.

I have heard about ARM chips and Apple eventually using those. As far back as 2011 or 12. Probably earlier but I know for sure during that era, there were talks of switching from Intel to ARM and what that could mean for Apple computing. But it also seems Apple is trying to kill the computer and get everyone situated with an iPad or Pro. People say it'll never happen, but that's not going to stop Apple from trying to lasso in casual users in to using an iPad and letting hardcore, heavy users stick with their computers until a tablet can handle those tasks as well. So like, ten years? Less?



Also, Samsung unlocked their FM radios, which seems to be a big deal: http://nextradioapp.com/press/samsung-becomes-latest-phone-manufacturer-unlock-fm-chip/

I either use the radio in my car or stream on Tunein Radio on my phone, but I guess it could be of some use to people that can't do that.

 

[dilla]

Some interesting Samsung news, especially on the S9.

Possibly leak of the box for the S9:

Samsung showed off that foldable, bendable OLED display: https://www.xda-developers.com/sams...-3-oled-foldable-smartphone-prototype-at-ces/

7.3" is just dumb, though.

The S9 and S9+ got FCC certification, which isn't surprising but a good sign that it's close to release.

 

[masta247]

I have heard about ARM chips and Apple eventually using those. As far back as 2011 or 12. Probably earlier but I know for sure during that era, there were talks of switching from Intel to ARM and what that could mean for Apple computing. But it also seems Apple is trying to kill the computer and get everyone situated with an iPad or Pro. People say it'll never happen, but that's not going to stop Apple from trying to lasso in casual users in to using an iPad and letting hardcore, heavy users stick with their computers until a tablet can handle those tasks as well. So like, ten years? Less?

ARM chips aren't as capable as x86 chips, which I assume is the main reason Apple uses Intel for desktop and laptop. Also Mac software would have to be rewritten for ARM chips, or suffer huge instruction translation penalty like Qualcomm chips do with the few Windows programs that work on them.

Also no matter how powerful tablet chips become, they are always going to be low powered, with heat dissipation limitations compared to desktop computers or even laptops. We are talking about 4.5W of power/thermal design power that they can handle. Laptops are comfortable with 15W-35W chips. Desktops usually have ~100W chips. While the performance does not grow as much as the power differences would suggest, even if the mobile chips grow to handle most software at acceptable levels, they are still going to be puny compared to true desktop chips. That difference grows even more if you factor in desktops using discrete graphics cards. PC gaming is still a growing industry, with more gaming PCs being sold than ever, although one can argue it's the area Apple had never covered.

On a side note, did you see the performance hit to the iPhone 6 and older with the new security patches? They took a 40% performance hit, which is insane, and makes people's older iOS devices basically obsolete for many tasks that their users could comfortably perform until now.
https://www.gsmarena.com/iphone_6_takes_massive_performance_hit_after_spectre_patch-news-29124.php

Something makes me think the security issues couldn't have come at a more convenient time, and solved all of their problems in terms of encouraging people to switch to newer devices. Especially as newer devices didn't take anywhere near this kind of a performance hit. In case anyone wondered why, Intel's patches also slowed down its older chips much more than anything with a Skylake onwards. It's easy to design such patches and get away with it too, considering everyone recognizes the security issue that "had to be" patched, and it's easy to justify also putting less effort into patching older devices, and making it seem like people should be happy they got a patch at all.

In the meantime, while the Meltdown and Spectre made Intel chips take a major performance hit, its Management Engine still being vulnerable, there is another vulnerability that affects Intel processors, this time related to their Active Management Technology, that allows hackers to bypass system encryption and BIOS passwords, which were regarded as the holy grail of security:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-amt-bitlocker-bios-bypass,news-57714.html

Of course, AMD is not affected again. Moreover, AMD released a statement saying that their CPUs are by design not vulnerable to Meltdown or any other of the recently announced bugs except Spectre, which they just patched at no performance penalty, while Ryzen is not even affected by that, as its branch prediction units are protected against such things by design.