To meet x86 head on you need to be able to beat them in all of it's strong areas, not just defend your own.
They can complain about x86 being the wrong instruction set, but to prove it they need to launch an ARM core that can beat an i7 and they can't.
As soon as ARM is faster as well as cheaper and less power hungry than x86, then everyone will switch everything to it.
Power, power, power! The same insane obsession again and again. Computers aren't cars! When will this madness end?
Raw power approach is ugly, ineficient and...boring as hell.
Heading Intel processors (i7 or whatever, I don't care) may be impossible to beat in a raw processing power measurement. But ARM processors can't be beat for low-profile designs where power needs are crucial. And I'm not only talking phones here.
As an example: take my damn noisy and hot Intel i5-based laptop and give me a cold, silent, efficient ARM-based laptop with 1/4 the raw power. Keep raw power for yourself! All I need is a video core with HW geometry transformation engine and HW fullHD H264 & MPEG2 decoding.
You see? The ARM computer is more capable, better designed and respects the enviroment by not needing a thermonuclear plant for himself as Intel chips usually do.
Oh, I forgot! we have FULL bloated desktops with ZERO optimization or software/hardware integration, call it Windows, Mac OSX or Linux, wich need RAW processing power.
Well, here's the solution: Windows and OSX are for slaves. Since I'm not an slave but a free person with ability to use and understand how computer works, I use Linux (And Amiga OS, and Open Risc OS). What's more, I'm experimenting with Linux + Wayland these days, so no bloated Xorg for me anymore: KMS+DRM allows my new, experimental but light desktop to run with VERY few resources. That's how it's meant to be in the upcoming years.
Then again, why should I explain it in an Amiga forum? The Amiga design itself was FAR superior to the stupid "raw power" idea... It's just that hearing people defend this primitive idea of what a desktop computer is makes my blood pressure increase...
