Monday, May 23, 2005
Apple Going to Intel?
In the pantheon of regular Apple rumors, the two that seem to come up most regularly are that Apple is being bought by some large corporate concern (Sun and Disney were my favorites, and they both came up more than once) and that Apple will move its hardware to Intel chips.
The Intel Inside rumor has been revived this morning.
The Wall Street Journal, citing two industry executives with knowledge of recent discussions between the companies, reported that Apple will agree to use Intel chips.
Neither company would confirm the report, and an Apple representative told the Journal that the information should be characterized as “rumor and speculation.”
If there is any truth to the rumor, it is still speculation as to whether this would be a broad move away from the IBM (I’m unsure whether Motorola still provides any of Apple’s needs) chips or if it would just be another single solution like the Intel chip that lives in the XServe Raid. Either way, it’s always fun to spread industry gossip.
The reason it might well be true: IBM’s next-generation PowerPC chips are so significantly different from earlier generations that it will be a big effort to to move Apple’s computing line to support the new technology. If that level of effort needs to be expended, why not port to a less expensive, more stable chip manufacturer? I had always hoped that the choice would be AMD, but it might much just as much sense to go with Intel.
The reason it might be a lie: one of the reasons people often give that Apple might want to ditch the IBM alliance is for future availability. I’m sorry, but IBM is in the chip making business and will be for a long time to come. Just realizing that all of the console makers will be moving to IBM technology should put to lie any fear of an IBM exit from the field. And IBM chips and architecture are impressive; it would be hard to imagine buying a new Macintosh that wasn’t based on a PowerPC chip.
This is in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” file; an unsubstantiated rumor until one of the two companies involved puts out a press release telling us exactly what their partnership might entail. Until that happens, enjoy the regularly scheduled Apple rumor.
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Comments & Trackbacks
Darn you zombyboy. I rushed in to work to blog this, I was going so fast I had to ditch 3 cops, only to find that you beat me to it. Darn you.
Anyways, I think its true. If Apple wants to increase marketshare it needs to stop being hardware dependent. If there was a Mac OS I could put onto our Win boxes at work I’d have 80% of our machines converted over the weekend.
So, here’s hoping…
I don’t think it will end up being true--or, at least, not in the way that it’s being reported. I’m betting that Intel and Apple will ink a deal for Intel to supply chips or parts for either another device (a latter day Newton?) or to provide some part of the motherboard or standard Macintosh equipment.
I’ve heard variations on this rumor for so many years (Apple was going to release an version of the OS that ran happily on x86 or that Apple was going to ditch the AIM alliance or even, at one point, that Apple was going to run on Sun chips, if I remember correctly) that I don’t give the rumors much credence. While getting the OS to run on x86 would probably be a pretty easy port--and, obviously, the core already does--but emulation for PPC programs would be a chore and convincing developers to take a radical new direction with their projects might be a hard sell, too.
I’ll be curious to see what comes from the rumors, but I don’t think you’ll be happy with the results in the end, buddy.
I can hope though.
I don’t think Steve Jobs realizes the pent up demand for an Intel Mac OS out in the business world. Granted it’s not like he’ll capture 90% of the market, but he could probably double his marketshare. As for porting to alternate chipsets, Linux has managed to do it just fine. That’s what abstraction layers are all about. Since Mac is now based on BSD Unix, it should not be as big a project as was the jump from OS 9 to OS X. Linux’s problem is the lack of business software. QuickBooks and FileMaker are the 2 limiting factors in my office that prevent us from even thinking of leaving Windows. If we could put Mac onto our boxes it wouldn’t be a tough decision.
So, like Pavlov’s dog, I will keep hoping everytime a rumor surfaces.
O.K. so I know this is going to sound sooooo stereotypical, but I just think the Apple designs to be far superior in terms of just how cute they are than any PC.
If they only made them in the same iPod mini colors.....sigh.