June 06, 2005
Science & Technology:
Apple joins the "Intel Inside" brigade
By Jack GrantI've known about this for several months, but I was constrained in writing about it because my information was from "inside", and I do NOT want to muck with the FTC or the SEC, nor lose my job over my weblog:
Apple to switch to Intel's PC chips
New chips will allow PC maker to lower prices
By Jonathan Burton, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:44 PM ET June 6, 2005SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Apple Computer Inc. said Monday that it will begin using microprocessor chips made by Intel Corp. in its signature Macintosh computers beginning next year, ending a longstanding relationship with International Business Machines Corp.
Apple made the announcement as Chief Executive Steve Jobs delivered the keynote speech at the company's annual conference for software developers in San Francisco.
"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor road map by far," Jobs said in a statement released at the start of his talk.
The chip transition is a stunning about-face for Apple, which has fought a long, mostly uphill battle against competing computer products that run on Intel chips and rival software from Microsoft Corp.
I strongly disagree with the statement by Steve Jobs that "Intel has the strongest processor road map by far," however I am sure I am biased.
I feel that the PowerPC road map is the strongest when evaluated by power, temperature, and operations per second criteria, relatively closely followed by AMD, with Intel running a poor third.
However, Intel can deliver large volumes of chips for a low cost, because of their advantages of scale.
So, in the end, it comes down to cost, not quality, as it always does.
Even if my company wasn't directly affected by this change, I'm sorry to see Apple follow it, because I have always felt they stood for quality over price.
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A footnote: I strongly suspect both Steve Jobs and Apple as a whole will end up regretting this decision, because although Apple was not a large customer to either IBM or Freescale Semiconductor for the PowerPC chips, they will be an even smaller customer for Intel, so Jobs' infamous tirades regarding delivery schedules and prices will have even less effect then they had in the past.
Posted by Jack Grant at 18:26 on 6 June 2005Making a better machine isn't always enough. Apple has it's loyal followers but was unable to gain market share in spite of a widespread loathing of Microsoft. IBM is responsible for us being stuck with the inferior chips from Intel and the horrible DOS based Microsoft opperating system because when they made those choices for the first PC at which time we were trapped.
I wonder if this is an attempt by Apple and Jobs to get out of the hardware business and into the OS/software business. Apple can't grow with the current base in spite of it being better on all fronts.
I suspect the bigger hassle will be getting the Mac OS to behave itself under Intel architecture.
Fun times ahead.
Posted by: Doug McKay at June 7, 2005 04:00 AM
