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Dvorak is a bloated man devoid of originality. No wonder he loves Wintel so much.

If Mr. Dvorak had bothered to do the slightest bit of background research before writing a baseless (as usual) article, he would know that IBM has already saved Apple from Moto and that Apple will be switching to them, not Intel.

Considering all the lack-lustre reviews of the Itanium so far, and all the positively glowing reviews of AMD's x86-64 and the PowerPC 970, this move would make NO SENSE at all

reviews have shown that the Itanium's FPU gets hammered by the x86-64. I'd wager that even the current G4's Altivec unit has better FP numbers than the Itanium

this article is just plain stupid

Dvorak must live in a cave. Not once was there mention of the IBM side of the PPC, which surely rates at least a mention. Moreover, Pixar purchased a single-purpose cluster for rendering, and they chose a company that uses Intel, Xeons as I recall, certainly not Itaniums.

I would speculate that AMD would build the transition chip, if there ever was one, 1) because Steve has a long relationship with Hector Ruiz, current AMD CEO and past head of Motorola semiconductor; 2) AMD's architecture would be more easily OSX and Altivec enabled than Intel's; 3) AMD has a relationship with IBM; and 4) the Itanium is being passed over for the Itanium II by almost all vendors.

His mention of Microsoft's investment in Apple was inaccurate and misplaced, just like his column.

Ignore him. Maybe he'll just...fade away.

Dvorak is at it again. The guy is an absolute idiot who has written more "Apple is doomed" columns than anybody.

I remember when he used to complain about how the Mac wasn't a real computer because it didn't use a command line interface....

Considering the source of this "article", I am now joyfully confident (as if I wasn't before ) that Apple will not switch to Intel. Also, the fact that he did not mention the IMB 970 chip, I am now positive that Apple will be going in that direction soon.

Apple will never never never put an x86 chip in a Mac. It will not happen. I wish Apple would just announce the 970 so we can all get past this issue and move on...

Don't feed the troll - he does this every time he wants to run up the hits on his column (or when he is about to miss a deadline and can't thinik of anything to write). By reading it or responding we are just rewarding him!!

He must have not been able to think of anything else to say, he keeps the "Apple is switching" column ready for when he is about to miss a deadline.

I feel sorry for the guy. He seems to have the ability to predict many things but he fails to notice his own demise

Dvorak is full of himself. His should go to his room (the one with the padded walls).

It's very hard to take an article on the future of Apple seriously when IBM's PPC970 isn't even mentioned. In short... pathetic and irrelivant. Itanium... haha.

Just more Made up bullshit from a idiot who doesnt know the difference between os9 and osx. This guy writes pure speculated crap. I think you could get more facts from a bowel of alphabets.

Dvorak is forgetting Marketing 101. If Apple jumbed in with Intel, they would become just another computer box maker. It would be suicide. IBM is a better short term solution. Long term, I bet Steve will pull another rabbit out of the hat and amaze us all.

This dork is just trying desperately to gain readership. The topic has been done to death so many times before! Ask John to go home, DvORaK !

Dvorak is the Biggest ass in the industry... I am suprised he can write anything at all with his head so far up Microsofts Ass...

Just look at the grin in his photo - the guy is on shrooms!

First, you have to remember that Dvorak has been consistently wrong for years. A prediction from him that Apple will switch to Intel's Techno-Drek is a sure sign that Apple will *NEVER* go Intel.

Jobs did *NOT* switch Pixar to an Intel shop as Dvorak falsely claims. Pixar still has Macs all over the place (as does ILM). What Jobs actually did was to drop his expensive Sun servers being used for rendering and get Intel based blade servers as render farms. The reason for this was that at the time, the Intel techno-trash was the cheapest stuff to do the job that was available and Pixar can't wait for the superior 64 bit PPC 970 based stuff from IBM and Apple to appear later this year. Pixar is obviously in the middle of a project that has a deadline to meet.

Computers are the cheapest part of Pixar's costs. Pixar, like other 3D graphics firms, replace their computing setups more often than most Frenchmen change their underwear. When the faster, cheaper PPC 970 based blade servers and cluster computing units appear from Apple and IBM later this year, expect the Intel based crud to get dumped permanently.

Besides, why would Apple switch to a dead-end 32 bit processor when a new 64 bit processor that costs the same or even less and can stomp Intel's best efforts will be on the market shortly?

Dvorak's ravings and past record as a Prophet Of Doom are absolute proof that Apple will not go Intel.

Why does *ANYONE* pay Dvorak to say anything?

I think we're missing the boat here, folks. Yes, Dvorak is pictured with a rye smile; Duh. This is light hearted and fun speculation. I've been using macs since '92 have always enjoyed the start-up smile. Why don't you do the same. Lighten up! Mac users must be the biggest bunch of grumps ever. And who cares which processor we end up with? It's not ike apple designs the cpu anyway.

Regardless of your personal opinions of Dvorak, the points mentioned in the article have merit, and are the same ones that I've been pondering ever since I was at ISMC. Dvorak has his facts right -- Yes, Jobs was the "keynote" speaker, and he agreed to do a Q&A;sitdown with Andy Grove and a journalist, on the one condition that Apple on Intel was NOT one of the questions asked. They showed us Intel parodies of the Apple switch ads, starring all of the first-tier Intel VPs. Jobs said he'd pay to run the ads on TV nationally, but the Intel VP's didn't want them taken out of context.

There was a LOT of buzz about Apple/Intel at the conference, and a very senior guy spoke off the record about his conviction that the deal would happen. Seriously, the Intel hotshot was convinced.

So it may or may not happen, but the reasons Dvorak states as backup are factual, and IMHO are the only compelling reason to take this rumor seriously.

And yeah, Jobs did say the words, "we turned Pixar into an Intel shop". Yeah, he was referring to the Sun renderfarm that was replaced with Xeons. And he probably didn't mean *every* box in Pixar was replaced by an Intel box. Just the important ones.

Dvorak is an idiot. About every 6 months PC magazine must get on his case(his father in law is probably editor in chief-or he would be jobless) about the utter lack of interest in his column (ie little traffic), and he goes and writes something ridiculous like this. So Mac users read his stupidity and then flame him. From now on I will not read his garbage.

Now I KNOW that we'll never have OS X on X86. If Dvorak has predicted it will happen, it most assuredly won't.

Has he ever been right with when making an Apple prediction? If so, I please tell me which one he nailed.

Intel would make a good low-end clone strategy and Apple could concentrate on the high-end workstations and servers that have better profit margins. Hell, IBM could sell a MacOS X version of their blade server and MacOS X could become a serious enterprise server OS.

Dvorak is a flame baiter, pure and simple. Please, DON'T RESPOND TO HIM AT PC WORLD!! He can use the response to show advertisers how big his readership is. Everyone should write to him at:

Fill his in-box there!

Two things here (and a short commentary):

One, I refuse to actually read a Dvorak column anymore for fear of contributing to his counter, no matter that my review would be negative in the extreme (and thusly, I would not look kindly on advertisers aligned with such a buffoon).

Two, the biggest reason that this is pure tripe is that the Power PC 970 will run both the 64 bit code that will be the new foundation of Panther (10.3) as well as the 32 bit code we all currently have natively (in either Mac OS X or OS 9 and before). Compound that with the fact that Apple would have to either include an emulator to allow programs compiled to run on the G4 to run on an Itanium or expect folks to shell out more money on yet another optimized version and you have the kind of disaster that Steve Jobs has been working hard to avoid.

Bottom line is that the PowerPC 970 (Power4 derivative) and its future cousin the 980 (Power5 derivative) are 64 bit chips that blend perfectly with both new and existing Mac users and should allow people with programs as far back as System 7 to have at it without nary a hitch. Say you read it in a forum if you like, but you WILL be able to buy, for the school buying season (Jobs won't miss THAT deadline again) a PPC970 based 64 bit, Mac OS X 10.3 system in its new enclosure. The new chips are already being fabbed. The mobos are done. The enclosure's are likely to be done shortly, and even so, don't require near the ramp time of mobos or chips anyway. Apple really does now use off the shelf like Dell and everyone else, so all they have to do is spec and set an aggressive price point. I think if they get the dual PPC 970 at 1.8 GHz in at $2999, they will be on backorder until February and Apple will see their stock head up to above $20.

There. I don't know about Dvorak, but I feel tons better (and I already have plans for one of those bad boys along with one of those 30" LCDs that Apple will be selling in the near future).

Folks- Dvorak was a regular columnist for Macuser for YEARS. While he offers opinions and speculation don't think he isn't a bit knowledgeable on the subject. Jobs would jump processors in a heartbeat if it made sense and could keep loyalists and add flexibility to acquire new markets.

"Jobs would jump processors in a heartbeat if it made sense and could keep loyalists and add flexibility to acquire new markets."

Perhaps, but it doesn't make sense, he can't keep loyalists that way, and it's questionable whether it would add that flexibility, so he won't. It's not going to happen. Everyone seems to realize this except Dvorak. And despite the fact that he used to write for MacUser, he has not kept up with Apple well enough to be able to offer an "informed" opinion. His past predictions have been way, way off because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Dvorak... HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA,HA, HA!!!

unfortunately that's all I can think of on this dumb article!!!

Hey John - It's January 12, 2005, some 21 months after "18 month prediction" - let's see how you rate:

1) Apple isn't using Intel processors in any of their machines.

2) Sales of Mac computers are up across the board
http://www.macminute.com/2005/01/12/q1-2005/

3) Apple dominates an entirely new product category - digital music.

4) Apple's stock has almost tripled since you wrote the article.

5) YOU are writing (semi) complimentary articles about the newest Mac (which by the way, doesn't have an Intel processor either).
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={9DE121D7-0280-42AB-92BD-C9E97BD832A8}&siteid=google&dist=google

Any predictions for "18 months from now?"

Hi Adam -

it's now 26 months and wow, looks like Dvorak was right after all.

Don't we all (above) look like a bunch of idiots.

oh, well.

Since deals do take a while to complete, I would say this group does look a little short sighted.

You might want to send John an apology.