“Stocks opened higher Monday as investors welcomed falling energy prices and a report that Apple Computer Inc. was talking with Intel Corp.about using its microprocessors in its Macintosh computer line,” The Associated Press reports. “Wall Street was cheered by the report as such a change would possibly be the biggest shift in the Mac’s makeup since it came out in 1984 and a potential cash cow for Intel.”
AP reports, “An Apple move to Intel’s chips would make Macs far less expensive — a major hurdle in Apple’s ongoing battle with cheaper PCs already using Intel processors and Microsoft’s operating system. The possible deal, reported in The Wall Street Journal, could spell trouble for IBM Corp. , Apple’s current supplier.”
Macs are cheaper than PCs, and their processors are faster too. – Paul Murphy, “Will Apple switch to Intel?” – May 23, 2005.
Apple added $1.27 to $38.82 in morning NASDAQ trading.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sometimes you just have to chuckle at the market. Wall Street understands Apple about as well as Ping-Pong balls understand chocolate pudding.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple said to be considering switch to Intel chips for Macs according to Wall Street Journal – May 23, 2005
Apple CEO Jobs misses ‘3Ghz G5 within a year’ prediction by wide margin – June 09, 2004
Steve Jobs needs to stop making predictions he can’t hit – June 09, 2004
Has anyone taken the time to consider that maybe Apple, having rights to the PPC, are considering taking it to Intel for fab rather than switching to x86?? Intel has all kinds of capacity. IBM can’t keep up with demand…and which would be the bigger coup…Apple using x86 or Intel adopting/manufacturing PPC?
Obviously they are doing the ultimate Anti-Microsoft thing.
They are designing a gaming box based on the P4 chip.
You heard it here first.
I think this has more to do with OSX on x86 rather than Mac on x86
artist, you hit the nail on the head\
Wow, Rob Enderle predicted this over six months ago… If this happens, not only will pigs start flying, but Rob Enderle will then become a credible analyst. That really scares me.
But, I think “my 2 cents” and or “CampusComputerStoreGuy” have the right bead on things here.
Has anybody noticed another article going around about Intel adding Firewire 400 and 800 to their motherboards? Perhaps it has more to do with that…
It is obvious to the cognoscenti that a switch from one cpu to another of totally different architecture is so non-trivial that it is stupid. Gates must be having a real belly laugh at the prospect.
It is hard enough to port an application from one platform to another but very much harder to port an operating system. All this is without consideration for the cpu features itself.
Intel makes good workhorses but they do not make supercomputers. None of the top ten supercomputers in the world use Intel. Four of them use Apple XServe G5’s. Isn’t that a clear indication of superior architecture.
Advanced architecture decisions are not made by little boys with pocket money and a wish for a PC combined with games console. They are made by serious scientists at leading institutions who are happy to spend millions for the right stuff.
I have no doubt that Apple has been having discussions with Intel about using Intel chips. Just not replacing the G5 or G4 with them. Who knows maybe a future Mac will have an Intel cpu as a slave cpu (where it belongs) that will allow hardware emulation of Wintel for added applications not presently available on OSX. Such a machine would still run Windows as a task under OSX like it does insug Virtual PC.
Go back a few years and you could by Intel daughter boards for Macs that let you run DOS applications. The need is less now, but it would really crimp M$ if a PowerMac in 2007 could run OSX and Longhorn while regular Wintels could only run LH with no choice for OSX.
Quite apart from that, Apple has plans for many more consumer appliances than just the iPod. Intel may feature in some of those, or again Intel networking chips are widely used, maybe Apple wants some of those.
I have also heard rumours that Apple are in discussions with Cisco. Maybe they are going to produce an iFirewall device. Or maybe incorporate hardware firewall into every XServe based on Cisco technology.
Who knows? I don’t but it is fun to speculate. As for those dweebs that think it would be good for Apple to go Intel – they obviously do not understand the market or the technology. Any competitive financial market must have at least three market makers to survive and not self destruct. The same applies to technology. In the case of CPU’s for PC’s
I think Thom is correct. Apple and Intel are just probably negotiating a per unit price on FW.
Moving everything over to x86 would require too much work. Plus, how would Apple lock the hardware down?
i don’t think everyone should discount apple using intel processors. hopefully everyone remembers steve’s other company runs on intel xeons. remember back to 2003 when pixar switched to intel. also, in 2003, steve spoke at intel’s sales conference.
there’s a lot of reasons to go to intel – specifically on the notebook side. branding questions aside, intel has a better platform on the notebook front than a power pc based one. perhaps this is how apple gets around the g5 powerbook issue?
what would be the software implications? are we talking another emulation layer?
as far as firewire on intel’s motherboards – keep in mind intel wants the digital home. digital camcorder devices all have firewire – only some have usb.
intel would be far more interested in apple as an OSV than as an OEM. their opportunity size from OSV perspective is much larger than as an OEM.
tydalforce:
Actually, Intel is nothing more than a licensee of ARM’s intellectual property as ARM is effectively a fabless chip design house.
ARM processors can be found in the iPod, Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSP unit amongst many others.
I agree that Intel’s plans to add FireWire 800 to their logic boards is a reasonable enough point for Apple to be in discussion with them.
I see NO rationale for Apple switching CPUs. I understand that Apple has historically had a project to keep OS X running on x86 architecture, but even if that’s up to date, NO current OS X apps would run on such hardware. And where’s the incentive to migrate? IBM is NOT going down the tubes, and has a strong incentive to continue to move ahead with the PowerPC architecture, evidenced with XBox and PS3 plans.
I think if Intel initiated these talks, it’s about negotiating a price to incorporate FW800 on their logic boards. If it was initiated by Apple, it was to take advantage of Intel’s world-class fabrication facitlities to manufacture some hardware for them. Intel is perfectly capable of manufacturing PowerPC CPUs…that’s a licensing issue, not a technology issue.
It goes without saying that Apple will keep its Mac line up exactly how it is. But what if they added an Intel MacMini option with some new Apple emulation software which could launch ‘Classic Windows’ in a separate HD partition as seamlessly as OS X launches into Classic OS 9?
Apple has learnt a powerful lesson with the iPod about the importance of cross-platforming to massively increase market share. It can’t cross-platform OS X and its hardware in the same way – mainly due to PC users Application investments. So perhaps an Intel ‘Mac’ with some VERY elegant and clever Apple ‘hell-froze-over’ software is the solution.
Apple should forget Intel/PowerPC decisions…
They have the money. Apple should buy Transitive technologies. This way people could run wintel apps on OS X like they run classic apps while they migrate over to the mac.
MS bought Connetix and Virtual PC, Apple should buy Transitive and essentially allow Wintel apps, Solaris apps, and what ever else people want.
a collegue at work emailed me an article off of msnbc about this. i replied to him that a) apple uses some intel chips in xserve as stated in tydalforce’s post
“Apple already uses some Intel chips, in their XServes, for example.”
b) why would apple abandon the chip that it helped to design based on risc, which runs twice the calculations at half the clock rate and heat of an intel chip.
maybe it was intel who was talking to apple on how to properly integrate firewire into it’s (intel) structure.
only time will tell.
good to know my stock has gone up a bit.
C|Net had the headline posted on News.com, but now it has disappeared proving that it’s a rumor/speculation and nothing more.
Apple is not going to go Intel. Steve Jobs has been down this road before with NeXT on Intel and it floundered just like Mac OS X would flounder on the same concept. Microsoft owns the x86 market and the only real threat to Windows dominance on x86 is Linux (which is basically free), which will eventually cut Windows marketshare nearly in half within 5 to 10 years.
Here’s hoping that Amiga (currently in its PowerPC transition from 68k) will finally get its curtain call, Linux becomes a household name (like Apple and Microsoft) and the Windows monopoly Microsoft enjoys now will be but a distant memory and folklore to tell our future grandchildren generations from now.
You know what’s probably going on?
Apple wants to buy Freescale semiconductor. Why?
– Apple’s been burned by Motorola
– Apple’s been burned by IBM
– Switch to Intel is non-trivial
– Freescale has PPC design license
– Freescale designs and builds low cost chips
– Freescale builds high power chips for Apple
– Apple has the money to buy Freescale
– Jobs doesn’t want to get “burned” again
– Jobs thinks “building the whole ball of wax” is good
My two cents…
Tera Patricks
Mac360
I think this has more to do with OSX on x86 rather than Mac on x86
From: bigslick
May 23, 05 – 12:24 pm
artist, you hit the nail on the head
Except that’s totally NOT what the article is about. So, yeah I would agree putting OS X on a platform with like, a 90% marketshare and allowing PC users to install OS X and giving MS *egads some actual competition besides Linux (hey look, no advertising) would be great.. but that’s not what this is about.. this is meaningless–a step backwards.. like I said.. yippee.. fat powerbooks..
oh wait.. maybe the market realizes that the general public is unable to compare 1 Ghz G4 to a 2.5Ghz P4.. well.. actually..now I’m giving the analysts too much credit..
Stupid analysts..
Tera,
Nice. Put that stockpile of cash to good use, and end up better off in the long run by eliminating the middleman. Plus, add in all the advantages that just doing it themselves would create.
Also, if this rumor gains any more traction, Apple might be able pick up Freescale for a nice bargain price.
i would like to see Apple use Intel chips on its Powerbooks and iBooks amd eMacs and use G5s on iMacs and Powermacs. The laptops and low-end computers from Apple have suffered and lagged for too long.
All Intel has to do is to incorporate Velocity Engine into its chips and voila!