Late Friday, CNET News reported that Apple Computer Inc. will switch to using processors (specific processor model(s) not mentioned) from Intel and that Apple CEO Steve Jobs plans to announce on during his WWDC keynote presentation this Monday.
Reuters reports, “If true, the move by Apple to Intel’s Pentium chips from IBM’s PowerPC chips would cap more than a decade of speculation. Both Intel and Apple have had talks over the years, though Apple has always opted to stay with IBM, analysts said. The move would be highly complicated, expensive and could cost Apple some of its less than 2 percent share of the global PC market, said Kevin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, a chip industry publication. ‘It’s going to be a horrendous challenge for the software developers who just completed the transition to OS X from OS 9,’ Krewell said, referring to the latest version of Apple’s operating system software.”
Reuters reports, “Not only would it be expensive for the software developers who create programs that run on the Mac, it could stall sales of the Mac PCs. ‘If word gets out that Apple is changing platforms, why would they buy a PowerPC?’ Krewell said, adding that he expects a negative reaction from developers at Apple’s conference. ‘They’d wait for two to three years to get an Intel platform.’ Additionally, for years, Jobs has touted Macs powered by PowerPC chips as faster at certain computing tasks than Intel’s Pentium microprocessors. ‘I don’t know how Steve and Apple are going to spin this,’ Krewell said. ‘Year after year, Apple has promoted the PowerPC over Pentium.'”
“Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood said Apple lost market share when it did so,” Reuters reports. “Brookwood also said such a move could frustrate some loyal customers of Apple. ‘Every time they go and they change their architecture, a bunch of people who had been with them go, ‘This is too much trouble. The PC world has been pretty consistent, and Apple keeps changing.””
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There is hardly any market share to lose, so that’s not much of a worry. Apple’s core customers have seen it all and stuck by the company through thick and thin and starting to get thick again; they’re lifers by now, for better or worse. We’ll have to wait for Monday and Jobs’ keynote to find out what this is really all about. How Jobs would keep sales of PowerPC Macs up during a multiple year transition of all Mac models to Intel and how customers would react, etc. are just questions without answers until we find out what Jobs has planned. After all, if, somehow, Intel is just going to make PowerPC chips for Apple or they have a new chip architecture or whatever—there are just too many unanswered questions right now; it’s impossible to begin to speculate how developers and customers will react when we don’t know the specifics.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
MacDailyNews to present live Steve Jobs’ WWDC Keynote coverage – June 06, 2005
Intel Inside Apple Macs? – June 04, 2005
Apple to switch to Intel chips starting in 2006 – CNET [updated] – June 03, 2005
Anticipation, rumors build ahead of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ June 6 WWDC keynote – May 27, 2005
Intel Exec: ‘We will never give up on Apple, we covet them as a design win’ – June 03, 2005
Apple really talking to Intel about WiMAX, not PowerPC to Intel processor switch – June 02, 2005
Intel CEO Otellini: If you want security now, buy a Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC – May 25, 2005
Analysts: No ‘Intel Inside’ stickers on Apple Macs anytime soon – May 24, 2005
Did Apple plant ‘Intel Mac’ rumor to send IBM a message? – May 23, 2005
Analyst: Apple-Intel rumor ‘hogwash’ (today marks 11th month that Jobs’ promised 3GHz G5 is late) – May 23, 2005
Enderle: ‘If Intel gets Apple, it could make Intel look brilliant after the fact’ – May 23, 2005
Stocks extend rally on Apple-Intel report; Dow closes up 52 to 10,524; Nasdaq climbs 10 to 2,057 – May 23, 2005
Apple said to be considering switch to Intel chips for Macs according to Wall Street Journal – May 23, 2005
Apple shares rise on Intel Mac rumors – May 23, 2005
Intel adds FireWire 400 and 800 to latest motherboard – May 18, 2005
iPod success opens door to Mac OS X on Intel – March 04, 2004
Poopsicle.
Dang! On pins and needles before the keynote after all. BTW, the keynote is not gonna be broadcast live is it? Where is everybody going for their coverage?
MW: “feed” as in “No, live feed? 🙁
I will be taking a final exam during the whole thing…stupid college…
This isn’t going to happen. Imagine developers having to now write three version of their software PPC Mac, Intel Mac, Intel Windows. They won’t do it. Imagine going to shop for some software for your Mac, oh guess what, no new software for your 1 year old PowerMac G5 cause everything is written for Intel Macs. American news organizations have no integrity anymore, reporting on rumors and no research.
I have to agree with Infinite Looper. I think Apple may be using an Intel chip for some new multi media device but I find it hard to believe they would change the architecture of their bread and butter. Especially when things are going so well.
Let’s see if Steve starts wearing a bullet-proof turtleneck.
Does Steve have to have a spin at all? Steve knows best, doesn’t he? I don’t think he is blinded like your average fanboy about opportunities, niches and possibilities.
Mac on Intel, and why not? I, the consumer, will love it. It’ll make for a more direct competition. Prizes sink, I profit.
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Ooh boy, will the blind fanboys be up in {arms} about this, if true 😀
Hybrid: “Prizes sink, I profit.”
Just how much cheaper does everyone think an Intel chip would be than a PPC chip? $50? Oh, gosh, a dual tower for $1,949 instead of $1,999 – crack open the piggy bank, Marge, we’re going shoppin’.
Well the other thing is performance. Intel x86 and Xeon is crap. I mean flat out crap. Look at the high end Dell systems. They just cannot perform. I never buy anything Intel for my data center systems (running LINUX) or for back office servers for our business. I only buy AMD since the performance is leaps and bounds ahead of Intel’s best. If anything, I wish Apple could have gone AMD. But the rumors are just that for now. Rumors. It may be that there is another Intel powered device and this has nothing to do with Macs. Why doesn’t IBM comment? Surely someone over at IBM is angry and many stand to lose their jobs if Macs are going away from their architecture. Someone at IBM would leak, or comment out of anger if nothing else. The other thing to consider is even if the rumor is true, OSX will be protected by some highly custom chipset or architecture so that not just anyone could slap OSX onto their current and former PC. Apple won’t allow their well-protected name to fall like Windows with endless driver problems on an unending array of hardware. No, Apple will lock it down and you will buy a custom machine that runs OSX. I doubt people will be able to run out and buy OSX off the shelf for their current pc. I also doubt Dell or other crap vendors will offer an OSX option.
Maji, I think that both OSes working on the same chip would make for a much fiercer competition. The one who is worse (which will be easily benchmarkable) will have to seriously dip under the prize of the better one. Windows as freeware, here’s to dreaming
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Mac entering the Intel world would also open up the world that I, as a part-time Windows user, am accustomed to: self-building and cheap hardware. You want it sturdy, buy an Apple Mac (Intel inside). You want it cheap, go down the street and collect some Taiwanese cloned hardware.
What if Apple started selling a PC (that runs Windows–not OS X), nicely designed, and as an Apple-exclusive bonus, is capable of running Windows versions of Apple’s applications.
My bet is that Intel agrees to make a PPC/G5 equivalent processor for Apple and other customers. Apple won’t use the P4 or Itanic but will get a processor that runs current PPC software, performs well, clocks high, and will work in a laptop. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo and others using PPC technology speaks well for it and I would think Intel would want to get into that business. With Apple as a big name win for Intel, they can accept the humble pie of producing a PPC chip.
No one has mentioned this yet, but Steve went through a major life change last year with his Cancer scare. These things can change a person’s outlook on life completely.
He may just be going to declare all out war on Microsoft on Monday. He may want to fight the battle he was not allowed to fight in the late 80’s after Apple management gave him the boot.
Microsoft is certainly ripe for the picking. This new deal may turn out to be a whole lot of fun for everyone.
Spin? Shareholder value.
Go Steve!
BTW, if he pulls this off properly, Windows SP3 (a.k.a. Longhorn) will be stillborn.
IF all these rumors are true, Monday June 6, 2005 will be remembered as the day apple hardware died. There is no niche in x86 where apple could predominate. After all, why pay for a 1500$ tower or a 1599$ laptop when analogues from the Dells and Gateways of the world could be purchased at half the price.
On the os X better than anything else side, true, all that is correct, but LINUX isn’t that bad, and again, why pay for the apple premium when you can have linux on x86 at way way less. There will be no compelling reasons to buy an Apple. Maybe there are a thousand fanboys that read this page that would buy a Apple x86 chimera but I doubt there are enough to keep the lights on at Cupertino.
June 6 is the anniversary of D Day…..hmmm
Apple’s core customers have seen it all and stuck by the company through thick and thin and starting to get thick again; they’re lifers by now, for better or worse.” – MacDailyNews
Don’t forget to look on the other side of the coin – the developers. A switch to a different processor would most likely mean yet another change in code. Only 2 1/2 years ago they had to recode for OSX with Steve Jobs pushing all the way. For the lion’s share of us users, it was worth it. The developers, however, had to cough up some serious cash to pay their people to do the job. When you mix that up with a “small market share”, the payback isn’t that great. If this change is true, Steve Jobs better pay CLOSE attention to the developers’ reaction. The idea could be either a collosal brainstorm or an ignoble brainfart.
CNET appeared to assume that the Intel chip would be the main CPU. Perhaps it’s just me, but I just didn’t get that out of the article. For all we know, Apple may be intending to use some USB controller chip from Intel.
Right or wrong – my two cents.
MDN, the Mac news drought is over – the deluge has begun.
What if it has dual processors Intel ans AMD ?
I think c|net is confused about what Apple is dealing on. Bet it ain’t CPUs.
Ya know, Google is currently listing more stories about weirdo post sexual fruit fly behavior than they are about this Intel thing. I think nobody cares one way or the other. ‘Cept us, of course. Just like always. pfffttt.
Maybe:
1. Intel has been showing a “macmini” style PC lately. Could Intel be contracting AAPL to design and manufacture a consumer line of “Intel” PCs?
2. Dell recently announced it would develop a line of “high-end” PCs. Could Intel also be interested in an Intel branded high-end PC designed by AAPL?
What I hear is that Intel will begin manufacturing and designing PowerPC chips and PPC-based motherboards. Apple is part of AIM, so it owns part of the PowerPC intellectual property. Plus It has also been rumored that Apple’s contract with IBM allows Apple to provide PowerPC IP to another chip producer (like Intel) if IBM failed to meet its obligations, which it surely has many times over (3GHz fiasco, liquid-cooling fiasco, iMac fiasco, Powerbook low-power chip fiasco). This escape clause is rumored to be there because of Apple’s insistence on avoiding another Motorola screw-up.
So Intel which has excess chip production capacity right now (with MS moving to IBM for Xbox), can certainly give Apple a good price on chips. And Intel can start designing in some of its own low-power technology, which might give it a route to win a mobile Xbox product in the future.
I got it!
“.Mac will be undergoing scheduled maintenance from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM PST on Monday, June 6th. During this time iDisk will be intermittently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Intel will be inside our iDisks! … no? err .. Intel will be inside our Apple Loops? no? hmmm .. Intel will be intermittant? Inconvenient? Unavailable? Man, I’m so confused.
I bet he’s got it–if this is about the CPU, his prediction is the only one that makes any sense at all (Apple escape clause with IBM permits them to hire Intel to produce Power chips).
Hoorah!! Multiple providers!!
Of course, that should have said “read Strategy”