“Jobs has chosen to launch the migration to Intel as the Mac is enjoying its best growth spurt in years. Mac sales are expected to soar 26% this year, thanks to the combination of the iPod’s ‘halo effect’ and a rebound from a weak 2004, when chip delays depressed sales. Next year will be less torrid. While Apple may still gain some share, analysts are betting that Mac sales growth will be about 6%, close to the overall PC market,” Peter Burrows writes for BusinessWeek. “And that doesn’t account for Mac buyers who will sit on the sidelines till new Intel-powered models appear next summer. Of course, diehard Macolytes will keep buying in the interim. Mac user Silvano Colombano, a robotics scientist at NASA, says: ‘If I needed a new Mac, I’d buy one. When it comes to technology, you can always wait and get something better — but then you’d wait forever.’ Still the risk remains. That’s why Smith Barney on June 7 trimmed its revenue estimates for fiscal 2005 by $200 million, to $13.6 billion.”
“The move to Intel holds other challenges, too. Until now, Apple has announced products on Jobs’s timetable — when they met his stringent demands. With Intel defining the hardware guts, he’ll have less flexibility. “Apple faces the risk of becoming [just] another player coming out with new products at the same time as everyone else,” says Forrester Research analyst Simon Yates,” Burrows writes. “Still, hooking up with Intel is worth the risk. So long as Apple is growing, software developers are likely to adapt their programs to run on the ‘MacIntels.’ And in the long term, Macs with Intel inside could spark growth. For starters, it could help close a speed gap in the fast-growing laptop market. Currently, Apple’s top-of-the-line PowerBook runs at just 1.67 gigahertz per second, compared with 2.21 gHz Wintel models.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Gigahertz per second? Burrows is so enamored of the “MHz myth,” he probably wouldn’t change his tune if Gordon Moore himself showed up to explain that you cannot compare the performance of different chip architectures by looking at clock speed. Every time Burrows repeats it, though, he comes off more and more like an idiot which diminishes the rest of what he’s writing. You can’t just drop a line about how the earth is flat and expect us to believe what’s in the rest of your article about the solar system, Peter. This is the second time in just two days for Burrows doing his readers a disservice by repeating his beloved “MHz Myth.”
Burrows is BusinessWeek’s Computer editor in the Silicon Valley bureau. In the hope that he’ll correct his recent articles or at least get it right in the future, his email address is:
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BusinessWeek serves up one last blast of ‘MHz Myth’ for old times’ sake – June 08, 2005