“Intel has put two Apple sessions at the top of its Featured Sessions list for the upcoming Intel Developer Forum. That isn’t Apple doing Intel a favor by filling a couple of empty slots in the schedule. Intel is touching a toe to that third rail for component manufacturers: Endorsement. And while people at Intel and Apple are scrambling right now to get their denials in a row, I want to drain this issue of its intrigue while at the same time highlighting its importance and pointing out that at least a little endorsement is overdue. After all, among first tier OEMs in the U.S., Apple is the only one remaining that buys CPUs exclusively from Intel,” Tom Yager writes for InfoWorld.
“Take a look at this session list for Intel Developer Forum. To me, it shows that Intel is, albeit quietly and cautiously, letting the world know that it has a thing for Apple. Note that Apple’s sessions are placed #1 and #2 in a non-alphabetical, non-temporal list. Note as well that no other OEMs get a shot at a session podium, and that Apple alone scored a non-rotating plug on the IDF event’s front page,” Yager writes. “This despite Apple being neither a sponsor nor an exhibitor.”
“But wait a minute: Isn’t Apple only at IDF to talk about software? Ummm…no. Oracle doesn’t get invited to speak at IDF for having an x86 cut of its DBMS. OS X is not Intel’s design win, Mac and Xserve are, and it’s Mac hardware that got Apple the IDF invite. One of the session’s summaries, that for Mac OS X Overview: Performance OS for a Performance Processor, reads like an ad slick. That’s not what developers want from a conference, but the Mac platform generates a lot of curiosity and will probably draw decent attendance despite its sales swing,” Yager writes.
Full article with more here.