The speculation, confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, that Apple is moving to Intel chip technology has put the Mac industry in a frenzy all week-end. However getting past the hysteria, paranoia and exuberance as well as the contention from some that it is totally unfounded speculation, the strategy is starting to make sense. The Intel Roadmap for both notebooks and desktops, together with some of the DRM security issues that appears to be built into the next generation of chips presented Apple with a real dilema if they were to stick with IBM / Freescale. As technology moves to dual core, in order to maximize the advantages that chips such as the Pentium D offers applications will have to be completely rewritten. So why not start now ? What's exciting is the new applications we will see in the future not the applications of the past.
Steve and his team have glimpsed the future and it is not IBM with their current track record. This bold visionary move is about taking the best chip roadmap currently out there and marrying it with with the best commercial OS (MacOSX) and building a future platform for notebooks, desktops and new mobile devices. Also, with this move Apple can use the competition between AMD and Intel in the years ahead to choose the best available future technologies. The delays in Longhorn, the general concern about security viruses, spyware and malware make the timing of such an announcement ideal.
Wired's Leander Kahney adds to the discussion by noting it's really about Hollywood and also discusses the universal emulator from Transitive.
I'm with those who see this as one of the most exciting opportunities ever to hit the Mac platform and the PC industry and look forward to many more details emerging over the next few days.
Maybe, just maybe, Intel was fed up of waiting on Microsoft to drive the platform. Longhorn is an unlikely driver of hardware sales. There is not much in the way of multimedia excitement on the Windows platform as Redmond focuses on beating up on Sony in the console market. Of course, Linux isn't much good for hardware sales. If all this does is light a fire under Microsoft then that will be all that Intel requires of the deal. If Apple burns up CPU cycles with some piece of fancy software or OS then so much the better at the next Analysts'Day.
Posted by: Omid Rahmat | June 09, 2005 at 04:06 PM