Apple/Intel Speculation Running Rampant

6031769 writes "ZD Net are reporting a rumour that Steve Jobs will announce Apple are going to move to an Intel chip base at their worldwide developer conference today. Still just a rumour, but could this be the masterstroke Apple have been promising or is it a blind alley?" Lots of submissions about this one, but no one knows for sure - there have been stories about how AMD is hurt by this - but I think my favorite debunking of it is the piece by John Gruber on Daring Fireball.

Comments

Its all just talk.

[Willy on Wheels]

This is all just rumors to get Apple users upset. Its being going since the 1980's, and its never happened. The G5 is too much of an asset to dump for the hell that is the P4. Even diehard Windows users are all migrating to AMD64 these days, Intel is just trying to get some free advertising and FUD to play with.

Re:Its all just talk.

[Senjutsu]

The PPC is a fantastic proc, but if IBM has come to Apple and said that they simply cannot deliver an efficient mobile PPC 970, given the way Freescale has totally dropped the ball on delivering a G4 with a clock and bus speed that belongs in this century, this would be the probable reaction by Apple.

Laptops are the fastest growing, most important segment to the company, and the iBook and PowerBook lines are both hurting for serious updates. The continued failure of these updates to appear suggests that their are serious issues preventing their appearance. If Apple's portable lines were projected to be stuck with the moribund G4 line for the foreseeable future, they'd react in the only way possible to ensure the continued relevance of their computers in their most important market; they'd switch to someone who could supply the mobile CPUs they need to survive, even if that meant some tough times in their immediate future.

"The IBM can't deliver a mobile G5" theory even explains the rumored roll out time line; the low-end minis and the portables will have fallen furthest behind the rest of the industry in another year or two if they're stuck with the G4, and be most desperately in need of an upgrade the soonest. The desktop G5s, thanks to the G5's excellent performance as a desktop CPU, will keep pace with the industry longer, and thus be in far less need of an upgrade than the heat- and power-constrained lines.

Re:Its all just talk.

[Arker]

I agree. Going to x86 would be insanely stupid. Adding a third supplier of PPC chips would not be. And it would be a smart move for Intel to start making PPC chips - there's nothing stopping that from happening.

Could be a disaster....

[eyegor]

Can you say binary incompatability?

When Apple last changed processor families, there was a big problem with binary incompatability. Needless to say, there were a lot of very pissed off Apple users. The transition from PowerPC to Intel could be very painful given two different processor families.

The LAST thing Apple needs to do is to piss off it's user base.

Re:Could be a disaster....

[mr_gerbik]

Yes but this could be the last time they do it, and it would give it more of a reassuring "once and for all" impression.

Yeah, I hope this is the last architecture change they ever make. I really want to be using x86 20-50 years down the line.

Re:Could be a disaster....

[squiggleslash]

Problems with this theory: 1. Intel probably wouldn't want to produce PowerPCs. 2. Apple has little or nothing to gain by Intel producing 970 clones except, possibly, fractional improvements in price.

Apple's problem at the moment is two-fold: The 970 is capped at well under the 3GHz originally promised, and it's still a power hog. It can't be used in laptops. Intel building clones isn't going to help, the 970 will need some design work to get faster and/or use less power.

Meanwhile, not only are we supposedly asking Intel to undermine the credibility of its own competitors to the PowerPC range, but also to make a CPU for one manufacturer that's come to it saying "We went to Freescale and they suck, so we went to IBM and they suck too, and now we're coming to you". For Intel to bite, it has to have real value for them, and being a second-tier chip cloner is not where Intel is at. They need Apple to confer credibility on what Intel does.

The best of this wave of debunkings, you mean

[ianscot]

Sure, that's a pretty good set of debunkings linked to at the end of the posting. I'd even go with something like the guess at the end -- seems like Jobs wouldn't just be announcing "We're on the intel bandwagon, hook link and sinker," for all the reasons people usually mention. (What would it do to the existing sales base? I mean, my God, who would buy a G5 iMac right now knowing that in a year it'd be a cut-off technical backwater for the company?)

But, you know, we have at least five or ten years of people debunking this particular rumor. Describing this list as the best ever is jumping the gun a little. Maybe we'll have another five years of the same, and then we can judge better.

Stock price? Re:Its all just talk.

[Gary W. Longsine]

It seems likely that this frenzy of speculation will affect the stock price in the short term. It seems like no matter what Apple announces at WWDC today, the headline will be related to this speculation. The folks who drive the stock price probably don't read Slashdot, and the headline "Apple did or did not switch to Intel" may drive some pretty big buy/sell movement as soon as the keynote is over.

Which direction will it move? If it moves down, how long will it take to recover?

There is enough uncertainty in such a move that it sure seems to me -- a slashdot reader who doesn't affect stock prices -- that it could only move down if such a switch is announced. However, when I think about it from the perspective of a trader who probably doesn't know all that much beyond the headline that shows up on his pager at say 11:01 PST today, I wonder if a switch would be considered good, and a series of PowerPC related announcements would be considered as a sell indicator.

Re:Meanwhile Microsoft and Sony are using IBM PPC.

[dick johnson]

1) Chip supply. IBM and Motorola have had repeated problems supplying Apple with the number of chips that Apple needs. Intel will not have this problem.

IBM is now something like two years behind on its promised 3 Ghz chips.

2) Laptops. Apple needs a low-heat G-5 chip for it's laptops. From all accounts, it may be as long as two years before IBM or Motorola will be able to provide these chips.

3) Cost. Apple, according to today's NY Times, in its latest renegotiations with IBM wanted a discount on the price of the PowerPC chips. IBM essentally said forget about it.

4) There's no way Apple will NOT have a way for users to run their old applications on the new Intel/Macs. There will be some form of emulation available -- count on it.

Re:Dvorak is bragging

[Alioth]

Dvorak is a professional troll. I don't know why someone who whined that Windows was slow "because the system idle process was thrashing 95% of cpu time!!111oneone" can ever get front page news on Slashdot. He's basically a clueless dolt.

Re:Dvorak is bragging

[sg3000]

> Yeah, along with every two-bit prognosticator in the business
> since 1985.

Absolutely. It's a pretty easy prediction to make. Back in 2002, I posted how Mac OS X could allow Apple to switch to x86 on Slashdot:

It's very unlikely that you'll see such a project until Apple can safely move as many Mac users there as possible, while stranding as few users as possible. The Mac market is too small for it to be successfully fragmented into Mac-PPC and Mac-x86 camps. But there is a path for Apple to get there.

1. Introduce Macintoshes running on as much PC-compatible hardware as possible. CHECK: current Macs use the same video cards, video memory, bus ports, and other parts as regular PCs. Just the processor is different

2. Introduce an operating system that can be run truely architecture independent. CHECK: Mac OS X is based on NeXTStep that used to run on x86. All they need is to get the majority of their users onto Mac OS X. Right now they're at 20% penetration.

3. Get Mac users off of Classic so they don't have to worry about PPC compatibility. IN PROGRESS: with Mac OS X 10.2, expect a lot more users spending all their time in Cocoa and Carbon. It'll probably be until 2004 before Classic will fall to a minority of users (once the specialized apps are replaced by Mac OS equivalents)

4. Introduce a Mac that uses a non-PowerPC processor (like AMD Hammer) which gives a definite performance advantage or price advantage. You'd better bet that Apple is at least considering this

5. Allow other PC makers to build Mac clones. But this time, Apple will have to negotiate from a position of strength, rather than one of desparation like before.

Clearly, I'm no expert. I think the AMD part I wrote is unlikely in the extreme, and I don't think Apple will be switching to become a software-only (item 5) business since their combination of hardware/software allows them to have a finely-tuned user experience. However, making such a prediction is pretty easy (particularly if you leave out the specifics), so Dvorak gloating about it is just silly.

That said, it's more likely Apple is announcing a WiMAX deal with Intel, or they're going to license PPC to Intel to make. Switching to x86 could be done, but it will be difficult to manage the transition (even with Mac OS X's advantages over Mac OS 9). Then again, Apple handled a processor change fairly successfully with the 68k to PPC, so maybe they can pull that off.

But it's probably best to not second guess Apple on this, and just wait until the announcement comes out. Apple sure knows how to get people to pay attention to its developers' conference!