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

Switching the Mac would be bizarre. Other product?

[Lemming Mark]

Switching the Mac over now would be really weird: for years Apple struggled with the G4's performance - then I might have understood. Now they've got IBM as a partner - one of the world leaders in CPU architecture, silicon fabrication, etc. It would seem truly bizare to ditch out from PPC at this point, especially given IBM's huge commitment to PPC world domination (and their manifest triumphs over Intel in another volume market - games consoles).

Using an XScale, I could understand. Intel are *the* market leader in high end portable processors at the moment (try to find a powerful PDA that *doesn't* have an XScale). An XScale would be the sensible choice for an Apple PDA or, indeed, the iPod / Phone combo that has been so talked about.

This "leak" might about buying Intel might a be deliberate publicity stunt but I find it really hard to believe the Mac will move away from PPC in the foreseeable future.

The third possibility is that Apple will introduce something new - something else they've not mentioned before. An ultra Apple / Windows friendly UNIX server? An appliance computer (e.g. a cross between iPod and a {web,file,database}server?) A set top box (*cough* *pippin* *cough*)? Personally, I think Apple could be good with appliance computing.

Re:fact vs fiction

[ptomblin]

Fact: Because IBM didn't meet their performance promises to Apple, they now have to give Apple a whole bunch of PowerPC intellectual property. Apple could take that IP over to Intel and either have Intel manufacture 3GHz G5s, or make an Itanic/Power hybrid chip.

In other words, don't assume that a move to Intel means a move to x86.