Intel PowerBook Rumor Mill

catdriver writes "AppleInsider has an article guessing about Apple's new Intel portable offerings in early 2006. 'With the initiation of the Intel Power Mac project last month, all five of Apple's Intel Macintosh projects are now said to be underway and moving at an exhaustive, yet fruitful pace. It should come as no surprise that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is reportedly leading the charge, with his heart set on making 2006 the next 1984.' With Mac OS X for x86 now catching up to its PPC sibling, is Apple ready to take the plunge?"

Comments

could backfire

[CDPatten]

I personally don't like OSX, but LOVE the Apple hardware. I would be interested in purchasing a Titanium (x86) and putting Windows and Linux on it. I odn't believe I'm alone with that opinion either.

First glance you may say, good for apple, they still get the money. However, what that starts to do is move mindshare for apple to a premium hardware supplier, not a platform supplier.

I believe there are many people that will consider doing this, and I think this could hurt OSX. This move could put Apple (overtime) going Head to Head with Dell not MS.

Re:Should anyone be surprised?

[antifoidulus]

Not to mention supply problems. Its one thing to go on newegg and order the latest and greatest AMD CPU. It's another thing entirely to use over a million per quarter. I just don't think AMD has the production capacity to keep Apple as well as it's current customers happy. Intel has much more production capacity than AMD does right now...

My next laptop

[Flounder]

Powerbook x86 (15 or 17inch, haven't decided)
Craploads of RAM and HD space

Running the latest version of OSX
Running any version of Windows and Linux in VM spaces

Just reduced my development test machines from four to one

I've currently got six separate machines. My main development box (Suse 9.3), my game box (WinXP), and my four test machines for compatability testing ( WinXP, Win2k on cheap beige boxen, Suse9.3 on a decent IBM Thinkpad, OSX on a MacMini ). Reduce my test machines down to one machine that's also my portable. Lowers my power bill, more desk space, and a portable I can do ANYTHING on (from development, to BF2/Civ4)

Re:Will it cost more than a Dell running Windows?

[JabberWokky]

I've often heard it said that Apple has priced itself out of the market. If they want a bigger market share they'll need to take advantage of cheaper prices that come through competition.

Consider if you said that about Ferrari or BMW. They have high priced product, and they certainly sell a lower volume than companies that focus on cheap product that has a large market share. Their business sense is generally not questioned; they have a loyal customer base who is willing to pay for their brand. Even items with the Ferrari and BMW logo like jackets and... well... laptops sell well.

Apple is a brand associated with high quality products. Thus they do not compete on price, but rather on perceived quality.

--
Evan