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What is the Intel Switch Costing Apple?
SenseOfHumor writes "A Business Week article says that it costs Apple $898 for an Intel iMac before loading it with software and packaging. From the article: 'But for Apple, the switch to Intel chips is less about saving money in the short term, and more about hitching its wagon to Intel's longer-term product road maps, particularly in the area of notebooks. IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers.'"
why is this news?
Agreed. This was explicitly stated as the reason for switching. I also find it amusing that the previous Slashdot headline is titled "Intel Loses Market Share to AMD".
Since there is no topic, I'll go offtopic.
AMD has completely kicked Intel's but in price, performance, and power requirements. Opteron's with their HTX memory controllers and now using them for interconnects http://pathscale.com/infinipath.php is absolutely off the hook. Intel does have better mobile chips though.
For about $200k, you can throw together a very fast general purpose beowulf cluster. About 64 dual-core processors, and save thousands in power every year over anything Intel has to offer.
In 2007, Intel is going to add direct memory controllers to their x86 and Itanium processors, but what they need to do lower their prices. They already have the best manufacturing capabilities of any chip maker, so they need to give the CxOs a pay cut and lower their prices. Time will tell.