Apple and Intel
So I'm convinced Apple is announcing a deal with Intel tomorrow, but I think there is zero chance of Apple announcing a simple transition of Macs away from PowerPC. We know Steve better than that, and there's got to be a twist or an angle or a gimmick, cf. The headless iMac turning out to be tiny, or the displayless iPod's "shuffle" paradigm. Here are some possibilities:
- Apple will announce it will be using a mix of both processor types for the foreseeable future. This is the only sure way to avoid alienating current customers and killing current hardware sales. Mac users will buy PowerPCs to run their old software, and switchers buy an x86 and may be able to run Windows software. They can announce the retirement of the PowerPC (or the x86) when the future is clearer. This isn't very interesting and is unlikely for that reason alone.
- Apple will include a superfast PowerPC emulator (and an x86 one for current hardware). Plausible, but again, boring.
- Apple is announcing Mac OS X for PCs. The success of iTunes may have made them confident enough to do this. Computer hardware is clearly no longer Apple's core competency, and there's no way they can increase their market share and keep their high margins, so it would make sense for them to keep real Macs as niche, profitable products and achieve market share growth in other areas.
- Intel will be making PowerPCs. Plausible, but there's no reason to think they'll be hugely better at it than IBM or Freescale.
We'll find out in 27 hours.
-- Graham, June 5th, 2005 2:39 PM.