CNET Says, "Apple's Going Intel"

Apple is the only computer manufacturer to successfully change the family of chips that its operating system has run on. It made the change from Motorola's 680X0-series of microprocessors back in the 90s, in favor of the far-more-powerful PowerPC chips made by an alliance of companies including IBM and Moto. It was a hard time to be an Apple computer user - and even harder to be a software developer for fruit-flavored computers. Do you stick with the fastest of the old, or accept the new without knowing it would really succeed? Emulation helps, certainly. But in no way is it a cure-all. A fast PowerPC was slower than a moderate 680X0 when running emulation. But we got thru it. And now the G4 and G5 chips are burning up the world.

But, they are lagging behind Intel in the Megahertz Wars - now the Gigahertz Wars. And the PowerPC alliance was supposed to give Apple choices in chips, but the reality is that IBM and Motorola are not interested in direct competition. Compare this to the Intel world where Intel, AMD, and Via (and others) are all vying for the PC space with pretty much fully-compatible chips. Well, CNET is claiming that appls has seen the same things we have, and has concluded it is time to make the jump to an Intel-based architecture. They report Apple will make the announcement as soon as Monday, and may release the first Intel-based Mac at the July MacWorld Expo.

My take? This is a case of rumor-mongering run wild. There is no particular reason for Apple to make the jump at this time... rather than around Christmas, for example, when parents might be ready to buy a lot of these cross-compatible systems (assuming they would also run Windows). The Moto to PPC switch was tough. This would be even tougher. Not impossible. But tough enough to perhaps end Apple as a company that primarily makes computers.

But then, in the face of the iPod, maybe that is the point.