quote:

Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it's scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips

Anyone else hear about this rumor? I frankly don't believe it. Apple's spent way too much time developing the G5 and touting it's 64bit nature. Intel's chips aren't even 64bit.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

It would certainly be unfortunate.

ARGH!!!!!!!

Actually, reading the article, it seems like the Powermacs wouldn't be on Intel until 2007, which would give Intel time to design the G6 processor that Apple wanted. It might not be as bad as it seems.

I don't think I could stand seeing the Intel moving logo on Apple ads though.

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

Now it all makes sense.

quote:

Originally posted by Studentfilms.com:
Apple's spent way too much time developing the G5 and touting it's 64bit nature. Intel's chips aren't even 64bit.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

Actually, they are 64 bit now, the chips that are E64MT ready anyway. They'll work with 64 bit XP. They finally caved to AMD's 64 bit chips. Intel swore up and down there are no performance gains. Now they sell them.

Anyway, as shocking as this is, its only slightly more shocking than the adobe-macromedia acquisition. And if that wired article is true, it could represent a serious shift in apple's focus. Kind of hard to swallow, but its entirely likely that come 2007, post longhorn and post intel-macs, post two new versions of FCP and premiere, post HD hitting the stage for real...well basically there is no way to tell just what could happen.

If anything, this means that the barrier between running an emulated OS of mac or pc on their respective hardware just got a hell of a lot easier, thats for sure. And that alone should make things very interesting. It is a growing concern though that apple, by, at this point, only seperating themselves by an OS now, could decrease even further its market share.

Funny how just a few weeks back we were surprised to see microsoft switch to the PowerPC chips for the xbox, in a strange cross platforming move. Now apple is taking the opposite route.

Here's hoping apple doesnt ultimately become a software developer, a la Sega in the video game industry. Once the market share reaches critical mass, it would have to happen. And it would be much easier to do after switching to the same hardware. Hell, they could (although they wouldnt and shouldnt) release the next version of FCP on both platforms i would think, much easier than before. They never will, but it would be a whole lot easier.