The weekend has been buzzing with websites saying Apple is going to switch to Intel (as in Pentium type) chips away from PowerPC chips. Many, many websites are saying the annoucement will come tomorrow at Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the World Wide Developer’s Conference.
Here’s what I think and posted on the Engadget website last month:
39. Posted May 23, 2005, 1:39 PM ET by Baron
There’s no way Apple is going to switch to Intel Pentium based chips.
What the meeting is probably about is having Intel manufacture PowerPC chips. Think about it, the PowerPC architecture is great but IBM is having manufacturing problems to get the yields of the faster chips up. I think PPC is a three-way deal between Apple, IBM and Motorola, it’s not solely IBM’s ballgame to call. Maybe Intel can buy Motorola’s PPC assets and manufacture the chips. This would make Apple happy and Microsoft happy (due to Xbox 360). IBM would be pissed but all this talk might be the kick in the arse to get their Fishkill plant into gear.
Now some other websites today seem to think the same thing. That switching to Intel doesn’t mean a switch away from the PPC chip.
If Apple did decide to switch to Pentium type chips this would be a headache for developers but would actually be good for consumers if prices are kept down. Think about being able to run VirtualPC on your Macintosh at full speed. More Windows users than ever would switch if they could have the best of both worlds and Microsoft would sell even more copies of Windows.