Intel planning to buy out Apple? . . . Cringely thinks so . . .

[OneBlueSky]

Going for Broke: Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really.
By Robert X. Cringely

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

The crowd this week in San Francisco at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference seemed mildly excited by the prospect of its favorite computer company turning to Intel processors. The CEO of Adobe asked why it had taken Apple so long to make the switch? Analysts on Wall Street were generally positive, with a couple exceptions. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE!? Are these people drunk on Flav-r-Ade? Yes. It is the legendary Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work. And this time, what's behind the announcement is so baffling and staggering that it isn't surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now.

Apple and Intel are merging.

- more . . .

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

[Donailin]

1. A lot of people are going to be very unhappy about this

I'm not an apple user, but the "Computer Guys" that talk every Tuesday on Kojo Nandi's (WAMU-NPR)Tech Tuesday here in the DC area predicted last Tuesday that this would be really bad news. I assume they mean from a computing POV. They swear by Apple.

[gordianot]

2. Apple has a window to seize the day and get even.

Maybe they are ahead with the 64 bit architecture and have truly blind sided that miserable little weasel borg Bill Gates.

[ET Awful]

3. I'm not sure how they could be ahead on 64-bit architecture

since AMD and Intel have both had 64-bit processors out for quite some time. Gates has already released a 64-bit version of Windows XP as an almost free ($12) upgrade to OEM versions of XP.

It's too late for Apple to gain any hugely significant increases in market share. If they'd acted differently at the beginning and licensed their architecture for other manufacturers to build compatible machines, they'd be in the lead now.

Jobs and Woz screwed up in the 80's and it's lasted since then.

[gordianot]

4. I've heard XP really does not take advantage of the speed gains.

Jobs screwed up big but I think he is at the next window of opportunity for something of a comeback.

[ET Awful]

5. Well, I can only speak as to the AMD 64-bit processors, but

I can state that even using the 32-bit version of Windows, it outperforms anything of comparable speed. I have a 1.8ghz Athlon 64 in my home machine and it outperforms my 2.4 ghz machine that I have at work by a significant margin.

From everything I've tested on other machines (I've been too lazy to install it on my personal machine), the 64-bit Windows works extremely well in everything but games. For games it performs no better than a 32-bit, but no worse either. For most processor intensive applications (video encoding and the like) it peforms extremely well compared to it's 32-bit counterpart.

The only significant problem with it at this point is driver support for all hardware, but I lay that problem on the hardware manufacturer, not MS.

[orwell]

6. Blindsided

Apple's grave error was to keep their hardware proprietary. Gates had nothing to do with that.

[orwell]

7. The Major Reason

Apple couldn't use Intel processors because Gates would have thrown a hissy fit. I'm sure Intel would have welcomed the business. After all they make faster cheaper processors than Motorola/IBM. It was Gates who likely wanted to make the "Wintel" collaboration a virtual monopoly. It gave him a strategic advantage in selling his OS over Apple's.

These is great news for Apple and their customers - more power at a cheaper price. As far as Intel buying Apple it doesn't make a lot of sense.