Apple — Intel Prediction
Posted on June 6, 2005
Filed Under Computing |
As the Apple world collectively holds their breath until 10am PDT tomorrow — the time of Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote — waiting to find out the true story of all the Apple on Intel rumors. I will offer my prediction, and see if I can one up the pundits.
Mac OS X on Intel x86 is not going to happen. While technically feasible, Darwin has a long running x86 port, rumors of an in house x86 version of OS X exists… the business case is just not there. The hot running sales will dry up if the switch is announced, since no one wants deprecated hardware even if it has a year or two before being phased out. Then there is the cost of recompiling and rewriting code for the x86 platform.
So if not Apple on Intel x86 processors, then what? Apple on Intel PowerPC processors. It is no secret that Intel has been struggling of late, sales and product development have stagnated. Apple holds the rights to PPC, PPC chips are in all the Apple boxen (16 % install base). Intel claims 80% of the remaining 86% of the market share. While gaining that 16% will make the chip giant grow its market share, the cost of introducing its own PPC chip is not worth it…. until you recall that all the gaming systems, Sony Playstaion, Nintendo and, XBox are all PPC, or going to be PPC based in their next iteration. That has Intel’s attention.
So when the Intel PPC chips start getting phased in, in about a year from now, I’ll be in line to get a Apple (Intel PPC) G6 PowerBook.
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Well I missed that one. Sell Apple if you own it, sales will suffer for the next year, as will its stock price. Buy Intel as its units shipped will increase. If Apple announces that it is opening up OS X to non-Apple hardware, then look out Micro$oft. The best OS on the market, on the most widely used CPU architecture, from the most widely used CPU manufacturer… it is about time.