The Apple deal: What others are saying

From outrage to disbelief to approval, analysts, consumers and industry insiders have been buzzing about Apple Computer's switch to Intel since The Wall Street Journal reported last month that such a partnership was in discussion and CNET News.com reported last Friday that it was a done deal.

Here's a sampling of comments made just prior to and following the official announcement, which Apple issued Monday.

"It's a bunch of bull. Firstly, Apple certainly pays much less for IBM and Freescale processors than Intel charges for comparable chips. Probably less than half as much on average. The G5 is a smaller, more efficient chip than the Pentium 4, and IBM has no other customers willing to buy large quantities."
--Peter Glaskowsky, analyst for The Envisioneering Group

"We believe the move is risky for Apple. By switching to a more mass market processor, Apple likely risks diluting its value proposition, as it has less control over the product road map."
--Steven Fortuna, Prudential Equity Group analyst

"There's more applications available for Windows than there are on Apple. All a chip change could do is probably slow that down because maybe there would be a big disruption with your ISV (independent software vendor) community...There's more training, knowledge, management on how to implement networks. What changes? I don't know."
-- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

"I will never buy Apple again, ever. If this is true, I am very sad. How will I get new software for my computer?"
--John Bresnahan, CNET News.com reader

"Come on people, we know you like to entertain these ideas, but it's just not going to happen. I'll eat my hat if it does."
--Adam Detzner, CNET News.com reader

"If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned. I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers."
--Nathan Brookwood, Insight 64 analyst

"This is a seismic shift in the world of personal computing and consumer electronics."
--Richard Doherty, president of The Envisioneering Group

"This is kind of like if your two best friends decided to get married and you don't know what it means. You feel sort of conflicted."
--Matthew Woolrums, conference attendee

C-Net Bias

Amazing the C-Net bias. There are hundreds of quotes that
could have been of a positive light but C-Net only chooses to
post negative ones. I have been a Mac user since the beginning,
matter of fact I was an Apple customer since 1979, and I am
looking forward to the new systems.

Apple would be stupid to stay with IBM because they are IBM's
only customer for the PPC chips. The custom ones for game
machines don't count. There is no reason for IBM to put much
effort into the PPC for Apple since they are only one customer.

Intel has a vested interest in supplying faster chips to multiple
OEMs of which Apple will be one. I have been waiting for a G5
notebook which would have never come. With Apple/Intel I have
a chance of a fast notebook soon.

[morganized]

What's the mystery?

They're (C|net)just pushing buttons to agitate the reader base and drive traffic. It's, unfortunately, no different then most of the modern news channels. Unfortunate because it just wastes enormous amounts of people's time wading through the misdirections while trying to arrive at the actual truth.

What did Ballmer say?

I couldn't make sense out of any of it (except "Windows has more software", duh). Network stuff? Does he even know what he's talking about?

[zaznet]

Does he even know what he's talking about?

No, he never has and probably never will.

[corelogik]

Since when

does anyone at Microsoft know what they're talking about when it
comes to a Mac,...

[Gleeplewinky]

Why Intel?

I don't see the CPU as necessarily relevent other
than there being a pretty decent chance that
current Macs will become prematurely obsolete by
virtue of vendors targeting the Intel CPUs with
their new releases.

But going with Intel seems counter intuitive. Why
not AMD? I know that the conventional wisdom is
that AMD can't scale up their production to meet
the demand... but given a couple of years notice,
I'm sure they could. Their chips are cheaper than
Intels, perform better, and use far less energy.

I am also somewhat puzzled about abandoning the
PPC architecture. I'm not convinced that there's
a large benefit in the move, but there's plenty
of risk -- if nothing else than by alienating
their customers and diminishing the cachet of
Macs (no more boasting about AltiVec). I know
Apple has been suffering the power consumption
issues of PPC in laptops, but they do have the
right to have that problem addressed by a 3rd
party...

[aabcdefghij987654321]

A switch to Intel x86

Switching to the x86 architecture means that Apple can also switch to use AMD for some or all of their hardware at a later date. With both Intel and AMD competing Apple has a better chance of not getting lost in a vendor's other priorities.

It's quite possible that IBM's diverting a lot of resources to developing the "gamers" versions of PPC for the game consoles that Apple decided that IBM was no longer interested in meeting their needs and it was time to look for a new partner. With the volume of chips needed for these new game systems, it's easy to see how Apple's needs at it's much lower chip volumes could get neglected.

Just speculation on my part though, but Apple must have had reasons, compelling reasons to make such a dramatic shift.

[johnroche--2008]

Re: Why Intel?

I think the reason they went with Intel is because--building on what you said about Intel's ability to meet demand--Intel is ready to meet demand now, and not just in a few years. From what I'm seeing, it's possible that AMD may be able to meet demand by 2007, but Intel is ready to meet demand now. Given Apple's past trouble with IBM and Motorola, that's an important consideration.

Besides, I've heard many good things about the Pentium-M (which is apparently good enough to consider putting into desktops now).

This is great. I think I will have WINE with that

I am so happy about this. My kids brand new iMac G5 will not benefit but in less than 2 years I will be able to buy a brand new Pent based Powerbook with maybe even the new Mac OS X 5. Wow. Not only is this great because I love the Mac OS but because I bet my order time will be nothing like the one I just expereinced with my iMac. It took more than 2 months to get to me and then it had a faulty Mainboard and Processor which means I am still waiting for it to be repaired.

But the REALLY GREAT thing about change is that I would put money on someone porting the Linux based WINE project to MAC OS X for Intel really quickly. Plus I am betting that the Xwine (Direct X Linux library) will also be ported. I will be running all the games I want on my new Powerbook with Intel CPU... and I bet they run just as good as if they were on Windoz coz Mac just sings no matter where it is.

Hehe. Jut thought about the Perl Project which ran the Power PC version of Mac OS X on Intel architecture. But you guys are not doing much today.

The good thing

Well if Apple allows OS X to run on any X86 system that will mean whole new world,as it would open "white box" which will increase cutomer base by large,very large number and therfore more software and su8pport will follow..after all comanies are in here for money not pleasure.
Hopefully we will end up having two great chip companies Intel and AMD and two ahem... OS companies Apple and Microsoft,focus will be having to OS run on X86 systems,64-bit on dual-core (quad-core anyone?) systems.
Does anyone know what this kind of compatition could bring to computing world???
Only bad thing that I see about this is it wasn't done long time ago.

[sfjase]

No OS X on non-Apple Hardware

Another CNET article says that although it might be possible to run Windows on a Mac, they don't plan to let people run OS X on non-Apple hardware:

"...Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. 'We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac,' he said."

See &lt;<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch%2C+aligns+with+Intel+-+page+2/2100-7341_3-5733756-2.html?tag=st.next" target="_newWindow">http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch%2C+aligns+with+Intel+-+page+2/2100-7341_3-5733756-2.html?tag=st.next</a>&gt; (last two paragraphs).

Mixed emotions...

I love Apple. I lvoe its products. I love the speed of the processors and the architecture. I love the apps,t he GUI, the total experience.

I'm just a little angry that this shift will end up costing us some money (consumers). I'm a bit relieved that this news came before I could by a powerbook, which, would have lasted me 3-4 years, but wouldn't be supported at the end of that time. I'm a bit confused because I've seen that AMD processors out perform Intel chips. I'm also confused because X86 as we know it today, running Windows is just a slower architecture.

Will this be good? Well, I don't see how games will be any better as they still use .exe files and OS X does not (thank God). But, I use a console for games so that doesn't matter much to me (though it amtters a lot to some people.)

I just don't know. I think I'm more confused and distraught than anything else. But, Steve hasn't made many bad decisions thus far... Maybe this WILL pan out.

Everybody Relax.

So they switched processors, so what? How many of you flipped
out like this when they went to the G5? How many of you who
"really" care about this dont have a fair amount of churn in your
systems anyway?

[Lucky Lou]

No big deal for end users

The end user will hardly feel any effect, except for possibly that
Apple will have more frequent speed upgrades and at possibly
lower prices.

For developers it's a bit of a different story. Those who didn't
make Carbon/Xcode versions of their software will have some
work to do. It was going to necessary sooner or later anyway.
And those that make hardware specific calls will have some re-
writing, too. You don't get anywhere great easily, so consider
this the cost.

And those Envisioneering guys just don't get it, do they? First
they are flat out wrong for the wrong reasons, then they make a
huge statement about something that's not small but not really
earth-changing.

[jerictrevors]

Totally agree

You are very correct. The end-users wont feel much difference besides not having to fear about their chips... (I use a pc, yet i've heard bad things about the G-series chips produced by IBM, correct me if i'm worng)

[Mark Donovan]

Welcome to BIOS Hell! Thanks, Steve...

There are many nice things about a Mac that one won't miss until they're gone. One of these is the ease of adding hardware, devices and memory without the bother and frustration of BIOS configuration and updates.

BIOS-related problems are one of the most frustrating and all-too-frequent annoyances associated with Intel architecture. These low-level, architecture-related headaches are non-existant with the PowerPC.

Maybe someone at Apple should reread Macintosh history for some insights into the choice of Motorola versus Intel. Maybe Apple has a solution to better insulate users from the BIOS. I hope so.

[blueice03]

Maybe not...

Look, I could be way off on this and if I am I'm sure someone will
correct me, but isn't BIOS related more to the motherboard than the
CPU? From what I have heard, it sounds like the only thing
changing is the CPU. Is it possible to change the CPU and simply
modify the motherboard so that you don't have to worry about
BIOS? Besides that, Macs do have a form of BIOS, it is called Open
Firmware.

[Earl Benser]

No BIOS...

The MAc/Intel is NOT a PC. It has no BIOS, nor any other of the PC
mptherboard's fundamental faults.

[strategyhack]

Whats Steve Jobs Thinking? Probably Nothing.

Jobs strength lies in making bold moves that shake the market and then adjusting his course to maintain momentum. Right now, to paraphrase Seinfeld, I think Jobs is thinking about nothing.

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://strategyhack.wordpress.com/2006/04/20/whats-steve-jobs-thinking-nothing/" target="_newWindow">http://strategyhack.wordpress.com/2006/04/20/whats-steve-jobs-thinking-nothing/</a>