The Triangle

Issue date: 6/24/05 Section: Sci-Tech
Originally published: 6/24/05 at 1:48 AM EST
Last update: 6/24/05 at 1:52 AM EST

Media Credit: Apple Computers

Some weeks ago, Steve Jobs announced that Apple is going to switch to Intel CPUs for their Mac line-up starting mid 2006. Now, if you are anything like John Dvorak, you saw this coming, and predicted that it was "coming this year" just about every year for the past decade. Like the rest of us, though, I was taken quite aback when I first read the reports from CNet and the Wall Street Journal that Apple and Intel were having talks. Then I was down right disgusted when I started reading the reports about Apple's WWDC. Not because of the switch, I think it's a rather good idea that Apple is parting ways with Big Blue, but because of hack journalists using dreadful portmanteaux like "Macintels" and the even more nonsensical "Mactels" to refer to these new machines. Well, it's the end of an era for Apple, and while they have had two other changes for the better like this in the past, for example, changing to the PPC and switching to OS X, when the dust settled, they always wound up with less market share than before. Will this time be any different? Time will tell, but there really is no where else for Apple to go but up.

The fact the Steve Jobs was looking for alternatives to IBM's G5 processor is completely understandable. Motorola designed a perfectly fine chip that really did outperform their x86 counterparts. Apple had themselves a winner for a while, but then the competition between AMD and Intel drove each other to improve at a rate that IBM just didn't find profitable to keep up with. Thus Jobs left Apple enthusiasts with two empty promises, a 3 GHz G5 and a G5 powered laptop. This is where Intel comes in. Intel already has chips more powerful and more efficient than any PPC, and IBM would much rather focus on the higher volume sales of its chips for the upcoming video game consoles. The fact here is that IBM simply would not give Apple what they wanted, or in fact needed to compete in the hardware industry.

Now that Apple saw they needed to get away from the PPC, why did they go with Intel? AMD is generally less expensive and many hold their chip designs with higher regard than Intel's, especially the new dual core models. Here it is probably a combination of things that all work out in Apple's favor. First, Intel wants to show off the power of their chips and give AMD a run for their money. In this vein, Intel gets an operating system fully optimized for their chip and designed with it in mind and Apple gets to show that side by side with the same processor OS X can beat Windows in any benchmark. Intel can also offer Apple something AMD can't that could help Apple expand its digital media business, DRM (Digital rights something or other) on the hardware level. Intel's chips can lock out access to files if it appears they are pirated. The benefits of this are three-fold. First, this will ensure that OS X remains on Apple hardware, second this will keep iTunes users from sharing their songs and finally, the promise of this technology will help Apple convince Hollywood to give them the rights to sell movies online, much like they already sell music. Once they get this movie store up and running, an iPod to play these movies might not be so far off, either.

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