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June 07, 2005

Apple / Intel Thoughts

When I first heard this rumor in the WSJ a few weeks back, I was a little befuddled. Things are coming up roses for Apple. Record earnings, serious mindshare in the market, tons of momentum...Why choose to put themselves through another painful transition?

There was a weird clue to their plans in the past two earnings calls (yes I actually listen to them). Analysts kept bugging Apple asking when a PowerBook G5 will come out. Their response was that putting an egg-frying G5 into the slim powerbook is "the mother of all thermal challenges". Apple's pro laptop line is headed down a dead -end. You can buy iBooks that have fast G4 chips in them now, so why buy a PowerBook? So IBM simply can't deliver them a low-power, low-heat but fast-enough G5 to use in their portable line. That's enough right there. Also, knowing this now, I kinda wonder why they didnt do this sooner.

The next 2 years are gonna suck for Apple (at least for the Macintosh business). They have just made all of their shipping models- and the ones coming down the pipe- obsolete. Will definitely be a dicey transition, though they have been through 2 much more difficult transitions successfully (Moving to the PowerPC chip, and moving to Mac OS X).

As far as the end user is concerned, I'm not worried. I won't have any qualms about buying a super-fast Intel-based Mac when they come out. I won't see any difference, other than more speed. Sounds good to me.

Posted by keegan at June 7, 2005 12:05 PM