Apple Makes a Switch to Intel

June 6, 2005 By Ian Bell

Undoubtedly today's biggest story, Apple has made the highly anticipated announcement that the company would be introducing new Apple computers based on Intel processors

In what could be considered one of the smartest moves in Apple’s history, the innovative computer and CE maker announced that they would be dropping IBM in favor of Intel’s processors for their Macintosh computers. Apple is hoping to transition all of its Mac products to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007.

Steve Jobs showed a demonstration of the Mac OS X Tiger operating system running on an Intel-based Mac system to over 3,800 developers at a keynote address. Apple’s move opens the door for a number of possibilities including lower development costs and ultimately lower prices for the consumer. Still there are even more questions people are going to want answers for. Will Apple plan on introducing their operating systems to non-Apple computers? Could this partnership be a signal for future opportunities with Intel, including the possibility of Intel chips in upcoming iPods or other Apple CE products? And, lastly how could this partnership affect Microsoft?

â€œWe are thrilled to have the world’s most innovative personal computer company as a customer,â€ said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. â€œApple helped found the PC industry and throughout the years has been known for fresh ideas and new approaches. We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come.â€

â€œWe think this is a really smart move on Apple’s part and plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,â€ said Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe.

Showing 6 comments

Tantrum at 3:20pm 6th June 2005 hahaha Apple is sure desperate. The PowerPC chip could never compete with an Intel CPU, and good ole-Steve knew this the whole time, burning all of you Apple Zealots in the end. Welcome to the dark-side fella's!
fungku at 3:11pm 6th June 2005 They certainly have an opening to pickup a large mareket share if they move over to Intel chips and their hardware becomes cheaper in price. Porting applications over to it should be easier since it will be x86 instead of powerpc. If Jobs/Apple doesnt open the door up to clones again then it will be a missed opportunity.
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 3:03pm 6th June 2005 This article by Om Malik: http://gigaom.com/2005/06/04/steve-jobs-like-howard-hughes-mystifies/ makes Steve Jobs out to be a genius. My take is that IBM simply cannot keep up with Intel and AMD on a margin basis. Apple computers simply cost too much money for the average consumer. Partnering with Intel not only makes sense, but its something Apple has needed to do for a long time. It has nothing to do with Steve Jobs proving people wrong. It has to do with keeping a company alive.
fungku at 1:11pm 6th June 2005 i know that os x has always been able to run on intel (know someone who worked there. he did testing for os x and did tests on the intel version.) Apple just has never released it. This is good for apple, and apple users. The only thing that sucks is that pretty much all the current machines have now been made obsolete. I just got a mac mini, and i'm a little pissed.
Red Smurph at 12:58pm 6th June 2005 Beyond cost-savings there's a very important point with moving to Intel: OS X could potentially run on any PC, competing directly with Microsoft. Whether Apple will have any real impact is another story.
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 12:18pm 6th June 2005 This is a sweet deal, and I hope it really does drive Apple prices down. Maybe this could mean a new motherboard architecture in which developers great more games for the Apple?

Also, anyone think there is a chance to see the Apple OS on non-Apple systems because of this?