Here is John Peddie's analysis of the move.

That being said, I find it ironic that the x86 pundits site “emotional reasons” for the mac users whoe say the PPC is a better chip.

IBM has announced Dual Core g5 chips a few days ago. I would MUCH rather have one of those than a dual x86. Time will tell, and I have no trouble getting “obsolete” hardware at a good price. I still use an SGI for stuff that neither a winblows box or a mac can do, yeah it may be “obsolete” but who the hell cares, it does what I want it to.

a cpu is just a lump of silicon, and I think Apple is making a smart biz move, since its machines can run either OSX or winblows, but a stock pc will NOT be able to run OSX as there will be a block to prevent. Sure someone will figure out how to do it, but the BIOS on your average x86 is so antiquated and far infeior to the current open firmware a mac uses, I will be interested to see how it works out. Try booting an average pc from a firewire external HD.

This is really all about the OS, I encourage all the peecee folks to take a hard and fast and even cynical look at OSX, an OS that is built on rock solid UNIX, and is really what Linux SHOULD be but is not.

I use Irix, Linux, win 2k, win xp, and mac OSX, so please dont tell me just because I am primarily a mac person, my preference for it is based on emotions, that is highly insulting.

IBM was simply ignoring what Apple wanted or needed, the total business they represented has become utterly irrelevant to their bottom line and even with the small amount of R&D they were still devoting exclsively to the Mac PPC, it was probably unprofitable. What IBM has been telling Steve for years now is “Don't go away mad, just go away…”

Why not move to the BEST xx86 technology ? We all know that's at AMD…Simple: For a Mac to BE a Mac you need a closed hardware platform. They have already confirmed, OS X will ONLY run on Apple hardware. All of you with fanatsies that Intel was going to produce PPC chips or Apple was going to utilize some form of Itanium simply betray your complete lack of understanding of hardware. The Mac stays a closed system based on the mb chipset, NOT anything particularly proprietary about the cpu. Apple no longer consumes enough cpus to justify ANYONE making a proprietary processor for them…PERIOD. In case you haven't noticed, AMD doesn't make supporting chipsets, in fact that has always been one of their major weaknesses (with computer partners like VIA, you don't NEED enemies….lol). AMD can't deliver the closed integrated solution Steve requires.

Steve is going to Intel because he has nowhere else left to go… and the reality is that he has even LESS leverage going into this relationship than he had when he partnered with IBM… that's what happens when you're in a death spiral. Intel will smile and say all the right things, why say no to extra business ? Some have uggested Intel will let Apple have their “latest & greatest” as a boutique supplier… yeah right: You have 2 customers, both use your chips exclusively, but one has been your customer for over a decade and, btw, buys over 50x as many of your chips…now you're gonna piss off that customer by giving an exclusive on your newest and best products to the smaller customer?

When, and it's not if, it IS when, Intel starts treating Steve the way IBM has, then the 'genius' will be back explaining why he's had a revelation that what makes the Mac “insanely great” is not in the hardware at all…he's NEVER wanted to be 'just' an OS company. Kinda hard to sell the myth of superiority without ANY hardware you can 'style'…but Steve is running out of options and ways to spin it…that's what happens when you've lost all leverage.

Apple will come out with the next killer device everyone will want. This wont hurt them. Then, once their new hardware is out for OS X, all you windows zealots will realize how right we've been all along about OS X.

I cannot wait for the day I can put an Apple OS on my home computer.