Apple annoncerer brug af Intels processorer

Apple vil bruge Intels processorer fra Juni 2006, og dermed er IBMs PowerPC processorer droppet. Men der er tale om et tæt samarbejde imellem Apple og Intel, så tæt, at flere spekulerer i om Dell vil være tvunget til at reagere. Under alle omstændigheder betyder samarbejdet mellem Apple og Intel at de lækre Powerbooks vil fåes med Intels Pentium-M processor næste år, og det vil give Apple mulighed for at gøre deres bærbare mere attraktive. Personligt tror og håber jeg at Pentium-M vil finde vej ind i rigtig mange af Apples computere, da det lave strømforbrug, vil gøre det muligt at designe endnu federe computere, uden at ydelsen vil lide under det.

Why not AMD? Much of Apple's success is due to marketing and branding, not necessarily technological leadership. That should sound a lot like Intel these days, whose processors essentially lag behind AMD in terms of technology, but outsell AMD by huge margins thanks to strong marketing and branding. The Intel brand is much stronger than AMD's, and that is the sort of partner that Apple is interested in.

The ability to supply Apple's volumes isn't a huge deal, as many have pointed out, AMD could most definitely handle Apple's volumes. Intel's pricing to Apple is most likely far more attractive than anything AMD could put together however, and when existing as a premium PC manufacturer is already quite difficult, any breaks on CPU pricing you can get are definitely worth it.

So why not support both AMD and Intel? Apple may in the future, although it is highly unlikely anytime soon - especially given whatever sort of pricing arrangement Apple and Intel have worked out. Right now Apple has no intentions of confusing their marketplace, let the transition from PPC to x86 take place and then we can worry about Apple supporting AMD. If Intel does indeed embrace an on-die memory controller and a Hyper Transport-like interface by 2007 in a cooler running architecture, the demand for Apple to support AMD may in fact diminish.

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