Could Apple be giving Intel the boot, or coercing them to lower prices?

[alfredo]

You know Apple bought chip maker PA Semiconductor. Cringley gives his insight into what might be the future for Apple products. Back to Power PC chips?


http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080425_004775.html

Apple this week bought a fabless chip company called PA Semiconductor and pundits far and wide are trying to explain the deal with broadly varying ideas, some of which are close but none seem to really understand what the deal is about. In the short term this acquisition means precisely nothing to Apple users. In the long term it could be quite significant, however, and gives a number of tantalizing hints about Apple's hardware strategy.

Why would Apple, having already jumped from PowerPC to Intel, spend $278 million to buy a company that is best known for designing PowerPC chips? Are they preparing to dump Intel? No. Does it have anything to do with Intel? Yes.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Thanks for posting!

I haven't had a good dose of Apple rumormongering and punditizing for a long time. Plus ça change!

[alfredo]

2. You're welcomed. it's really fun watching the antics of Apple. They

play the game well. We need more companies that take risks and push the technology. American industry has become too conservative, too cautious. We need more Pixars, More Googles's and more Apple's. What if Detroit's auto industry had adopted new technology and designs back in the 80's instead of making vehicles that weren't able to compete? Our steel industry refused to adopt new techniques and got their ass handed to them. Our bicycle industry refused to change with the times and customer tastes. and were mowed down by the European and Asian companies. Smaller more nimble companies like Trek and Cannondale have filled the gap, but we took a real hit for decades.

[Gore1FL]

3. It would hamper some of their marketing

Apples run Vista and Vista software nicely because of "Intel inside." I don't know how much of their market relies on such things, but I know there is a demand for that ability.

[alfredo]

4. With virtualization it could be a potato chip inside and it wouldn't matter.

[Gore1FL]

7. Wouldn't that require

something like VM or parrallels or something-- running a second OS under the first?

[alfredo]

8. On the Mac I have Boot Camp where I can dual or triple boot.

I'm thinking about dual boot Ubuntu. Parallels and VMWare are pretty good in that I can run the two or three OS's at the same time.

[jmowreader]

5. I wish they WOULD switch back...

I've got a LOT of Classic Mac software that won't run on an Intel-based Mac. Unfortunately, the world outside of Apple thinks a computer's only real if it's got an Intel processor in it, so they've got to stick to putting Intels in their Macs. (Though it would be REAL nice, guys, if you could find it in your heart to put a PPC in there too, so that my QuarkXPress 5 and LetraStudio will still run.)

I'd say Apple's going to use the PA Semiconductor chips in telecom products.

[alfredo]

9. The problem with the PPC chip was Motorola and IBM took their

companies in different directions and away from the Power PC chip for computers. We've known for years that Apple had an Intel build, and knew that if the PPC chip didn't keep up or got too expensive, Apple would jump.

The Intel Inside campaign was very successful, but notice there is no Intel Inside on Apple computers. Apple doing this makes the brand of chip less important than the brand of computer. It is not an Intel computer, it is an Apple. The PC makers made themselves irrelevant by allowing the Windows splash screen instead of the brand name splash screen. The computer name also had to share space with the Intel tag. People would say they have a Windows or Intel machine, not a Dell, or HP.

[alfredo]

10. I think it will be for their small hand held devices like you mentioned.

[IDemo]

6. I've thought about building a "Hackintosh"

I have been looking into Macs off and on over the past year, but for much less money I could build one myself.

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php

[alfredo]

11. I ended up buying the Mac Mini 2 gig Core 2 Duo