Tuesday, June 07, 2005

MacIntel

I just finished lunch at the Moscone center here at Apple's Worldwide Developer's conference in San Francisco. We were given a choice between a bag lunch or a vegetarian hot buffet. Everyone was in a sort of daze, due to either jet lag or the after effects of Steve Jobs reality distortion field, where it is now okay to like Intel processors. The vegetarian fare was a festival of carbohydrates. The bag lunch was a big wad of bread with a wad of meat in the middle. I am unable to find any kind of literary parallel between lunch and the keynote right now.

Before the address, I had talked briefly with someone at Adobe, who had pointed out that it would be great if Apple moved to Intel architecture, as it would help them develop a more common code base for their development. I think there may be a few people who are thinking this way.

Everyone has their own explanation for why Apple is moving to Intel. I think it isn't as simple as one or two bulleted items. There are a lot of little reasons.

An apple engineer yesterday belabored the megahertz myth scenario, where people were still picking computers based on the clock speed. Apple has yet to break 3 ghz in a desktop machine. I believe that people are becoming savvy enough that they understand themselves that there are other things as important as the clock speed of the machine. Features, aesthetics, size, cost. These are all things that are important as we quit thinking of desktop computers as calculation engines and more as appliances that do stuff.

While high-end processing can give you chest thumping rights, the reality is that the majority of Apple's sales are in the laptop market, and this is where the gap is really showing. Apple's laptops are not just being surpassed in terms of processor performance, but in a much more important area -- power consumption.

While Apple makes very nice laptops, there are even nicer ones out there. Everyone is coming out with sub-3 pound laptops, but Apple. Apple can't because they do not have a processor that can compete in that arena. Now they do.

That is the numero uno reason I can think of at the moment. Steve Jobs even had a slide illustrating the ratio of power consumption to performance between the PowerPC and Intel line. I know this has some impact on the desktop market, but the desktop market is shrinking.

Everette and I are speculating what the first Apple intel box will be . He thinks it will be the Mac mini. I think it will be a desktop, followed quickly (if not simultaneously) by a Intel powered laptop. This will happen very quickly. The intent is to migrate over a two year period, but I think we will see Intel powered Macs for the masses somewhere around MacWorld 2006 in San Francisco.

Apple's fortunes have been on a slow climb over the last two years. I think they actually have a chance to double their market share. Keep in mind though, in the grand scheme of things, Apple and Microsoft are battling for a market that is in itself going to be challenged by the rise of cheap information appliances -- ie cell phones, Tivo, game systems etc. But again, this announcement paves the way for Apple to be completely free of attachment to a single line of processor, whether is be Intel, IBM, AMD or whatever.

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