Apple moves to Intel

So we can finally put an end to the rumors and start look­ing at the impact: Apple, in a move that has been rumored for a long time, has announced that it would start using Intel proces­sors begin­ning in 2006.

The 5-years outlook

The inter­est­ing thing is the tim­ing of the move, a bit over 10 years from the move from 680x proces­sors to Pow­erPC and a big over 5 years from the tran­si­tion from MacOS to OSX.

In 1994, the com­pany decided to aban­don some of the more pro­pri­etary com­po­nents of its hard­ware archi­tec­ture and move to a more “open” hard­ware archi­tec­ture, using mod­els sim­i­lar to what was then avail­able in the PC world. At the time, the tran­si­tion was largely seen as just a proces­sor tran­si­tion but it was a much larger move to more open hard­ware architectures.

Then, in 2000, the tran­si­tion started from the pro­pri­etary MacOS to a more open Unix-based oper­at­ing sys­tem. Once again this was seen as an Apple only move and mostly seen as a sim­ple migration.

Today, the com­pany announced that it was mov­ing from Pow­erPC to Intel-based x86 proces­sors, a move that leaves open more ques­tions than it answers.

How­ever, it shows a clear trend in the company’s approach to change: Every 5 years or so, the com­pany makes a move towards more open­ness. I’m assum­ing that, at this rate, Apple will make a deci­sion to either move to a more open plat­form (notice in today’s announce­ment that they did not announce they would be avail­able on hard­ware beyond Apple’s own hard­ware) or ditch the oper­at­ing sys­tem and work on being a hard­ware com­pany with a few Windows-based (and/or linux based) soft­ware prod­ucts. This deci­sion, in my view, will be announced in either 2010 or 2011.

The short term outlook

I would say that, short term (under 5 years), the move will be towards intro­duc­ing an Intel-based lap­top run­ning OSX. Basi­cally, the G5 lap­top is not just not hap­pen­ing this year, it’s as dead the famous Monty Python par­rot. How­ever, the Apple Intel lap­top is com­ing and it will prob­a­bly be one of the first item they intro­duce under the new line.

The next thing that we’re going to see is a new price drop in some of the hard­ware. Expect more of the iMac line to trend down price wise. I sus­pect Apple will use the iMac line as a value line with prices rang­ing from $399 to $1000 for desk­top and from $999 to $1500 for lap­tops. How­ever, they will prob­a­bly bring to mar­ket a higher end line of pro (or pro­sumer) devices. This strat­egy might help them grow their marketshare.

Third, expect Motorola/Freescale to be the first one to suf­fer. The tran­si­tion, on the desk­top, will prob­a­bly start with the G4 line and then be fol­lowed, later, with the G5.

Fourth, expect Apple to announce a new ver­sion of their server and a new ver­sion of OSX run­ning on either Intel x86 proces­sor or Trans­meta chips (tech­ni­cally, one could assume it’s possible).

And what about the lawsuits?

A few months ago, some blogs leaked infor­ma­tion about upcom­ing Apple prod­ucts and Apple filed suits to find who their sources were. Last week, the Wall Street Jour­nal and Cnet leaked info about this move to Intel and… well, I guess Apple must have decided to stop suing peo­ple or maybe they are just reserv­ing law­suits for bloggers.

Update

: A help­ful reader pointed out that I had argued in favor of the switch last year.