Steve Jobs dropped the big one today:
When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of performance per watt, but Intel’s roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do. - Steve Jobs
My first reaction to the announcement that Apple will be switching to Intel is discomfort and concern. Everyone who has a stake in the Mac platform is likely to flinch. I have to say that I continue to like Apple's boldness. These are turbulent times, a conservative approach would be dangerous too. But I am crazed.
I have all confidence that Intel chips will be excellent. I'm not worried about that. It's all the other stuff. Starting with the question - will people buy PowerPC-based Macs anymore? Will I? I would need to know the timetable of replacement before making a purchase.
Some people will be out there buying the existing models because they'll miss this announcement and won't realize they are buying lame duck hardware.
Will Apple have to drastically discount the prices over the next six months and longer on machines that won't transition that quickly? Apple will have to make all sorts of guarantees to get people to buy into that deal. Here's hoping all that cash from iPod/iTunes will make the likely disruption in sales affordable.
We finally got a successful transition to OS X but now we have to start all over again with another transition. Another *Fat Binary* deal where applications have to come with the ability to run on PowerPC or Intel.
Since there is a cost to this transition stuff, some OS X developers will drop away. Some who might have started down the OS X path won't.
The iPodification of Apple has already got me wondering how important Apple sees its Macintosh business. Are they going more consumer than we thought? Or into movie sales - the year of HD?
I have to admit that the sexy Xbox 360 was making me a little nervous anyway learning it had 3 powerpc processors and that it looks hot and fits with Microsoft's plans to dominate the world. I was wondering how little old Apple was going to find a place at the home entertainment dinner table.
Just lots of questions and not enough answers. I'm guessing that Apple knows a lot more than they are saying right now. Maybe they are playing it by ear waiting for the response from their various stakeholders. Probably.
And, you can bet they won't tell us the new products they want to build that make this Intel road the preferred path. But, hey, Apple is getting into podcasting, maybe they'll open the kimono a little more. One can always hope. I plan to write a second post once the dust settles a bit on this one.
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