By Stephen Shankland, 6 June 2005 08:40
NEWS Apple is set to announce that it's scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.
Apple has used IBM's PowerPC processors since 1994 but will begin a phased transition to Intel's chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
The announcement is expected today at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech. The conference would be an appropriate venue: changing the chips would require programmers to rewrite their software to take full advantage of the new processor.
Apple, IBM and Intel declined to comment for this story.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Apple was considering switching to Intel but many analysts were sceptical citing the difficulty and risk to Apple.
That scepticism remains, according to Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. "If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned. I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers" and more software partners, he said.
The relationship between Apple and IBM has been rocky at times. Apple openly criticised IBM for chip delivery problems, though Big Blue said it fixed the issue. More recent concerns, which helped spur the Intel deal, included tension between Apple's desire for a wide variety of PowerPC processors and IBM's concerns about the profitability of a low-volume business, according to one source familiar with the partnership.
Over the years, Apple has discussed potential deals with Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, chipmaker representatives have said.
One advantage Apple has this time: the open-source FreeBSD operating system, of which Mac OS X is a variant, already runs on x86 chips such as Intel's Pentium. And Jobs has said Mac OS X could easily run on x86 chips.
The move also raises questions about Apple's future computer strategy. One basic choice it has in the Intel-based PC realm is whether to permit its Mac OS X operating system to run on any company's computer or only its own.
IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership but it can take consolation in that it's designing and manufacturing the Power family processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, said Clay Ryder, a Sageza Group analyst.
"I would think in the sheer volume, all the stuff they're doing with the game consoles would be bigger. But anytime you lose a high-profile customer, that hurts in ways that are not quantifiable but that still hurt," Ryder said.
Indeed, IBM has a "Power Everywhere" marketing campaign to tout the wide use of its Power processors. The chips show up in everything from networking equipment to IBM servers to the most powerful supercomputer, Blue Gene/L.
Intel dominates the PC processor business, with an 81.7 per cent market share in the first quarter of 2005, compared with 16.9 per cent for Advanced Micro Devices, according to Dean McCarron of Mercury Research. Those numbers do not include PowerPC processors. However, Apple has roughly 1.8 per cent of the worldwide PC market, he added.
Apple shipped 1.07 million PCs in the first quarter, and its move to Intel would likely bump up the chipmaker's shipments by a corresponding amount, McCarron added.
CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos and Richard Shim contributed to this report.
Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Jason Smith
Eeek! Intel!
Let's wait for the Keynote....
Quite possibly is gonna happen though.....
2. Keith
I came to use a mac to get away from the Intel / microsoft junk!!
3. Brian Catt
"Is it a RISC?"
The fact you avoided/missed this pun says it all. No one cares customer side.
Power PC no longer differentiates Apple's approach in the market from when they used a wider bus and CPU width than PCs and RISC versus CISC was some kind of issue.
As long as they can port the substantial advantages in manageability of the Mac OS to Intel CISC this has to be a plus for pricing and availability - with multiple vendors and much higher volumes.
So why not? Well, I did hope PCs would become more solid state communicating devices for consumers which relied on network attachment for updates etc and primarily used network services - and RISC has always seemed best for such closed sysems - like Games Consoles and PDAs...............maybe the Mac won't be going that way for a while.
4. Simon
My first reaction was to check the date - no it's not the start of April again !
I can see the attraction of the switch, but as the reporter points out, it's one hell of a risk and removes one of the big selling features of the Mac - the 'better' processors.
They aren't going to drop PPC chips overnight - hell, it took years to get the 68k to PPC transition finished (and that involved having 68k emulation built into the PPC chip for quite a while. The confusion caused by having PPC and Intel Macs will be huge and I think very damaging.
Realistically, I think the only way they could do this without p***ing off most of their customer base would be to have dual-chip machines running both processors - but that won't work for the budget end of the market (ie Mac Mini) and it won't be easy to do technically.
Things could be interesting - in the Chinese curse sense !
5. Malcolm Ripley
There is one curious link. Years ago Apple invested in a chip along with a british firm, Acorn. The chip was called an ARM (Acorn Risc Machine) which changed its name to Advanced Risc Machine when it became a seperate company. Intel made the StrongARM, a Digital chip with an ARM core. They currently make X-scale ARM based chips. These are used in PDA's, phones etc and even desktop RiscOS machines. RiscOS is the OS that Acorn started and that is still alive today with new hardware, although Acorn is no more.
So it's not a certainty that the x86 power hungry processor is going to be used. I suspect that it will though and Apple will make a machine that runs both its OS and the dreaded windows.
6. Doug
I would think this would open up Apple to be able to do more with Intel chips. Some of you I notice do not favor this. I think for Apple is doing the right move. The Power PC chip is just holding ground and I see no new inprovements from IBM to compete with Intel or AMD.
7. Paul Fretter
The Mac hardware platform might disappear altogether one day, leaving us with only the operating system. Apple OSX, Microsoft and Linux all running on the same generaic hardware. May not be a bad thing.
8. Lionel A Smith
Mac OSX running on Intel rather than IBM chips is fine unless there are viruses around that can exploit processor architechture features.
Oh! Dear! With Intel CISCs this is already a possibility so I read somewhere recently.