Apple Must Switch to Intel Says Research Firm

[pimentoLoaf]

Here's the general article:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=5468

And the specific analysis is the "Giga Press Release" of 28 Oct:

http://www.gigaweb.com/search/0,2197,results,00.html

Alas, you must be a member to view the latter.

 

[BenderBot1138]

Switch? Hmmm

Headline "Apple Must Switch To Intel"

subtitle: "intel is trying to attract Apple"

In 1986 I recall a similar article that circulated on BITNet that said nearly the same thing. And In 1990 I saw something similar in a PC Magazine. Oh yea, in 199... well you get the idea.

I always enjoy reading such articles though, they make me laugh... great find pimentoLoaf...

 

[Sun Baked]

I'd trust the Forbes analysis of a switch to Intel, which basically called any switch to Intel the end of Apple.

Wintel destroys anything that intrudes on their marketspace, and anything the ends up with Wintel compatibility has an even quicker death.

It comes down to corporate economics when deciding what platforms to support, and when a platform is similar/compatible with another, the companies will tend to chose to write for the easiest/largest one every time (Wintel).

Why bother spending the money on the orphan platform when people can buy and use the Wintel program too?

With Macs on Intel, the compatibility layer (VPC) will be assumed and the companies can thin out the number of platforms supported...

 

[Wash!!]

And cows will fly

With a G5 build in for auto pilot coltrol and M$ winblow xpsh**t for OS

 

[Gelfin]

"Analysts" in the 90s also said that Apple needed to pursue the beige-box corporate desktop world or they would be DOOOOOOMed. We know how well that went. See, business analysts are very frequently what we like to call "idiots." They pretend to understand some "big picture" that others do not, but it's all hand-waving. They typically have a very specific idea of how a market sector is defined, who its target audience is likely to be and so forth. Their analyses reflect this. You can summarize any such analysis like this: "If Company A wants to be successful, they'll change their business to work more like the business model I understand."

This sort of thing can take on the character of an auto industry analyst claiming that the way for John Deere to be more successful is to make their tractors more car-like.

 

[Switcher2001]

Check out the Crazy Apple Rumors spoof!

The Crazy Apple Rumors Site has a great spoof of this analyst's findings!

 

[Sun Baked]

The dancing pink elephant is quite embarassed that Crazy Apple Rumors has such an article defending the PPC platform, which means the poor elephant is now off the sauce and himself is seeing the following...

 

[topicolo]

Isn't that more like a dancing pink pig? where's the long snout?


Anyways, I think the analysis may have some truth to it. Sure, if apple switches to x86, they will probably not make enough money on software to make up for a reduction in their hardware sales, but what is the alternative? If they stay with PowerPC, they'll trail farther and farther behind, soon we'll be 3x slower than x86s (megahertz wise), and then 5x slower, etc.

I don't think the switch issue is as clear cut as we'd all like to think it is. My view is that Apple should release more kick-ass consumer gadgets like the ipod and try to diversify their business enough so that they can experiment with the mac platform without worrying about killing themselves if they make a big mistake.

 

[bousozoku]

It's not the first time that Giga has come out with Apple mis-information. While there could be a tiny truth in there somewhere, they always exaggerate it out of the picture.

It's better to trust Gartner and Forbes, as well as, InfoWorld and The Wall Street Journal.

 

[Macmaniac]

I say when pigs fly: See Above post.

Sounds like an old article from the 90's doom and gloom reports