The Pipeline: All Macintel, all the time
Welcome to the Pipeline, where we decode the hidden messages buried in the mainstream media. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media was all over Apple this week, for their announcement that they'll be going Intel inside — a level of Apple saturation not seen since, well, since about a month ago, when they all went
wild over Tiger. This time, opinions were not quite as unanimous, though the general tone was that this would be a good thing for Apple — and for consumers — in the long term, but that it could hit Apple's sales in the short-term as current customers hold off on upgrades and "switchers"
wait for the new boxes before taking the plunge.
Walt Mossberg sums things up nicely in The Wall Street Journal: "In the long term, the change will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it.
That's because Intel's processors and other chips will give Apple more options than IBM's products could for building Macs that run faster and cooler, and have longer battery life." However, the risks to Apple are clear, something John Markoff explains in The New York Times: "There is an immediate risk in the tie-up with Intel, however: Mr. Jobs could soon find himself trapped if his best customers stop buying I.B.M.-based Macintoshes while they wait for more powerful Intel-based systems, which are likely to begin arriving in January 2006. ... In an interview, Mr. Jobs rejected the notion that Apple might suffer from what is known as the 'Osborne Effect,' a term that describes the fate of the computer pioneer Adam Osborne whose firm went bankrupt when he announced a successor to his pioneering portable computer before it was available."
Other writers pointed out the opportunities
for Apple to increase market share via the Intel deal, particularly through sales small of media-centric computers ?
a field where Intel finds itself competing with Microsoft, which uses the PowerPC architecture spurned by Apple in the upcoming Xbox 360. Here?s BusinessWeek?s Peter Burrows: ?Intel could provide Apple with a technology tool kit to create a greater variety of trailblazing consumer products. One possibility: a device for playing music and home movies ? like the MediaCenter PCs championed by Microsoft, but with Apple?s trademark elegance and ease of use.?
Then there are the pundits who can?t help but gloat about the fact that they?ve been predicting this for years. Our fave has to be PC Mag?s John Dvorak, who starts his latest column by declaring that ?[t]oday?s announcement that Apple will be phasing itself to the Intel architecture comes as no surprise to this writer since it?s simply a smart move. ... It?s not a secret that I have been suggesting that Apple do this through most of the 1990?s and most recently in 2001.? At the end of the column, Dvorak includes links to his previous Macintel columns, ending with the boast that ?I?m around 90-percent right in a lot of this?good reading.?
Finally, we have to give Robert X. Cringely some cred for going out on a limb and saying that he sees this as a precursor to Intel buying Apple to take on Microsoft. ?So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS.? While we agree that both Intel and Apple have, er, issues with Microsoft, we don?t see this happening. For one thing, we couldn?t imagine Steve Jobs entrusting his beloved Mac to a company that thought that the Dot.Station could be an alternative to PCs.
Of course, the big question for most of us is still whether to wait for the new Intel boxes or to buy now. Based on the comments on our Ask Engadget on buying a new Mac vs. waiting, it looks like most of you agree with what has rapidly become conventional wisdom: If you need a Mac now, buy a Mac now. By the time the new boxes come out, you?ll be ready to upgrade anyhow. As tempting as it is to try to wait for that 3 GHz P4 PowerBook, we?d have to agree ? unless, that is, we can score a
bootleg copy of OS X for Intel and install it on an 3 GHz box today.
The Wall Street Journal – What Apple?s Intel-Chip Switch Means
The New York Times – What?s Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance
BusinessWeek – Tougher Days,
Bolder Apple
PC Magazine – The Mac-Intel Computer, Finally!
PBS – Going for Broke