I’ve been moving at a pretty good personal clip lately and in combination with an exhaustive work schedule have not had a chance to put my thoughts down regarding the move to Intel. In short, I think it rocks!
I bought the previous lines from various keynotes on the benefits of RISC over CISC and saw the bottleneck demonstrations, the burning bunnyman etc. All that was great and yet even with the reality distortion effect in full effect, I was still left wanting more. Clearly my desire was not alone as the Apple shift to Intel hardware will enable a much greater capability within existing hardware and allow for some amazing developments – some that were probably cooking, but on back burner while waiting for IBM.
Intel is about much more than the CPU… If you are just an average joe consumer, you probably have no idea, but Intel has been developing a pretty deep platform strategy that takes the various silicon sets they manufacture and enable things to work together.
The Mobility, Digital Home and Enterprise platforms are all the same places Apple has been sighting and yet been unable to break through from a mass perspective. Windows is clearly a big obstacle to mass adoption, but the hardware is bigger in my view, given the relative eco-system of products that end up getting designed to work together (below the OS level). The work that Intel has championed on the Centrino certification program for example is astonishing. You may recall they were actually quite late to the WiFi game initially, but you only hear about Centrino and Pentium-M today, not really much about Apple’s Airport – other than it’s just in there. Centrino actually goes quite a bit beyond the WiFI and is actually a set of chipsets designed to enable longer power, wireless and multimedia. These are things my Powerbook needs today. Sure it does wireless (B/G) and can handle multimedia (2-channel), but Centrino can actually bang out quite a bit more and can most likely add hours to the life of the system. If Apple offered an Intel based Powerbook today, I would immediately upgrade – well OK perhaps after I settle on the house.
On the Digital Home front, Intel is pushing and pushing hard. The AOpen device, was designed by Intel, yet is being produced by an OEM who has been able to get the benefits of several billion in R&D. That mini-clone device can bang out much more than the current mini can – all thanks to Intel’s thinking. If you combine the Mac OS, some very capable Intel hardware and of course the Apple Magic sauce – product design and marketing – and well, I think the living room will become very enabled. In fact this is the area in which I am most interested in witnessing the change. I like the mini and it can do some nice stuff. Even without an Apple 10 foot UI to make it all slick from the couch, the mini really needs more power for basic media center functions. I want more ports (check), better integrated audio (check) and video (check) and HD capabilities (check!). If this can be done today what can be coming for us within the year?
All in all, I am clearly excited at the prospect of this change. Reports from WWDC are confirming the keynote info on the ease in which applications can be ported. I can’t see the Cringely effect, with Intel acquiring Apple to fully beat the doors off of Microsoft, but I do see a very dynamic partnership. BSD, the core of OSX, has been running on Intel for more than a few years and can apparently run circles around Windows on similar platforms. MacWorld January will certainly bring some very cool announcements – especially keeping the normal Apple delivery schedule in mind to keep things on track per the WWDC Stevenote.
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