Cobuyitaphobia

"Apple Switching to Intel," by pudge, Slashdot, 6 June 2005, http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/06/1752234&tid=118.

"Intel Macs," by TM Lutas, Flit(tm), June 07, 2005, http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/tmblog/archives/005430.html.

Apple is looking for synergy with Intel, an announces plans to make its Mac OS X computers run on the Intel chip. But if programs haven't been written right, it may be hard to make them work on the new machines

Steve Jobs announced at the WWDC keynote today that Apple is switching to Intel processors. MacNN has live coverage. The bottom line is that Mac OS X for the last five years has been running on Intel, the switch is expected to be complete in two years, and Rosetta will allow PPC apps to run on Intel-based Macs, transparently. If you're using Xcode, it is small changes and a recompile; otherwise, you might be seeing a lot of work ahead of you. You will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today.

Further, TM Lutas wonders if this is the end for innovation in microprocessors

One of the really good thing about Apple's hardware is that it used a reasonably sophisticated firmware system, IEEE-1275 or Open Firmware. One of the unresolved issues of the coming new hardware designs from Apple is whether they are going to continue using IEEE-1275 (and thus keep Mac OS X only for their own hardware) or they are going to also shift over to Intel's BIOS replacement, EFI which should mean that any competent EFI geek should be able to make hardware that OS X will run on. That's a big deal because it would mean that Apple sees more profit in shipping $129 boxes of OS X consumer and $999 boxes of OS X server than in shipping Xserves PowerMacs, iMacs, etc.

If this is the case, this is a huge announcement to the entire PC industry that they've been commoditized and the Dell model of cost reduction is king. Apple's exit from hardware would mean that innovation is dead as a business model for major PC manufacturers. The only point of competition would become in software and services.