Apple Confirms Intel Chip Switch

The announcement, which followed reports about the big switch across nearly all major newspapers and online technology publications this weekend following a Wall Street Journal article, means Apple will deliver Intel-powered Macintosh systems next year and have its entire line of computers running on Intel processors, and its latest Mac OS X Tiger operating system, within a year from now.

Customers in Mind

"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor road map by far," Jobs said. "It's been 10 years since our transition to PowerPC, and we think Intel's technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next 10 years."

Analysts said Apple's OS X operating system would make the transition to Intel processor technology easier, but the computer company was widely viewed as ruffling feathers among some of its developers, who had recently had to update to OS X.

"This is big for Apple," Mercury Research President Dean McCarron told TechNewsWorld. "This represents the first time they've used a significant piece of PC technology since they've been a company."

Developer Transition

Apple, which boasted software support for the move from giants such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) , indicated its future would be tied to Intel's technology, leaving behind a long and somewhat tumultuous relationship with IBM (NYSE: IBM) , which for a decade made its PowerPC chips for Apple computers.

"We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come," said a statement from Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini.

Making the announcement at its developer conference, Apple said its US$999 Developer Transition Kit was immediately available and added Intel would provide development tools for Apple later this year, including software compilers and libraries.

Good Deal

Mercury's McCarron said Apple, which has long been urged forward and cautioned against working with Intel and x86 processor architecture, likely deliberated hard on the matter before deciding to move ahead with what is a significant change in technology.

"I think they made this decision for all the right reasons," he said. "I'm sure it was a hard one to make because of the amount of change in their own infrastructure they face."

McCarron said Apple was seeking a long-term roadmap and guaranteed supply, something it apparently did not see in IBM's Power technology. The analyst said although Intel did not elaborate on the deal in a briefing, the chip giant probably gave Apple a good deal.

"Presumably, Apple is getting some fairly favorable pricing," he said.

While McCarron indicated the technology switch was favorable to Intel -- which gains a one million unit-per-quarter computer maker, and for Apple, which secures its future technology and may broaden its market -- the change does present some challenges.

"Whenever you make this big of a transition, there's some difficulty," he said.

Time Was Right

Gartner (NYSE: IT) Vice President Martin Reynolds said although there were barriers of price and performance to an Apple-Intel relationship before, conditions had changed to make a switch more favorable.

"The economics were against it in the past, so there may be something changing there," Reynolds told TechNewsWorld, referring to a deal for Apple, or performance from less expensive Intel technology that is superior to IBM's Power.

Reynolds added while the issue of porting software to the new processor platform would have been quite difficult a few years ago, Mac OS X would help pave the path.

"You could move Mac OS X to x86 without an extraordinary amount of pain," he said.