castanyes blaves

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Intel hates Microsoft. It hasn't always been that way, but in recent years Microsoft has abused its relationship with Intel and used AMD as a cudgel against Intel. Even worse, from Intel's standpoint Microsoft doesn't work hard enough to challenge its hardware. For Intel to keep growing, people have to replace their PCs more often and Microsoft's bloatware strategy just isn't making that happen, especially if they keep delaying Longhorn.

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I can agree with it.

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Enter Apple. This isn't a story about Intel gaining another three percent market share at the expense of IBM, it is about Intel taking back control of the desktop from Microsoft.

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Desktop? Hummm... Desktop is more about applications than chips. As an example, Apple and Adobe hit the bullet with the "postscript world" as they provided applications, or alternatively, solutions, to SMB in the typesetting and publishing market. The "postscript world" wasn't about Apple alone, but Apple's OS (and hardware) and Adobe providing it.

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Intel is fed up with Microsoft. Microsoft has no innovation that drives what Intel must have, which is a use for more processing power. And when they did have one with the Xbox, they went elsewhere.

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But yet, Intel is the choice for most of the Microsoft market.

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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. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one).

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Intel buys Apple? Steve Jobs will let Intel buy it's child? Unlikely. "Buying" or "merging" might not be the issue here.

I think that a possible scenario can be the following: Intel needs some countermeasures against Microsoft, so that when MSFT big guys go to Intel's offices to talk bussiness to Intel's big guys, Intel has good cards to put on the table. Intel wants to be a big player in the "media-in-every-room-and-every-pocket" market, or whatever you want to call it. So Intel and Apple "join forces" to provide products that Microsoft hasn't entered yet, and to compete with Microsoft directly in the desktop platform market.

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This scenario works well for everyone except Microsoft. If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft. And if they tuned the OS to take advantage of unique features that only Intel had, they would put AMD back in the box, too. Apple could return Intel to its traditional role of being where all the value was in the PC world. And Apple/Intel could easily extend this to the consumer electronics world. How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple? Not much. And if they paid in stock it would cost nothing at all since investors would drive shares through the roof on a huge swell of user enthusiasm.

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OSX for generic Intels? Unlikely. That would mean Apple loses the hardware advantage. Generic Intel with DRM-locked OSX? Very likely. Maybe the whole idea really is to extend the availability of OSX and the "cool-ipod-apple-world" to all the OEMs via the DRM-locking. That is very dangerous if not done in an imposed way, as DRM alone is nothing in itself. DRM _and_ application-locking could to the trick. And that could explain the 1-2 years in advance announcement. The imposition could be made by the HP-Dell-Intel-Apple quartet, for example.

Now, the risky predictions:

The problem with all this is that the Cell processor can easily make all these strategies fail, and wipe away all of them. The problem with the Cell processor is that it takes a lot of effort in the OS side. Maybe that's the reason that Apple sticked with Intel: it's easier to go for Intels roadmap of 64bit+embeddeds. But here is were GNU/Linux could make its entrance. Actually, there already are patches in the kernel for the Cell processor (although only in the arch). If Sony-IBM-Toshiba decide to play the GNU/Linux way with Cell, they can rule them out.

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That's the story as I see it unfolding. Steve Jobs finally beats Bill Gates. And with the sale of Apple to Intel, Steve accepts the position of CEO of the Pixar/Disney/Sony Media Company.

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Steve Jobs is having a lot of fun with Apple. He won't left it to go play with Pixar.

posted by avilella  # 2:10 PM