Here are some sample comments made just prior to and following the official announcement, which Apple issued on Monday.
"It's a bunch of bull. Firstly, Apple certainly pays much less for IBM and Freescale processors than Intel charges for comparable chips. Probably less than half as much on average. The G5 is a smaller, more efficient chip than the Pentium 4, and IBM has no other customers willing to buy large quantities." -- Peter Glaskowsky, analyst for The Envisioneering Group
"We believe the move is risky for Apple. By switching to a more mass market processor, Apple likely risks diluting its value proposition, as it has less control over the product road map." -- Steven Fortuna, Prudential Equity Group analyst
"There's more applications available for Windows than there are on Apple. All a chip change could do is probably slow that down because maybe there would be a big disruption with your ISV (independent software vendor) community... There's more training, knowledge, management on how to implement networks. What changes? I don't know." -- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
"After this transition, Apple will have the pick of the litter of component suppliers." -- Yousuf, ZDNET.co.uk reader
"I will never buy Apple again, ever. If this is true, I am very sad. How will I get new software for my computer?" -- John Bresnahan, CNET News.com reader
"Come on people, we know you like to entertain these ideas, but it's just not going to happen. I'll eat my hat if it does." -- Adam Detzner, CNET News.com reader
"If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned. I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers." -- Nathan Brookwood, Insight 64 analyst
"This is a seismic shift in the world of personal computing and consumer electronics." -- Richard Doherty, president of The Envisioneering Group
"This is kind of like if your two best friends decided to get married and you don't know what it means. You feel sort of conflicted." -- Matthew Woolrums, conference attendee
Talkback
The only thing im scared of is having those stupid intel inside stickers all over my precious powerbook. Can you imagine it..?
I own many Apple Macintoshes, all get used from time to time, they are Macintosh Classic, SE/30, Performa 6200, iBook 466SE clamshell, iMac G3 400DV and a new G4 1.42 Mac mini. I was disappointed to find that the OS 10.3.8 installed on my mini does not boot into OS9.2 like my iMac G3 which runs OS 10.2.8, disappointing because some if my programs will not run properly or at all with the newer OS. Now I find at the end of this year and the start of next, 2006 I may well find that new programs written after that date, including any updates to the OS may not run on my machine, oh great! I have turned to Apple computers as they are (were) almost guaranteed to work with any Mac software, unlike PC based machines. (Works machines are all these, glad to get back to my Macs at home). I got fed up of buying software that needed updated to drivers just to work, if at all, life is just too short for that garbage, now it looks as though Apple will fall into this as well. May have to try LINUX again!
K. in Scotland