There's been rumours lately that Apple might be able to get its first
x86 Mac out by January 2006, ahead of its original projections of May
2006. This story doesn't seem to think that it's going to be ahead of
schedule. Also it's mentioned that there are both engineering *and*
sales teams assigned from both companies to each other. This is the sort
of treatment Intel reserves for major corporate customers, of which
Apple now seems to be one.

IGM: Apple Transition Team at Intel
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=5496

Yousuf Khan

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:49:56 -0500, Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>There's been rumours lately that Apple might be able to get its first
>x86 Mac out by January 2006, ahead of its original projections of May
>2006. This story doesn't seem to think that it's going to be ahead of
>schedule. Also it's mentioned that there are both engineering *and*
>sales teams assigned from both companies to each other. This is the sort
>of treatment Intel reserves for major corporate customers, of which
>Apple now seems to be one.
>
>IGM: Apple Transition Team at Intel
>http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=5496
>
> Yousuf Khan

If the rumors about Dell finally going AMD are true, Steve may aim to
take over Mike's place of the last Intel-only "major" (I guess AAPL
volume is less than 10% of DELL) 1st(???!!!) tier PC vendor
;p
NNN

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> If the rumors about Dell finally going AMD are true, Steve may aim to
> take over Mike's place of the last Intel-only "major" (I guess AAPL
> volume is less than 10% of DELL) 1st(???!!!) tier PC vendor
> ;p
> NNN

It might actually be less expensive for Intel to do it that way. If
Intel cuts Dell loose, it doesn't have to pay for all of those "special"
discounts anymore. It can give all of those special discounts to Apple
instead, and because Apple is so much smaller than Dell, the overall
amount spent on the discounts will be much less for Intel. Plus, Intel
gets a partner with a better name recognition. I hate to say it, but
this makes it extremely unlikely that Apple will go with AMD after this.
Though Jobs is more likely to be heavy-handed in his negotiations with
Intel, and therefore more likely to go with an alternative supplier like
AMD, it doesn't seem likely that Intel will want to let go of Apple.

Yousuf Khan

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:14:47 -0500, Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>> If the rumors about Dell finally going AMD are true, Steve may aim to
>> take over Mike's place of the last Intel-only "major" (I guess AAPL
>> volume is less than 10% of DELL) 1st(???!!!) tier PC vendor
>> ;p
>> NNN
>
>It might actually be less expensive for Intel to do it that way. If
>Intel cuts Dell loose, it doesn't have to pay for all of those "special"
>discounts anymore. It can give all of those special discounts to Apple
>instead, and because Apple is so much smaller than Dell, the overall
>amount spent on the discounts will be much less for Intel. Plus, Intel
>gets a partner with a better name recognition. I hate to say it, but
>this makes it extremely unlikely that Apple will go with AMD after this.
>Though Jobs is more likely to be heavy-handed in his negotiations with
>Intel, and therefore more likely to go with an alternative supplier like
>AMD, it doesn't seem likely that Intel will want to let go of Apple.
>
> Yousuf Khan

If Apple manages locking down the OS to Apple-only hardware, there
will be no embarrassing side-by side comparisons of A64 wiping the
floor with twice more expensive P4EE.
Besides, it's doubful that any major Apple customer would ask tough
questions such as "Why you don't offer Opteron servers? Do you want me
to go acrosss the street to HP?" While Apple may offer multi-socket
servers (at least, AFAIR, they used to), they probably have only one
customer of noticeable size for these, and that customer is...
....keep scrolling...
....
AAPL

NNN

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> If Apple manages locking down the OS to Apple-only hardware, there
> will be no embarrassing side-by side comparisons of A64 wiping the
> floor with twice more expensive P4EE.

Yeah, but there is still a way to directly compare Apple to something
else. Just install a non-locked OS, such as Windows or Linux. Apple has
said that they won't prevent anyone from installing Windows on their
machines (and I assume that means Linux too).

> Besides, it's doubful that any major Apple customer would ask tough
> questions such as "Why you don't offer Opteron servers? Do you want me
> to go acrosss the street to HP?" While Apple may offer multi-socket
> servers (at least, AFAIR, they used to), they probably have only one
> customer of noticeable size for these, and that customer is...
> ...keep scrolling...
> ...
> AAPL

Yeah, the average Apple flowerchild doesn't know or care what servers
do. However, even if they don't ask why there's no Opterons, they might
indeed ask why there aren't any Athlons or Turions, or even Semprons.

It's possible that as Apple customers get used to lower prices, they
might be demanding even lower prices later.

Yousuf Khan

Apple traditionally prefers compact cases with no room for massive (or
noisy) heatsinks. The current AMD line of cool-running 90nm CPUs
would seem ideal for Apple's traditional packaging purposes. Intel
will not have production quantities of its next cool-running desktop
CPUs until the end of 2006, a year after Apple will have to have
frozen its x86 packaging.

It is a puzzlement.

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:14:47 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:

> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>> If the rumors about Dell finally going AMD are true, Steve may aim to
>> take over Mike's place of the last Intel-only "major" (I guess AAPL
>> volume is less than 10% of DELL) 1st(???!!!) tier PC vendor
>> ;p
>> NNN
>
> It might actually be less expensive for Intel to do it that way. If
> Intel cuts Dell loose, it doesn't have to pay for all of those "special"
> discounts anymore. It can give all of those special discounts to Apple
> instead, and because Apple is so much smaller than Dell, the overall
> amount spent on the discounts will be much less for Intel.

Intel would trade Dell's volumes for Apple's? That doesn't sound like a
good idea (though neither is Itanic .

> Plus, Intel
> gets a partner with a better name recognition. I hate to say it, but
> this makes it extremely unlikely that Apple will go with AMD after this.
> Though Jobs is more likely to be heavy-handed in his negotiations with
> Intel, and therefore more likely to go with an alternative supplier like
> AMD, it doesn't seem likely that Intel will want to let go of Apple.

This is going to be interesting to watch. Jobs is rather good at the
negotiation table.

--
Keith

Keith wrote:
> Intel would trade Dell's volumes for Apple's? That doesn't sound like a
> good idea (though neither is Itanic .

Yes, that's exactly my point, it's precisely because of Dell's volumes
that Intel might want to cut it loose! If it's starting to lose money on
Dell, then those high volumes would be a *bad* thing for Intel. Large
volumes and positive numbers, give you large positive numbers. However,
large volumes and negative numbers, give you large negative numbers!
With Apple's small numbers, if it loses money on Apple, then it'll lose
much less money than it would've with Dell.

Yousuf Khan

On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 01:48:23 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:

> Keith wrote:
>> Intel would trade Dell's volumes for Apple's? That doesn't sound like a
>> good idea (though neither is Itanic .
>
> Yes, that's exactly my point, it's precisely because of Dell's volumes
> that Intel might want to cut it loose! If it's starting to lose money on
> Dell, then those high volumes would be a *bad* thing for Intel. Large
> volumes and positive numbers, give you large positive numbers. However,
> large volumes and negative numbers, give you large negative numbers!
> With Apple's small numbers, if it loses money on Apple, then it'll lose
> much less money than it would've with Dell.

I can't imagine them voluntarily losing money on *any* customer. Are you
saying that Dell isn't paying at least the marginal cost of Intel
products? That sounds like an anti-trust action waiting to happen.

--
Keith

> Yousuf Khan

Keith wrote:
> I can't imagine them voluntarily losing money on *any* customer. Are you
> saying that Dell isn't paying at least the marginal cost of Intel
> products? That sounds like an anti-trust action waiting to happen.
>

Hmmm...

:-)

Yousuf Khan