Hanibal zeigt die andere Seite der John Siracusa Analyse und stellt Intels Roadmap vor und wie sie zu Apple passt: Hell freezes over; it must’ve been the liquid cooling: Hannibal on the Apple-to-Intel transition.

Er spricht genau die Fragen an, die bei noch unklar waren — also was bietet Intel in Zukunft — aber auch “Why Intel and not AMD?”:

Considering that Apple makes the whole widget, their decision to go with Intel makes sense in terms of Intel’s platformization approach. Intel can give Apple a package deal that includes a feature-rich chipset and a competitive CPU, and they can do it in volumes and at prices that are beyond AMD’s capabilities.

Klingt schlüssig. Besonders gefallen hat mir die Analyse der PPC-Mythology:

As of the PowerPC-to-Intel transition, Apple fans will no longer have PowerPC and RISC as a sort of spiritual power center for energizing the user base. If Apple as a brand is to retain any of the technological exoticism, mystique, and open elitism of the PowerPC era, it is going to have to find some other way to fill that hole in its mythology. With the loss of the “inner geek” that represents a core component of Apple’s overall brand identity, the company risks becoming yet another “me too” PC vendor, like Dell, Gateway, HP, etc. Of course, they also risk selling many more computers, but if they decide that it’s important to them to continue to turn their user base’s “geek knobs” then they’ll have to find a substitute for PowerPC.

Wobei ich mir nicht sicher bin ob es so drastisch ist. Auch wenn man es gerne einbildet, Apples Zielgruppe sind nunmal nicht Geeks. Wenn man “As Seen On Tv” glauben möchte.