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Apple bits
Following Apple's announcement of a switch to Intel-based processers on its new Macintosh computers next year at their Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, many analysts have weighed in on the move. IBM's PowerPC CPUs, have served well for the past 10 years, but recently they've been unable to compete with the faster Intel chips reports National Ledger. Some anticipate that Apple's move could hurt IBM, Market Watch reports Apple's decision may not have as great an impact on current chip supplier International Business Machines Corp. because IBM has been shifting its emphasis in recent years away from PC chips to those used to power other types of devices, especially video game players. FT agrees "Given that even Intel was tipped to see little impact from winning the Apple chip account, IBM can probably shoulder the loss easily. Apple was a relatively small customer that is almost insignificant next to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo." In the long term, the change will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it. That's because Intel's processors and other chips will give Apple more options than IBM's products could for building Macs that run faster and cooler, and have longer battery life. The first Intel-based Mac is due in spring 2006 reports AZ Central Fortune - How will it look to customers when Apple runs ads touting head-to-head comparisons for running software on OS X versus Windows on the same hardware? PC Magazine's John Dvorak speculates about this in a recent column: "This change to Intel will not only save the platform but potentially drive it into a position of dominance." That may be going too far, but clearly there's a great opportunity here.
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