In some shocking news Apple has decided to stop using IBM powerPC chips, and wants to switch over to Intel in the future:
Apple has used IBM’s PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel’s chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
The announcement is expected Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech. The conference would be an appropriate venue: Changing the chips would require programmers to rewrite their software to take full advantage of the new processor.
IBM, Intel and Apple declined to comment for this story.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Apple was considering switching to Intel, but many analysts were skeptical citing the difficulty and risk to Apple.
That skepticism remains. “If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned,” said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. “I don’t know that Apple’s market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers” and more software partners, he said.
Apple successfully navigated a switch in the 1990s from Motorola’s 680×0 line of processors to the Power line jointly made by Motorola and IBM. That switch also required software to be revamped to take advantage of the new processors’ performance, but emulation software permitted older programs to run on the new machines. (Motorola spinoff Freescale currently makes PowerPC processors for Apple notebooks and the Mac Mini.)
This is very sad, as one of the reasons to get an Apple was the PowerPC architecture. Now Apples will just become boring Intel boxes, I don’t see much point in getting one in the future. You may as well install OSX on any random beige box.
Switching to Intel would really mean the end of an era & the end of choice. Sad news, sad news indeed 
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