Apple Apple Apple

[geek]
Apple “news” sites are going crazy predicting all kinds of crazy things (or not) for January given the smallest tiny bit of info from their “sources.” Anyways, here’s what I see as the possibilities:

iBook (maybe Mac Mini too) released in January with Yonah chips. Either Apple is going to be okay with the iBooks performing better than the PowerBooks (which will be a strange situation and especially not ideal from a marketing stance) or they are going to cripple the iBook’s Yonah chip (disable one core and/or clock it down a few hundred Hz). If the iBooks are crippled, the rest of the PC industry is leaving them in the dust again performance wise because they won’t cripple their batch of Yonahs in their laptops.

iBook and PowerBook lines released in January with Yonah chips. Somewhat trivial distribution of the different versions of the chips to the iBook/PowerBooks (slower two or three to the iBook, faster two or three to the PowerBook). This seems somewhat rushed, but I don’t think it’d be impossible. It wouldn’t be too hard to take essentially Intel’s reference design and slap Apple casing around it. Doesn’t coincide with many of the rumors going around as well…

No Intel parts this January. Apple is left in the dust as far as Yonah laptops go. I think there was a press release or something from either Apple or Intel indicating that Apple wanted to be one of the first to use Yonah, but I’m not entirely confident on the validity of it. If Apple wants to use Yonah, I don’t doubt that Intel promised them a good quantity of the initial batch in order to “win them over.” Though, I might take that back because I’m not entirely sure how much Intel really cares about Apple business (they’re insanely small compared to the rest of the PC industry that buys from Intel). Perhaps they care more about not letting Apple go with AMD than with the actual money Apple would bring them… shrug

Just PowerBook? This would be nice I suppose, but again… there’s not much indicating this is going to happen… most of the buzz has been around the iBook switching to Intel first.

If Apple were to wait for Merom, they’d be able to go entirely 64-bit x86, which would be nice and I think coincide with their mid-year switch to Intel. I’m sure Apple would put a nice spin to that as well as the rest of the PC industry would still be hunkered down with 32-bit x64. Since Apple is making the transition from PPC to x86, a directly transition to 64-bit x86 would be one of those “might as well” type of things. If Yonah laptops were released, it is somewhat silly to have to support 32-bit x86 just because of the first gen of either the iBook or PowerBook (and if Yonah laptops are released, perhaps this is a good reason to NOT buy first gen). If Apple waits for Merom, that means that first half of next year, expect not much from the Apple portables as they will become very very stale…

I forsee the desktop Macs (except for maybe the Mini, especially with Intel’s Viiv stuff) making the Intel transition the last. And, I expect the new Mac Mini (NEW new, not a little revision) to be aimed at the entertainment hub crowd. Maybe the Mini will make the transition first?…

That’s it for now. =) [/geek]