Apple pushes Intel into new direction

Eh, combustion, sorry...

Amen to that.

If you look at Apple's marketshare not based on platform, but as a company, it is quite significant. I'm really glad that this partnership has become one of mutual benefit beyond the financial dimension.

Sounds romantic.

Exactly.

Why is everybody compairing Apple (A single company) to the entire PC Market? It's like this, just because 20 companies all have Window$ compatability, that doesn't make them ONE company.

Dang, most cars use internal cumbustion engines, that doesn't make them all manufactured by GM.

Surely Apple is NOT one of Intel's smallest vendors in the computer space. That only works if you're comparing to the PC market as a whole. As a single customer, Apple as a multibillion-dollar corporation would be quite large. And, unlike companies like Dell, Apple would seem far less likely to abandon Intel for AMD. I'd want to keep them happy.

1) Apple might be one of Intel's smallest customers, but they might also be/coming to be one of the best known customers. Tech sites have made a big deal about the switch to Intel, which is publicity for Intel, and there were those Apple Intel adverts.

This can only be good for Intel and every other company that use Intel chips. They will now hopefully produce chips which run faster, run cooler and use less power. Also lets hope that ie graphics get much, much better!!!

I'm not shocked by this. Intel has been trying to push the PC hardware landscape away from the legacy technologies for a long time (USB and EFI amingst other tech) and Apple was the first major computer manufacturer to rely on and push USB as the only way to do things and they're the first, or amongst the first, to ship a computer with the EFI spec, sure it is arguable if it is better than Open Firmware, but its now out there.

Maybe they're going to integrate decent GPUs in their motherboards?

I find it difficult to believe that one of Intel's smallest customers will drive them but of course if they see that Apple's predicted path makes sense for their business then it can only be good news for the Mac world.