Intel Macs may come out sooner?

Don't know if this is old news since it's from 07 Nov 2005

Apple could unveil Intel-based Mac Mini In January

Investment Research raised his price target and earnings estimates for Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) and maintained a "buy" rating on the company after checks revealed strong sales of the new video iPod and iMac G5.

"We believe sales of new iPods are picking up steam into calendar year-end, with new video iPod sales stronger than we expected," said Reitzes. "Also, we believe that the story has more legs as the 'iPod hand-off' to the Mac story continues to takes shape."

The analyst said Apple would introduce more video content and digital entertainment offerings at Macworld in January, helping to drive shares. Checks also indicate that the company may be ready to launch lower-end Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people )-based Macs earlier than its original June 2006 target, with the possibility of an Intel-based Mac Mini at Macworld.

Reitzes raised his first-quarter 2006 earnings per share estimate for Apple to 53 cents from 50 cents. He raised fiscal 2006 and 2007 EPS estimates to $1.85 and $2.18, respectively, from $1.78 and $2.08. He raised the price target to $74 from $65.

http://www.vnunet.com/forbes/news/2145694/apple-unveil-intel-mac-mini

Ya, most of the rumor mills have picked up on this as well.....

So, the PPC Mini's were released in Jan 05, and the refurbs started showing up in Sep/Oct 05.

Hopefully, the Intel Mini's will get released in Jan 06, and the refurbs will come online in Sep./Oct. 06.

I honestly don't think Intel will be able to supply Apple with enough processors the very month they are released to do this. The only way it'll happen is if Apple simply puts in a regular Pentium-M and lets it go there. Besides, if the mini is dual core and everything else EXCEPT the PowerMac is single core, isn't it going to look a bit bad if your bottom of the line computer beats your top of the line laptop in overall speed (the Rosetta issue remains to be seen)?

I expect the Mini will use something like the Sonoma chip, not a dual core, maybe even the Celeron M - who knows.

Vicky

I'd really be shocked if Apple released any Intel Macs in January. Unless of course it's to announce them with a ship date months off.

I've heard that they are now looking into clockwork technology and are planning on releasing a wind up mac mini very soon, sooner than you think, maybe tomorrow !!!!

It'd be nice if the came out early. I'm looking at a new laptop for january-- an intel ibook or powerbook would be just the ticket.

Meyvn said:

I honestly don't think Intel will be able to supply Apple with enough processors the very month they are released to do this. The only way it'll happen is if Apple simply puts in a regular Pentium-M and lets it go there. Besides, if the mini is dual core and everything else EXCEPT the PowerMac is single core, isn't it going to look a bit bad if your bottom of the line computer beats your top of the line laptop in overall speed (the Rosetta issue remains to be seen)?

Click to expand...

What leads you to believe that Intel could not supply enough chips? My opinion is that they will have no problem supplying chips. They are the largest producer of microprocessors, and Apple will occupy only a small portion of their output.

Also, I would not expect the mini to be dual core. The mini was designed to be the "$500 Mac," and many of Intel's dual core chips cost a great deal more than $500.

That would be cool, but I'm still hoping that the Intel processor will be exclusive to Apple, so that might be a manufacturing time problem.
If they were to use a straight-up Celeron, then you could install MacOS on any Intel-based machine. This could potentially put Apple's hardware production out of buisness.

Using a customised Apple Pentium/Celeron part negates one of the big reasons for switching to Intel - supply.

And also relative cheapness...

It will most likely be done by a trusted computing based verification IC, or some kind of ROM code.

Potentially something like the old-world ROMs in 68K Macs and early Power Macs that had a little bit of the Mac OS stored in ROM so without it - you didn't have a Mac .

Maybe the Mach kernel will be placed in ROM.

Who knows, it's all conjecture.

Best to wait and see what Apple delivers rather than second guessing for the tomorrow.

Vicky

Good point...

Read this http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024180,39235916,00.htm

jram said:

Read this http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024180,39235916,00.htm

Click to expand...

Mac OS X x86 also runs on the AMD platform.
That was in that article, pretty interesting!

Yes, that's not new. Apple has been working with the protection on OSX with each new version for Intel and apparently the Intel 10.4.3 version is pretty robust. If you can bust it, it'll run on both Intel and AMD, busting it will be the hard part. Supposedly Apple is working on tying the OS to the hardware, much as they had for the PPC, so getting OSX to isntall on any Intel/AMD clone box may not be so easy in the end.

It will be an interesting battle to watch and see. Apple is only going to crack down more and more and tighten up the OS to the hardware.

baggss said:

It will be an interesting battle to watch and see. Apple is only going to crack down more and more and tighten up the OS to the hardware.

Click to expand...

Yeah...and I can foresee the long and eventually fruitless war that will be played between the crackers/hackers and Apple. They'll tighten...some enterprising chap will figure out a way 'round it, they'll fix that...then someone leak information how to get in another way...wash rinse and repeat...

But here's the good part. While there will always be some hacked version out there, it will never work as well as the full supported versions, and could conceivably be set to "phone home" and stop working when it finds a problem (like non Apple HW). But the fact that it will be out there will be a boon for Apple. There will always be the segment that won't buy a Mac on principle alone, and that's fine. In effect however, this may end up being some sort of free look, for those fence sitters that want to try OSX without buying a Mac. You can get the hobbled and hacked version if you know where, but you can buy a Mac and have the real thing.

Good point.