apple moving to x86

[Vulpes Velox]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 12:57:11 -0700
Freddie Cash <fcash-ml at sd73.bc.ca> wrote:

> On June 9, 2005 12:43 pm, you wrote:
> > Freddie Cash <fcash-ml at sd73.bc.ca> writes:
> > > If they went with AMD processors, then they would have to either
> > > build or find someone to build a chipset.
> 
> > FYI, AMD makes chipsets.
> 
> Yes, and some nices ones at that, especially on the server side
> (our new dual-Opteron boards use AMD 8xxx chipsets).  But they
> don't make motherboards, they don't make audio/video chipsets, they
> don't make ethernet chips, and they don't sell everything all
> nicely packaged up as a single "platform".
> 
> I'm not saying that's definitely why Apple went with Intel.  But it
> does make sense, if you think about it for a bit.  Going with Intel
> gives Intel a place to show off their "complete platform
> solutions", and gives Apple a single configuration to code for.
> Going with AMD would require too much work on Apple's part to get
> everything working together, and would be a pain to certify the
> hardware configurations as "Designed for Apple".

Just did a quick search and it looks like AMD does make some ethernet
hardware. But video and and audio would be a problem.
 
> This way, they just say that MacOS X will only run on Centrino2
> laptops, whatever the desktop equivalent of Centrino will be
> called, and they're done.  Intel takes care of the hard parts for
> them.