Transitioning From Guesswork To Analysis In Predicting Apple Product Transitions

There has been some discussion going on about the direction of Apple next new models. Speculation became rampant when the Apple CFO referred to some product transition coming up, which may squeeze profit margins.

People are trying to guess if it means a switch from Intel to AMD, some new chipset from Semi, the company that Apple acquired, some new video chipset, etc. I can see that they can be called 'trasitions' - but then, so is changing the way a power adaptor connects to the laptop. I do not see any of these as having significant enough impact to warrant the CFO warning of some lower profit margins.

My prediction is that Apple may decide to let Mac OS X run on non-Apple 'Windows/Wintel' machines (which would lower margins and be a product 'transition' at the same time).

To keep pace with, while not really price-matching the low quality fares of HP and Dell, they would also reduce their own hardware prices somewhat, but still command a premium for additional things like Semi related chips, perhaps GPS and a WWAN capability built in.

And, finally, perhaps it is time for the granddaddy of the old and defunct Apple Newton, bring in a TouchMac. A tablet style MacBook Pro with touchscreen, iPhone like functionality, and 3D display capability.

It would be cute to call them TouchBooks, but Panasonic may object based on their Toughbook trademarks. That would be tough to book as a trademark!

What do you think?

Intel Back With A Vengeance, Apple Back To High End Drawing Board

ComputerWorld (and others) have reported some interesting news items out of Intel, the erstwhile computer chipmaker.

During the last several years, it was interesting to see how Intel faced competition and where it's greatest threats came from. Instead of Intel getting beaten by PowerPC chips, that were made originally by the giants IBM, Motorola and Apple, Intel had a far rougher time competing with the brash and bold people of AMD. Now, however, the tide seems to have turned.

I have to say that intel has come back with quite a lot of steam, thunder and vengeance, or, add your own cliche' here.

I do find it amazing that Microsoft is still so far behind in helping applications and users take advantage of even the dual-core chips available today in most computers being sold today. Application makers are also not off the hook in that regard.

As usual, people are buying computers that can do far more than they can do. What I mean by that circular sentence is that the capabilities of the chips in most cases are outstripping the capabilities of the software to benefit from them.

Sure, most software products, especially image processing, speech recognition, video compression, etc. push computer CPU chips to the limit in terms of their clock speed. But, to use a bad example, that is somewhat like driving a Ferrari mostly with just one of the rear wheels, while the engine RPM nears redline.

One hopes that better use of these multi-core chips is at hand soon, before people realize that the multi-cores are not worth upgrading for.

As a MacUser I am looking forward to the Q4 release of smaller quad-core Intel chips, with QuickPath. I suspect that may be when my beloved 2003 vintage PowerBook G4 17" (whose design is still used on MacBook Pro laptops) will finally get a new shape and design.

That may also be just in time for some new battery technologies, as well as laptop sized Blue-Ray drives to become available.

That surely would be a nice toy, I mean, tool, to get in the New Year 2009.

What do you think?