It’s been quite interesting to see all the different press and viewpoints about Apple’s recent move to use Intel chips. I’ve saved what I think are the most interesting links to mull over, with some of my own comments on them.

The most level-headed piece on the subject comes from The Register, where Tony Smith wonders what all the fuss is about. He points out, correctly, that “most of the components that go into [a Mac] are already coming straight out of the wider Wintel world, and have been since Apple began ditching proprietary specifications like NuBus and ADB, and expensive standards like SCSI, in favour of USB, Firewire, UItra ATA, Serial ATA, PCI and AGP.” The operating system is, as it always has been, a far greater distinction between Mac and Windows than the underlying chip.

Along the same line, Chris Seibold at Apple Matters advises people not to wait for a Macintel and just buy the computer you need today, as you always ought to, and further points out that the move is primarily to support low-energy laptops, and that “there is no indication that by waiting you’re going to get any performance boost. It is, in fact, plausible that the first generation of Intel powered PowerMacs will outperformed by the machines they replace.” So buy that iMac G5 if that’s what you need now; why wait a year?

Paul Murphy at ZDNet agrees that a move away from PowerPC to another chip was necessary, but can’t believe that Apple went with Intel chips instead of Sun’s low-power, multi-core Niagra chip. He finishes with this thought: “And remember one thing: what you just did? Nobody at IBM is going to call a board meeting over it—but a Sun alliance? That would be different.”

The wildest speculation came from Robert X. Cringley, who believes that Apple and Intel will merge. Ha ha! What is this guy smoking? I’m not sure…it might actually be Clairvoyant Genius Menthols. Gulp. The strongest evidence in favor of this conspiracy theory is his “Question 4” in the article, “Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?…This announcement has to cost Apple billions in lost sales as customers inevitably decide to wait for Intel boxes.” Why would Apple voluntarily take such a financial hit, he wonders, unless there was another reason?

John Gruber at Daring Fireball disputes this prognostication, pointing out that “in any hypothetical scenario where Apple gets bought by a larger company, the first question you need to answer where do you put Steve Jobs. He is not a second-in-command sort of guy.”

One of the most chilling links is this one, that forecasts the future by examining the past, a generally sound approach. Intel’s role in killing other companies has a sort of plausible deniability to it: they might be doing their best to save a doomed partner, rather than engaging in a sinister Machiavellian plot to link their friends’ fortunes to vaporous hardware which never materializes.

It’s also interesting to note that whether Jobs authorizes it or not, Mac OS X will run on non-Apple hardware. This opens the door to widespread piracy of OS X. I can’t tell if this will help, by introducing lots of people to OS X who wouldn’t look at it otherwise, or hurt, by killing whatever software sales are left to Apple if people buy less of their hardware.

Finally, it’s good to remember that this idea of running Mac OS on an Intel processor is an old one—it’s just taken awhile for market realities to finally cause Apple to follow through.