If Intel and Apple merge, that’s my vote for the new name. ;-)

Cringely has some thoughts, but I think he’s mostly wrong, in part due to his misunderstanding of the state of technical affairs on the Apple-IBM side of things. The Altivec was only an advantage for certain applications on OS X and Apple has egg on their face by proxy due to IBM’s failure to get a 970 into a Powerbook. A commensurate feat, by the way, which Intel will have no problem with given their Centrino platform. Hannibal has some theories as to which CPUs we will see in the coming months and years in the Apple line.

Now Jobs does have that famous RDF (Reality Distortion Field) of his, but I don’t see this move as spite for IBM or an attempt to dethrone Microsoft. I see it as Apple finally moving to a platform that will allow them to garner a large amount of developers and one that opens up the possibility of multiple platforms to them (e.g. games, PDAs, servers that people might actually buy, etc). Apple is rapidly moving away from being a “computer” company and turning into a media services company. As such, they need a platform that is sufficiently flexible in order to provide the proper experience for customers. Sticking with IBM means that they are letting IBM call the shots on that score. I’m guessing Jobs no longer considers that acceptable.

I’m guessing they don’t really care about the Osbourne Effect because there are actually two types of people that won’t buy until the Intel’s come out:

• Those upgrading from a PPC-based Mac
• Those who have lost their last excuse to move off of Windows

My guess is that Apple will take the loss of some sales now to increase the overall sales and power of the Apple line by garnering a good customer base of people who are aggravated with Microsoft, but not so much so to switch to Linux. So, in that sense, Mr. Cringely, announcing this a year early does make sense without a merger. Apple is spotting disgruntled Windows users a year to come up with the loot to make the switch to a Mac with a guilt-free conscience.