[symphonix]

I guess this thread really got off topic quickly. And who would really be surprised.

The real question we ended up asking ourselves with the announcement of the Intel transition was "Why?". How would the transition benefit Apple in the future.

A number of reasons were suggested. One is that IBM simply weren't delivering on promised performance and wattage targets. Another was that the "roadmap" for Intel's processors was in some way better.

DRM was cited as another possibility, though based on Apple's past history and privacy conscious customer-base its not a real likelihood. There are many many ways of using DRM technologies that don't require a processor transition and if DRM were a factor there would be easier ways to go about it.

So what else could it be? The "roadmap" that Intel and Apple must have discussed surely offerred Apple a lot of really compelling and worthwhile new possibilities ... possibilities that they have been working on for at least five years.

Intel's newly released VIIV chips are rumoured to contain many media possibilities, including TV, digital radio and cable interfaces. And rumours I've been getting from Apple sources for the past couple of years have all pointed towards an effort to produce full entertainment-centre type appliances. There have been a lot of companies working in this direction recently, but none has really succeeded. Tivo is the best known, though they've been seeing slowing sales. M$'s next XBox was supposed to come into this area as well ... though it looks like it will launch without meeting the requirements for features and price point (the low end 360 does not have a hard drive, none are likely to have a DVD writer at launch, and the price point for a 360 capable of these tasks is likely to be far too high).

So, I'd conclude that the "Entertainment Centre" is one thing on Apples roadmap that just happened to match up with what Intel was offering. But that is just the beginning of the reasons ...