Apple Joins the Intel Empire?

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal broke a story about Apple, which is allegedly considering Intel as a chip supplier for Apple systems. The Mac Observer has good commentary on what this story really means; the Observer said it's not an accident that the WSJ "leaked" a story about negotiations between Apple and Intel.

This is about getting IBM to perform better in its chip-building role for Apple. Macs are powered by the PowerPC line of chips, developed here in Austin at an Apple-Motorola-IBM startup called Somerset. A great article about Apple's embrace of IBM's chips 10 years ago is up at the bott.org site, a "museum space" donated by the supplier of Mac and iPod accessories and products Dr. Bott. My latest favorite Bott product (they distribute, not make most of what they sell) is the SmartWrap, a bit of plastic you wrap your iPod earphones' cord around. My iPod experience always starts with a minute or so of untangling my earphone cord. Apparently, this is a common beginning.

If Intel does replace IBM as a chip supplier, then Apple takes one more step closer to the Wintel Empire. Some Mac users lust for the day when Apple will make a Windows computer, and join the Empire. The dark side of the force is quicker, more seductive. They miss the point — the Mac experience is built around an operating environment that's safer. Bring any part of the wild Windows community into the Mac's low-virus sanctuary and you've introduced the tangle of viral checkers and spam nests. If I don't have enough time to untangle my iPod cords, I definitely don't have time enough to unmuck my Apple computer that runs Windows.

I hope the Journal story aids Apple's ploy to press IBM for better chip development. I think of us Mac folks as the Bespin mining colony, the Cloud City of computing, "small enough not to be noticed" by the Empire, as Lando Calrissian said in The Empire Strikes Back.