Apple x86 rumors

Here we are at the end of a week and Monday's story about Apple and Intel (it appears to have started in the WSJ, but was widely echoed by Reuters and AP and then everyone else) is still running around. It might not have the legs it did on the other end of the week, but it's still out there.

Why was this story out there to begin with? We may never really know.

It's a certainty that Apple talks to Intel on a continuous basis. Ignoring the circling rumors of a Mac operating system running on Intel (they were true for several years in the 90's, MacOS X originally ran well on x86 hardware and it would be no surprise to hear they keep it alive in the labs), there are several other reasons that they'd be talking and even making agreements on purchases.

• Intel has a big footprint in WiFi and is making noises in WiMax; Apple has a vested interest solving wireless connectivity as simply as possible in ever shrinking devices.
• PCI chipsets are also a really good reason to be down talking to Intel.
• USB, same basic situation. Less likely I'll admit, but if they can wrap it up with a bunch of other functionality, that could have a big payoff.
• Intel has some kind of Bluetooth chipset but I'd consider this one a lot less likely.

With all these real reasons for Apple to be doing a deal with Intel, the idea that they're going to change CPU's for their main gear in mid stream is ludicrous. Yet, the rumor is out there and deserves consideration. Assuming that some grain of truth can be attached to the rumors, what other options exist?

The tablet rumor is at least interesting. Do I buy it? Not really. A tablet would run on a slow CPU and a MacOS based tablet shipping with zero software and a really slow emulation layer would seem counter productive in the extreme. That said, I don't put it past them to do it just because they can.

The only other thing I can think of is a new device of some sort; be that a Video iPod, the mythical iPhone or some other gadget none of us have considered. And for all but video device (and perhaps even there), the XScale Processors (the successor to the StrongARM family) seem like a darned good fit.

Update: After finishing this, I finally went weeding through all the open tabs in Safari and found a post from Ask Bjørn Hansen that mentioned the XScale angle much earlier this week. One could consider this a negative aspect of long lived applications and many (far too many) open tabs in a multitude of browser windows. Virtual reading (having loaded it in a browser tab we still haven't focused on) isn't nearly the same thing as reading.