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Think Secret - Intel iBook in January

Written by Philip Roy

Thursday, 17 November 2005

Think Secret recently started suggesting that pans for an Intel-based Mac were far ahead of schedule, beating all estimations of a mid-2006 first release. Now, they’re sure that we’ll see iBooks in January 2006 that include the Intel chip.

Ryan Katz, Senior Editor with Think Secret speculates that Apple will release entry-level iBook laptops with Intel processors at Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

There are many interesting aspects to the rumour and the fact that the speculation of a first release is so more advanced than anyone first thought after Apple announced the plan to switch processors.

Think Secret backs the sources by saying that the informants are reliable and were responsible for reports related to the Mac mini and photo iPod previously.

Katz comments...“Rolling out a consumer system like the iBook as the first Intel Mac also makes sense from a software development standpoint........Rosetta translates PowerPC instructions on the fly to x86 instructions, allowing PowerPC programs to run on Intel Macs. The process is said to impact performance by about 30 percent versus a native binary, however. iBook customers, with presumably less demanding needs, should be more forgiving of this performance hit compared to Apple's Pro customers.”

Think Secret sources also suggest that we shouldn’t rule out other releases at the Expo but that we should expect most initial releases to be aimed at the consumer market rather than the professional one.

Katz continues...”Word that Apple will move up the debut of Intel-ready Macs by some six months from their previous announcement and that one of the first models will be the iBook is not surprising to some analysts who see the entry-level laptop as the perfect jumping off point for Apple to show how aggressive they will be with the less expensive, best selling microprocessor.”

Katz then focuses on the possible prices of the laptop and points out supporting comments from others who say that with an aggressive pricing level on many PC notebooks, Apple must also radically lower the price on these new iBooks if they do in fact materialise.