InfoWorld is running an article about Intel’s finally, truly, endorsing Apple, as well as what Apple has done for Intel (among other things, helping to create a market for Intel’s Core Duo CPUs). How is Intel doing this? By giving Apple two “feature sessions” at next week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
Excerpts from the article:
Intel has put two Apple sessions at the top of its Featured Sessions list for the upcoming Intel Developer Forum. That isn’t Apple doing Intel a favor by filling a couple of empty slots in the schedule. Intel is touching a toe to that third rail for component manufacturers: Endorsement. And while people at Intel and Apple are scrambling right now to get their denials in a row, I want to drain this issue of its intrigue while at the same time highlighting its importance and pointing out that at least a little endorsement is overdue. After all, among first tier OEMs in the U.S., Apple is the only one remaining that buys CPUs exclusively from Intel. That deserves more than a cupcake. Intel should greet Steve Jobs’ visits to the Intel campus by scattering rose petals before him.
Steve Jobs has been lionizing Intel for over a year. He and Apple’s PR and Marketing have been making public mockery of Apple’s PowerPC systems as they’re replaced by x86, even though some of those PowerPC boxes were fewer than six months old at the time of their replacement. Apple redesigned Macs’ packaging and on-line collateral to play up Intel’s logo and technology. Although the story has never been told, Jobs (certainly not single-handedly) brought Apple to the brink of meltdown to ship Intel Macs way ahead of schedule, seizing the opportunity presented by Core Duo, a CPU that Intel had relegated to the low-volume embedded market. Apple created a broad market among Intel notebook OEMs for Core Duo.
With this trial balloon with sessions at IDF, Intel is playing favorites, just a little, with its poster OEM. For me, that passes the sniff test and looks like good business. Intel is giving Apple some fraction of its due and is creditably being completely open about it.