Apple and Intel | New best friends | Economist.com

Apple and Intel | New best friends | Economist.com: "A far more strategic, but very unlikely, change would be for Apple to use the Intel alliance to reconsider its basic philosophy about combining hardware and software. Tom Berquist, an analyst at Citigroup, reckons that it could try to sell its operating system “shrink wrapped” to owners of other Intel-powered computers, thus attacking the huge installed base of machines running Microsoft's Windows. As it happens, Apple's migration to Intel chips will coincide with the launch of a new version of Windows, code-named “Longhorn”, that will force many users to upgrade anyway. The main implication, however, is that the old certainties are gone. Just as Apple is embracing Intel and firing IBM, Microsoft has abandoned its old ally Intel in favour of IBM (for its consoles, that is). Suddenly, it seems, everybody is getting into bed with everybody. Think of consumer-electronics giants such as Sony, cable companies such as Comcast, or new internet powers such as Google or Yahoo! and one can imagine a lot more hugging to come."

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