Tiger’s in the air

It’s Microsoft’s bad luck to have scheduled its TechEd conference during the same week as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The weeks preceding any performance of the Macintosh Tabernacle Choir, for which Steve Jobs is the opener, generate a slew of rumors, speculation, and misinformation.

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I always devote a column to pre-Mac-conference junk. Planting Tiger’s release just before WWDC puts matters in focus. I don’t want to come across as a chump for having missed somebody’s idea of the big picture.

The news broke as I was filing this story that Apple met with Intel to discuss having the Other Evil Empire supply chips for future Apple products. There were simultaneous yowls of betrayal and shouts from the rooftops by market analysts who said that moving to the PC commodity market is the only way Apple can compete. That last bit knocked Apple’s stock price up by 5 percent. How do these naughty rumors get started at such opportune times?

There are many compelling angles to the Apple/Intel thing. Let’s start by wondering what Apple might have gone to Intel to discuss. What does Apple manufacture or what might Apple manufacture in the future that a) runs on electricity and b) does not have a keyboard and mouse? Hmm.

Intel is into lots more than Pentium. The best thing it has going for it right now is the XScale low-power RISC microprocessor. Intel has been ratcheting up this embedded CPU for years and now has an array of XScale system-on-a-chip chips aimed at different Apples. Er, applications. You’ll find intrigue at the low end of Intel’s line with one chip that integrates cellular, Bluetooth, USB, digital camera, and color LCD panel controllers. If you want to speculate on the high side, one chip has two 10/100 Ethernet ports and support for VoIP, Ethernet switching, and wireless base station.

Might Apple sell an x86? I doubt it. Might Apple shrink-wrap OS X for PC systems? Who cares? PC OS X would fatten up developer base, and the GNU compiler’s fine with the idea. OS X could be the next OS/2, rocketing from million-seller to shelfware in the blink of an eye. But Apple would have distributed a million Mac demos, minus the ability to run existing apps, for $100 a throw.

The other pseudo-story revolves around the “leak” of an IBM technical document referring to a — big surprise now — dual-core PowerPC! The document is on the subject of thermal management, which smacks of an inside joke. The debate rages about whether the document is real or not. I have seen sloppy circuit diagrams from IBM, and no company is as likely to take a jab at the egg-frying PowerPC as IBM. Authenticity isn’t the issue. It doesn’t matter. Freescale has its dual-core 32-bit PowerPC chip in the wings, so that dual-core PowerBook (PowerPowerBook?) can’t be long off.

I’ll tell you my pet scenario: IBM leaked the details of the top-secret PowerPC 970MP processor to needle Apple into committing to a volume purchase. Apple doesn’t like to be jerked around, so it had a sit-down with Intel over cucumber sandwiches and chortled, “You must promise not to tell anybody about this.”

My point: Apple shipped a million Macs last quarter. That’s not Dell volume, but look at a Dell. Then look at a Mac. Apple’s not suffering.

One last thing: My favorite leisure read these days is the Tiger documentation. Nicely done.