by , 10:00 AM EDT, August 6th, 2003
The Edmonton Journal (via Canada.com) has posted an in-depth interview with Pat Gelsinger, Intel's senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO). The interview covers many topics relating to Mr. Gelsinger and his position at Intel, but the discussion briefly takes a detour into things Macintosh. He is asked to compare Apple's market to Intel's, and is later asked whether Steve Jobs made the right choice in choosing IBM's G5, and what Intel could offer instead. From Canada.com:
Q. Did Steve Jobs make the right chip decision, choosing IBM for his upcoming G5 processor, or will Apple be missing out on some pretty hot Intel technology.
A. I think Steve Jobs has made the wrong CPU choice for 20 years, he just added a few more years to the life of his bad decisions. Steve's not an illogical guy, he's passionate and opinionated about the directions he wants is a poor path for the company as well as a poor path for the users.
Q. What do Intel chips have to offer?
A. Our chips would help Apple could find ways to open up more applications for themselves, a broader set of products, we have Centrino mobile products that are stunningly good. I don't think it's a good decision for Apple or for their customers, but they've done a good job of turning the company back around at the same time so you can't discount all the things that they're doing and all the decisions they've made.
You can read the full article at the Canada.com Web site.
Of course, the end result of what he wants is that Apple be just another box maker duking it out with Dell on the x86 platform. While that might make sense from Intel's perspective, it completely ignores the reality of the way Apple is competing today. Apple's sole basis for competition today is having differentiated itself as a maker of integrated solutions that work. Hawking Centrino PowerBooks with last year's WiFi technology and an emasculated mobile Pentium leaves little opportunity for differentiation.
That said, some of his ideas and visions are interesting and worth a read.