Apple has benefited greatly among its user community from the [[psychology]] of "[[Think Different|thinking different]]." Many Apple users for example, have enjoyed the ready availability of a consumer desktop that was completely separated from the "[[Wintel]]" alliance. Those often very technically-inclined users, nowand feelads betrayedclaiming bythe anPowerPC Applearchitecture thatas hassuperior apparentlyhad soldbeen itsa soul.key Userspart expressof whatApple toadvertising [[IBMfor PC|PC]]many advocatesyears. seem relatively insignificant fears, e.g.With that Appleseparation will include the "[[Intel Inside]]" logo on the computergone, butmany thislongtime isMac reallyusers thehave surfaceexpressed viewfear of a deeper foreboding that the Intel supertanker will simply crush the minnowabout Apple.'s That the latter might become a "[[me too]]" vendor of PCsfuture, particularlyand ifwhether Apple is buying the complete system from Intel and not simply the main's [[Centralbrand processing unit|CPUidentity]],haswill echosbe of the gradual decline of other companies previously involved with Intelpreserved. These arguably include [[Silicon Graphics]], [[BeOS]], as well as NeXTSTEP itself. A sourceSome of chips from AMD would have retained the performancefears crownexpressed andinclude allowed the naysayers to remain on-board.
* forced usage of the [[Intel Inside]] marketing campaign, including the [[decal]]s and [[jingle]];
This suggests that the purchasing [[demographic]] of the company's machinery might change from that of technical users now turning to [[Linux]] or a [[BSD]] which they can use on any preferred configuration, while consumers increasingly disillusioned with Windows' repeated security scares rotate towards Apple as the most obvious desktop alternative. It is likely that the latter demographic represents a much larger market than the former.
* concerns about the x86 [[instruction set]], and whether it will affect system stability and application quality;
* the possibility of Windows running natively on Macs; and
* the early announcement of the change causing an [[Osborne effect]].
FinallyThe therePowerPC's isbenefits, theboth supposedreal cleanerand architectureperceived, have been at the heart of the PowerPCdebate. Advocates of this architecture suggest that x86 has succeeded in the marketplace by sheer strength of [[research and development]] cash, rather than because it isfrom an inherently better design. Moreover, they suggest that a large amount of historical baggage is carried around by x86 for [[backwards compatibility]] reasons that isn't needed by Apple. Others counter that whilst the demonstration machine was a [[Pentium 4]], at no point did Jobs say that x86 would be the final deployed chiparchitecture. Also,Still argumentsothers aboutsay that the cleanliness of [[RISC]] vs [[CISC]]debate is moot thesebecause days, since even CISC designs are RISC atof the core. Nevertheless PowerPC advocates are having to eat a certain amountcross-pollination of [[humble pieRISC]] at the precise moment at which PowerPC seemed to be in the ascendent with even Microsoft choosing it forand [[XBox 2CISC]].Itconcepts mayover bethe thatpast sincedecade, Microsoftand wasthat sowhile ambitiousx86 inhas cultivating alternative chip suppliers in AMD andits IBMdownsides, thatfew Intelpeople madewill Appleever ansee impossible-to-refusethem offerbecause soalmost asall tomachine cultivatecode anis alternativenow operatinggenerated systemby supplier..[[compiler]]s.
