Following a Wall Street Journal report in late May that quoted anonymous sources saying such a deal was in discussion, CNet News.com reported late Friday that anonymous sources say the deal will be announced today.
If these sources are to be believed, Apple will announce that it will move its low-end machines to Intel in mid-2006, and its higher-end boxes, such as the Power Mac, would go Intel Inside a year later.
While more details are not currently available, and the companies themselves are not commenting, such a move is broadly viewed as a risky proposition for Apple, but one which may have been a long time coming.
IBM has been supplying PowerPC chips for Macs since 1994. Recent iterations, the PowerPC 970 or G5, and 980 have been delayed, and Apple has had a hard time delivering on its promises of future performance.
In June 2003, when Apple launched the G5, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said Apple would ship Mac OS machines clocking in faster than 3GHz within a year, and that did not happen.
Jobs is expected to make the announcement, or rebut it, at its World Wide Developer’s Conference, which kicks off today in San Francisco.
