[censored], you make number two look better than number one. Now, your primary processor supplier hasnt hit their numbers consistently, they've missed their roadmap, they're not producing in a decent quantity, and they're making you look bad. You need to step up and shine it on by picking a new processor to be the core of your hardware. Do you pick the first string player, who you know can deliver, or the second string player, hoping they can step up?

When your business, your hardware, your company's future, and the employment of all your people, hang in the balance, you dont bet on good enough. You call Paul Otellini, and say, "Paul? Steve. Lets move on this. It'll be good for both our companies." Then, once the little people have worked out the details, you get together and sign the contracts over latte's and biscotti.

So yeah, thats how I see it, course, I'm always subject to being wrong. But, had I been in steve's position, I probably would have done the same thing. Course, I also would have cashed out some of his stock to buy a Maserati MC12, but thats again, all me

Is there any possibility apple might ever start developing chips?
IBM is a computer builder and also develops processors....
why doesn't apple?

Apple will probably never get into the chip market for the same reason they and microsoft, for that matter, wouldnt get into the car market. It would involve millions in developing research, and manufacturing infrastructures to develop a freshman product for a mature market that already has primary players. In short, they'd spend a lot of money getting their foot in the door, with minimal projected return.

Case in point. The Xbox. MS wanted to get into the console market and dominate it. But, they had Sony, Nintendo, and Sega to go against. Due to many issues, Sega got out of hardware. Sony played their cards right, and rose to the top. Nintendo sticks to their core market, and always does well. MS put out a relatively decent competitor and threw it into the mix. The unfortunate reality is that in order to get their product into the top 3, they've to date, never made a profit on the Xbox.

Back when I worked in the industry, around 2001, it was projected that for MS to make money off the system, they'd have to sell everyone in america an Xbox, a second controller, and 30 games. Very few companies have the financial resources to take a 5 year loss, measured in millions, just to secure footing in a market that they're entirely new to. Using that as a reference, Apple would be looked upon as foolhardy if they tried to get into the chip market. They'd most likely take substantial financial losses just to secure a foothold, with no guarantee on any kind of return, break-even or otherwise.

So no, pretty sure apple wont get into chips.

I must admit that i take offense to the ideas of G3's being ice-age, monolithic, idiotic cavemen of the processors. I use an ibook clamshell as my main machine for school and it works wonderfully in 10.2. It just goes to show that seemingly obselete computers are still very productive members of society. I have no plans to switch or even upgrade to anything above this clamshell for many years. Probably not till i leave for college in two years. This computer serves me very well and i'd expect that the G4's and G5's out there serve their owners VERY well. I see no need why everyone needs to switch to Intel macs if their PPC is doing just fine. Then again, I'm one of those people who can be satisfied with out being bigger or better  ;D

Well, there's several things to consider therein.

Firstly and most importantly, is the ability to repair a machine. When Apple marks something vintage, I nor any other service provider can order parts for said machine. That leaves only chop shop parts, which can be questionable. When Apple marks something vintage, I tend to move it out of my workflow, if its something I depend on. If its a play machine, then I dont worry so much.  Of course, this is not to say that older machines are bad, far from it. I still own and use my color classic, as well as my G4 cube (went vintage last month)

As far as upgrading to the new machines, thats a personal/professional choice. Will it benefit your workflow, make you mor productive, and allow you to enjoy your computing experience more? Possibly. Its a call every user has to make for themselves. For some of us, our daily lives are spent on the front line of such things. My job is to know everything thats new, current, and old. Therefore, an intel machine made perfect sense. Thinking about it as I write this, I realize I've been using my MacBook Pro for several months, and I havent really noticed any differentiation in the Mac User Experience, other than this unit boots windows and does certain things very fast. Other than that, Its still a mac, processor regardless.

So, with all of that in mind, if you're happy with older stuff, enjoy, rock on, et al. If you want the newness, same answer. Eventually all thats new, becomes old, and all thats old, becomes retro. But you'll never get me to use a beige G3 again 

The Cube has gone vintage?????!!!!!!! Damn, I had spotted that.

Wow, the cpu pissing contest emerges.  Funny, I felt the same way before the transfer to intel.  I could spend the next ten minutes writing why its good that Apple has changed, but we all have heard it before.  Fact of the matter is, the intels are faster than the ibm chips and by a considerable amount.  The core 2 duo chips are the fastest consumer cpus on the planet.  The xeons are better yet.  If you are interested in seeing some "real" benchies, head over to http://www.barefeats.com.  You will see that the xeon PMs are as fast or faster than the quad G5s and yes, even using Rosetta.

Previous comments about the Books are ones that I agree with.  The iBook are consumer models and the Pros are Pro models.  Yeah, the iBooks have had some issues, but many of them can be fixed if you know what you are doing.  I have owned one iBook (clamshell) and I own four Powerbooks.  I loved them all.  Chances are I will buy a Macbook cuz they are cheaper and most of the Pro options I dont really need on the road.  Pretty cool that the consumer model Book has two processors!

The extra features of the MBP just don't justify the price jump.

Lets take a look at that 900 dollar price jump.
Much better video card
DVD burner
Bigger, Higher Rez LCD
Card slot
Bigger hard drive
Light sensing keyboard and screen
Faster Processor
More stylish, thinner case

Looks like 900 bucks of upgrades to me.  There is probably more to it than meets the eye too.

Lets look at them another way:

Better branded video card (The Intel 950 is not actually as bad as everyone assumes. especially on OpenGL. I know the ATI is still better though)
DVD Burner should really be standard on all Macs by now. It would probably cost Apple less to do that than offer combos too)
Bigger screen I can't really argue with
Card slot is good, but still not so much available for it yet
Hard drive is a $50 upgrade from Apple
Keyboard I'll give you too,
Faster CPU will be a negligible difference to 95% of people 100% of the time and 99.9% of people for 90% of the time.
Style is a matter of choice, and lets face it, the MBP is an Aluminium PowerBook with too much bezel around the LCD. Apple really should have had more of a revamp. The design is essentially 3 and a half years old now. The Titanium which made every other laptop on the market look like a brick, ran for less than 3 years.

If you compare the mid range MacBook with the HD upgrade to the entry level MBP, you are paying $650 for a slightly larger screen, a slightly better graphics card and a glow in the dark keyboard. This is hard to justify unless its a business machine for a creative pro.
Apple fails to address the fact that some people want a wireless laptop which does music, email, DVD, and web and thats all. Not so many people can justify that (me included - I can afford a MacBook to replace my old Lombard, or even an MBP but I just don't need it. I have borrowed a G4 iBook until I finish building an old TiBook 667 out of spares)
Don't get me wrong, the luxuries that Apple includes are great, but for many they are still overkill. And the MB and MBP are too close in spec to justify the difference. Remember there are other manufacturers selling 15.4" laptops for plenty less than a MacBook. I know the OS will suck, but thats hardly the point.

Apple are slipping on the hardware front. They used to get things first (or at least use them first). Superdrives, ethernet, wireless were all things which Apple pushed before the competition. Take your backlit keyboard. I love these, but they aren't rocket science, they aren't state-of-the-art, and I can't imagine they cost too much to make. This is the sort of thing which should be standard across the range, since its a very useful feature. I expect more students and MacBook users would use it than pros.
They used to offer bigger drives quite quick when they become available too.
(FYI, if you fit a 7200rpm drive to a MacBook, it will void your warranty. Got that straight from Apple technical.) They won't adopt the new 750GB drives until the Intel Xserve starts shipping.

This has degenerated into a rant. I'm going to stop now.