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Despite the enormous size of Dell, Apple's growth possibilities, tantalizing to investors, are probably the reason it has surpassed Dell's marketcap. A new BusinessWeek blog posting looks at How can Apple be worth more than Dell?, concluding that Dell is limited by its size, while Apple can achieve growth with relatively quickly: "But if you don't have big honking growth markets waiting to be harvested, size can be a heavy anchor indeed. The math is simple. To deliver 15% growth in the upcoming year, $55 billion-a-year Dell has to find $8.25 billion in extra sales. But Apple, at $13.9 billion...

Let us turn our attention away from new Apple portables and overlooked software suite updates for a moment to tackle true matters of grave import—Apple’s TV commercials. In case you missed last Tuesday’s keynote, Steve Jobs punctuated the unveiling of Intel chip-powered iMacs and MacBook Pro laptops by showing off a new TV ad about the move to Intel-built chips. In fact, Jobs showed off the commercial twice, which is either a sign that he really likes the ad or, depending on how much stock you put in rumors, that something got pulled from the keynote at the last second...

The Mozilla Foundation has set a March launch date for a version of its Firefox Web browser that will run on Apple Computer's Intel version of Mac OS X. "We are targeting the official release of Firefox for Intel Mac OS X in late March with the Firefox 1.5.0.2 update," said Mozilla software engineer Josh Aas told. Demand for the browser on Apple's new CPU platform is expected to rocket as the PC vendor last week started selling the first Macs based on CPUs from Intel. Previously Apple had used IBM's PowerPC chips. While an unofficial version of the software...

Apple is closing in on Dell's marketcap. Following its record $5.7 billion revenues and 14 million iPod shipments in the December/holiday quarter and new Intel-based Macs, Apple's stock is trading at an all-time high--near $85--giving the company a market cap of $72.29 billion. As of market-close yesterday, Dell was closer to $73 billion. According to one blog post, Gateway's marketcap is $1 billion, while Microsoft is around $288 billion--or about 4 times that of Apple's. Given the company's record holiday quarter, several analysts have raised their fiscal 2006 and 2007 estimates as well as raised their price targets. The official...

With the announcement of the first Intel based Macs yesterday, many users have rejoiced in being able to dual-boot both Mac OS X and Windows. Unfortunately, this is not the case; due to Apple's use of the extensible firmware interface (EFI) rather than BIOS, current Windows releases will not run on the systems. On Tuesday at Macworld, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller said the company would not specifically block the use of Windows on Mac hardware. Instead, limitations in Windows itself will prevent its use on the new MacBook Pro laptop and iMac. With...

SAN FRANCISCO--Addressing a packed crowd of the Mac faithful, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday served up the first Intel-based Macs, introducing a new high-end laptop and a revamped iMac. The new machines both include Intel's Duo dual-core chip. The iMac will come in the same sizes and sell for the same prices as the current models, but the Intel chips make it two to three times faster, Jobs said. A new laptop computer, called the MacBook Pro, will be available in February, he said. In addition to the crop of new Macs, Jobs announced a new version of...

As readers digest all the announcements from Apple at Macworld San Francisco, we've noted a few interesting tidbits: - Steve Jobs announced that Apple's entire product line will be transitioned to Intel in 2006. This is earlier than previously announced at WWDC 2005. Jobs notes that over the coming months we will hear announcements as each product line is transitioned. All by the end of this calendar year. - MacBook Pro naming. Steve Jobs: "It's a new name because we're kinda done with 'Power' and because we want 'Mac' in the name of our products." This would imply that the...

Apple claims its newest iMac, which features Intel’s new Core Duo processor, is twice as fast as its predecessor. Despite the major change under the hood, the iMac remains with the same design and at the same price as before, with systems starting at $1,299. The new iMac, which starts shipping today, will be Apple’s first computer to feature a CPU built by Intel. Up until now, Apple has used the PowerPC architecture developed in conjunction with Motorola and IBM to drive all of its iMac computers. On the outside, the iMac G5 looks the same as before — it’s...

Stock jumps 6% as Apple CEO unveils new Intel-based computers. SAN FRANCISCO (CNNMoney.com) - Apple CEO Steve Jobs Tuesday unveiled the first Apple computers ever to use an Intel processor and announced that by the end of the year, Apple's entire computer line will contain Intel chips. Intel (down $0.35 to $26.12, Research) CEO Paul Otellini was also on hand to introduce the iMac desktop computer with Intel's Core Duo chip and the MacBook Pro notebook, a new product line for Apple (up $4.81 to $80.86, Research), unveiled during Jobs' keynote at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The iMac...

Apple claims its newest iMac, which features Intel’s new Core Duo processor, is twice as fast as its predecessor. Despite the major change under the hood, the iMac remains with the same design and at the same price as before, with systems starting at $1,299. The new iMac, which starts shipping today, will be Apple’s first computer to feature a CPU built by Intel. Up until now, Apple has used the PowerPC architecture developed in conjunction with Motorola and IBM to drive all of its iMac computers. On the outside, the iMac G5 looks the same as before — it’s...

Intel Corporation on Tuesday unveiled the Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology for a new generation of laptops. With key components designed in India, the new platform is aimed at advancing the emerging digital lifestyle at home, work, and on the go. It delivers breakthrough capabilities to make entertainment truly mobile for people on the move and improves responsiveness and efficiency of mobile workers. About 500 members of the Intel India Development Center have significantly contributed to the Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology platform. Since June 2004, the India team has been working to help achieve smaller form factor, more battery...

Why should anyone believe anything the CIA has to say about Iran? Like everyone else in Washington, I’ve been reading excerpts from James Risen’s new book, the one that "exposes" the "crimes" of the Bush administration with regard to the war on terrorism. The most recent excerpt deals with the CIA’s activities vis-à-vis Iran, and Risen says some very shocking things, things which a serious city would find far more troublesome than the legalities about NSA’s intercepts of conversations involving terrorists. Since I’m just an amateur at these arcane subjects, I thought it best to get some real expertise, and...

Our sources tell us that Intel has applied for a license with the Vietnamese government to open a fab in Vietnam Hot on the heels of announcing the reopening of Fab 12, our sources in Asia tells us that Intel has applied for a license with the Communist Party of Vietnam to open a brand new plant. There hasn’t been a name released for the new plant or information about what it will produce but we know that it will be located in Ho Chi Minh City, which is Vietnam’s capital -- previously known as Saigon. The southern part of...

Jolene Jonas, an Intel employee in Oregon, has been listing her company email (jolene.jonas@intel.com) on various webpages relating to the activities and transactions of the Oregon Democratic Party, as the contact email address. While nothing should prevent an Intel employee from using her free time to pursue her political affiliations, use of company email address for this purpose should be expressly prohibited at Intel. Are there any Intel Freepers here that can raise this issue within the company? In addition to the State party webpage, she also lists her email address on the Columbia (Ore.) County Democratic Central committee webpage:...

It's time to retire your "Intel Inside" jokes and start coming up with some "Leap Ahead" humor. Intel is changing its branding campaign after 14 years. Intel leaked word of the new brand to the Wall Street Journal, disclosing that it will adopt the "Leap Ahead" theme at next week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Along with changing the familiar "Intel Inside" line, Intel will nix the use of the dropped "e" long used in the depiction of the company's name. (You can see the new logos here.) One thing that won't change with the re-branding exercise is...

2006 Ahoy! The interminable in pursuit of the meaningless By: Thursday 29 December 2005, 10:26 2006 WILL BE quite the interesting year on the desktop CPU front, with the year starting out firmly in AMD's grasp, and ending in Intel's. If both sides execute on their CPU roadmaps, and that is a huge if we believe it will be a fight to the end with Intel having the lead by at least a hair when all is said and done. Let's look at the players in some detail. On the one hand we have Intel with the Pentium line of...

Appleinsider claims that according to "reliable sources", Apple has contracted out the motherboard design for the next-generation PowerMac to Intel. According to the rumor site, Apple has its current resources spread so far across the planned Intel iMacs, PowerBooks, iBooks and Mac minis that outsourcing the PowerMac motherboard design may help them keep a targeted ship date of the 3rd quarter of 2006 for the next-generation PowerMac. The design is expected to take place within the Intel Apple-Group which was quietly formed in November. Outsourcing PowerMac motherboard design to Intel may have some interesting consequences regarding control and exclusivity of...

A four-core chip home server system will be able to deliver one billion floating-point operations per second, apparently. Move up to a 32-core chip - in, say, a blade server module - and you'd get 32 gigaflops of processing power, while a 64-core slab of silicon inside a rack-mount unit doing graphics work would churn out two teraflops, according to Kutaragi's presentation foils... Kutaragi likened a single Cell chip to IBM's 32-node RS/6000-based chess supercomputer Deep Blue. The exponential scaling rate suggests Cell really doesn't come into its own until you use lots of them together.

Ex-secretary of State predicts a gradual reduction in troops to start in 2006, but says there will be a military presence for a long time. LONDON — Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview to be broadcast today that the United States would have a military presence in Iraq for years, although a gradual withdrawal probably would start in 2006. In the interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Powell said a massive, rapid pullout would be a "tragic He also said U.S. intelligence services had not revealed their doubts to the Bush administration about the reliability...

A few months after 9/11, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans and others in the US without having to obtain the court warrants normally required in these situations, according to government officials. The New York Times reports that as a result, the NSA has monitored the international phone calls and e-mails of "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of people living in the United States. Before Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA limited its spying in the US to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Officials say the government still seeks warrants for...