The big news of the weekend: Apple is dumping IBM as its chip supplier and has struck a deal with Intel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While Apple is famously unhappy with IBM's difficulty in delivering chips, an architecture switch just as the Mac is achieving serious acceptance is certainly a risky move. Here's Nathan Brookwood, of Insight 64, quoted in the CNET article on the story:

If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned. I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers" and more software partners.

So what's the point? The blogosphere has some ideas:

At GoldSounds, the theory is that it's all about the enterprise.

If you want to get to the heart of the matter, one need look no further than the XServe. IBM, as a manufacturer of high-end servers as well as the chips that Power them (no pun intended), has a vested interest in protecting its stake in the top-end UNIX market. IBM has readily supplied the desktop-capable FX970 (G5) chips to Apple for some years now, but the high-end POWER4 and POWER5 chips remain strictly IBM only. While recent moves such as Open Power intend to portray the Power architecture as the foundation of the next generation of high-end computing, IBM is still the gatekeeper to factories and patents used to produce these chips, and has the clout to keep other players at bay should they threaten IBM’s core business.

Under this theory, consumer Macs continue to run on G4s and G5s for the forseeable future. Rumblings make it sound bigger than this, though. I would expect to see consumer level Macs running on Intel chips at Macworld 2006. Does the switch in chips really matter? Would you simply be able to install Tiger on your PC instead of Windows? That's hard to believe but when Apple is running the same hardware as everyone else, why buy an Apple-built Mac instead of a Dell? And Microsoft let Dell sell Intel-based PCs running Mac?

Another theory posted on Slashdot holds that because IBM failed (miserably) to meet its contractual obligations on clockspeed (3 gHz) Apple now owns a substantial part of the PPC intellectual property and is free to shop around for a better manufacturer. In other words, Intel will be manufacturing PowerPC (not Pentium) chips for Apple.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I would have to concur with Brookwood - it's unbelievable that Apple would jetison the whole PowerPC architecture. It would set them back years, just as acceptance of the Mac is at historical highs. While they haven't made many inroads into the enterprise, Apple is a consumer/creative company. Dumping PowerPC really isn't an option. But if they're not held hostage to IBM, if they really have the rights to the IP, then Steve has the ability to have his PowerPC chips made by someone who knows how to crank out chips.

In any case, we'll find out in a few hours.