According to Bloomberg: "The shift would help Jobs court laptop buyers, a market that's growing more than three times faster than desktop PCs." It also quotes the man responsible for the Mac II and, later, founder of Be and its dual-processor BeBox:
"The main motivation is more and better processor choices," said Jean-Louis Gassee, who oversaw Apple's products and research and development efforts from 1981 to 1990. He's now a venture capitalist at Allegis Capital in Palo Alto, California.
Using Intel chips may enable Apple to make "smaller, lighter laptops" and "more macho higher-performance laptops" than possible with IBM and Motorola's chip business, spun off as Freescale Semiconductor Inc, Gassee said. That's because the processors create less heat and require less cooling, making it easier to build the slimmer styles consumers prefer.
Comment: This is a pretty obvious point, but there are no thin-and-light Mac notebooks like the IBM ThinkPad X41, or the various pioneering Tablet PCs, and even smaller devices powered by Intel's Centrino chip set. On the other hand, this is not the type of notebook PC most people buy....
