The latest version of the Mac OS X operating system could easily run on Intel chips, but Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs said on Wednesday that the company has little interest in changing processors.
"It"s perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," Jobs said at a meeting with financial analysts. But Jobs said the company is happy with IBM"s PowerPC family of chips and feels the performance is "quite competitive." "Right now we don"t see a compelling need to switch processor families," Jobs said. "We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong." Asked about Apple"s interest in selling Macs that could serve up the video recording abilities Microsoft offers with its Windows XP Media Center Edition, Jobs joked that Apple was instead focused on melding the computer with a toaster. "I never get mine quite brown," said Phil Schiller, vice president of marketing. "We can do an up-sell for bagels."
Jobs said that he doesn"t see such products creating a big market. "We"re not going to go that direction," Jobs said. "There is a small audience that likes this." Jobs said there are several problems with the Media Center concept, in particular the wide divergence in the way people want to watch television as compared with how they use a computer. "Generally what they want to view on television has to do with turning their mind off," he said.