Posted By Paul Kafasis on September 29th, 2005

There seems to be a lot of confusion, or at least a lot of differing opinions, on when Apple will unveil their first Intel Chip Based Macs (ICBMs, as I like to call them). Apple may have cleared up some of the mystery last week, when CEO Steve Jobs said they were on track to ship by June 2006. In one direct quote, from a meeting at Apple Expo Paris, Jobs said:

“We said we’d be shipping by next June and we are on track to have that be a true statement.” (9/20/2005)

There are plenty of rumors flying around, and we’d love to determine exactly when the first ICBMs will fly out the door. Prior to last week’s revelation, I had re-watched the keynote address from the 2005 World Wide Developer’s Conference. The following quotes are all pulled right from there, and may still be relevant in determining Apple’s timeline for the release of their Intel machines. Next time someone says “Didn’t Apple say 2005 for shipping Intel Macs?”, you can point them here.

The following quotes are all from June 6th, 2005, and all refer to Intel machines.

“For you now, and for our customers in 2006…”

“Starting next year…”

“When we meet here again, this time next year, our plan is to be shipping Macs with Intel processors by then.”

Referring to WWDC ’07, Apple plans the transition to be “mostly complete”

Complete by end of 2007.

“When we’re here next year, we plan to have them in the marketplace”

“When we meet again here next year, we will have Macs with Intel processors entering the market”

So there you have it – uncertainty! It’s nearly certain that no ICBMs will ship in 2005. It also seems unlikely we’ll see anything at Macworld San Francisco, in January 2006. Will Apple unveil the new machines at WWDC ’06? That seems unlikely, as that’s not a consumer show, but we currently expect to see the first ICBMs in the second quarter of 2006. As far as the order in which the machines will be updated, that’s anybody’s guess.