Crazy Cringely Rumor: Apple to do H.264 Hardware in Every Mac
Robert X. Cringley is not the most reliable source of news, but he is almost always provocative. So take this one with a big grain of salt, but he is suggesting that Apple will soon incorporate hardware H.264 decoding and encoding chips across the Mac line. The big advantage of this would be to allow every single Mac model to offer full 1080p HDTV decoding without depending on the speed of the main processor. This would make the Mac mini, for instance, a perfect HDTV DVR. Further it would make the Mac the choice for consumer video processing a la Youtube, allowing users to process video for upload more quickly then on any other platform. Says Bob: "It's an aggressive play that fits perfectly with Apple's traditional role as the hardware platform of choice for new media development. And I am sure the company will have at least one new service or application that will uniquely support this new chip upon which Apple is placing a $500+ million bet."
As I said above, take this with a big grain of salt, but it is provocative and has just enough plausibility to it to give one pause. So is what do you think, TUAW readers? Is this another one of Bob's pie-in-the-sky rumors, or is this a brilliant move by Apple's into HD video? (And what about the Apple TV and a video iPod?)
Update: corrected typo
