Companies will go to great lengths to protect their bottom lines. Just yesterday I was getting my twice monthly Shiatsu session and I was talking with the gentleman that has allowed me to live with less pain. He had a brand new powerbook sitting their, and I asked him what he thought about the Intel deal. His comment was, if I had known they were going to do this I would have waited a year.
I am hearing this comment a lot, and I am sure that Apple will have slower sales in the notebook arena till the next generation of power books are sitting in Apple stores with Intel inside.
Getting back to the point, an article on Infoworld is speculating that Apple did their gestapo tactics to keep the lid on the Intel deal. It was a warning across the bow, you talk about the deal and we will smash you, because we need to make sure that our stock holders get some return on their investment before we make this announcement, which will have sales going south on the powerbook front. [Infoworld]