Apple Moves To Intel
A bold move towards innovation, or Apple's eventual demise?
On every Mac lover's mind these days is what will the future hold for the enjoyment of our computing experience? The day is coming when we will no longer be able to brag about our RISC architecture and Altivec (Velocity Engine) technology. A day is coming that the answer to the question "do these computers run Windows?" (or the worse form, "do these computers run a 'normal' operating system") will be "yes" or at least "possibly."
These events may seem tragic, but I think the benefits of a move to Intel may out-weigh the problems. First, this should be the easiest major transition Apple has ever instituted. The NextStep Operating System (Mac OS X's ancestor) ran on the x86 architecture, so the port for Apple was probably an easy one. Cocoa developers will essentially just have to recompile their code, and Carbon developers will need to make a few tweaks and recompile. (Of course, some developers have not made the transition to X-Code, but that is one hurdle they would have had to eventually do anyway.)
The end-user should have no problems with the Intel architecture. Mac OS X will still look, feel, and run like it did on a Power PC. Rosetta should aid in the use of most programs that aren't recompiled by 2006 for those users who don't want to upgrade their software. (Personally, I hope that developers make a free upgrade to a universal binary version of all their current programs, but that's probably not too terribly realistic.) I'll no longer have to try and equate the speed of a Mac computer to that of an Wintel machine.
All-in-all, if Apple really can prevent owners of other branded Intel boxes (such as Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc.) from installing and using Mac OS X, then I don't think the transition will be the demise of Apple. In fact, it could be Apple's greatest move towards more innovation.
Well, now I need to go and begin the painful process of waiting for the new MacIntel (or Mintelac) computers to come out.
A bold move towards innovation, or Apple's eventual demise?
On every Mac lover's mind these days is what will the future hold for the enjoyment of our computing experience? The day is coming when we will no longer be able to brag about our RISC architecture and Altivec (Velocity Engine) technology. A day is coming that the answer to the question "do these computers run Windows?" (or the worse form, "do these computers run a 'normal' operating system") will be "yes" or at least "possibly."
These events may seem tragic, but I think the benefits of a move to Intel may out-weigh the problems. First, this should be the easiest major transition Apple has ever instituted. The NextStep Operating System (Mac OS X's ancestor) ran on the x86 architecture, so the port for Apple was probably an easy one. Cocoa developers will essentially just have to recompile their code, and Carbon developers will need to make a few tweaks and recompile. (Of course, some developers have not made the transition to X-Code, but that is one hurdle they would have had to eventually do anyway.)
The end-user should have no problems with the Intel architecture. Mac OS X will still look, feel, and run like it did on a Power PC. Rosetta should aid in the use of most programs that aren't recompiled by 2006 for those users who don't want to upgrade their software. (Personally, I hope that developers make a free upgrade to a universal binary version of all their current programs, but that's probably not too terribly realistic.) I'll no longer have to try and equate the speed of a Mac computer to that of an Wintel machine.
All-in-all, if Apple really can prevent owners of other branded Intel boxes (such as Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc.) from installing and using Mac OS X, then I don't think the transition will be the demise of Apple. In fact, it could be Apple's greatest move towards more innovation.
Well, now I need to go and begin the painful process of waiting for the new MacIntel (or Mintelac) computers to come out.
posted by blindsay @ 3:37 PM
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