It appears that it is official, Apple is going to use Intel processors instead of PowerPC starting next year. The goal is to complete the transition in two years, by this time in 2007. Yes, Steve did indeed switch. Engadget has some notes from the WWDC keynote, where Steve made the official announcement. On a side note, the next version of Mac OS X (10.5) will be called Leopard and is scheduled to be released around the end of 2006, or early 2007.
So here is what we know right now. You’ll be able to run PowerPC binaries on the new Apple/Intel systems. It is supposed to be reasonably fast, but we’ll have to wait and see on that. A developer kit is available today for $1000, which includes OS 10.4.1 and a P4 3.6 system (on lease). Apple has been running OS X on Intel systems for years, just in case I suppose.
There are still plenty that we don’t know yet. Will you be able to buy Apple/Intel systems and run Windows on them? I’m thinking yes, but I won’t rule out Apple discouraging it. Even if they try to prevent it, someone will find a way around it. It seems almost a sin though to image Windows systems running in the Apple stores. The flip side of this question is will you be able to run OS X on plain x86 boxes (like a off the shelf Dell system)? This seems less likely to me. One of the things OS X has had going for it is that it hasn’t had to worry about drivers for everything under the sun the way Microsoft has. I’d score this possibility as unlikely, but again, some enterprising young soul will likely find a way around this too. Will sales fall off while people wait for the new Intel based systems? How will the stock market react? Will the performance on the Intel systems be better than what you can get out of G5?
If this is how things are going, I still think this suddenly puts wine in a very interesting position. How long until the same binary runs on both Windows and OS X?
Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock, there is a lot of buzz tonight around a News.com article that reports that Apple will announce their switch to Intel CPUs on Monday. This was reported last month and everyone panned it as yet another rumor with no substance to it. Not surprising since “news” of Apple switching to Intel CPUs seems to crop up every couple of years. The rumor mill has cried wolf so many times, why should we believe them now?
I’m having a hard time believing this. There really is no good way to do this kind of transition, if you do it all at once then you’ll have an OS, but no apps until developers catch up. If you phase it in over time (which is what the News.com article suggests, starting with low end systems) then you pretty much kill sales of the already phased in systems for the same reason, lack of apps. At least when OS X came out you could still run older Mac OS applications.
There are two possible ways to deal with the problems of such a transition. One, you get these new CPU systems into the hands of every OS X developer you can, offer them for insanely low prices ($100 for an Intel based Mac Mini?). All you should have to do to qualify is to already be distributing an OS X application. The second method is the same approach that transition to OS X used, provide a way for PowerPC/OS X apps to run on Intel/OS X systems. I have no idea if that is even possible without some insanely high performance penalties. Perhaps they’ll integrate the PearPC work into Mac OS 10.5 to make this happen? If you are going to go that far, why not integrate Wine into Mac OS 10.6, which will enable you to run MS Windows apps on Apple Intel/OS X systems, which by then would be the only systems they sell.
Hmmm, now that I think about it that way perhaps moving to Intel isn’t such a bad idea after all. Shall I go out on a limb here? Sure, why not. By 2010 Apple will only sell systems with Intel CPUs and OS X will be able to run your Windows apps. This will give Apple enough time to bring Wine up to a more or less complete replacement for Windows XP and most of Longhorn. You’ll even be able to run .Net apps, thanks to Mono. And just like the base of OS X, all of this will be possible because of existing open source projects.
Or maybe not :-)
So, will Steve switch or not?