I am trying to wrap up and get to bed, but daaamn, we have the Wall Street Journal confirming the Apple/Intel announcement for Monday according to Om Malik. I need to spend some time really wrapping my head around this one, but it really looks like it might actually happen. This is a good thing all around, as long as it can be executed well. I’ll trust Jobs on that front. As a software developer, I’m excited. As a fan of Apple and OS X, I’m even more excited. As a long time critic of Windows (I haven’t bought or run it on my home machines in, gosh, nearly 5 or 6 years), I’m excited to see the possibility of an OS my mom can use that can work on machines that are extraordinarily inexpensive that doesn’t suck. I’ve always believed that Apple machines represented a good value for the features. Problem is that my mom doesn’t need Gigabit ethernet built in with Firewire 800. Heck, even I don’t on all but one box. So, bring on the Intel boxes and let’s get a mobile laptop running on faster chips than the aging G4. Granted, there won’t be the cachet of the dual G5 sitting on my desk at work (nor will the Intel desktops perform as well), but daaamn, it’s about freaking time.
I hope that Jobs doesn’t do something dumb like require a custom chipset. This was the stranglehold that kept their last attempt at clones from taking off.
PS. Think about this: the day that an Intel-ready OS X operating system appears, what do you think first day sales will be? Are there enough geeky Windows users to, in effect, double the number of OS X users in the U.S.? Worldwide? Anyone want to guess (or do the research that I can’t do now)? 
(thanks Jason Calacanis for the pointer)
Update: Jason Kottke points out that the chips might not be x86 compatible chips. I’m about 50/50 on this one… I believe that Apple wouldn’t risk their hardware business… but maybe, just maybe, they realize what’s sitting tantalizingly close for the first time in our computer revolution: real convergence with real hardware and real tools. The Mac Mini is a start in this direction and I’m thinking that we’re going to see more consumer products from Apple than we have in the past. Or, Jobs is smarter than me and has another good reason to go x86. Besides, part of this for me is just wishful thinking… I want commodity OS X boxes. Yesterday.
June 5th, 2005 at 9:58 am
1. Mobile (as article said)
2. Set-top boxes?
3. This isn’t just about Intel. Once the ink is dried, there will be AMD options.
4. Expect the OS to do something brilliant, like encapsulating x86 and PPC binaries in the same installer, and launching whichever is appropriate.
5. Cross-compiling to the new platform may be harder than that. Gut feeling that there are low-level optimizations Mac developers got used to with Altivec, and an Altivec compatiblity library for Intel will be slooooow.
6. THINK ABOUT HOW FAST VIRTUAL PC/WINE WILL RUN!!!
This last one is especially valuable/vexing for me. I’d like to buy a Mac for school, but I have some applications required for classwork. They would run too slow on a Mac laptop, so I’m stuck temporarily using a PC.
And Sujal, I think you’re wrong about proprietary chipsets. Apple is protective of their hardware business, as that control drives the high compatiblity level of the OS with the hardware, without the driver questions that abound under Windows. Apple needed that control in the past, because they were the only Mac-compatible hardware manufacturer with an R&D budget large enough to develop quality new motherboards for faster processors. Then they got greedy and shut off the tap when competitors started outshining them at the margins.
For desktop cost, families can probably afford a $500 Mac Mini. Yes, Dell ships a $375 package with a 17″ monitor (the Mini has no monitor shipped) and a $75 mail-in rebate, but we’re not talking about big money anymore.
For what it’s worth, I do love the coincidence of this announcement coming soon after Microsoft announces that they’ll be using a PowerPC chip in the XBox 360.
June 5th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
The Altivec optimizations, in large part, were wrapped up by higher level code that could use the SIMD. This is beyond anything I know, but a couple of things I’ve read either speculate that apple could get their chip vendor to modify SIMD to have more similar instructions, but we’ll have to see on that front.
The thing is that the number of applications that do Altivec optimizations is small compared to the apps I use. iTunes, maybe, Safari? Doubt it. Mail? ditto. NetNewsWire, Office/Mariner Write, Terminal (hah!), etc… same deal.
The Java VM probably has some in there, so that affects all of those applications I run (Eclipse, OxygenXML, anything I write for work), but beyond that I’m in good shape (just looking at the things I run).
June 5th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
oh, and about the hardware thing, deep down I know you’re right, but part of me hopes (and can see the logic in) Apple transitions from a mostly computer hardware play to a software (high margin) and consumer electronics/media retailer play (high volume/miniscule margins). I don’t know if they can be successful at it, but that’s why I’m not steve jobs.
June 5th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
For what it’s worth, I’m on a mailing list for macintosh small businesses (got on it when I was deluding myself about writing desktop shareware) and the smart folks there are skeptical. So skeptical that they’re ready to believe that this isn’t about the core processors but about Intel building PPC chips for specific uses… for example laptops using Intel-engineered chips that speak PPC not x86. The critical component of this theory is how much PPC IP Apple has now that IBM has (probably) missed their speed benchmark schedule. Oh, tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. Wish I was going to be there.
June 6th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Follow the money on that last one. Motorola and IBM collaborated on the original PPC, then IBM took over production. I don’t know who owns the IP.