After News.com’s Friday report that Apple is moving to Intel/x86, the respected publication Wall Street Journal and now NYTimes threw their reputation behind the rumor. Many people still remain skeptical, but I personally believe that the time is right for Apple to switch to x86-64, for two main reasons:1. Longhorn is late.
Remember all those articles and opinion pieces online that “Linux’s big chance” is now with Longhorn being late and with Longhorn losing features one by one and with many companies claiming that they won’t upgrade to Microsoft’s new monster? Well, what a better time for Apple to get into the x86 market and steal the thunder from both Longhorn and Linux! If the “time is right” for Linux because of Longhorn’s problems, then the time is even more right for Apple! Linux is no real threat on the desktop compared to the Mac OS X experience, while Longhorn hasn’t won many hearts either for different reasons we all know.
2. x86-64 is still a virgin market.
There is no OS today for x86-64 that anyone would call “really mature”. This is essentially a new platform: a platform on which many existing OSes have to “start all over again.” Linux applications still have major problems with x86-64 (weird incompatibilities or even compilation problems), while the newly released WindowsXP-64 has almost no third party drivers for it yet except the very basic stuff. And Microsoft doesn’t seem to care to market it either. If Apple were to come over to x86 today, it would be for full 64bit support for their Apple PCs and it would be good enough to compete on fair terms against Linux and Windows. In the 32bit market, Windows XP is simply unbeatable because of its vast hardware compatibility that it enjoys via third parties. Linux tried and it still has a 2-3% of that market. But on x86-64, the market is just different, and Apple has a serious start-off advantage.
Remember, we are not talking about having OSX running on random PCs here, Apple would never get into the “generic PC” market. This market is impossible to support fully; that was one of the reasons BeOS was killed when it moved from PPC to x86 as well. Apple won’t make the same mistake. They know better and they have the infrastructure to modify the stock x86 platform to lock-in Mac OS X to their modified PCs only. I am confident that Windows and Linux and FreeBSD would be able to run just fine on these hypothetical Apple PCs, but Mac OS X won’t run on your random PC. And it would be better that way (for Apple), as third party hardware manufacturers release hardware faster than anyone could add support for them, even if they had the full hardware specs. And these hardware manufacturers could probably not be persuaded to write brand new drivers for Apple which it will still have a fraction of the market share when on x86, so the logical step for Apple is to “lock” OSX to specific hardware so the user experience remains good.
Regarding software compatibility, I won’t be surprised if Apple re-introduces “fat binaries”, like NeXTSTEP had. These are binaries that run on both PPC and x86. Of course, lots of third party software will have to be recompiled, but at least it won’t be necessary to be re-written or heavily modified as it was in the switch from 68k to PPC in 1993 or from OS9 to OSX in 2001. In other words, the move to x86-64 could be really smooth for users! Emulation does not make much sense as emulating the PPC in “OS-mode” like Apple did with 68k inside PPC is complex and it would be slow [update: this is the only part of this editorial that I didn’t predict on target, as there will be emulation *and* fat binary support – Jobs confirmed today the rest of my points in this article]. As for PPC user support, I am sure that Apple would be able to support PPC users for at least 4-5 more years, as they did with 68k support.
For those who claim that Microsoft will never recompile Office for x86-64 for Apple, I can only say that Apple coming to x86 is not bad business for Microsoft initially in terms of “fighting together” Linux. Microsoft has failed to squash the Linux hype but users who go Mac OS X almost never look back. With Apple managing to squash Linux in the x86-64 market, Microsoft will have to fight Apple at a much later future date. And it will be easier for Microsoft to fight an ‘enemy’ that plays with the same rules as they are rather one that doesn’t (open source). My enemy’s enemy is my friend, kind of thing… This is a lot like you are getting beaten at both the club and the school, but you give your lunch money to the bullie at the club guy to come and beat the school guy. At the end, you end up with ONE bully instead of two and that’s a progress…
With all this in mind, I believe that THIS is the best time for Apple to move to x86. I would argue that the best time was actually last year, but I will give the benefit of the doubt to IBM who seem to have managed to anger Jobs, mostly because the G5 doesn’t fit well on laptops rather than because the G5 might not be fast enough. And remember folks, the laptop business, is Apple’s business. If IBM can’t deliver, it’s time to move to someone who can. It makes sense, and the time is right, so why not?
I always wanted to try OS X, but it sounds like Apple will still have their “very own CPU” & well I have AMD anyway. Mayber this means macs will be cheaper? Why are they not going AMD though?
Tune your TV….errr…sorry, tune your browser to http://www.apple.com for the keynote!
Apple wants the cell processor, but IBM is unable to supply it as the PS3 will keep its fabs humming for a few more years, dont forget Xbox 360 too will carry IBM chips,
Apple wants Intel to produce the Cell, Intel knows the cell is going to be huge, so they will agree to it after extracting their pound of flesh from Apple by making it agree to put a Intel chip on a new product, to start with, and then a few months later, BANG, “Intel to produce Cell for Apple”
OS X on x86?, keep dreaming
You stop dreaming and come back to the real life. Apple needs to sell its OS and Leopard will run on Intel chips in a year’s time.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050606/sfm142.html?.v=9
From Engadget.com
10:26am PDT – “Now, let’s go to the big topic: Transitions.”
10:27am PDT – 1994-1996 Moto 68K -> PowerPC. “I wasn’t hear then, but from everything I hear the team did a great job.” 2001-2003: OS9 – OS X.
10:28am PDT – “It’s time for a third transition. And yes, (puts up slide that says): It’s true.” Next slide is one word: “Why?”
10:29am PDT – “I stood up two years ago and promised this (3.0G PowerMac), and we haven’t been able to deliver.” Steve says it’s bigger than that, though. No roadmap for the future based on PowerPC – they can’t see a future.
10:30am PDT – Intel offers not just increased performance, but reduced power consumption. Transition will be complete by WWDC ‘07.
10:31am PDT – PowerPC – 15 integer perf units (not sure what) per watt. Intel does 70 per watt. “Mac OS X has been living a secret double life” for the past 5 years.
10:32am PDT – Satellite shot with crosshairs shows building where a team has been working on the “Just in Case…” scenario. Every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for Intel for the past 5 years. Here comes the demo!
10:33am PDT – “As a matter of fact, this system I’ve been using here…” the keynote’s been running on a P4 3.6GHz all morning”
10:34am PDT – Steve’s hopping through every app. Performance is snappy. He’s playing an H264 movie trailer for something wtih Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. “Ok, enough of that” he says after a few seconds.
10:35am PDT – “Here’s the geekout for developers”. Widgets, scripts, Java: they’ll just work. Cocoa – Xcode: small tweak, recompile. Carbon – Xcode – a few weeks of tweaking, recompile. Carbon- Metroworks: Move to XCode.
10:37am PDT – There’s a checkbox for builds: “Intel, PowerPC” that makes a cross-platform single binary.
10:38am PDT – Theo Gray, cofounder of Wolfram Research, comes onstage to talk about porting Mathematica in the past 5 days.
10:39am PDT – “I get the most ridiculous phone calls from Apple sometimes. This was like 9 c’clock at night and he says, ‘I can’t tell you what it is, but …” they flew out a developer with source code to do a demo for today.
10:40am PDT – Theo is hilarious. “I said, ‘I’ll send out our crack team of Mac developers that we keep on standby.’” Turns to guy standing next to computer. “That’s you, Rob.”
10:41am PDT – Theo says it took 2 days to get it ported: “We had a lot of resources. There’s Rob, there’s Apple … your mileage may vary. But his biggest problem was figuring out what to do with the rest of the weekend.”
10:42am PDT – Mathematica demo. This stuff always makes me wish I’d studied harder at MIT.
I bet how the Apple fans are taking this move to Intel
, they must be shocked, that x86 rules.
Even Intels own Itanium has to give into x86.