So in case you were sleep today , Apple announced that , over the next two age , it will swop the chip inside the Mac . Today , all Macs run for a PowerPC chip from either Motorola or IBM . By the end of 2007 , all new Macs will be fly the coop with an Intel Saratoga chip at heart . Call it Mintelac — my personal penchant — or whatever you like .
Now , I ’m not the proper guy to comment on all the technological aspects of the differences between the two chips , but suffice it to say , they ’re substantial . Today , a Mac program program will not run on an Intel chip . Apple has annunciate a Modern applied science , call Rosetta , that will let some ( but not all ) existing programs hunt without changes on the Intel chips . So the cognitive operation of switching chips is not a elementary one . But that ’s not what I want to focus on today .
alternatively , I ’d like to let the cat out of the bag about my flavour on the switching , and inquire how all of you feel about it . At first , I was tear . One of the things about the Mac has that it ’s always been a bitdifferent . Part of that remainder was the computer architecture of the CPU , but a much bigger part was ( manifestly ) the OS itself . So the initial annunciation , though it did n’t becharm me by surprise thanks to all the unofficial news leaks , was still quite shameful to learn .
But once I got past the initial shock of the announcement , I ’ve come to realise that this is a very good move for the political program , with onebigcaveat ( which I ’ll get to in a spot ) , and one great question . When I thought back on my age of Mac usage , I realized that the mainframe was fundamentally irrelevant to my experience . It did n’t matter if it was a 68 K Motorola , a PowerPC G4 , or a PowerPC G5 . What appeals to me about the Mac is , quite just , the operating system and its associated user interface and coating . They all just plain workplace . So if Apple can manage this transition to Intel , and not lose the “ heart and soul ” of the Mac , I think I ’ll be fine with it .
But the caveat is : this only work if the developer play along . We take apps , and we require those apps to be native on Intel , not run in some emulation surroundings . Although Steve ’s demo of Rosetta was telling , there are many apps that wo n’t be capable to use it — according to this1.5 MB PDFof universal binary developer documentation , it wo n’t support code that uses unique G4 or G5 features , nor that which utilize Altivec . So it will be interesting to see how well the transition crop — I ca n’t reckon using my Mac without some of the current curing of apps I campaign , so Apple really needs to get the developers on board with this . It ’s squeamish Apple is giving them a one - year head start , and that the growing kit seems to be reasonably priced ( $ 999 plus a $ 500 Select - level ADC membership gets you a 3.6GHz Pentium P4 Mac run OS X for Intel 10.4.1 ) . So only time will tell how well that works , but it looks like Apple is try on really hard to make it easy for developer . Seeing that something as complex as Mathematica could be ported with 20 tweaked lines of code was quite impressive .
And the one liberal question is : Who is going to buy any Apple hardware between now and next June ? Unless I ’m lack something , I foresee a huge decrement in sales coming between now and then . sure as shooting , Apple will trade some high - end machine and laptop , but really , why grease one’s palms now when the technology is a known dead end ? Personally , I now know for sure that my 12 - inch PowerBook and original dual-2GHz G5 will be with me through at least next June . I was think over an upgrade for the PowerBook later in the twelvemonth , but now , I ’m go to hold off and see what the future holds . So for the next nine months , Apple sell what , iPods only ? Is that enough to sustain the company ? Or am I overlooking some tumid group that will continue to buy ironware ?
There are a couple other exciting thing to study with this declaration . The first is that the Mac platform should now have access to the late technology from the Wintel earth . debate a current top - of - the - lineAlienwaregaming machine , theArea 51 - 5500 . This box seat has a PCI Express video recording card with a 512 Bachelor of Medicine VRAM ( and two PCI Express slot total ) , a dual - core 800MHz front - side bus Intel Extreme Edition 3.2GHz processor with 2 MB of Level 2 cache , dual - channel DDR2 RAM running at 667MHz , and Serial ATA 2 ( which is twice as firm as the SATA in the G5s ) severe drives . This is some telling poppycock , and with an Intel CPU on the board , there ’s no reasonableness to retrieve we wo n’t be able-bodied to see similar things in the Mac in the nigh future .
The other thing that interests me is looking forwards , past the end of 2007 . Now we have an all - Intel Mac lineup , which presents the chance to directly compete with Windows . How ? Consider a brace of option .
Option No . 1 , which would be the least disruptive for Apple , would be to provide a true Windows layer , rather of just practical PC . I ’m not a technical person , but since the CPU is now pure Intel , it should be possible to have a nearly - native - swiftness transcriber to operate Windows apps natively on your Mac . This is howWINEworks , which does just that for Linux on Intel chips . They describe it like this :
Apple should be able to do the exact same matter . Talk about a strong debate for an comfortable transition from the Windows mankind !
The other thing Apple could do is embark into a verify cloning arrangement . Talk to Sony , for representative , or maybe even Dell ( who has render some Windows animosity at fourth dimension ) , and permit them sell an OS X - installed version of their machinery , complete with the wine-colored - corresponding emulation bed . This is a much openhanded step , for it ’s one that clear cast Apple on the track of becoming a software system - only company . But after all , is n’t that how Microsoft got to where they are today ?
