Well, the rumours were true after all. During his WWDC keynote address, Steve Jobs announced that Apple will begin switching from IBM PowerPC to Intel chips during 2006 with the transition to be completed by the end of 2007.
Developers using XCode 2.1 can today begin compiling “universial binaries” for both PPC and Intel and Apple will ship a “transition kit“, including an Intel-based Mac, within two weeks.
Don’t get your hopes up about running OSX on a Dell box as Apple will remain a hardware company, not a software one, and will do their best to ensure OSX runs only on Apple hardware. Windows running on the same computer may be a different story however…
Update: A number of people are arguing this transition will be the beginning of the end for Apple, at least as a computer rather than entertainment company, because they will essentially be competing against mass producers like Dell.
That argument seems to imply that people buy Apple hardware solely based on the chip architecture. I know that I couldn’t care less what type of processor is in my Apple laptop / desktop / server - I’m far more concerned with the overall speed and design - as long as it runs OS X rather than Windows.
If Apple can build a computer with an Intel chip that provides the same end-user experience as what I’m using now, I’m all for it (and I can see absolutely no reason why this wouldn’t be the case).
So why are Apple doing this?
I think it’s pretty simple. Apple has had problems with the supply of PPC chips from both Motorola and IBM. There have been delays, lack of supply and sustained failures to increase clock speeds as quickly as promised.
Jobs also made it clear during his keynote that he thinks Intel has a far better roadmap for balancing the computing power versus electrical power tradeoff. (i.e. much better performance for a given power consumption)
If your operating system already runs on Intel hardware, your developer tools have the ability to create universal binaries for two architectures, and you can provide a translation layer for exising PPC compiled code to work with Intel machines, why wouldn’t you switch?
Now Apple can be confident that chips for desktop and lower-end servers are going to be Intel’s priority - something that wasn’t the case with either Motorola or IBM.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2005 at 7:45 and is filed under OS X. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.