imroy's Journal: Thoughts on the Apple-Intel switch

It's about time I wrote another JE, and what better reason to do so? Everyone else is giving their thoughts and hair-brained conjectures about the Apple-Intel switch. So here are mine.

1. This will harm the Macintosh brand. Ordinary computer users have for a long time had difficulty with this whole "compatability" issue. All this time it's been reasonably simple to explain "Mac" vs "PC". But now we're going to have a different type of Mac to confuse the issue. And everyone's going to hear that it uses Intel chips, just like PC's. Read some of the Slashdot posts to see that even /. geeks have trouble understanding what exactly this will mean. I expect there to be erroneous memes and rumours running amok for a year or two. For example, people will try running Windows on the Intel Macs (which might be possible) or try running Windows apps on OSX/Intel. People will try installing OS/X onto their shiny new non-Apple PC and complain when it doesn't work. Which may or may not happen, we're still a year away from these things being available and Apple isn't being too clear on some of these issues.
2. It will make it tough for developers. If I understand things correctly, Apple will continue selling PPC-based Macs for at least a little while. But even if they don't, there's going to be a lot of them out there in the market. Any commercial software developer would be a fool to ignore that user base. So they're going to have to develop both PPC and x86 versions of their software. Jobs apparently tried to show how easy it would be to port to x86, but that's only for projects using something calle Xcode. Which doesn't cover a lot of software, particularly projects (e.g F/OSS) that are cross-platform and have their own build system. I read a comment, which I can not find now, from an OpenOffce developer and how this will affect them. OO has their own COM/CORBA-like system, which requires some assembly code to be written for even architecture/OS combination. So moving OSX to Intel will not bring OpenOffice to OS/X any sooner.
3. This will not affect Linux, at least not in the way that the crack-smoking pundits think it will. Just what is their reasoning? That there isn't enough room for three OS's on the x86 achitecture? Duh, someone should explain to them that Linux runs on many architectures, not just PC's. When all the Mac users start moving to the x86 Macs, there will be many Linux (and BSD) geeks happy to pick up a nice second-hand PPC box! I've had a circa-1992 Sun SPARCstation LX running Debian for a few years. It's a fun little box if a little underpowered. I wouldn't mind picking up some second-hand G3 or G4 boxen to add to my collection. Remember, architecture doesn't make a difference when you compile from source! Someone should also explain to these pundits that Linux is ultimately community driven. All the Linux companies in the world could go under and Linux would still stick around, being developed by the people who started it in the first place. The concept of "market share" isn't all that important to Linux as a whole.
4. Intel buying Apple? I don't think so. But then again I didn't think Apple would make this switch, so what do I know. All I know is that Cringely is grasping at some straws and not understanding some issues. For example, AMD couldn't possible supply enough chips. I'd love to see Apple switch to AMD instead of Intel (or maybe later), but they've already had enough supply problems for several years now.
5. From the stories I've heard, this switch has a lot to do with the Apple-IBM relationship. Apparently Apple had some rather strong clauses in the contract that they signed several years ago to get the 970 aka "G5" processor. It seems there were certain criteria that Apple wanted but IBM ultimately failed to deliver on. Things like performance, power and heat issues, and a G5 CPU for laptops (related to the previous issue). Steve Jobs promised a 3GHz G5 and G5 laptops, but they only got as far as G5 iMacs. So Apple is pulling out of that contract and switching to Intel processors.

I think that's about all for now. I might write more later if I need to.