This is really hilarious news:
SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 – Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer’s 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday.
So much for the claims that PowerPC offers more bang for the buck than Intel.
We don’t know yet if this means that Apple will build a straight-up PC clone capable of running Windows and Linux, but if they so something short of that it will be stupid. And if they do build a real clone and port OS X to it, they’ll have a software platform capable of challenging Microsoft. They won’t win, of course, but the battle will be fun to watch.
H/T John Cole.
UPDATE: It’s official, Jobs announced it today and gave a demo. The reaction was interesting:
Gasps of concern went out at the developer conference when Jobs first mentioned the switch, as many Apple fans have long relished their non-Wintel status. The developers will be charged with doing most of the work to shed Apple software from the PowerPC architecture.
Heh heh heh. Apple apparently wants to get out of the PC hardware business and focus on OS X and iPods. More power to them.
UPDATE: Here’s a bit about Apple’s rationale; it’s not what you might think.
Oddly enough, this comes contemporanously with my fundamental epiphany that Windows is a dead letter for real networked consumer AV applications.
Maybe Apple’s OS is too, but frankly, the wide open exposure and ease of manipulation of an applicaton registry is anathema to anyone who wants to transmit content securely and robustly render it.
IOW, it’s just too damned easy to hack Windows.
That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard in a long time. All the Windows registry does is centralize the parameters that are sprinkled all over a *nix system in the various config files in /etc/config and elsewhere. It in no way compromises the ability of the system to tranport and render A/V data, robustly, securely, or otherwise, and is a great help to developers, Sys Admins, and support people. Apple’s OS is Mach, a follow-on to BSD Unix that’s not particularly different from Linux except that it has a micro-kernel architecture that makes it rather easier to port from one CPU to another, IIRC.
I’ve never bought Apple products, but I’ve always appreciated Steve Jobs’ talent. There is absolutely nothing more important to Jobs than what’s in the user’s face. PowerPC has always been somewhat behind x86 in performance, given the same Mhz. Compounding the problem these days is the excess heat of PowerPC over Intel, given the same Mhz.
What does this mean to the end user? $1000 laptops based on PowerPC will always be slower than similar software running on $1000 laptops based on Intel. OSX is sort of excessively permuted Linux; and Linux runs on both PowerPC & Intel. Almost nobody does work at the machine-code level, and people love Apple for reasons other than PowerPC.
There is nothing more important than what’s in the user’s face.
The issue behind this move is what’s in the user’s battery, as it turns out. The PowerPC boys can’t match the power-efficiency of Pentium-M, so they’re toast, along with Apple’s existing customers.
Hmmm. I have a rebuttal to that, but I will continue this discussion on my own blog.
My understanding is that the reason that Apple is finally going to Intel is that IBM has started to focus on chip development for gaming platforms and growing uninterested in putting enough effort into PowerPC development (such as low battery drain chips like the ‘M’ series from Intel).
I imagine that using Intel won’t necessarily mean that Apple will open itself to just any old hardware – perhaps more of that old ROM magic.
Sounds reasonable. I’ve used PowerPCs in various network systems such as routers and WiFi access points, and the road map from Moto is very much geared to that type of device. Game platforms are bound to generate much higher volumes than Apple can over hope for in anything above the iPod, so IMB and Apple are both looking after their interests. I wonder what CPU they use in the iPod.
Richard, the registry centralizes the parameters-and makes them readable to the outside world.
Anybody can connect in their program via the registry- or alter the registry’s parameters to make it think one program is another; which is one way in which malware infects a system.
While no system is completely malware proof, the very openness of Windows (and Linux) is its Achille’s heel.
As a Linux advocate I would point out that the Windows Registry is a binary database alternative to a multitude of text config files scattered all over the Linux filesystem [with little thought to filename , format and location consistency]. It’s different, not necessarily better or worse. Text files are easier to fix under duress, and mastering the arcane nature of the setup maximizes your geek cred.
Windows’ security woes are ‘mostly’ due to running by default as superuser, and the Visual Basic for Applications underlying [and accessible to] the majority of the Windows Office apps, IE and Outlook Express. Those issues are fixable.
Right, ordinary users can’t edit the Windows registry, nor can they install hardware. John, you’re off in the weeds on this one.
Even without a registry, any system that loads from storage is hackable. The ReplayTV DVR has been extensively hacked by people who reverse-assembled the code, without any manual to go by, and that system has no registry and doesn’t use a standard OS. If it’s on disk, I can hack it.