So. Yahoo News, by way of Reuters, by way of CNET says that Apple will be moving to Intel CPUs in '06 and '07. Correct or incorrect, this is cause for neither alarm nor protest. One of the IBM semiconductor honchos who opened up POWER's design said something along the lines of, "processors don't matter." True enough, from a software development and distribution point of view.
The timing for Apple's surrender to hardware mediocrity is right. The market's money is sitting precisely where Apple's strengths lie: Higher-powered desktop/workstations for gamers and other legitimate uses, high-end notebooks, centrally-managed workgroups, turnkey rack servers and, oh yeah, system software that kicks Windows' ass around the block and then calls its momma names.
I can see this getting screwed up badly. If Apple announces an x86 shift, Apple falls from a first tier volume RISC player (really, a market it has to itself) to a second tier PC player. But all is not lost. Dell (snerk) is planning a high-end (read: gamers) desktop. Apple could walk right into that space and own it, but with advance notice of that intent, every PC maker will line up to catch a ride on Apple's style-mobile.
As for me, I'd love it. My major gripe is OS X's inability to run multiple virtual machines; AMD and Intel have solutions for that, although the whole PowerPC/x86 compatibility thing is a bear. If Apple wants to hand me a squeaky-clean BSD for x86/x64, plus Quartz Extreme, plus OpenGL, plus PDF-based rendering, plus metadata-based searches, plus the Aqua top-level GUI, I'll take it. I'm a RISC fan, but hey, I can still parse x86 machine code.
I will feel burned if Apple goes with Intel instead of AMD, but that's personal. It took Intel 20 years of courtship to try to win Apple away from Motorola/Freescale and IBM. AMD makes killer technology but can't sell it. Opteron is a first-tier chipmaker now, with NUMA and HyperTransport and 8 CPUs (glueless). It can hand Apple something in G5's class. Maybe when this is over, some Apple insider will explain why AMD didn't make the cut.
It's late, and those are the only thoughts I have in mind.
But seriously, people, didn't you see thins coming?
--------Posted by Tom Yager on June 5, 2005 01:11 AM
