From their own site:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

Wouldn't have believed it (and didn't) from any other source. Now the wait begins to get all the details of how this will work, and if this means OS X on other boxes. Microsoft is still making Office for either OS X on PowerPC or Intel, so I'm guessing Apple boxes will still be very closed compared to a Dell or HP.

OS X on other boxes won't happen. Apple's business model (making money on the hardware) hasn't changed, they're just going with the chips that have a better performance/power ratio.

Yeah, apparently it'll be in all of their machines by 2007. I've heard it was partly to take advantage of the DRM in Intel's chips. At least, that's what Engadget was saying.

Presumably these Macintels will be incapable of running Windows ? Which is going to lead to the bizarre position of sitting in front of what is very nearly a Wintel machine that can't actually run Windows and next to it will be a Wintel machine incapable of (offically at least) running OS X.

Odd.

I don't see any reason that Apple Intel-based computers have to have any resemblance to Wintel boxes. The fact of the matter is that they can throw away all the shit that's keeping Wintels in 1982 (the terrible BIOS structure comes to mind) and create basically an Apple-architecture machine that happens to have an Intel microprocessor at its core instead of a PowerPC. I mean, it's not like you can run AIX on a Macintosh or MacOS X on a pSeries. Or, closer to home, you can't run RISCOS on an empeg, despite the fact that the empeg has an ARM in it.

Yes, but both OS X and WinNT are basically portable systems that don't rely much on the firmware/bios to get the job done. OS X has run on PowerPC/x86 for a long time. WinNT ran several other processor architectures before Microsoft lost interest.

No doubt a Macintel machine will have a PCI bus, USB ports, Fireware ports, a SATA controller, the same types of video cards, same type of memory system etc etc as an equivalent Wintel machine. Who knows it may even use a very similar north-south bridge and the like.

But it's going to cost three times the price and come in a much nicer enclosure.

Bruno

The point being though, that people would more likely be interested in running MacOS X on a cheap Intel machine, and that's what Apple doesn't want. I'm sure that Apple could care less if people want to run Linux or Windows on Apple hardware. The point is that they will have enough control over the architecture and MacOS X86 to make running MacOS X86 on generic hardware difficult at best. I'm not saying that it can't be done. Darwin already runs on x86, so that's one layer down. The only part that remains is making userland MacOS X86 run on that kernel. I'm sure that it'll make requests that will be hard for standard Wintel machines to deal with. It won't be impossible by any means, but it'll be difficult. Difficult enough that people who are inclined to buy Apple anyway will just buy an Apple x86 machine, and they'll get more people because it'll be cheaper than their current hardware, tho still expensive. The only folks who will hack on it enough to bypass those checks are likely to be geeks who aren't going to buy the Apple hardware anyway, unless it's Dell-cheap. That leaves people who are willing to pay $100 for MacOS X86, but run it unsupported (which doesn't seem like a large demographic) or people who are willing to, uh, use unlicensed copies of MacOS X86. I suppose that is a market that they don't largely have now.

Actually, I'd expect that what Apple would do is bundle the OS with the hardware, like both they and every large PC manufacturer do now so that it'll run/install only on that hardware and then sell unrestricted versions for a lot more. That way they keep the hardware as a gate to the OS, but still appear to be open, but turn that opening into a profit center.

All speculation, obviously.

I was also blindsided by this one. I saw the rumors and first wrote them off entirely, then figured there was a tiny chance it might actually be true by the time the keynote rolled around.

One interesting thought is that with this move they can stick with PPC for as long as they want with no downside other than binaries being twice as large. These days, the size of the binaries is pretty inconsequential. There wouldn't be anything stopping them from keeping PPC machines in the lineup if they worked out to be better for server or workstation class machines.

Matthew

Actually, per Apple's translation guidelines released to developers, AltiVec is not part of the emulation later. Any applications that force AltiVec code and don't have a fallback will fail on an Intel Mac. Basicially the Intel Mac will emulate G3 runnable code only, nothing G4 or G5 specific.

In followup statements immediately after they keynote (and widely quoted on the web) Apple has very specifically stated that OS X will NOT run on commodity Intel boxes while windows will actually be installable on Macintels. Will it be hacked? Most likely. Will it be worth the effort? I seriously doubt it. One of the (IMO) major benefits of apple is tightly integrated and controlled hardware designs leading to extremely stable systems and in my opinion, people who want to run OS X on cheap ass beige box crap systems just *don't get it* ("it" being the whole reason for using Apple). Linux is extremely stable on most commodity systems and is probably more attractive to the "hack the installer" types anyway. If I were to go hack the installer and run it on commodity hardware, I'd probably lose a great deal of that stability, and if I wanted an unstable system that crashed all the time I'd just go back to windows.

Will wine be ported? Will windows apps be runnable under MacOS? Frankly, I don't give a crap. I don't WANT to run windows apps, 99% of them are total and utter crap and the stuff I need from day to day is available in native versions or as a quick download from my local open source repository. Of course, I made the 100% switch away from Microsoft and to Linux a *long* time ago, so moving to Mac OS wasn't nearly as difficult.

In addition, I downloaded the latest updates to Xcode (the Apple-supplied developer tools which are VERY good) for the universal binary support so I can start looking at what needs to be done and in the updated developer notes it very specifically states several things, so let me clear up a few other questions:

* The architecture will be IA32.
* They are not using OpenFirmware, Macintels will have a standard BIOS
* Any code using Altivec will NOT be supported
* Any code using G4/G5 specific features will NOT be supported

There's some other gotchas in the docs that I haven't worked my way through yet, but those above items are very specifically stated. As for the IA32, it's specifically called out, but other quotes indicate they plan on moving to EMT64 "eventually". Why they didn't just go with AMD and 64 bit right out of the gate I have no idea, but they have plenty of reasons to abandon the powerPC:

* IBM failures to deliver on 3 GHz chip designs and promises to apple
* IBM mysteriously delivering 3+ GHz PowerPC chips to Sony and Microsoft (PS3 and XBox 360)
* Limited production capacities being choked out by their new console contracts
* Rampant G5 heat problems resulting in a complete inabilty to deliver faster laptops (which have surpassed desktop sales)
* the "megahertz myth" becoming a non issue as the (at least in my mind) inferior intel architecture makes up for a crappy design with sheer raw clock speed.

Am I pissed about the switch? Yes, especially since I was contemplating going out and upgrading to one of the top of the line dual CPU dream rigs very shortly and now I'm not going to buy anything for a couple of years at least, until they stabilize their design. Is it ultimately the right choice? God only knows, Apple has this tendency to completely screw over their developers it seems. Personally, I think they have COMPLETELY gutted their hardware sales for the next 2 years at least.

-- Gary F.

It seems to be a common sentiment but I don't see much reason not to buy a PowerPC based Mac today if that's what you want. Let's say Apple was sticking with PowerPC. How would a machine bought today fare in 3 years? It would run all the software it runs today. It would probably run the software available in 3 years but be deficient in some aspects. Certainly, there would be vastly better machines available. How does the move to Intel change this scenerio?

Hmm, because in my experience (which admittedly isn't vast with the power PC architecture yet) there's several things different about being on the powerPC side of the fence:

1) Apple people in general tend to hold on to equipment a lot longer before being forced to upgrade
2) each release of the operating system runs *faster* on the old hardware than the previous release, not slower (this in itself contributes greatly to (1) above). This didn't apply when they jettisoned system 9 for the new OS X of course, but has generally held true otherwise.
3) just because there are "hooks" for fat binaries doesn't mean everyone is going to distribute them.
4) in general that means I suspect that yes, I'd have to buy a new machine in 3 years. I am used to buying PC's every 3 years, I wasn't planning on upgrading my mac that quickly. I'm sure as hell not going to fork out $3k for a machine that I'll be forced to replace in 3 years because the newest stuff doesn't run on it (and no, I sure as hell don't blow $1k per year on intel hardware either, I'm a miserly sob). I know as a pc user I just sucked it up when I had to buy new hardware constantly just to stay "supported" but I really wanted to get off that rollercoaster.

-- Gary F.

I don't see it either. In two years, apple will begin exclusively selling intel boxes. Until then, everything coming out will be gauranteed to work and be heavily tested for the PPC. At that point, some 90% of the people running osx will still be running PPC. There will be a vocal minority who rush out and buy macintels. There will also be a vocal minority who buy the last powermac, as it'll be the Best Macintosh Ever Made. The rest will use their computer until they need/want a new one.

In three years, things will stop being optimized for PPC, and things might be a little slower. However, if you're worried about speed at that point, you're already going to own a new computer.

Matthew