Apple goes Intel. Why?, Apple Options

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Apple goes Intel. Why?

[coldharbour]

Yeah well, at the moment PPC is looking pretty good - but where's the 3 GHz G5.. where is PowerBook G5? In the end IBM just could not deliver and a companyl like Apple can't just stand waiting while Wintel machines overtake in performance.

Apple's share of IBM's production is less than 2% so Apple does not have much leverage there. Apple certainly is in no position to force IBM to develop more powerful and energy efficient processors for their machines, especially now when IBM has their "not-suitable-for-desktop-machines-or-laptops" -cell technology sold to Sony and Microsoft.

Remember moving all your apps from OS9 to OSX? I recently did that, and it sucked. Now we have to do it again and it will again suck, but the two combined in these 4-5 years are just horrible.

As Steve said, it won't be nothing like that. The universal FAT binaries will run on both x86 and PPC architecture, and Rosetta will make PPC binaries run on x86 machines in a totally transparent way.

x86 architecture will bring a load of *NIX apps over to Macintosh, plus that we'll see a lot more software in general released on Mac because porting is not an issue anymore.

You can also scrap VirtualPC as there'll probably be a WINE style solution to runnung Windows apps straight on OS X. You can probably also boot your machine natively to Windows if you like - but PC users will not be able to use OS X. I'm sure Apple will take care of that in their new Intel motherboards. Just remember that it has been impossible to crack Logic 7, protected with a mere USB dongle.

Just think what that'll do to Apple's market share. A whole lot of switchers are on their way.