“In the long term, the change [to Intel processors] will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it. That’s because Intel’s processors and other chips will give Apple more options than IBM’s products could for building Macs that run faster and cooler, and have longer battery life,” Walter S. Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal.
“In the short run, however, the chip changeover should make little difference to average consumers… What makes a Mac a Mac isn’t the processor under the hood. It’s Apple’s elegant operating system, OS X, which won’t see major changes for 18 months, and the company’s stylish hardware designs, which it will continue to produce. When you peer at the screen of the first Intel-based Mac, it will look just like today’s PowerPC Macs, only it should run faster,” Mossberg writes.
Mossberg also writes that he expects “some third-party company to supply the missing drivers and otherwise make it possible to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Microsoft itself might even do this. That would allow Mac users to run Windows programs that lack Mac equivalents at speeds comparable to a Windows computer’s.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Analysts think ‘Yonah’ Pentium M may power Apple’s first Intel-based Mac – June 08, 2005
Will developers stop writing Mac applications if Apple ‘Macintel’ computers can run Windows? – June 08, 2005
Why buy a Dell when Apple ‘Macintel’ computers will run both Mac OS X and Windows? – June 08, 2005
Apple+Intel news is no reason not to buy a new PowerPC-based Mac today – June 07, 2005
Apple to use Intel microprocessors beginning in 2006, all Macs to be Intel-based by end of 2007 – June 06, 2005
WTF? Guess the Exchange server was down again. Missed that last tidbit by Mossberg.
I, for one, will not use my Mac as a Dual-Boot to Windows. I would prefer that Microsoft release a new version of Virtual PC that has been compiled for use on x86 OS X, that would yield performace equal to, or very close to, the actual speed of the Mac x86.
Well, this will put a lot of pressure on Apple to get out products with the latest chips. This did not go well for Apple in the clone days, and it usually took their design team much longer to get an elegant product to market than it took others to just start selling something that works. Even though the OS will now be different, there will be lots of clammoring in Mac-land if Dell or HP or Gateway gets a chip to market before Apple does. Apple’s designs are more complex and will probably always take longer. And there’s the time to sync up a major announcement with a MacWorld or something like that so Steve can take the stage. This will be a challenge for Apple. I hope they adjust and succeed, but it can’t be business as usual.
The “average” user doesn’t give a rip about any of this. Apple will not necessarily have to keep up. Does Dell, no. Only the geeks care and they are relatively unimportant in the age of computer as consumer electronics device.
Ooops…forgot the last sentence…
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The geeks just haven’t figured this out yet.
AJ, you’re absolutely right!
No way am I going to dual boot winblows on my Apple hardware. I’ll do vm all long so I can better keep the winblows torture to a minimum.
Dual boot Mac OS X and Linux? Well…
MacMania: what does take you from dual booting a Mac into Linux today?
There is already a Linux distribution for PowerPC. Since years
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A whole year of gossiping ahead, for sure Apple is going to make something beautiful around a Mac-Intel !
A whole year to get used to this idea ..
A whole year of building Apple mystic.
Amazing !
Mort: if you talk to geeks that have to live in both Linux and Mac world, and deal and develop software for both platform… you’ll find lots of smiles. Just the fact that endian gymnastic is going to be over is a reason to smile. SSE optimization is equivalent to Altivec. Now you do not need to do BOTH, one is enough for both a Linux PC and a OS X Mac.
Lots of working hours turning into relaxing at the beech
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No need of an optimized virtual PC, neither a Windows dual boot, you just have to run the microsoft windows file with Wine.
damn, i have the wrong job. wernstrom!! mossberg’s excellence in rehashing improved. he actually did *not* wait 4 weeks to comment on the intel switch.
tho, why would microsoft be even capable of switching to a suprerior chip architecture is beyond me. 64bit? that’ll be the day, hahaha. (caveat, without emulation as always)
I’m convinced Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal is to bypass the need for Windows to open Windows applications.
The BIGGEST obstacle to ‘switching’ has ALWAYS been that people can’t bring their very expensive suite of applications with them to the Mac.
Perhaps the techies here can answer this…
Surely the code for a Wintel app is MUCH closer to the code for a Macintel app than PPC code is?
If Rosetta invisibly opens PPC apps in the Macintel environment – surely a future iteration of Rosetta could invisibly open Wintel apps in the Macintel environment – and (because of the similarity of the code) with much more ease and speed?
Can there be a day in the near future when software developers only need release a single ‘one-code-fits-all’ version of their apps?
You see, I waffle on about where I believe the Mac is going but I don’t have the technical knowledge to see how (and if) it can get there.
Twenty, not truly “one-code-fits-all” in the sense that 100% of the very same code would work, but certainly changes will be much less and less intrusive. Think for example of games, where optimization done in the Windows version has to be redone on the PPC version. In the future the very same SSE optimization will work for both.
All code that will interact directly with the CPU architecture will not need to be re-invented for a port. Game developers are these very days dreaming about having to just change compilers and link options to have the version for the Mac and not having to juggle to understand why online interconnections do not work cross-platform, or game status saved on one platform still does not work on the other although everything seem nicely ported. Some companies are saying: “WOW, we are going to release for Windows and Mac the VERY SAME DAY, with 100% confidence that it will work, will have same neat effects and cross-platform networking will just work”.
What’s more, if Windows game developers are indeed moving to OpenGL more and more the above will simply be a matter of changing few options to build the game for the Mac + Intel.
No. You’re wrong. The endian properties are about all that will change. That makes it easier for people who develop for both, but it’s only a small part of it. Altivec is also missing, but it’s likely that most never coded for that anyway.
All of the stuff that talks to the OS remains different on both platforms. For some, that’s 10%, for others it might be 80%.
Rosetta lets you run G3 Machine Code on an Intel chip. PPC and Intel and Rosetta have absolutely nothing to do with Windows. What we’ll probably have is just Virtual PC (but native), which means you still have a copy of windows that the windows apps sit on top of, Windows sits on top of Virtual PC and Virtual PC sits on top of OS-X.
It’ll probably mean that a few things that don’t work on VPC now, still won’t work on VPC then. I’m guessing that things like running a sequencer and getting it to talk to firewire audio interface probably does not work in VPC and will probably still not work on VPC when it’s built for Intel.
Harry
We don’t need to build one. We’ve already got a “mystic” in SJ.
Now, mystique. That’s a different thing, and will be fascinating over the next 12 months or so. I’m just impatient.
John
The “No. You’re wrong. …” is not from me
You’re right, it wasn’t from you, it was from me !
Oops !
It’s early for me. Apologies
The message content was fine though.
For those that are still worried :
Flowchart
WOW WOWO WOW – Buy a Mac.. boot in OSX or Linux or Windows. OR boot into OSX and run Windows programmes when you want. (I wouldn’t but zillions of Winusers would).
How beautiful would it be if Apple create the Macintosh that runs Windows apps sweeter than Windows ever could!!!
That would be THE endgame..! I just cannot wait for it to happen!
So if we have a mac that can also boot into Windows, aren’t we all of a sudden opening our Mac up to viruses, spy ware, etc?
Doesn’t sound like too good of an idea to me.
Macaday – I agree… that IS the endgame.
Imagine, all those Windows users will come over to Mac knowing that their precious Windows OS is there… after a couple of weeks they’ll end up throwing it in the Trash.
AFAIK, virii et all take advantages of failures in the OS. OSX <> Windows.
Or is that too simplistic?
Mac and Windows boot on Intel?
w-a-c-i-n-t-e-l
or
mini-wac
So, “To Jump”, I’m trying to envision how having multiple OSs on one machine would work. Would they be able to share the same file directory? i.e. would documents, pictures, etc. available to one OS also be available to the other OS? If not, then I see no problem. If so, it would seem that a malicious virus brought in through Windows could do some serious damage to the stored content on your computer.
I currently use a PC. I had been a Mac user since the 512 K days, but because of the work I do, needed to switch. I look forward to having a ‘PC/Mac’ machine where I can have seperate enviornments for the work I have to do, while having an environment I like to work in.
One of the apps on the PC side that could be interesting in all of this is VMWare. It is similar to Virtual PC, but I believe more compatable. I would love to see either (or both) a virtual environment of a PC running on OS X, or virtual OS X on a PC. Granted for the latter they would have to do some additonal work to make it happen. VMWare running virtual PC environments on a PC is quite responsive. I would suspect that either VirtualPC, or VMWare will provide an excellent environment to do things in.
I currently run up to 5 virtual machines under VMWare at a time.
Hmmm, I don’t know if the ability to run Windows apps directly with OS X would be a good thing. What would the interface look like? WIndows? Eeeyuw. A lot of time when they come out with a Mac version it looks a helluva lot better than the windows version did.
Twenty Benson:
Almost all programs used to produce audio, like Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer, etc. have Altivec optimizations. Garage Band and Soundtrack Pro also are programmed with Altivec optimizations. Many realtime apps nowadays have these optimizations, so It’s going to be interesting to see how that will play out in the coming months. I know lots of audio app an plugin developers who are NOT pleased about this move at all. The pro audio market is small, but they spend more money on their gear per user than in most other Mac markets.