PLATFORMS | Ahmad Humeid reflects on the Apple latest technological transition.

Mac fanatics were shocked by the rumours that were coming out earlier this month. Some of them even refused to believe them. Until, that is, Steve Jobs, speaking in front of thousands of Mac developers, uttered the words ‘It’s True’. On the large screen behind him the ‘e’ in ‘True’ was a bit lower than the rest of the word. Reminds of a certain chip maker’s logo?. Yes. Intel.

Who had ever thought that Apple would start using Intel chips to power its computers? Wasn’t Intel the other half of the evil WinTel empire (Windows being the first half). Whoever still thinks that way has not grasped that in the tech world there are no permanent enmities or friendships.

In 1991 I wrote a headline for an article (in what was Jordan’s first computer magazine: MEC) that said “When two worlds collide”. At that time the big news was that Apple was now working with IBM. If you know your personal computer history you would most probably remember how much Anti-IBM Apple was since it started in the late 1970s. In 1984 when the Macintosh was launched in front of a crowd of journalists, the Mac told the audience (through its speech synthesizer) “Never trust a computer you can’t lift”, referring to an IBM mainframe.

The Apple-IBM cooperation yielded the PowerPC processor that, till that fateful keynote address of the June 6 Apple Word Wide Developer Conference, powered every Macintosh for producing during the last 14 years. IBM and Apple also tried to work on an operating system together. That project never saw the light of day.

So, there we have it. Soon we will have Intel Inside our Macs. Don’t expect an Intel Inside sticker on a Mac though. And, just in case you’ve misunderstood the Apple-Intel announcement, Mac OS X will not run on normal Wintel boxes. Some people are speculating that it is only a matter of time until some hackers put together the code needed to run the Mac OS on Wintel hardware. But the fact remains that the Wintel PC come in so many flavours and configurations that it would be quite cumbersome to run MacOS, an operating system that is tightly integrated with the Mac’s hardware.

Apple never had it so good in years. The Intel switch is scary to some users and developers. But the way Apple has handled the switch’s groundwork, both from a technological and PR angles is amazing. Developers where shown that amending their applications to run on the new, Intel based Mac is quite easy. Apple is ever releasing a technology called Rosetta (as in the Rosetta stone) that allows today’s Mac software to run (at reasonable speed) on the new hardware without alteration. This is intended as a temporary fix, but it put many minds at ease.

Amazingly, it also turns out that Apple has been, for the past 5 years, secretly been developing versions of it’s OS to run on Intel processors. The so called ‘Just In Case” scenario,

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini took the stage during Jobs’s Keynote and told the story of Apple and Intel as a Silicon Valley story. The recent deal, in his words, is not “a fairy tale with a happy ending.” I think of this as an exciting and important story with a very happy beginning.” He added.


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10 responses to “Mac-Intel?”

  1. Ameen Malhas Avatar
    Ameen Malhas

    Great news I thought. I’ve always looked at Macs from afar and even attempted the switch a few years back with an ill-fated PowerBook purchase.

    Now that I’ll probably be able to run Windows on a Mac (Apple has said it won’t explicitly support this, but that it is entirely possible), and that will run at near native speeds (as opposed to VirtualPC), I might contemplate the switch again.

    In the meantime, I’m holding off on investing in a Mac… well … maybe just the mini, I just love how small it is. I’ve heard a company on the East Coast has started installing minis in car dashboards so you can have a media center in your car.

    Malhas – a mac fan, but a windows user.

  2. Ammar Ibrahim Avatar
    Ammar Ibrahim

    That’s a big threat to both windows & Linux. I think I’d switch to Mac Os once the transition is over.

    Apple are doing great, they never stop amazing all of us.

  3. Isam Bayazidi Avatar
    Isam Bayazidi

    Ahmad, To be frank, I think that one of the biggest advantages for Apple is having Mac OS X available in a Normal PC platform (what you called Wintel). It will open the market for Mac OS X in the Intel-based PCs, which I think would be the best thing about the transition.
    Worst thing about this transition is that Apple will lose one of the most unique factors in thier hardware. They will basically loose thier edge, a Powerbook could be head-to-head compared with a Dell Laptop. Making the “unmeasured” difference int he CPU arch more clear now.

  4. Humeid Avatar
    Humeid

    Isam,

    Apple are explicitly saying they wont allow OS X to run on wintel boxes. Some in the Mac community are expecting some 3rd party hacks to emerge that allow this. It is not expected that running MacOS on wintel boxes will be a widespread phenomenon. Although time might prove this opinion wrong.

    From a completely reversed view, some Mac pundits are now promising themseleves that Windows apps will start running under MacOS X with Virtual PC without considerable loss of performace becasue there will be no processor emulation necessary.

    As for the hardware issue, I really didn’t fully understand your comment. But what I can say is that compared feature by feature, Apple hardware is not more expensive than Dell’s. The average Mac is more expensive because it is more fully featured. I can also testify from personal experience that Macs have a much longer usable life, making the overall cost of ownership lower.

    The tech market is undergoing unbelievable changes. Today I heard a rumor about Intel planning to buy Apple to compete with Microsoft! Microsoft is under attack from a combination of Google, RSS, blogging, podcasting, Skype, Linux and Apple. It’s very interesting!

  5. Ziad Avatar
    Ziad

    I’m one Mac fan that feels completely betrayed by this!

    It’s hard to explain, but there’s that “I hate you WinTel” rebel feeling you get when owning a Mac :)

  6. Ameen Malhas Avatar
    Ameen Malhas

    Now we just need OpenOffice to shape up. Or some other competitor to emerge in the “Business Applications” field.

    I’ve done a lot of reading on the issue of running Mac OS X on non-Apple Intel machines. Apple has said it will try to prevent this by installing safeguards in the installation process. Another key to preventing this from happening is the fact that Macs use proprietary hardware, and thus the OS will only have drivers for Apple approved hardware. As always, hackers will eventually find a way to circumvent this, but I don’t forsee ‘average’ people going to Best Buy to pick up a copy of OS X for their Dell at home anytime soon.

    Microsoft is now trying to enter the graphics market with their announcement of Acrylic. As with everything tech, we’ll have to wait and see…

  7. Axel Avatar
    Axel

    As a result, demand for PowerMacs is expected to drop and the speeds will likely never exceed 3GHZ. I am going to start running Linux side-by-side with MacOS because I expect I will eventually switch over to it in the 1-2 year time frame. One of the main reasons Apple is switching to Intel is because the Intel chips have DRM (digital rights management) built in to the hardware. This will make it theoretically impossible for hackers to bypass it. So, no more “fair use” or anything like that. You will only be able to do with your movies, music, etc. what the distribution companies (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) want you to be able to do. You will not have total control over your computer—they will.

  8. Yazan Avatar
    Yazan

    Well there’s absolutely no need to hack. A Developer Version of Mac OS X already exists for Intel Platforms. Jobs in his demo ran Mac OS and Rosetta on an Intel Box.

    The software is out there, you just have to know where to look, or pay up a grand and get it legally off Apple.

  9. Yazan Malakha Avatar
    Yazan Malakha

    For the unfortunate ones with no access to Mac OS X Developer Edition, comes a hack that overrides Apple’s TPM Chip. I’m surprised the issue hasn’t surfaced on your blog yet. You may check it at

    http://ymalakha.blogspot.com/2005/08/osx86-project-mac-os-x-on-sub-300-usd.html

    and http://osx86project.org/

  10. Yazan Malakha Avatar
    Yazan Malakha

    just uploaded some screenshots of MacOS X running under windows XP, enjoy;-)

    http://ymalakha.blogspot.com/2005/08/screenshots-of-mac-os-x-running-under.html