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When Apple CEO Steve Jobs made the announcement at the Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, I felt the Earth shake.
This is huge.
From a hardware standpoint, by 2007, all Apple computers will be virtually indistinguishable from Wintel boxes. This has been a long and painful progression for Apple, as the first Macintosh was built with components that were specially designed and incompatible with IBM PC architecture. Little by little, Apple has realized that their future would reside in components that would be compatible with the rest of the computing world. I remember the day that Apple began using PC compatible hard drives and RAM, which was likely one of the smartest moves they ever made. Now the transition will be complete by 2007.
A lot of die-hard Apple fans feel like they have been abandoned. I have mixed feelings about the switch, as I think the effects of this transition will only be realized over the next year. I am sad to see Apple drop the IBM architecture, as I had good vibes about the next-generation Cell processor. I do believe the switch has saved Apple from an uncertain future. Switching to Intel is another step in the direction of convergence, where all computing platforms (OSX, Windoze, and *nix) will be able to interact with one another on an unprecedented level.
About an hour ago, I watched Steve Jobs' Keynote where he announced this incredible news. The crowd was eerily quiet by the announcement, likely due to mass shock. One of the most riveting statements Jobs made was that all versions of OSX have been developed on both PowerPC and Intel architectures. I think this was a precautionary measure, if Apple computer sales tanked, then they could release OSX to the PC platform, and still manage to stay alive in the software business. You cannot deny that when it comes to synergy in software development, integration, and ease of use, Apple is at the top of the heap.
I think it is going to be exciting to see Apple's next-generation machines. I particularly like the fact that I could run OSX, Linux and Windoze on one machine. This would be an ideal software development platform, as you could simultaneously develop software for all computing platforms on the fly. It was stated at the conference that future intel-based Macintosh computers would be able to run Windoze, but PC Clones would be incapable of running OSX. I am curious to see how they plan to accomplish this; I am sure some hacker will be able to make a crack so the rest of the computing world can use the world's most advanced operating system. You know as well as I do that there are countless PC users out there who are sick and tired of viruses and spyware. This might be the development they have been waiting for to take the plunge and switch to a more robust and secure operating system.
Over the past day, I have been reading a large number of forums who are discussing this very subject. The general consensus is not very optimistic. Many feel that the transition is going to be a bumpy one, and will hurt Apple in the short run. From what I saw from the keynote, the transition from PowerPC to Intel is going to be seamless, and transparent. Developers are encouraged to develop cross-platform binaries from this point forward, a new version of XCode -- Apple's software development package -- was released yesterday that allows developers to port their software to Intel platforms with little headache. In fact, they claimed Mathematica was ported in approximately two hours.
It is Rosetta that will allow backward-compatibility for PowerPC developed software to run seamlessly on future Intel machines. It is an amazing translation / emulation technology that Apple developed, which is incredibly fast, and superior in every way to Classic emulation. With all these developments, I doubt we will even see a hiccup in the migration from one platform to another.
On a slightly different tangent, I guess Apple's old slogan Think different no longer applies.
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