Wow, what a historic day. Steve Jobs has today (06.06.05) announced that future Macs will have "Intel Inside". PowerPC is dead (in Macs), phased out come late 2007. Long live PowerPC!
Wintel (Windows + Intel) platform users and the Mac faithful have up untill now been fed stories that PowerPC chips were better. It would seem that we were misled. Apparently Apple has been secretly running OS X on Intel chips for the last 5 years: was it merely being prudent, or hiding a long-standing lack of confidence in it's own product? The following claim, still on Apple's website after the announcement, has somehow lost it's ability to convince:
And of course, there was that Apple advertising campaign that portrayed the 32-bit Pentium as a snail with a chip on its back:
My first Mac (a PowerBook 100) had a 68000 Motorola processor. I then progressed through a 68040, to a PowerPC G3, and currently use a G4. But that PowerBook G5 I've been waiting for will never come. I paid to upgrade my "Classic" applications to native Mac OS X ones—and now I'll have to pay again to make them run natively (no emulation) on the x86 architecture. Perhaps I am not alone in having mixed feelings about this announcement?
So why is this happening? Jobs says it's all down to a four letter word.... watts. Intel promises 70 units of performance per watt, whereas PowerPC looks set to provide only 15. "Units of performance"? Sounds a bit like this is in the same vein as "serum rhubarb assay", "metachlorian count", etc. Regardless, there are a number of interesting questions raised by this impending transition:
- What is left that will make the Mac a Mac? With increasing adoption of PC-standard hardware like USB 2.0, PCI cards, IDE, etc - and now the CPU - will there be anything other than aesthetics to distinguish a Mac box from a PC box? Bear in mind there is less than a 2% difference between chimp DNA and human DNA, so any remaining differences need only be small to have real world meaning;
- What's going to happen to Mac sales during the next year or two, when people realise anything they buy with a PowerPC in it is going to come with limited prospects and support? Like buying Rover (a defunct British car), it could be a good time to pick up a cheap (obsolete) Mac. On the other hand, why buy an iMac G4 when you can have an iMac P4 instead?;
- Will PowerPC emulation on Intel-based Macs allow us to get effective use out of non-native applications like Office 2004 and Photoshop CS2? [The emulator/ translator is called Rosetta, and it apparently performs well, although there are some restrictions on what apps it will handle. Furthermore, the presence of any PowerPC-specific code will apparently cause the whole app to run under emulation.];
- If apps built for Mac OS 9.x and earlier are "Classic", and apps recompiled for x86 will be the new "native", what does that make today's Mac OS X apps? We could refer to them as "halflings", or maybe follow the existing naming tradition (Carbon, Cocoa) and call then "Castrated"? [Apps that can run both natively (x86-specific code) and via Rosetta (PowerPC-specific code) are termed "universal binaries"];
- Will we be able to install Mac OS X on a cheap PC box? [Apparently not; a sensible decision? How will Apple enforce this?];
- Will we be able to dual-boot an Intel-based Mac, choosing OS X or Windows XP - or both? [Apparently Apple won't preclude your running Windows on a Mac; very clever—but let's wait and see, as Microsoft may yet bugger this up by disabling Windows if it detects Mac hardware];
- This is a new twist in the Mehahertz Wars, as without an alternative CPU architecture Apple may struggle to continue claiming that MHz doesn't matter. Can it provide the same MHz bang-for-buck as budget PC manufacturers like Dell? Will Apple even try to? As TidBITS comments, "Running a native Intel Photoshop under Mac OS X versus Windows XP will reveal more about the efficiencies of Unix and Apple's implementation than any of the apples to oranges (or Apples to Redmonds) tests yet performed." Dvorak predicts "Apple and its BSD-UNIX kernel running on the Intel platform should outperform Windows by an extreme";
- Will be still be able to run our "Classic" favourites e.g. the early Tomb Raider games? [Apparently not, as the Rosetta emulator will not support applications built for Mac OS 8 or 9];
- Will the new Macs have the "Intel Inside" logo plastered prominently on the case?;
- If you can run Windows on a Mac, will developers even bother porting their applications to Mac OS X? [An Aspyr Media employee says "Running windows on a Mac pretty much eliminates the need for Mac ports of PC software"];
No, you're not alone. I can't decide yet if it's good or bad...but it's fact. I'll still probably get a new G5-based Mac later this year as I expect Leopard will run on it. What I can't figure out is if all future versions of Mac OS X will run on PPC (as well as Intel).