In this /. story Apple is reported to have officially switched to Intel processors, citing more innovation, better power use, and the fact that they’ve been planning it for the past five years. Mac OS X already runs, they’ve got a real-time emulation layer to transparently run current Mac programs, and most other programs can be rebuilt in two hours.
So you mean after years and years of my touting how Intel chips suxxors, now I’ve got to follow Apple onto them? groan I hope this works out. I also hope that they’re not going to sell OS X apart from Macs… or maybe that’s their plan? What better way to invade the Windows territory than to invade their own hardware? Offer the Mac experience at a very cheap price…?
No, that’s not Apple’s style. The Mac experience is driven in part by the fact that hardware and software Just Work™. If Apple has to start supporting all manner of hardware that’s in the x86 world, that would cause problems. Of course, they could only support ATI/NVidia cards, Intel processors, and a certain kind of RAM… Meh, who knows. Now let’s see if I can get Tiger to run on that old HP POC I’ve got upstairs that won’t even run Red Hat…
