Bryan - can you port Mac OSX to run on an Intel box? I'd gladly buy OSX on an IBM, Dell or Chembook with its Unix backbone as opposed to Windows.

Secondly, since you were at the announcement, when do you think the time frame is for this? Intel is going to push 64-bit processing like a bat out of hell, so what do you think that has to do with this decision, if at all?

dd, that's one of the big questions everyone has... How long will it be before someone comes up with a hack to make it installable on a Dell machine? You know it will happen. I don't think they really want to give up their control over most of the hardware, though, so I don't know what they'll do about that for sure. They definitely don't want to ruin their reputation by letting people put together a machine on $200 in parts. They can't control the quality or compatability, so it would hurt them in several ways. I'm having visions of a dual-boot machine running Linux, OS X, and maybe Windows just to show it can be done.

By 2006, Intel OS X boxes will be shipping, he said. Developers can order a $999 kit that includes one of the Intel machines, right now. One of the people I'm with already ordered theirs, we will probably be getting one, but since we're java it's not critical... just fun :D Anyway, these machines have to be returned and can't be opened up.

Something interesting Jobs pointed out is that in the last 5 years, OS X has had 5 releases, and Microsoft has only had XP. The next Windows release will be Longhorn, which will come out at the same time as OS X 10.5 Leopard in 2006.

Bryan,

What happens w/ Altivec instructions that aren't supported by x86? The Mathematica guy must have dealt with this.

I read that Rosetta has some limitations - won't work for some apps - do you know how significant they are?

Do you think Apple's sales get hurt because some people don't want to buy the last PowerPC Macs? I wish I knoew what happened when they switched to PowerPC in the '90s.

Edit: On the Rosetta, Apple docs say it does not run the following:

"Applications built for Mac OS 8 or 9
Code written specifically for AltiVec
Code that inserts preferences in the System Preferences pane
Applications that require a G4 or G5 processor
Applications that depend on one or more kernel extensions
Kernel extensions
Bundled Java applications or Java applications with JNI libraries that can't be translated"

But I don't know how significant this really is.

Well... I think they have to say that not all programs will work with Rosetta, but literally everything that the programmers I'm with have tried has worked. One of them downloaded a benchmark program that's designed for the old PPC and ran it under Rosetta. You could definitely see a speed loss, but it was totally usable.

I'm not a Cocoa programmer, but the new versions of XCode they gave everyone have a checkbox that says "Compile program for: [] PPC [] Intel" and if you choose both, your install dvd will run on either. As far as how much of the code has to change to make this all work... I'm not sure. I'll find out more about that today.

I do think sales will suck for a short time. Anyone that knows what's going on is going to wait until the first generation of Intel machines have all of the bugs worked out. I'm sure all developers and hard-core apple guys will get one right away, but I could see regular users wanting to wait it out.

At this point, it seems like most of the hostility to the switch is coming from people who did badmouth Intel at one time. They don't want to face the Windows guys who now are just going nuts. "How's Crow Taste" was the first slashdot post about this. It's mostly having to face those people that's going to suck.

Darwin (the underlying BSD core of OS X) runs fine on x86 hardware. The new intel based macs will most likely not be x86 or x86-64 - just some other chip made by intel. They will not use a PC BIOS but rather will continue to use openfirmware to boot.

Oh, and the OS running on my Mac (iMac w/DVD) runs fine on my PC as well. Debian rules. :)

The new Intel Macs will be x86. I'm tired of listening to the arguments that Intel will license PPC or some other such drivel coming from people who have no comprehension of how the semiconductor industry works.

Does anyone really believe that Intel would produce a CPU that is in direct competition with their bread-and-butter platform that's they've so heavily invested in for the past 20 years?

Further, does anyone really believe that Intel has any leftover sub-.13 micron mfg capacity to produce some other chip that will amount to maybe 3 million units a year?

I'm sure someone will trot out the XScale/StrongARM example, just remember that Intel acquired that design in full in the process of picking over the dead pieces of DEC. This design filled a power/speed niche that the x86 line couldn't.

Agree, the x86 Macs will be pretty standard x86 hardware. Apple has said you'll probably be able to run Windows on the x86 Macs. And Mac OS obviously can run on standard x86 PCs (see Jobs' demo), except that Apple will do something to make it hard to do.

Buying a non-standard processor would defeat most of the reasons for Apple to go to Intel - scale economies, guaranteed processor parity with the competition.

Selling a non-standard processor would be tough for Intel to do. Intel's biggest customer is Dell, who can move 3X Apple's volumes from Intel to AMD. Intel cannot treat Apple better than Dell, e.g. making a special chip just for Apple.

I agree, Bryan; sales will suck for Apple - and I think they will suck from here onto the early part of 2007, when the 1st Gen Apple/Intel bugs get worked out to a degree that those who are computer saavy will feel safe in buying them. Now, can Apple stockholders wait that long? I'm not sure.