There's a bunch of rumours flying around the web right now about how Apple is going to announce a shift to Intel processors at the WWDC conference this Monday (the 6th June). I have no idea whether it's true or not, but if it is, Apple is taking a risk by alienating a lot of the existing customers, as well as forcing developers to cater to the two architectures (although there may be functionality in XCode to automatically make FAT binaries).
Anyway, here's a bunch of links:
- MacNN's article
- CNet's report
- AppleInsider's report
- Robert Scoble's post, where he confirms that the rumour is real
UPDATE (2005/06/07 1:00): Some other, very late, links:
- Jonas Luster
- John Gruber - I'll see you Intel and Intel-Apple odds and ends
- Rui Carmo
Phew. That's enough for now. I guess we'll see what the fuss is about in a couple of hours! (and me, in 7 or so, when I wake up!)
IBM (Apple’s current chip provider) aims more for supercomputer/mainframe type systems, the desktop is ruled by intel/amd. That’s why apple whould probably get cheaper and more powerful chips from intel for their macs, its a matter of cost cutting.
Also, os x already supports x86 chips so there shouldn’t be much change for the developer, as for alienating the consumer, there is no change, its the same os, just different hardware, kinda like when you run winxp on an intel or amd cpu.
Will, you forget that IBM is supplying the chips for the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3, so it is not just restricted to the supercomputer/mainframe systems, as you say.
I don’t pretend to know how much a processor (plus the controllers and motherboards, which would be required to run the chips) would cost from either Intel or AMD, but I don’t think that’s much of an issue. Apple already has a huge profit margin on their products - I doubt they feel they need to increase it any more (which is why prices have gradually declined).
OS X doesn’t support x86. The underlying base, Darwin, does. Everything on top of that would have to be modified to work on x86 (whether that’s a recompile, or something a bit less trivial, I don’t know). With regards to alienating the customer (or not), there’s the issue of software that simply won’t run on the new systems, because the programs are no longer maintained, or the developer simply hasn’t released an update to work with the architecture shift. Similarly, I bet there’s a helluva lot of PPC-optimised code in Apple’s (and 3rd parties’) pro apps that squeeze every last bit of performance out of the processor. Moving to a new architecture is likely to kill that totally, until the optimisations are rewritten.
Anyway, we’ll see in a few hours. I’ve got a couple of other links to put up (who knows if I’ll get them up before the keynote.
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