Apple and the Evil Empire

After years of assuring us that the Power PC was the One True Chip and that the Wintel Empire could never strike back, Apple has jumped ship. Next year you'll be able to purchase Macintosh machines with Intel Inside. The corrollary, of course, is that soon there will be a version of Max OSX that runs on Intel Machines.

The would-be technopunditry have been discussing the 'extreme difficulty' that Apple and Co will have in the conversion of OSx to the Intel platform - but they've missed the point. Darwin is OSx on X86, minus a buncha add-on code and that cool GUI, Aqua. I'll be interested to see how Apple approaches this strategic partnership - will they ask Pappy Intel to build 'em some very specific motherboards, or will they go a la carte? That question is significant to those who like OSX but don't want to buy PPC hardware, or for that matter, Apple hardware... Will they be able to, say, run YellowDog on their g4 powerbook, and use that OSX license on their hot-shit hyperthreading 10 ghz P4.5? Curiouser and curiouser.

This also could have significant impact on the future of linux on the desktop. If Apple goes generic - ie, offers OSX for purchase by the General Public for operation on their own X86 systems, we could see linux on the desktop become the impossible dream outside of universities and really serious *nix shops that want an X11-based desktop and the Linux kernel rather than the Mach microkernel and the Aqua interface. I'm terribly torn - I've been with linux since 1996 or so, via slackware, redhat, mandrake - you name it. I've nursed it along on crippled hardware and fought through old-school kernel patch and recompile to get my cheap ass hardware recognized and functional. I've spent days building X11 so that I could have AA fonts and lots of other eye candy and dancing bologna; but, Oh My Heart, the thought of Lightwave and Poser native in *nix makes my pulse race.

If Apple can actually produce an OSX that is viable on X86, and vendor supported, and the switch to PC hardware can bring their prices down within shouting distance of Dell, this could also have a significant impact on Windows. I can only hope.


All I can say, folks, is "Hang tight - this is gonna be a bumpy ride!"