and how the devil are you, and where the devil are you ;-p

An address/phone no. might be useful..

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bombholio

I can't be the only one to find this whole thing terribly funny, though, can I? Ironically, I mean -- in that it's one of the Mac evangelists' worst nightmares.

Me, I couldn't give a toss whose chipset my OS runs on (indeed recent and expensive attempts to convert myself to a Maccie reveal that actually I couldn't give much of a toss which OS it is either), but there's a big pride element amongst the fiercely loyal / hardcore Maccies, and this will hit them hard. I expect many will feel an element of betrayal, about which I can empathise.

:bu:

Bruce is right - people shouldn't care what chip is in their machine, what they want is familiarity and all their stuff where they left it.

What Jobs is doing is making a radical change at the optimal time - Longhorn is still n years away, Linux isn't really maturing as a desktop OS - so now's the time to expend efforts creating a translation layer that will let OS X run on both big and little-endian systems.

The "Univeral Binary" that's being talked about - PPC and x86 binary in one 'app' (packaged directory tree, really) is fundamental along with Rosetta.

Support for PowerPC isn't going to somehow magically disappear as a result of this move to Intel, I think the endgame is to make OS X chipset agnostic.

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simon

The primary issue is not that the change is being made now, nor even that the target appears not to be optimal from a technology standpoint, but that it is being openly disclosed. The history of the computer industry is littered with the corpses of companies that said too much too soon and killed their existing portfolio. In that regard, I refuse to believe that Jobs is such an imbecile, and choose instead to posit that there are real strategic reasons for the timing of the announcement.

Apple have already stated that Intel chips will replace PowerPC chips. They have already stated that you won't be able to run MacOS on non-Apple grey box computers. They have already stated that they don't care if you run Windows on an Apple computer. The very speculation that the final target is x86 is just that, fueled by the knowledge that there is an existing MacOS port to that platform, and that developers now have access to an IA-32 x86 cross-compiler (along with big warnings stating that nothing is fixed in stone).

We've been through this on the Mac platform before, with the transition from 68K to PowerPC, and we had 'Fat binaries' for a time. Just as will be the case this time, that was a limited time offer, and its days have passed. Modern Apple software does not run on an MC68K Mac. Future Apple software will not run on a PowerPC Mac. It won't happen overnight - there's a few years left in the systems yet - but it will happen. The market desire for PowerPC Macs left millions of dollars of obsolete Apple inventory unsold in the channel. With the more streamlined 'just in time' manufacturing Apple currently uses, there will be much less inventory to write off, but sales will suffer, and they'll suffer badly.

Microsoft recently got into bed with IBM, selecting PowerPC as the platform for Xbox 360, and cutting Intel out of future platform sales. They also published a version of Windows XP that runs 64 bit clean on non-Itanium hardware, ensuring that the multi billion dollar Itanium platform is under further jeopardy. Although Itanium in its original form is very likely buried, even inside Intel, much of its technology will find its way into successors of EM64T. That there could be an alliance of Intel, Apple and HP pushing that technology as a MacOS platform should be viewed with some concern by both IBM and Microsoft.

Despite the very public announcement, clearly some cards are being carefully held close to the chest. Were that not the case it's unlikely that Jobs would have damaged the sales channel so badly and so early in a migration cycle.
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DrGoon

That said, compiling existing Cocoa Mac OSX apps for Intel is likely to be a piece of piss for most of them. Vienna 2.0 compiled with nothing more than a bunch of compiler warnings brought about by the switch to GCC 4.0. I don't know if it will actually run as I've no way of finding out for a while but I'm pretty optimistic. There's a category of code that will need revisions but they're limited to those that assume byte ordering, AltiVec, Preference plugins and assembler stuff to name but a few.

Perhaps there's more interesting stuff coming, possibly at the Paris Expo. Possibly significant price reductions on existing hardware. But I'm also confident that PPC machines have years of life left in them. (But given my financial situation and the developer necessity of such an approach, I'll probably wait and buy a MacIntel box as my next Apple PC.)

Might as well follow on here - I bought a G5 and a flat panel, a monitor arm, and some wireless bits to replace my laptop shortly after I posted this. My chair looks like mission control, but its more ergonomic and the old carpel tunnel is a bad memory, at least for now.

A couple of days later, I found myself walking out of my job - either I subjected myself to some intrusive personal questions with a third party HR company or I would be suspended without pay for insubordination, they said. So, I quit.

The following six months were a trifle rough, and the credit cards are bloody well used. I'm working again now, but for my sins its back to ISP land (only this one's a tad different to CIX in a couple of ways). Could be worse - I get to work at home and use this lovely computer, and hell, I'm learning things instead of stagnating for the first time in several years.

And if folks want to contact me... ping me at mac.com and I'll forward the rest of the details. Hope you're all well!

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DrGoon

You got iChat video conferencing facilities yet? If you do, stick freewheelin@mac.com into your buddy list. NB: that's just an iChat account, my email is the same as it always was.

Cheers
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simon

I find text chat too staccato generally.
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simon