Well, it happened… Apple-oriented web sites (and others as well) all went crazy over rumors from CNet and Wall Street Journal that Apple would switch to Intel chips. I have to admit that I was far from being convinced and now that it’s been announced, I still have problems believing it!

Superficially, it strikes me as a Real Bad Mistake™ from Apple though, admittedly, it’s too early to tell. For one thing, Apple just announced that they won’t be selling any computers for the next year because who, in their right mind, would buy an Apple computer knowing that it’ll be obsolete in a year (then again, computers always are obsolete by the next year but we’re talking complete architecture change here)… Sure, I’m sure that there are some good deals to be fetched as far as PPC-based Apple computers will go but I doubt that Apple will see much computer sales for next year.

Now, who knows what Apple has planned, but I can see that switch backfiring and backfiring HARD! Apple is a hardware company, they make money from hardware, not software. And anyone who knows anything about computers will tell you that regardless of protections you put on something, given enough incentive, people will find a way to bypass it. How long is it going to take before someone figures out how to run OS X on any PC? Then, how will Apple make money? Selling software that can easily be cracked? Not a chance in hell! Microsoft makes money because they dominate the business side and business users pay for licenses. With Apple, business users will still need to buy an Apple computer so no dice there: if people are not switching now, why would they later? For that matter, I’ve managed to have some people switch to Macs at my office and part of it was the G5 with easy 64-bit computing. Sure OS X was part of it but the deciding factor was the combination of both. I mean, we all like UNIX but for our work, we can just use Linux and keep Windows handy for Office.

The only potential gain I see is getting more performance and I hope that’s not a shortsighted gain. They probably thought long and hard about it and they know more than I do about processors but my personal perception was that the PPC architecture has always been superior and it seems like it has a bright future in multi-core and 64-bit computing. I mean, all next generation consoles are switching to PPC? Heck, it seems like everyone and their brothers is switching to PPC nowadays! Apple only is bucking that trend. Maybe what’s holding up Longhorn is the fact that Microsoft will switch to PPC! :)

Then it kind of pisses me off to think about all the people who spent efforts optimizing their apps to work on the PPC. Then again, it won’t be the first time or last that hard efforts will go to nought (I know something about that myself).

All in all, what I know for sure, is that OS X better kick Windows’ ass performance-wise now that they can be compared equally. No more excuses! Apple fans have suffered enough through dark performance days getting solace with Altivec, multi-processor systems and 64-bit computing. Hopefully, Intel won’t hit the performance wall they seem to be currently hitting and will solve their problems with their 64-bit chips. Maybe, Apple will manage to make Intel use Altivec (though I am not sure if it’s even technically possible)?

I’m still stunned by the announcement and I sincerely hope that Apple will pull stronger out of whatever will happen. For me, and I suspect for many Apple fans, it’s a little bit as if it was the end of the world as we know it, like Luke going to the dark side! Apple hardware has never used a little-endian processor before and this announcement changes so many things it’s mind-boggling…

Oh, yeah, amid all of this, there are probably other interesting news from WWDC but honestly, right now, who cares that OS X 10.5 will be called Leopard? Or is it a hint at the blazing speed that the OS will offer on Intel hardware? ;-)

For a good summary of blog coverage of the pre-keynote rumors, see The Unofficial Apple Weblog (and I concur on urging codepoet to reconsider posting pictures of himself naked!) :)

As always, John Siracusa provides a nice perspective on the situation with a point of view that I completely share:
If all goes as planned, the Mac platform will be stronger in a couple of years than it is today. (Who knows, maybe Doom 4 will even get decent frame-rates.) I’ll buy a multi-core, multi-CPU x86-64 Mac and I’ll like it because it’ll be fast, good-looking, and it’ll run Mac OS X. But I’ll still think of what might have been…and what someday might be again. Call me a hopeless romantic. I’ll miss the PowerPC.

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