I think Mac biggest limiting factor especially with geeks and developers is the hardware price. I think they have made a very smart move moving to Intel. Now you will be able to put together your own white box like we all do for Linux and Windows now and run Mac on it if we want as well. I have a spare machine that will be eagerly awaiting a Mac OS. Sure the power issue might be a factor but I think the monitary issue is a bigger factor. more people will buy it if they can put it on the local Dell special from Best Buy and more developers are likely to try out writing apps for it. I think Wall Street's speculation about Mac moving to Intel is just that speculation. I'll go on record here and now as saying I think it's a brilliant move.

Andy -

You will not be able to run OS X on anything but apple hardware, this is official info from apple.

Other than that it's only the CPU (and motherboard i presume) they're changing, theres still proprietary apple stuff in there, and they will probably use OpenFirmware or the like.

Andy -

You will not be able to run OS X on anything but apple hardware, this is official info from apple.

Other than that it's only the CPU (and motherboard i presume) they're changing, theres still proprietary apple stuff in there, and they will probably use OpenFirmware or the like.

Oops, double post, sorry about that.

It is likely however, that the prices on apple machines will drop. As I recall, the G5s cost signifigently more to produce than intels, including intels upcoming dual-core 64 bit cpus, which the new macs will most likely use.

>> You will not be able to run OS X on anything but apple hardware, this is official info from apple. <<

But what are the chances of that being true in practice? Where there's a will there's a way, and so on.

I bet you'll see OSX running on a Dell within a year of today, "official" or not.

But yeah, to your point, you won't be able to buy it that way.

I've been following this over the last few days. From the outline, following Rory's link, it looks like Apple will be using "garden variety" Intel CPUs. Pretty amazing that they've been compiling OS X on Intel for the past several years. They've been bashing Intel the last couple years at least. I can still remember the demo where Jobs showed a graphics/sound demo on the G5, and the same demo running on a Wintel Xeon box. The demo ran smoothly on the Mac, and ran jerky on the Wintel box, finally crashing it. The implication of the demo was obvious: "The Mac/G5 is the choice for graphic artist professionals. The Wintel platform is a piece o' crap". It's sweet irony that they're partially reversing themselves: "Oh, um, er...Intel is actually good." I bet some of their customers and ISVs are doing a double-take right now. They probably think that Apple has been snowing them a bit all this time.

I agree that it may just be a matter of time before someone tries creating a legal Intel Mac compatible. Only thing is, people have tried this before. I can remember back in the 80s there were companies who successfully produced legal Mac clones, but it was tough. There was a lot of custom hardware that needed to be reverse-engineered, and Apple kept changing it with each new generation of their machines. They died out after a while because of this. I think during the 90s Apple finally licensed out their custom chips, and there were clones again, but I think it was around the time that OS 9 or X came out that Apple said they were no longer licensing their chip technology, and once again the clone makers died out.

It wasn't tied to an OS release, but when Steve Jobs came back as CEO. That's when they reversed themselves and said they were no longer licensing their custom chips.

"You will not be able to run OS X on anything but apple hardware, this is official info from apple." - quote

OK that officially sucks in my book. I can hardly wait then until somebody cracks it and posts how to set up my own Apple/Intel box on the internet. I mean for heavens sake if people can figure out how to uncap modems and post those instructions then I'm sure they will do the same for building your own cheap Mac. Sucks that it might be a hack though I would rather it just work like Windows and Linux do when you build a box for them.

Andy -

Try running windows sp2 on the PowerPC then, see how that 'just work'.

Seriously though, apple still has alot of proprietary hardware in their systems, the cpu switch wont make all that of a diff, though it might enable microsoft to sell a mactel version of windows, not that I think they will.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/08/1725255&from=rss

I'm not sure it's a goog idea if you can run OS X on a machine that you build yourself. For me, this is one of the strenght of Apple: Control. They control the 3 most important things in Computer today: The hardware, The OS, The software... Take something like Final Cut... Why is it running so good ? Because they know everything... They test everything...

That's one of the reason why MS's job is harder: they don't control anything about the hardware and they have to virtualize everything... On the other hand, of course, like Dave W. said, we don't write anything in ASM anymore and even Apple has layered/virtualized everything otherwhise they won't be able to go to intel...

I anyway think it's a good deal with Intel. Especially for folks like me... I mean, unless MS make longhorn not running on a mac (the same way Apple will do with PCs), I'll be able to have a powerbook with 2 partitions ;) Even better, I should have a VPC working waaaay better coz it won't have to translate PPC->Intel.

Hey Rory, tu viens parler de ce passage à Intel avec moi dans www.pomcast.com ? ;)

Hey Rory, I'm at TechEd, where are you?

Truth in Advertising laws say You had better be here!

"Hey Rory, tu viens parler de ce passage à Intel avec moi dans www.pomcast.com ? ;)"

That'd be fun - I like this topic, alors, yes :)

Paul -

"Hey Rory, I'm at TechEd, where are you?"

I was going to go, but...

Would you believe "long story"?

Hope there's no long story next week when your supposed to be in Alaska!

"Hope there's no long story next week when your supposed to be in Alaska!"

The ticket has been purchased, and my reservations at "Hotel Captain Cook" have been made.

I'll definitely be in Alaska...