NOOOOOOOOOOOO......!!! 


OK, perhaps I am overreacting just a little. However, that was my initial thought upon hearing today's announcement that Apple is planning a phased migration to Intel processors over the next two years. Although the rumours have been flying ever since CNet reported that Intel and Apple executives had been getting rather chummy of late, few of us really believed that Apple really were preparing to ditch IBM in favour of the world's favourite chip manufacturer… How wrong we were! 

With the PowerPC architecture gaining increasing momentum—the Microsoft Xbox 360 (yes, Microsoft!) and the Sony Playstation 3 being two recent high-profile converts—and all the much-touted advantages of a reduced instruction set design, why on earth would Apple want to ditch it in favour of an Intel based chipset? Moreover, the new PowerPC Cell processor looks set to be a minor revolution in performance, and includes exactly the sort of rich multimedia capabilities that Apple requires. Why then are they switching to Intel, now of all times?

Well, the answer seems to be twofold. Both Motorola and IBM have been notoriously slow to deliver processor updates, with the fastest G5 clocking in at around 2.7GHz while Intel processors are fast approaching the 4GHz mark. Of course, straight clock speed comparisons are misleading as it certainly used to be the case that you could approximately double the clock speed of a PowerPC compared to its Intel equivalent, but this less true of more recent Intel processors, which use a similar optimised core and superscalar pipeline architecture to the latest PowerPC designs. Even worse from Apple's point of view, there is still no equivalent of the G5 processor that will run cool enough to fit in a laptop, which is really starting to eat into Apple's sales—one of its key markets. Despite persistent rumours of dual- and even quad-processor machines—although Apple confirms that it will be releasing further PowerPC based machines before it makes the switch—it seems that IBM just wasn't able to deliver enough bang for the buck, and so Apple have to decided to shop for their processors elsewhere.

Another factor may be the inclusion of full digital rights management and media encryption in the silicon of the latest Intel CPUs, as this may be a factor in getting Hollywood executives to give Apple the go ahead for their new HD video distribution network, which is similar in concept to the existing iTunes Music Store but for high definition film and TV media. This analysis seems less likely as any such algorithms could almost certainly be implemented by other manufacturers unless Intel holds some essential patents to the technology, which seems anti-competitive—not that that ever stopped Microsoft—but the use of an Intel processor for any media hub type device certainly seems to make sense purely on cost-performance grounds. Booming sales of the Mac mini and iPod product lines may have given Apple a taste for high volume, lower margin product, although it is never going to be able to compete with Dell for low cost PC systems. Of course, there may be other factors that we don't know about, such as new developments that Intel has in the pipeline (excuse the pun) that leapfrog anything IBM is working on, but that is even more wildly speculative than the above, even though there are hints of some pretty drastic performance improvements over the next few years.

Plans for an Intel-based version of the Mac platform seem to be at relatively advanced stage, with Steve Jobs demonstrating a version of Mac OS X Tiger running Apple applications on Intel hardware during today's WWDC keynote presentation. In fact, he revealed that all previous versions of Mac OS X have been compiled to run on Intel processors as well as PowerPC ever since OS X was first released, and that it had been living a “secret double life”, which can now finally be brought out in the open. Test machines will be shipping within a month to allow developers to recompile their applications using the new PowerPC-plus-Intel ‘fat-binary’ format, meaning that both architectures can be supported from a single runtime installation, although it will be a year before new Intel-based Macs finally hit the shelves, starting with a new entry-level model in 2006 and more high end machines some time in 2007.

So does this mean that OS X will be available to install on existing Windows PCs any time soon? Not likely is my guess. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company, as that's where it makes most of its money. As soon as they release a version of OS X for bog standard PCs, they can kiss goodbye to their high revenue hardware sales and say hello to all of the compatibility headaches that Microsoft has to deal with, which I can't see them doing in a hurry. Rather, OS version 10.5, aka ‘Leopard’, will almost certainly be restricted to run on Apple hardware only, although it's certainly possible—indeed, very likely—that such machines would be able to run Windows XP / Longhorn, giving Apple a compelling case for persuading possible switchers: buy an Apple PC and run all your existing software natively right alongside Mac OS X—you can't go wrong! Having said that, it remains to be seen whether cracked versions of OS X Leopard emerge, and the arrival of virtualization technologies could soon change everything.

Apple's last migration between the Motorola 68000 series and PowerPC line used hardware emulation built into the operating system to allow existing 68000-compiled programs to run on the new PowerPC hardware. This is similar to the way that Java programs employ a standardised 'virtual machine' to allow programs to run on any Java-enabled device without the need for specialised hardware. Recent developments in so-called virtualization technology mean that additional instruction sets can be emulated in software with (apparently) almost no loss in overall performance, mainly courtesy of a company called Transitive, set up by researchers from the University of Manchester. Along with several other as-yet unnamed major players, Apple have licensed this technology for inclusion in OS X 10.5 in order to provide support for both Intel and PowerPC applications without recompilation. With this in place, Apple could effectively release Intel based Macs in a matter of weeks and we could all go on using the same software regardless, although of course things in the real world never go quite that smoothly, and so Apple is wisely giving its developers as much time as possible to make the transition, even though that will almost certainly damage its hardware sales in the interim.

The arrival of viable virtualization software means that the traditional barrier between hardware and software compatibility may soon become a thing of the past, as users will increasingly be able to run the OS of their choice on the hardware platform of their choice. This is undoubtedly a good thing for PC users everywhere, and Apple have chosen to turn it to their advantage, allowing them to combine state-of-the-art OS X software with cheap, fast components build around an Intel core. It may only be a matter of time before someone releases Macintosh emulation for Intel PCs (although quite who would do this I'm not sure—certainly not Apple or Microsoft), at which point Apple may be forced to release OS X for Intel anyway, and so today's move may be a way of keeping one step ahead of the game.

All in all, this is a very brave move by the folks at Cupertino that could mark the start of a new era for Macintosh computing, or the end of the Mac platform as we know it, or quite possibly both. Only time will tell which of these scenarios pans out, but in the meantime I can't help feeling a little sad that the company that encouraged us to Think Different™ has finally come to the same conclusion as everybody else: that as far as processors are concerned, it's better to follow the crowd. In any case, I think I'll be hanging onto my G4 PowerBook for some time yet, and will wait to see how things develop before committing to any further hardware purchases for a while

Vive la difference! 

Posted on Monday - June 06, 2005 at 08:32 PM            

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