Intel Inside... Macintosh!


Apple's announcement that they'd be migrating their product line to Intel processors is sure getting its share of press. I've been reading a lot of the predictions, some good and some rubbish, but Macworld has a FAQ that seems to be pretty realistic...


I've seen a few people guessing that just because Apple is switching to Intel, they may not be switching to x86 processors (the same chips used by Windows computers). That guess is refuted by Apple's Universal Binary Programming Guidelines, where you can find "x86 Equivalent Instructions for AltiVec Instructions" in Appendix B.

Does that mean Macs will be able to run Windows? Who knows? It's doubtful that Apple intends to reproduce every nuance of a Windows-capable machine; there's a lot more to a computer than just its CPU. Then again, Apple knows there's value in being able to run Windows applications, and something like Microsoft's Virtual PC is likely to run far better than it currently does. That might earn Apple some new opportunities.

Apple has made it clear, however, that OS X is only intended to run on Apple's own hardware. I suspect that even if you could get OS X running on, say, a Dell, you'd lose out on one of the better reasons to use OS X: stability. The downside of Apple's control over both hardware and software is that the choices for hardware are more limited; the upside is that there are fewer flaky third-party drivers to bring the whole system crashing down. I'd guess that over the years Microsoft has taken a lot of heat for problems really caused by poorly written drivers and cheaply built hardware --- problems that Apple is in a position to avoid.

The tools needed to build a universal binary --- a program capable of running on either PowerPC or Intel --- are already in the hands of developers in the form of a free XCode 2.1 download. There's a catch, though: there's no way to test a program's operation on Intel processors without purchasing the $999 Developer Transition Kit, which includes Intel-based hardware and a supporting build of OS X. Ah, but to purchase that you also need to be in Apple's Select or Premier developer programs, which will set you back another $500 or $3,500, respectively.

I've already rebuilt TinyELF with XCode 2.1, and browsing the code I don't think I have any byte-ordering issues to resolve. For me, supporting the new Macs should be no problem. The only hurdle is that I won't be able to test TinyELF's Intel operation until I buy an Intel-based Mac, and I probably won't make that investment until they've shipped a laptop that has first-generation kinks worked out. If anyone out there has a Developer Transition Kit and would like to test a universal binary of TinyELF, though, drop me a note and I'll email you the software.

Posted: Tue - June 7, 2005 at 10:52 PM          

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