An Hour that Changed the World (As I Know It, and I Feel Fine).
So the world changed a little bit more than an hour ago. Steve Jobs announced that the Macintosh would be moving to Intel-based processors by the end of 2007.
And for some reason, I’m not too worried about it. Most people that know me will prolly note that I’ve not had a fond place in my heart for Intel. In the Windows world, their processors have been, to put it kindly, bad. Now granted, that bias is probably (and actually more like most likely) based on incorrect information. I think the reason why Intel processors seem so bad is because of how Windows seems to run on them. In the x86 side of things, I’ve always been an AMD fan cause their processors ran better and they seem to put more thought and research into their stuff.
I can see Apple’s dilemma too. The PowerPC chip has hit a big wall. There’s little place for Apple to go now because of it. Something had to change. And with IBM looking to push the Power chip into the video game arena, it makes sense for Apple to go somewhere else. With the two available options, Intel or AMD, Intel is the smarter choice just from the manufacturing capacity standpoint. Intel will be able to pump out chips a lot faster than IBM or AMD could.
Of course, it’s hard to think about a Mac running on a Pentium 4. But as cheesy as this sounds, I trust Apple to create the best machine that they can. They always have. If the amazing engineers at Apple say that they can make my Mac run on a P4 and run just as good as what I have now (which isn’t too hard considering that I’m still running a G4 1GHz), than I have no place to complain. There had to have been some major thinking that went into this decision, so I know that things will work out for our benefit. And as Steve said, the Mac isn’t about the hardware or the processor. It’s the operating system that makes a Mac a Mac. Personally I would care it the computer ran on cottage cheese and honey. If my use of the machine is still up to par, they can put whatever they want inside and I’ll be ok.
Now, some out there are saying, “Apple is going to kill their hardware business with this move!” Yeah, that had always been a concern here too, but I know there would be an answer for that too. Here:
After Jobs’ presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. “That doesn’t preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will,” he said. “We won’t do anything to preclude that.” However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers’ hardware. “We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.”
And that’s about what I figured. It’ll be interesting to try running Windows and Mac OS X on the same machine… And then my nice copy of Novell Desktop Linux along with that.
Yep. Change can be good. Well have to see how this develops as the next 12 months rolls out. Yes, we live in interesting times.