It's True: Say Hello to *cough* Mactel

Apple did it. It announced it is ditching the PowerPC in favor of Intel chips. MacRumors has a good summary of the keynote highlights with lots of discussion in the comments, while Engadget did a blow-by-blow, and MacInTouch offers more detail. The most interesting part of all of this as far as I'm concerned is that Apple claims (at the end of the article) it can and will prevent people from running OS X on non-Apple hardware:

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,” he said.

So how can they do that? If A dell uses the same processor as a Powerbook, why won't they run the same OS? Another problem: OS X on Intel looks pretty damned slow.

Technicalities aside, if Apple can do this, it could be kind of cool. I know I would love to be able to partition my drive on my iBook and have it dual boot into Windows. Not that I love running Windows, but there are occasions when it's just sort of the only option (e.g. law school finals and the bar exam if you're using the damnable Extegrity). If a Powerbook or iBook could dual-boot OS X and Windows (and Linux, of course), but a Dell laptop could not, which would you rather buy?

Apple talked a lot about how long it would take Mac developers to port their software to run on Intel chips (not long for some, forever for others), but I haven't heard anything about how long it will take Windows developers to port their software to OS X on Intel. Will this move make it such a transition easier, and if so, will Mac users soon see an explosion of new software options? I mean, it doesn't matter that much if you could just boot your Mac into Windows for the $100 or whatever it costs to buy a copy of that OS, but still, I'd rather work in OS X so it would be nice if rebooting wasn't necessary.

On the darkest side of all this is the argument that this whole shift from PowerPC to Intel is for Hollywood and so Apple can lock down digital media with the DRM built into Intel's new chips. I have little doubt this was a big factor in the decision, but I have a lot more doubt about the value of such a motivation on Apple's part. In a sense, Apple sold part of its soul to the RIAA with the DRM build into iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. Now it appears at least possible that Apple has sold the rest of its soul to Hollywood.

Listen to me talking about Apple's “soul.” It's a corporation. What I should probably say is that Apple may be selling out its users or betraying their best interests with these moves. I guess only time will tell whether the value of being able to download DRMed movies and music will outweigh the hassles and restrictions that come with all of that.

Posted 06:45 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack | mac geek