Iria

From the MacCentral WWDC Keynote LiveUpdate Page:

As the Intel logo lowered on the stage screen, Jobs said, "We are going to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, and we are going to do it for you now, and for our customers next year. Why? Because we want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward."

"I stood up here two years ago and promised you 3.0 GHz. I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook, and we haven't been able to deliver that to you," said Jobs. "But as we look ahead, and though we've got great products now, and great PowerPC products still to come, we can envision great products we want to build, and we can't envision how to build them with the current PowerPC roadmap," said Jobs.

Intel processors provide more performance per watt than PowerPC processors do, said Jobs. "When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of perfomance per watt, but Intel's roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do," he explained.

Transition to Intel by 2007, and yes, Marklar exists

"Starting next year, we will introduce Macs with Intel processors," said Jobs. "This time next year, we plan to ship Macs with Intel processors. In two years, our plan is that the transition will be mostly complete, and will be complete by end of 2007."

Jobs then confirmed a long-held belief that Apple was working on an Intel-compatible version of Mac OS X that some have termed "Marklar."

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Read More / Live Keynote Source: MacCentral.com WWDC LiveUpdate Page (VERY BUSY)
Read More / Source: Yahoo! News

Ubergrendle

HOLY SH*T. Its true.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/050606/tech_...uter.html?.v=1

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Zardon

This was always going to happen after microsoft worked out the deal with IBM and the risc G5 hybrid cpus for the Xbox 360.

Interesting to read however Jobs stating his customers wanted G5's in their laptops and they never could due to temperature issues, and now with intel it will happen he can bring the fastest cpus to the portable market. Also true that companies like alienware, rock etc can use the clevo chassis incorporating 3.8ghz P4 chips with adequate cooling - massively outperforming the G4s..........

FDM80

So when they say they are moving to Intel chips, does this also mean the x86 platform? Would be interesting if they will allow you to run one on an AMD chip just the same. I have a feeling that apple will try and prevent people from installing their OS on hardware other than what they want people to put it on.

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riles9262

This would mean the x86 platform I believe. I'm not a huge mac user, but I hope they don't lose their identity or become another prebuilt company.

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Ubergrendle

I'm not sure if I buy this re: temperature issues, I suspect its spin control. The reason why I say this is because my department just did an through RFI on enterprise RISC processors and the PPC architecutre is -years- ahead of what is available in Itanium, HPUX risc or Sparc in terms of electricity demands, heat dissipation, etc. True it might be a factor only for their rack-mount enterprise boxes, but I'm assuming the chip architecture is fully portable.

My guess is IBM could have made a decent G4 / G5 chip for laptops if there had been demand. I suspect this is a chicken/egg scenario... minimal demand (Apple only) for laptop-quality performance PPC chips... IBM is too busy with the datacentre demand (their AIX market share is growing by percentage points every month, mostly at HP's expense but some attrition to Solaris) and the console systems will be demanding MILLIONs of processors. My guess is mobile computing is a strategic goal for Apple, they couldnt' generate the demand for their own PPC variant in this regard and thus jumped to Intel who has this space commoditised much better.

So, technically they like Intel mobile computing better than the G4s/G5s, but the stated cause is really an effect.

Personally, i think this is a huge mistake...Microsoft now will turn their nukes on Mac and destroy them. Apple was playing nicely before and Microsoft showed them mercy a few years back, but if Mac wants to compete in the Intel space they're in for a world of hurt. Unless Apple firmly and strictly contains its OS to a branded, proprietary chipset & bios which would prevent porting to a common platform...

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dj_stick

some how i don't think that's going to happen

the Mac OS is a very powerful piece of software, and there are countless professional applications designed specifically for it, as well as Mac users

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Zardon

That funnily enough never crossed my mind, but you might have a point.....

nForcer

Wow. I'm sure the folks at AMD are left scratching thier heads on this one.
Well, I'm an Intel guy and I'm doing the same, except I find this interesting - interesting to see what competition it brings to the entire personal computer market.

swimtech

Apple may finally have decided to capitalize on their real strength - the OS and application software.

Might anyone surmise they know something about how the Mach kernel, FreeBSD, and Aqua run on X86 hardware versus PPC hardware? That is beyond me, but if anyone knows the advantages, Apple does...

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dj_stick

dual booting could be fun

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swimtech

Indeed! If Apple allows...

I'd personally love it.

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Rhomboid

Apple's not turning into a software-only company. They have stated that the x86 version of OS X will only run on Apple hardware, so it will probably be a cold day in hell before you can throw together a standard PC and install OS X. They will still sell you Macs, and they will be the only machines out there that can run OS X. They will just have a different CPU/chipset at heart, and you will be able to install Windows on it if you really wanted to (but most probably wouldn't.)

PoopyTheJ

Dual booting OSX hmmm, I use OSX at work and on our old POS's it blows, but on my nice shiny P4 hmmmmmm

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Necrosis

Ha, ha one of the most retarded things I've even read in my entire life.

dj_stick

ok with that statement it soundsl ike dual booting is possible

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riles9262

That's what I was thinking. They used to be a hardware driven company, but I think their real strength is in their software. And yes, dual booting would be really cool.

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yoda133113

They are moving more and more towards mobile and SFF technology as a company, the pentium-M has proven to be a better performer than the G4 in this arena, but the one knock against it that I see if it's relatively poor performance in encoding and media creation, which is a big thing for Apple, however this may be a decent tradeoff if the P-M based macs perform as laptops that much better.

This could also open up new posibilities in software porting. Right now making a program for both x86 and mac is rather difficult, but porting from PC to Mac could be a whole lot easier even with a proprietary chipset, opening up the mac as a possible gaming solution, however the games aren't ported to linux now, so this may be a pipe dream.

Also the P-4/M based systems could be much cheaper to make and therefore could make it possible to sell the macs at a somewhat competitive price point as compared to the overpriced luxury items they sell now.

I'm just waiting for the first hacked OS X copy to be ported to a regular PC, that will almost definately happen once OS X is fully ported to a x86 based system.

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Ubergrendle

I agree that Apple won't be opening Mac OS/X to intel generic right off the bat. However, it allows them a divergent strategy -- if they can't pass on cost savings and don't get the leverage they want out of their Intel switch, they can further develop the strategy by opening their platform to non-branded OS/X. The later move definitely turns them into an OS & Software company, but they're a ways off from this.

Its a good strategy to test the Intel waters. Closed systems at first to test the market, control the engineering variables and make a good intel product. Then if they so choose, open up and compete with Microsoft head-on.

Personally I think Microsoft is regretting not letting Apple die off a few years ago now, and will turn their efforts to minimising the Mac threat. Mac is a greater threat to their desktop O/S than Linux will ever be.

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Paradox Enigma

Apple will indeed be threatening some of M$ business now. People pay good money to M$ for Virtual PC... With the new Intel-based Mac's, it appears that they won't really need it - unless they need a "mixed" environment.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Apple doesn't really think "Hardware" or "Software"... they think "Solutions"... for the digital lifestyle (or whatever the catch-phrase is these days).

While the price of Apple hardware may come down - don't expect it to be directly competitive with the likes of Dell or E-machines.

As a LOOONG time Mac owner (and now also a PeeCee owner for about 7 years), this development is very interesting to me...