Intel and Apple

Finally, since a visitor to this site, rich, challenged me to find more reasons why the pears will turn sour for Apple (pun and reference to FOSS projects intended), I'm at it again.

Some critics have argued that had Apple put more effort into optimisation of ppc compilers, they would not have had to abandon the architecture. The PowerPC architecture, of course, will survive on the merits of its floating point registers, and GNU/Linux will likely be the most popular operating system for it.

As for Apple's switch to Intel hardware: Mac OS X is Apple's greatest asset, but the business model has always been "want the OS, buy the computer". Whether or not the current reports of such achievements are truthful, Mac OS X will be hacked to run on ordinary x86 hardware.

However, there are benefits from the move. I have been wondering what the next generation Mac OS will be like, and it's clear that Apple could now at any point choose to switch to a different kernel, such as Linux (which also exists for PPC), opensolaris (which does not) or more exotic plants, such as DragonflyBSD.

One thing is clear. Whatever they do, they're stuck with POSIX compliance as a minimum.

The OS wars are coming to a computer near you. And this time, MS-DOS is going to lose.

tags:apple,mac,macintosh, ppc, intel,opensolaris,linux,pearpc,x86