Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sun 5th Jun 2005 22:11 UTC
After News.com's Friday report that Apple is moving to Intel/x86, the respected publication Wall Street Journal and now NYTimes threw their reputation behind the rumor. Many people still remain skeptical, but I personally believe that the time is right for Apple to switch to x86-64, for two main reasons:
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I still think that it is a big "if" if Apple moves its mainstream computers to the x86 processor family, and I would be disappointed if they did.
I mentioned in the other thread that I thought that lots of other architectures were better than x86 and that even Intel have tried to move away from it. But I am aware that x86 has economies of scale behind it and most people don't care about elegance of instruction set architecture. Pure performance is the order of the day and unfortunately x86 with both its good points and its bad points is certainly going to live on for a very long time yet.
Now I agree with most that if Apple *does* switch to x86 they will probably make their own proprietary boxes. I think they will do this just because of Apples' past performance and not because of the other arguments put forth.
I would buy OS X if it would run on my current boxes.
If they do make proprietary boxes, price/performance ratio would be the only reason that people would buy them. OS X is good, but not *that* good. If it can't run on regular x86 boxes then there is little real advantage over PPC. They would certainly gain many more users if they supported regular boxes, or at least a certified hardware list. Lots of people want to run OS X on their existing boxes or on boxes they build themselves. Proprietary boxes would grow their market share more slowly.
I don't think that supporting hardware on x86 boxes was BeOS downfall. I think that it raised their mindshare and introduced more people to BeOS than would have tried it had Be Inc. stuck to PPC. The company had other problems.
If Apples' goal is to increase market share and decrease price/performance ratio then supporting generic x86 is the way to go. Otherwise they may as well stick with PPC.