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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The are a couple of problems with your reasons as to why this makes sense:
1.) Longhorn is late.
Sure. But as you pointed out, Apple is never going to be selling OS X as a standalone product for generic x86 machines even if they do use an x86 in their own machines. If the Mac remains a proprietary platform, what difference does it make what processor it runs on? You'd still have to buy a Mac to run OS X and associated applications.
Advantage: None.
2.) x86-64 is still a virgin market.
OK, but again, OS X is not going to be running on generic x86-64 boxes. It's going to be running on Apple x86-64 boxes. So, again, the processor powering those boxes is superfluous. It's not as if your Windows applications will run on it just because it's running an x86. It's still an entirely different platform from a generic Windows box. To the user, it isn't going to make any difference what processor it uses. He still isn't going to be able to take his Windows apps or his Linux apps and run them on his Mac, or vice versa. It's still an entirely different platform.
Again, no advantage.
There may be other advantages to using x86, such as cost or supply, or a greater variety of chips for applications for different kinds of computers (i.e. laptops or desktops), but the reasons you've given don't really make much sense as reasons to change architectures.