control, shift, cheeseburger

I have been reading a lot of articles by a lot of pundits regarding Apple Computer’s move to Intel processors. Most of them feel that this is going to be good for the computer industry as a whole as well as Apple and Intel. Most of them, at least the ones I have read, also have the mistaken impression that Apple will allow OS X to run on generic PCs. This is the best part, they feel, because now Joe Average can run the world’s most usable and elegant OS on his Gateway.

This is so… wrong.

Were any of you actually watching the World Wide Developer Conference Keynote address by Steve Jobs? Not once did he ever say that Mac OS was going to run on generic PCs. Ever.

He showed an “About this Macintosh” screen where it said “Mac OS X, 10.4, Intel Pentium 4, 3.8 GHz.” That’s all it said. Steve then told the developers that job one was to develop dual binary software for the transition to the new processor. He was also offering for $999 a Pentium based Macintosh with the new developer kit. I don’t remember him ever saying, “Oh, by the way. If you don’t want to run on the Macintosh, there’s a developer version of OS X that runs on a regular PC.”

It ain’t gonna happen. Apple and Intel will design the computer and OS X will only run on those.

The reason why PCs have hit the ceiling performance wise is because of their architecture. It is based on a standard developed in 1980. You can see why the current CEO of Intel stated once that there would never be a 4 GHz Pentium based PC running Windows. Speeding up that chip on that bus is a zero sum game. One of the reasons is that, in order to boot the OS, each PC motherboard must have a BIOS, a chip that starts the computer up, and helps it access the disc the OS is on.

Apple used ROM BIOS chips in their Macs up to 1998; however, PowerPC chips have something called Open Firmware built in that does, basically, the same job as a BIOS, only with a lot less instructions. Once a Mac is turned on and accessing its startup disk, its Open Firmware looks for a ROM in software on the disc. That is what gets the Mac thru its boot process and to the desktop.

One reason Intel is so excited about this partnership, I think, is that it can finally help design a computer that can take full advantage of whatever chip they decide to use. We may see the first Macs with Intel chips running at 4-4.3 GHz. Not a bad speed bump from the 2.7 GHz PPC G5. I certainly would not rule out a Powerbook with a Mobile P4 running at those speeds.

OK, so we won’t be able to run OS X on a Dell, will we be able to Windows on a Mac? I think, yes. I predict that in order to take advantage of the P4’s instruction set for devices, Intel can add “virtualization;” an abstraction layer that emulates standard PC attributes in hardware. This will not only give the Mac, thru OS X, access to a ton of inexpensive PC hardware, like sound cards, Web cams, keyboards, video digitizers, etc. It will also allow the Mac to run Windows (or any other PC based OS) without using software based emulation, which is slow and limited. If you need to run a piece of software that only runs on Windows, you can partition your drive and install Windows and possibly boot the computer from there, or run it in a virtual hardware machine under Mac OS X with little to no performance hit.

If virtualization is used on Macs, then it can only give us something we still lack, even in this era of open standards, and that is more choices. I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to purchase a $29 dollar Web cam for my Mac only to have it say “Works with MS Windows only.” Or the same in a scanner, or sound card, the list goes on and on.

I still may get a Mac G5 if they go below a certain price point, although, Apple just discontinued the single and dual 1.8 GHz Power Macs. The only ones you can get are dual 2.0’s and 2.7’s. They start at $1,999. Oh well.

S.

Filed under: Apple