Parallel computing universes

[mikailborg]

Damn.

Turns out all the web rumors were true. All Macintoshes will be Intel-based by the end of 2007. This is from Steve Jobs' own lips at WWDC.

Just checked the calendar... it's not April 1st.

My job's just gotten more interesting.

Comments

[rattrap.livejournal.com]

Great.

Next thing you know, O'Brien will be installing a hyperdrive in the Defiant while Chewie puts phasers on the Millenium Falcon...

Dunno about this.

[impink.livejournal.com]

Pretty wacky stuff. If this means that there will someday be a version of OS X that runs on any Intel machine Microsoft should be sweating bullets now. Longhorn seems to be losing features as its release date gets pushed later and later. But then again that would also remove Apple from the consumer level CPU market as people would just buy whatever Dell was cheapest. But even if Apple locks it down someone will probably figure out how to build it on top of the GPL Darwin release so I think the box is open anyway. Meanwhile Mac users are back to the 'fat binary' days again.

This is a rather drastic act out of frustration with IBM's manufacturing problems, opting instead to have faith in their operating system as a more direct competitor with Windows. I think the faith is warranted, espcially when you picture the competition between Longhorn (perhaps still beta) and Leopard (the name Jobs dropped today for OS X 10.5). Still, it puts someone like me - I was planning to drop some cash on a new G5 this year - back into a wait and see attitude.

Re: Dunno about this.

[vond.livejournal.com]

It will almost certainly require OpenFirmware to boot.

Compiling OS X on top of the Open Darwin kernel on a Dell or white box would work fine. where are you going to (legally) get the source for OS X? The entire OS isn't open source, just the kernel and the bits they've adopted from the OSS world.

Re: Dunno about this.

[impink.livejournal.com]

IANAP - but couldn't you just use the binaries already compiled for x86 off the CD?

Re: Dunno about this.

[vond.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that's not what you said ;) I hadn't thought about that until you mentioned it though, so yeah, probably we'll have white box OS X machines in a year.

Re: Dunno about this.

[rattrap.livejournal.com]

Wait for the G6. Something tells me this is why they've been keeping it close to their sleeve.