Macs on x86

Paraphrasing the Slashdot meme that's been going around:

"You know the world's gone crazy when the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, Microsoft is using IBM CPUs and Apple is using Intel CPUs".

To that Stephen wryly quipped:

"Next thing you know they're going to declare pork halal".

So it's official... Apple's Macs are going to use x86 CPUs. On a technical level this is neither groundbreaking nor exciting because Apple has done this sort of thing before with the 68K to PowerPC migration back in the 90s, and also the predecessor to OS X's Darwin kernel, OpenSTEP neé NeXTSTEP was running on x86 for the longest time. Given such a good track record, it's likely that Apple will be able to pull this off from an engineering standpoint.

The real story is in the business angle. SGI and Sun both have transitioned from a non-Intel CPU to x86 and have found themselves in, shall we say, "challenging economic situations". In both cases downward price pressures as well as the increasing ubiquity of x86 "whitebox" hardware meant that both companies didn't have enough reasons to justify a price premium commanded for their own machines, although strong arguments can be made about the technical excellence of the operating systems. The "high-end" workstation market based on x86 hardware has dried up and died a long time ago, and Apple surely knows this. So what's left?

It wouldn't take too much effort to imagine the return of the clones. Since the only difference between future Macs and PCs is entirely just in the operating system, there really is no margin for Apple to remain in the hardware business. Apple can concentrate on the software (which it is doing with great success) and let the Dells and DIYers take care of the hardware.

We live in interesting times indeed.