A New Kind Of Apples
The 6th of June 2005 will become part of the history. Not because I turned 30, but because in the IT world something BIG happened.
Apple switched to Intel processors and to their x86 architecture.
Steve Jobs dropped the bomb and didn’t give many explanations, leaving mac users panicking in all the forums. Resuming, few days later…
When I’ve got interested in Apple, few years ago, I knew they where ‘different’ on the way they were ‘thinking’ computers. Not because of the obvious slogan, but because of their style, their system and their processors. I bought the first and I felt in another world, the second and I’ve fell in love, and now I’m writing this from it.
The system (Mac Os X): unrivaled. More intuitive than Windows, you don’t have to learn how to do things, since you do them as it seems natural for you, the user. The hardware: while some parts are not as update as pc’s ones (graphic cards, memories), others really make the difference, like bluetooth, wi-fi, firewire, lcd screens of the laptops, battery life of the laptops. But the processor, that was something a pc user never experienced.
A PowerPC means the same kind of scalar processors IBM uses for their Power servers. No technical details, enough saying that those big machines just crunch numbers, and fast. And they do it very good (and they stay cold).
Now IBM decided that it’s better to serve the consolle world, than a 3% market share (Apple), especially when you don’t know how to put such a processor (the G5) into a laptop without transforming it in a toaster (not only for the heat, but also for the size). Moreover, maybe Adobe had enough of recompiling all the suites for this 3% market share. And so on…
That happened the last 6th of June. Steve Jobs decided that it’s time to change. He has been forced. For sure.
But now? SJ says that OS X is already running (and even better) on x86 machines… but all the developers? They’ll follow faithfully this change (not the first one in Apple history)? And who’s gonna buy computer from now until an MacIntel (as it has been already named) will show up? And the existing user that are still proud of their piece of ‘think different’? Well, now it’s a species to protect, because they have been the last ones to omologate.
