Re: [MLUG] OS X on Intel - do we care?

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 1/17/06, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
>
> Is OS X going to run on normal old Intel PCs now or is it just that Apple
> is using Intel chips in its proprietary machines.  If it's the latter, I
> don't know why I care.  Can someone fill me in?  They have TV ads now that
> imply it can make a difference to someone somehow.

It makes some big differences in some places, smaller differences in others.

The *biggest* difference it makes to somebody using a Mac is that
Apple gets a *much* better deal on the Intel chips than they could
from IBM.  The G5-based iMac seemed (to me) to be a very nice
computer.  The dual core Intel version was exactly the same price, but
seems to be at least twice as fast on most things.  Twice as fast is
always good, and Mac OS X is very good anyway.

A potentially big difference is the fact that, yes, the new version of
Mac OS X will run on Intel hardware.  In practice the jury is still
out on the following things:

1) How fussy will it be about the hardware?  The best guess is that
you have to defeat some checking the OS does, but this was a
non-factor for the developer builds.  One real issue has to do with
video card support, which is always a chore for anybody on the PC side
of things; right now, this would appear to support the ATI X1600 and
maybe similar cards, but probably not much else unless drivers get
written.  Also, Mac OS X depends not on a traditional BIOS, but
Intel's new idea along those lines.  Again, 'tis hackable, but maybe
not immediately available.

2) What level of support can you expect from Apple?  That would
probably be about zero.  My guess is that they are not (right now,
anyway) trying to do anything that would antagonize Microsoft, who
have the ability to release Office for the Mac or not at their
discretion.  That said, if you get tens of millions of people willing
to pay for this on their PCs, I'm guessing that Apple might eventually
find a way, modulo the fact that they'd have to support only a subset
of what people have.

A more interesting long-range question is whether the fact that Mac OS
X *could* run on the same or similar hardware will put any pressure on
Microsoft.  It would be pretty embarassing if MS was seen as putting
out only the second best desktop OS for their chosen platform.

So to summarize: for Mike Miller, this probably doesn't mean very
much.  For me, this means somewhat more.  For the people who are
trying to get MS Vista out the door, this is is not a pleasant
development at all.  In the end, I think it's just one more thing that
will make everybody's computing better and cheaper.

jking

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