NY Times has the story now, with more details.

Post #209,954 by Another Scott 6/5/05 8:47:50 PM Reply	NY Times has the story now, with more details. It still has the air of rumor about it, but there does seem to be some substance behind it. [link\|http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/technology/06apple.html?hp&ex=1118030400&en=3e3b854a03598d26&ei=5094&partner=homepage\|Here]: SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 - Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer's 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday. The move is a chesslike gambit in a broader industry turf war that pits the traditional personal computer industry against an emerging world of consumer electronics focused on the digital home. [...] Mr. Jobs is scheduled to take the stage on Monday to face his software developers, an important constituency he must convince of the wisdom of the shift. It is the software developers who will need to do the hard work of making their programs run on Intel chips if Mr. Jobs's strategy is to succeed. Apple must be able to persuade software developers who make business and graphics programs for the Macintosh - Microsoft, Adobe, Quark and others - to overhaul their code. "That's a huge challenge for Apple, to win the software developers over and drag them along," said Mr. Wolf, the Needham analyst. (Assuming this is correct:) Unless Steve has something spectacular up his sleeve that he can deliver soon, I think he's just killed the Macintosh as a general computing platform. Why would anyone write software for a (n assumed proprietary to Apple) niche Intel platform when the Windows market is so much larger? How are Mac ISVs going to make money? Monday should be interesting... Cheers, Scott.
Post #209,963 by altmann 6/5/05 9:41:56 PM 6/5/05 9:47:55 PM Reply	Why do they write for it now? Of course getting the existing 3rd party devs to come along will still be the big issue. Perhaps this will help ease the pain during the transition: [link\|http://transitive.com/\|http://transitive.com/] "Business Issue If you are a computer OEM, you may be considering or may already have decided to change the microprocessor at the heart of your platform. The availability of ISV and customer-written applications on these new platforms is an important business issue in these circumstances." -- [link\|http://transitive.com/computer_oem.htm\|http://transitive.com/computer_oem.htm] "QuickTransit allows software that has been compiled for one processor/operating system to be run on another processor/operating system without any source code or binary changes. " -- [link\|http://transitive.com/technology.htm\|http://transitive.com/technology.htm] "Transitive expects to announce that a second computer OEM will deploy products enabled by its technology during the 1st half of 2005 and that others will deploy QuickTransit before the end of the year. Unfortunately, strict confidentiality obligations prevent us from discussing these relationships in any detail." -- [link\|http://transitive.com/customers.htm\|http://transitive.com/customers.htm] -- Chris Altmann Edited by altmann June 5, 2005, 09:47:55 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #209,969 by Another Scott 6/5/05 11:00:54 PM Reply	Various reasons. Some people just like Macs better. Some people have Mac customers going back a long time. Some people like the idea of being a medium-size fish in a little pond much better than that of being an amoeba in an ocean. There are lots of reasons why ISVs write Mac software. The fact that they do so seems to indicate that they're not interested in competing with Windows software on a PC. But we'll see. Maybe Steve's [link\|http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date\|RDF] will be cranked up to 11 and it won't be an issue on Monday. ;-) QuickTransit sounds similar to [link\|http://www.newplanetsoftware.com/jx/galaxy.php\|Galaxy] from Visix. They didn't survive. Cheers, Scott.
Post #209,985 by altmann 6/5/05 11:47:44 PM Reply	Galaxy not the same thing Galaxy was, from what I could gather, a cross platform toolkit that one would have to explicity program to. QuickTransit translates binaries compiled for one CPU instruction set to another instruction set at runtime. If it works as advertised, 3rd party devs wouldn't have to recompile and redistribute their apps initially (they could do so later if/when they are ready. Trolltech makes a cross platform toolkit. They seem to be doing ok. I too am wondering how the RDF will hold up when the audience starts flinging 'reality' at Steve on-stage. -- Chris Altmann
Post #210,002 by altmann 6/6/05 4:27:28 AM Reply	One more thing From the bottom of [link\|http://pview.findlaw.com/view/3340942_1?&channel=CCC\|http://pview.findlaw...42_1?&channel=CCC] "Transitive Technologies: Represented Transitive Technologies in a co-development and licensing agreement with Apple Computer" We shall see. -- Chris Altmann
Post #210,020 by Another Scott 6/6/05 9:48:15 AM Reply	Thanks. Lots of companies are working on virtualization. E.g. AMD and Intel are adding extensions to their newest chips to allow multiple OSes to run "simultaneously". There's overhead with such approaches, obviously, and even more so if the program assumes a different instruction set. It also introduces the "Win-OS/2" problem again. If the virtualization is good enough, there will be little incentive for ISVs to write to the native CPU. Then Windows x86 wins by default. If it's not good enough, then the migration to the new CPU or OS is too painful for customers with existing vital software. Then Windows x86 wins by default. It's tough for translation/virtualization to win unless the underlying CPU is ~ 10 times faster than the incumbent. The Cell might have a chance, but it's hard to see that virtualization of existing MacOS X software on x86 variants being a compelling solution. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.

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