Apple moving from PPC to x86

Wow.

Who would have thought that just as Apple gains momentum with their products, they take a huge risk and change processors?

Given the unavoidable teething problems in both hardware and software that'll come, I can see them struggling to makes sales for 12 months at least. I mean, who'd buy a Mac today? - no future in your hardware or software purchase. Who'd buy a 1st generation x86 Apple when they come out? And the 2nd generation stuff x86 couldn't be available until at least June 2007 - and that's 2 years away!

Apple make nice kit, and if they supported an open-source DRI-enabled graphics driver for xorg I would have bought a powerbook already. That's definately off the cards. Now the switch has been made, Apple will need to be become very price competitve - no-one's going to buy a similarly spec'd laptop for $AUD1500 more just because of an Apple logo. I guess that's a good thing for Mac OS X aficionados.

I hope Apple survives all this - they do nice hardware. I just hope they also realise they need to better support the future of computing.

BTW, this has new meaning now.

| 07 Jun 2005 | #