Decius wrote:

flynn23 wrote:

If Apple has licensed QuickTransit for an Intel-powered Mac, all current applications should just work, no user or developer intervention required.

If this is indeed true, then the world will be turned upside down on Monday.

Well, it appears half true. Apple is making an Intel powered mac. The QuickTransit Tangent seems a figment of this reporter's imaginination though... at least without anything to substaniate it.

Dunno. There have been a lot of articles that mention the Transitive option and the fact that Apple is a licensee of the product. I haven't been able to find a transcript or anything on the keynote yet. It should've ended about 45 minutes ago.

o Since no OS will be married to any hardware platform, all bets are off.

I think this decision is a lot less important then most people are making it out to be. Even if I had QuickTransit it doesn't mean my commodity PC will instantly run OSX. OSX depends on lots of particular hardware being present. If I'm going to make computers that have all the right hardware, along with a QuickTransit chip... Well why don't I just go ahead and do that right now with a PowerPC chip? I think there is some sort of legal reason why people don't make cheap OSX compatible computers, and I don't think its likely to change. Even if Apple goes to Intel procs in its computers this does not mean I'll be able to run OSX on non-apple hardware. From a consumer perspective, nothing has changed.

In the beginning, yes. But the barriers for someone like Dell to produce an OSX compatible machine would be removed severely. Once more, it wouldn't be hard to create OSX compatible hardware without licensing anything since this is precisely how Compaq reverse engineered the IBM PC. A current Mac uses all commodity parts. Only the CPU and proc chipset are specialized and hard to replicate today. With a switch to x86, this would not be the case. They'd be readily available at least from Intel to start.

The other dynamic is that it puts Apple on equal footing with Dell and HP as a supplier of a robust and powerful system. The advantage is clearly Apple's, since it will have tight control over hardware and OS, something that Dell and HP do not.

The point I was really trying to get at was that this move will create a chain reaction of events that will be rather large in impact over time. Even if Apple keeps the mboard closed and doesn't license it to other hardware mfgs, it will now be in the most prime position to utilize its position in the marketplace as a major force. Intel supporting Apple cannot sit well with Microsoft, but I'm sure HP and Dell are either salivating or quaking depending on how much the consumer market is part of their strategy going forward. Somewhere buried in all this is probably a soap opera on how IBM is supplying Microsoft and Sony their new weapons but dissed Apple's demand for a mobile G5.

RE: Hollywood Orders: Apple Wed Intel