http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4612951.stm


would this mean that it would be possible to use Darwin / OSX on x86 without using Apple Hardware???

how would/ could this affect the Linux community?

When I first saw that I thought "just because the chips are made by Intel doesn't mean they'll be x86 chips, they can be anything".

However, this part of the story makes me think that maybe, yes, they will be x86-basedWay to go, now they'll either have to make two versions of OS X 10.5 (one for new Intel and one for the old IBM chips, if the architecture is different) or they'll just stop supporting the older chips.

This may, however, be a clever move so that they can sell OS X on x86 based machines, thereby breaking Microsoft's OS monopoly...

Apple also stated officially that they've been working on this move for quite awhile now, and that Tiger was written with the changeover in mind. There shouldn't be a lot of problems from the official Apple-software side of things, although any apps written specifically for the RISC architecture are now pretty screwed. They've got until 2007 to sort things out, though... I really don't think it will be the catastrophe that mac zealots are predicting.

It will be neat to get OSX on an x86 platform without the nead for emulation, I suppose. Whether this will hurt Apple by reducing them to "just another OS provider, ho-hum *yawn*" or help them in the long run (by breaking said monopoly) remains to be seen, but one has to assume that they've thought this through quite a bit. If it was going to be corporate suicide logically they wouldn't have done it.

It will suck to lose the PPC architecture, though...that thing's powerful, and really I don't think that x86 can compare yet. It'll be neat to see how much they still manage to keep proprietary..that's always been a strength of theirs. You always knew that whatever you install is going to work, because there's simply no chance that it won't. Now....wow, potential variables....think of the possibilities :-)

We have no idea if this is even a topic worth talking about yet.

We don't know how specialized the Intels Apple will be using are, nor do we know if there will be any need/way/possibility of getting OSX to run on your generic non-Apple PC.

Cool it, friends. There will be a rush of information soon. (And probably countless Torrents claiming to be OSX86. Sigh...)

how can one ascertain that a topic is worth talking about, without talking about it?

There is a better article about it striaght from apple.com, so it is official.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

It say's Apple will begin to use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006. It also say's that it will also be using intel chipsets as well. What a relief. I'm really getting sick and tired of microsoft having no competition from a commericial OS. This should force them to actually make improvements in their core OS instead of adding bloat features and selling them as new versions. I think apple is going to kick their ass myself. The freebsd platform is so far supperior to the nt kernel it is laughable. And with apple adding all the cool stuff on top quartz, etc microsoft aint got a chance unless longhorn is a really tremendous improvement over what microsoft has put out in the past.

While it's true that the PPC arcitecture is quite powerful it's just not producing the clocking speeds that intel's arcitecture is producing. The main point is that software, even operating system software should be reasonably independant of the hardware. In other words a mac will still be a mac even if the hardware is X86 pc. The genius apple has shown hasn't been in their hardware it's actually pretty mundane stuff it's been in their OS software design. Those concepts and even, to a certain extent, the code is transferable from one platform to another. I don't think apple will just become another, ho hum, software vendor.

Apple WON'T be "breaking said monopoly"...

The 'other' ows a big part of the apple... anif it won't ever have a linux version of his 'his' thing, it will almost surely have all the apps for the 'mac-pc'.

If people 'think' it is still difficult to do obvious tasks with the most moders linux install, like the complex 'open and/or close the cdrom', not to say mystical things like 'configure CUPS', wait to see if the mac-pc will "breaking said monopoly" or break linux's distros and "expand said monopoly".

It's not that special a move. You won't be able to install the x86 version of Apple on any chip, you will need to have an Intel based pc with a special Apple x86 chip - Apple have said that they won't "allow" Apple to be installed on anything other than what they say it should be installed on.

There are some open source Beos type OS's for a alternative to X, there is no open source to OSX or windows of course, just wondering why mac osx is talked about so much.
There is also a risc os implements , the ROX filter

Beos and Risc os type seem to be the only gui odopted in the free or open source world.

What makes mac osx good? why has no one attempted to rewrite a similar version to?

unix was and still is a good server os , and its ok for desktop, nothing special, but it does the job in a complicated way, try programming for X.

sorry i did not explain my self proberly .
mac osx uses Darwin open source unix-like enviroment, mach mircokernal and aqua gui which uses the Quartz compositor - (wndows manager)
why had no one tried to rewrite (new code ) a free version with source ? it makes me wonder.

i've heard that PowerMac line will remain in PPC-architecture for quite some time. That makes sense, since G5's are pretty damn hot pieces of hardware and require efficient cooling. That's why one of apples developers said putting the G5 in a laptop would be "mother of all thermal challenges". They are powerfull, but Intel with their M-technology beats the G4. Also, IBM has had delievery problems with all their chips. They can't match Apples demand. Thus it would be logical that Apple switches all but G5 PowerMac and maybe G5 iMac to Intels. Possibly after Intels "Yonah" processor is released in 2006 Q4 everything gets changed..

@geletine: programming is made very easy in Macs. They have this nifty "little" programming tool called XCode. Latest developer version of it has ability to make double-binaries out of source: both for x86 and ppc platform with 3 clicks. Dunno why OS X isn't widely copied in linux world, maybe it's not just that easy? You should check it out someday and start copying if you can code. And you would see why it's so much talked about.

As for the intel switch, I'm not concerned about people hacking osx to run on their pentiums. There are several vendors selling PPC *nix boxes, none of which are made running with OSX.