Well if you haven’t heard about the several sites claiming Apple is switching to Intel processors then you have most likely being living on Mars for the past week, in which case NASA would like to get in touch with you. For those of you who’ve been following it you’ve probably gone through the same stages as everyone else:

a. Here we go again…
b. The media really are stupid to be feeding off this rumour
c. Heh, that’s a lot of sites, umm, I hope apple isn’t that stupid

Tomorrow will decided whether stage d. is either “HAS APPLE GONE INSANE?” or “Phew, panic for nothing”.  Well I’m slightly worried myself but I also think that Apple isn’t stupid. Let me explain....

Apple is no stranger to changing architecture. They successfully managed a switch from 68k chips to PPC in the 90s. But this was only managed by some very good emulation code in the OS and the fact that the PPC chips were so much faster than 68k. But switching to x86 is much much harder. Emulating a PPC on x86 is extremely difficult. If you look at the speeds you get with Virtual PC emulating an x86 on PPC then you can lower them quite a bit to see roughly how fast the emulation would be.  All apps in active development would have to be recompiled, which isn’t that big of an operation for most developers. But you would lose classic support and you would lose all the apps that aren’t in active development any more. You would basically piss of users by making their apps not work on the new Macintel’s and piss of developer by making them all have to release updates. They had a big enough job getting people from OS9 to OSX another major jump in 5 years is not going to help. Then you have the business side of things

Apple has been pushing the PPC as a vastly superior technology claiming it’s faster. It is also pushing Altivec claiming it gives it a huge advantage over x86 processors. And it is under the media spotlight more than it has ever been before. Basically a switch from PPC to x86 make absolutely no business sense. You lose sales as people don’t want to buy a PPC machine when they’ll just have to throw it away to get an x86 machine in the future. Then you have the people asking, “Why has Apple switched from a processor it says is better to one it says sucks?”. They will lose money, market share and the faith of many Mac users. All at a time when it is primed to make money, gain market share and is liked by most users.

“So,” I hear you say, “this means that apple won’t switch to Intel”. Well, I didn’t say they wouldn’t switch to Intel, just not x86. I was talking to Bob on yesterday and he brought up an interesting point, which for me sounds more plausible. I believe that almost everyone is looking at the wrong company switching architecture. While it makes next to no business sense for Apple to switch architecture it does, however, make perfect sense for Intel to start making PPC chips. They are the biggest chip manufacturer in the world and they probably want to stay that way.

The x86 architecture could be looking at a period of decline in the next few years. All the next gen consoles are using PPC chips (the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution are using modified G5’s and the PS3 is using Cell’s). PPC chips are being used in many embedded devices and (assuming Apple stays with PPC) it will be making big gains in the PC market. So surely Intel want’s a piece of that action. As bob pointed out, the PPC architecture is open so anyone can come and make a PPC chip if they wanted. So this would mean the media is right with the Apple to Intel switch, but not with the PPC to x86 switch.

So how hard would this be to accomplish? Well it’d be about as hard as switching from a G3 to a G4 in theory (I would say G4 to G5 but that’s 32 bit to 64 bit, which is a tiny bit harder). Basically Apple may have to rewrite a bit of code, I’m not sure, but most applications already around would still work. With this we would all win. Intel would be expanding it’s business and mass produce PPC processors, hoping to fight off IBM. This would lead to cheaper processors meaning Apple could lower it’s prices without damaging it’s margins (assuming Intel doesn’t overprice any PPC chips like they do with many of their x86 chips).

Well I guess we’ll all see tomorrow whether we’re using Macs or Macintels. I hope you join us in our AIM chat room “dtgeeks” for our live coverage of the WWDC keynote. I don’t know about you but I’m looking forward to see what stage d will actually be.....