Apple’s x86 Invasion

By Will Smith
The earthshaking, D-Day announcement that Apple is switching from IBM’s PowerPC architecture to Intel’s x86 is, without a doubt, the biggest tech story of the last five years. I think it’s just the first attack in Steve Jobs’ 10-year campaign to assault Microsoft’s impenetrable Western Front—aka the Windows Monopoly.

The back story reads like a cloak-and-dagger military op. Jobs revealed that for the last five years, Apple has simultaneously developed both PowerPC and x86 versions of OS X. (Those crazy rumors were true!)

Of course, Apple’s official reason for the switch sounds innocuous and makes sense. Apple has finally conceded that the ludicrous thermal profile of the G5 processor is a big problem. In fact, the IBM-produced CPU runs so hot that desktop units actually require water-cooling. Putting a G5 in a laptop is thus out of the question, and so without a switch, Apple laptops would forever be limited to the inferior G4.

Apple is shipping x86-powered Macs to developers right now, and expects to start shipping IMacs (that’s the Intel Mac) to consumers sometime in ’06. Publicly, Apple reaffirms its position as a personal computer manufacturer: You won’t be able to run OS X on non-Apple hardware (though Apple “won’t preclude” users from dual-booting OS X and Windows on Mac hardware).

My take? Apple’s spewing hogwash. OS X will eventually be cleared for use on PCs, and then, finally, we’ll have a legitimate OS war at hand. In fact, the time is right for Apple to make the move from hardware builder to OS vendor. Windows is a mess. Spyware, viruses, and all the problems inherent to a 4-year-old OS have left Joe and Sally Consumer without a reliable home computer. The PC isn’t the problem. Windows is the problem.

Make no mistake, a large-scale launch of OS X for all PCs is inevitable. Apple’s current position is just a smoke screen in order to build a software application base and work out kinks in its driver model. After five years of planning, Jobs and company have launched their first assault on Windows. I bet we’ll see a full-on war by the end of 2006. Will Longhorn be enough to repel the Apple invasion? Only time will tell.