In a stunning move during his yet-not-over keynote at San Francisco World Wide Developper Conference, Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, announced that starting from 2006, Apple wil now use Intel x86 processors, going away from the PowerPC architecture, developped over the years by Motorola and IBM. Explaining the move by a lack of roadmap from IBM, lack of performance and Megahertz, and lack of G5 processors for Apple's line of Powerbooks, Steve Jobs even showed a Mac OS early build running on a 3.6 Ghz Pentium IV!!

What is not known yet is whether or not this x86 Mac OS will run on Apple machines only, or if it would run on standard, generic PCs, whether they have Intel or AMD chips. Apple is well known to implement many protections in its software and hardware so it wouldn't run or use non-approved hardware.

Regarding applications, they would obviously have to be recompiled. XCodes 2.1, the latest developper tools for Mac OS, will run on x86. Many Mac OS applications, built on Cocoa, would need a simple compilation to run on x86. Commercial applications will ship in both x86 and PPC versions from now on.

Its been said by Steve Jobs that all Mac OS builds over the past 5 years have been built for x86 as well as PPC. So this is a well-planned move. All Mac OS builds, including the next major upgrade (10.5, code-named Leopard) will be available for both platforms.

Stay tuned for updates, the keynote is not over

UPDATE: An PPC emulator, code-named Rosetta, allows PPC applications to run under x86 Mac OS. Existing applications should run with the new x86 Mac OS.

UPDATE 2: Steve Jobs is showing the speed of Rosetta with Photoshop CS2 and Office 2004 apps, written for PPC, running on x86 Mac OS.

View: Apple Press Release
News source: In-House

UM, wasn't that mentioned somewhere else on this board recently? In any case, it's good to hear it from Apple directly.

It was just a rumor, now it's officially confirmed

UPDATE: An PPC emulator, code-named Rosetta, allows PPC applications to run under x86 Mac OS. Existing applications should run with the new x86 Mac OS.

OOH, OOH, are they gonna have the public BETA test it like Microsoft? I want in!!!!!!!

Yeah, right. "Apple Beta Program"

They have one. You pay a few hundred dollars a year, and you are in it. Of course, you have to purchase the hardware as well. And there's little to no support. But go ahead and sign up if you want.

UPDATE: Official press release on Apple's website:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

they have went from being another computer to just another brand. This sucks. If i wanted mac x86 i would of bought a pc with some distro of linux.not a knock on linux,

clearly you've never used a Mac

Clearly i own 4 along with my 4 pcs

MacOS is great, especially for multimedia stuff. I'm glad they are making teh switch, that way I can use it without spending a fortune for the hardware.

Wow, if they do this, we should hopefully get osx on pcs!

If not, i'm sure the x86 mac ed. will be easier to emulate/virtualize than ppc.

Anyone see something funny going on, the recent move by Microsoft saying has been working with AMD alot closer than it seemed and basically bashed intel, and how Apple is bashing IBM and Motorola and going to intel.... i see a new division forming i know intel won't give up its competition in the current market but gonna be interesting to see if Microsoft and eveyone else reacts to this... but i think its a good thing give more compatibility and being on x86 companies will be more inclined to port there current PC proggys over to the Apple...

Why is everyone making a big fuss over this? Maybe I'm not seeing something?

I think this is good, and bad. I wonder how MS is going to react to this, considering they own a good chunk of Apple stock, last I knew. Are they going to continue investing in a company that's providing direct competition? Doesn't make much buisness sense. We'll have to see I guess.

Well it seems like a risk for apple. They depend on hardware for most of their income, but if the market adopts mac os, then they make begin to seriously challenge microsoft. It may seem attractive to buisiness to use unix/linux based server/workstations and mac workstations together, instead of windows. I imagine it will be easier to code for both windows and mac together on the same architecture too, so more software should be available for the mac software. This all depends on whether apple opens the floodgates, and allows normal non-apple computers to run osx.

thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Ok so who's gonna leak the MAc OS x86 build!? lol

I'd sure as hell would try mac os on x86

You're all assuming that MacOS is coming the the PC, which has NOT been stated. What's been stated is Macs are going to use x86 processors. Those are VERY different things. As Quactaur said, Apple makes most of their money on hardware sales, and if they lose that income they'll most likely go broke. I just can't see them having OSX be usable on anything but their boxes; it would be a very bad move on their part.

It would be a whole lot faster to use an emulator for x86 OSX than PowerPC OSX. Look at how fast VMWare runs. Yeah, they might have protections here and there, but it won't take long for those to be cracked.

Exactly...

and

"You will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today." --SlashDot...

So umm does that mean "today" or today as in the future?

The issue with cracking it is going to be drivers. Apple only supplies a very small driver set; unless your system mateches that driver set, you'll have issues. Still, I'll give you that it may be possible. I'm just not getting my hopes up.

?? I thought today means today?

Whether apple go for the pc or not (and it would be a gamble, but they may be able to pull it off, with the features of osx and the catalogue of x86 instructions and programs (which could be ported more easily to another x86 system (i've used too many parantheses) ) ) , it would be far easier to emulate, as I and Chug have said. It may even be possible to program a low level, basic emulation loader, that runs straight after bios with no other os, that then boots directly into apple86 code. This would give you an almost seamless boot into osx, which due to virtualization would run at close to realtime speed. So whether apple release it for pc or not, it might not matter. Of course, the very fact that it would be easy to emulate/virtualize could force apple to release it on general pc use.

Then again, they could just go and be apple and put locks on the os that only allow special intel mobos/cpus to install osx, or might tweak the instruction set so certain essential operating/kernal commands on normal x86 won't work whilst program level instructions remain unchanged.

This is ofcourse major speculation, so i'm just gonna sit back and see what happens. Till then, i suppose pearpc will do... can't wait for sound emulation


@Illriger: But won't you be able to program drivers in a fashion similar to unix? If apple put locks on the os, it will be a problem, but wouldn't it be possible to hack open the driver set and add your own versions in place of whatever is needed?

http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switc...html?tag=st.num

apple is going to lock in OS X so it only runs on there hardware

but i am sure there will be a hack for this, or PearPC will be able to fill in this gap.

This likely means that the hardware will be standard x86 hardware, without anything hard coded in firmware or whatever to tie it to OSX.

The restriction on OSX for x86 might just be licensing terms, so they won't support it if you install it on your own hardware, but there might not be anything that actually prevents installation on a normal PC. Or it might be in software, which I am certain can be hacked. Drivers will be tougher, but NVidia and ATI drivers will certainly be available, as will generic NIC drivers for most network cards. And surely there will be a TON of people out there hacking and coding custom drivers for all sorts of hardware.

/karp

Well it's all based on free bsd right? so making drivers can't be "that" hard... ?

This would really be a blow to Microsoft, although it would be based on user choice....that would be soooo awesome if osx got ported to x86 i'd so buy it in a heartbeat

OOH, OOH, what if Apple and Microsoft teamed up to make one Super OS? Wouldn't that just be the most incredible? It'd have the stability of MacOS (which has the stability of Unix at it's core) but the userfriendlyness of Windows. It'd have the multimedia capabilities of the Mac, and the gaming and number crunchingness of Windows. It'd be perfect! They could call it "Microsoft Apple OS". Pretty neat huh? The only thing standing in the way is the courts. They'd call it a monopoly and force the two companies to split. But the OS would be awesome, you have to admit. What do ya think? Microsoft Apple OS, or no Microsoft Apple OS?

HAHA, this is just an idea that formed in my feeble little imagination and will never come true................or will it?

That's what I was thinking. Could probably take existing drivers and hack them to work with OSX. The video drivers would be tough, of course, but for those of us who have NVidia or ATI, it won't be an issue, since those companies will surely release drivers.

/karp

There's something I can't figure out though. Apple has said the first platforms to switch will be the notebooks. If Intel is smart (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt), they will use Pentium M type chips.

BUT, Pentium M isn't 64-bit. MacOSX is, isn't it?

I'm having a discussion with a guy who believes apple will only make osx for some sort of maconly intel pc.
But look at what steve jobs is using in the keynote. A regular dell pc. No macrom, no special hardwarething, just a regular pc. Even if apple will include a protection, it will be hacked in no time. Pearpc and mac-on-linux with pegasos are successfull programs that proof that osx can be ran without any mac roms.
Who wanted to license mac osx to their pc's? Dell!

Getting unix drivers to work with osx may not be a problem if apple dont lock their os, but imagine a version of windows xp where the os will not let you install drivers for non-certified hardware. This is basically what apple could do, and by embedding the driver handling elements and settings/config files into system files which are already compiled, they would prevent people from adding their own drivers, unless they had source code or knew exactly how the os selects and uses drivers.

By the time Apple relases x86, they will be. Remember, all Intel CPUs are being shifted to the Pentium-M core with EM64T added at the time.

I hope so too. But I guess all those ATI and NVIDIA drivers will also have the same restrictions Mac OS X will have, in order to prevent installation on a normal PC. Apple will instruct ATI/NVIDIA or anyother company to make their installers do the check. So it is going to be annoying rather than hard.

Good point. Makes sense.

Apple delivers pre-installed drivers for those cards, so people won't have to fool around with searching and installing drivers. Once in a while apple has new drivers via software update. Nvidia and Ati both don't deliver downloadable drivers for mac osx on their homepage. They deliver their drivers directly to Apple. This way Apple keeps controlling it.

There will be chipset driver issues as well, I imagine. If you are running the same hardware as Apple is using you'll be in a lot better shape for a hacked OSX. If you have an AMD machine, well....

It will be interesting to see how their sales are for the next year when people are waiting on the Intel based models. It would be sweet to have a system that could boot to OSX or XP.

A sneak peak at it.

Linky!!!!!!!!!1

just buy an intel powerbook and dual boot it with windows.

there, best of all three worlds, fucking cool apple hardware, fucking cool apple OS and, err, windows.

But.. but.. it's Intel.