the rumors were true..

(Most of you can safely ignore this post) I was skeptical, but it turns out all of the leaks for the past few weeks were right. Apple Computers are dumping IBM and making the transition to Intel/Pentium chips over the next two years.

How will they do it? Well, it turns out there have been guys in a bunker in Cupertino compiling the MacOS to run on the Intel architecture FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS!! In fact, Steve Jobs stopped in the middle of the Keynote address to mention that - oh, by the way... this presentation I'm been giving has been running the MacOS on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 all morning. IT'S ALREADY DONE!! Then they brought over a guy from Wolfram to announce that it took them 5 days to port Mathematica to the new architecture. FIVE DAYS.

Steve Jobs, you are a fucking genius.

I don't know HOW he's going to brush aside all the negative "RISC is better than CISC" propaganda of the last 10 years, (**) but... if anyone can do it, it's The Steve.

Fuck, this doesn't mean I have to have one of those ugly "Intel Inside" stickers on my next Mac, does it?? Maybe he'll loan them some designers to come up with a spiffier logo.

A good report of the keynote can be found at engadget.

Dr. Dave

(**) Actually, I do know how. LIke the article above says - they'll simply keep repeating "Pentium runs cooler than PPC" and even though hertz-for-hertz, PowerPC still beats Pentium (as in a 2 Ghz PPC actually runs more instructions per second than a 3 or 4 GHz Pentium) IBM hasn't been able to deliver a G5 that will run in a notebook without causing it to burst into flames. Steve will simply stress that portables are an important part of Apple's business, and that if they don't make the change NOW, they are in danger of falling behind Windows in the portable market. And we'll all smile and nod, becuase He's Steve and we're not.