As developers begin to sort out what they really have to do to make their products run on both the PowerPC and Intel processors, the rest of the Mac universe might just be worrying what has really happened here. For so long, Intel was seen as the enemy, part of the great conspiracy, led by Microsoft, to dominate the PC industry and sweep all comers aside. Now Steve Jobs is telling us that Intel is our friend.

Taking emotions out of the picture, there’s the fundamental question: What makes a Mac a Mac? On the surface that seems an easy question. Combine cutting edge design with a first class, user friendly, operating system. It’s so obvious, why should I even bother to ask? But it’s not that simple, and the issue may seem more cloudy when you ponder the implications of Apple’s latest processor shift strategy.

In the early days, a Mac had a Motorola processor, beginning with the 68000 and ending with the 68040. Peripheral ports included SCSI for hard drives, and NuBus for expansion cards. The Mac OS reigned supreme as the best graphical operating system on the planet. But in 1994, Apple began to phase out its existing processor chips, and began the transition to PowerPC. At the same time, developers had to reinvent their products, making software compatible with the new order, and it wasn’t always easy. In fact, it ended up taking a year or two, and perhaps longer, to make the switch; some just gave up and switched to Windows and a much larger market. At first, applications were shipped as “fat binaries,” meaning they supported both the 680×0 and PowerPC architectures. An emulator was included on those new computers to allow you to run older software. In the end, however, the Power Mac was still a Mac, no question about it. Despite the changes underneath, the operating system still looked the same.

The following year, NuBus was phased out and replaced with PCI, an expansion card technology that had also been embraced by the Dark Side. The upshot? Well, where you once had to pay upwards of two thousand dollars for a high performance graphics card, the price went down considerably. You benefited by the economies of scale. By 1998, with the arrival of the iMac, Apple adopted USB as the standard serial port, and the following year essentially ditched SCSI (except as an option) and embraced FireWire for external drives, scanners and other devices.

And, despite all the changes, your Mac was still a Mac.

Do you recall the brief era of the Mac OS clone? Apple licensed several companies, giving them the right to stuff Apple-designed motherboards and other circuitry into cheap PC, anonymous looking PC boxes. Yes, it looked a little generic, but when all was said and done, you still used the same operating system, and when you looked at your monitor, you knew you were still using a Mac, even if it was built by a different company.

From System 1.0 to Mac OS 9, there was never a doubt in your mind. Despite subtle enhancements in the look and feel, and a bulging feature set, you knew you still had a Mac.

The arrival of Mac OS X may have seemed rather jarring in the scheme of things. Yes, you still had a desktop, folders and an Apple menu, you interacted with the operating system in pretty much the same way, but it looked so different. And beneath the graphical veneer lay the arcane, command line world of Unix. In fact, despite the use of the word Mac, the new operating system bore very little resemblance to the old.

Now maybe some of you had difficulty accepting that degree of change, but you never felt the need to question whether or not you still had Mac. Well, I suppose that applies to most of you, although others regarded it as a great conspiracy in which the NeXT operating system supplanted the real Mac OS right before our eyes.

No matter. Now we are poised for an even greater change in the scheme of things, and that is the end of the PowerPC, and the beginning of the Intel Inside era. You used to laugh at that silly Intel stinger on a Dell or Gateway commercial. Who really cares, and, besides, doesn’t the PowerPC smoke the Pentium in virtually every single benchmark? Besides, aren’t those Pentiums too hot anyway?

But the truth was really out there for quite some time now, only we didn’t see it, or didn’t want to see it. Steve Jobs wanted to have options, and so there was a parallel development of Mac OS X on Intel processors, just in case. Motorola and its processor spin-off, Freescale, were perennially late to the party in delivering faster chips in sufficient qualities to Apple. With the arrival of the G5 from IBM, Steve Jobs said things would be different, that we’d see a 3GHz version by the summer of 2004.

Instead, the chips didn’t scale up near as fast as expected, and getting them in sufficient quantities remained difficult. The fastest Macs now require liquid cooling systems to keep the processors from frying, and putting a G5 in a PowerBook remains the “mother of all thermal challenges.” At the same time, Intel has continued to tame its Pentium to deliver high performance with low power consumption in a laptop computer.

By the end of 2007, all new Macs will have Intel processors. If all goes as planned, they will have all the advanced features you expect, such as dual cores, superb performance, low power consumption, and they will ship on time, in sufficient quantities to build all the computers Apple can sell. If Steve Jobs is even half right in his promises during Monday’s keynote, developers will be able to build Universal Binaries, software that supports the PowerPC and Pentium, in days, weeks or perhaps a few months at most. Mac OS X will still be Mac OS X. It will look the same, and it will run only on Apple’s computers. Despite all the changes inside, the Mac will still be a Mac, and that won’t change for a long, long time.

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Now I’m not going to suggest that Apple planted those stories about the switch to Intel processors. Oh well, I’ve said it. In any case, when Steve Jobs let the cat the rest of the way out of the bag, some of the technology pundits managed, as usual, to screw up the facts about the transition.

So let’s just set the record straight, and get on with it. First of all, there is the perception created in some articles that Apple lost a lot of market share as a result of the move from 680×0 to PowerPC back in 1994. In case you forget, that switchover was far more painful for developers than Mac users. Don’t forget the infamous emulator that allows you to run older applications with good compatibility. It wasn’t terribly fast at the outset, but got better over time, particularly as processor speeds rose quickly. The real reason Mac profit share declined was most likely the release of Windows 95, the first really useful version of Microsoft’s operating system. That, and a huge marketing campaign, made some feel the Mac was irrelevant, that its advantages had vanished.

In retrospect, we know that wasn’t true, but you can’t forget how many Mac users and software publishers went to the Dark Side in those days. So no, I don’t think the migration to PowerPC was that serious a factor.

So, of course, with another major transition afoot, the pundits suggest that Apple again is confronted with the potential loss of market share. Now I can see where some of you might hold off buying a new Mac until the model you like offers Intel Inside. Or maybe not, because it shouldn’t matter what kind of processor is used, so long as performance meets your standards. Do you care, for example, what sort of Ethernet or Wi-Fi chips Apple uses? Of course not!

Besides, there will always be newer, faster computers. To take this logic to its ultimate conclusion, you should never buy any computer, ever, because it’ll some day become obsolete.

If there is any genuine pain in the transition process, it’ll be on the part of developers who must begin to update their software as Universal Binaries, so their apps run on both the PowerPC and Intel processors. But since the first Intel-equipped Macs are roughly a year away, there’s plenty of time to tweak and recompile, which Apple claims should be sufficient for most developers to get their software ready. Between now and then, you will see the magic words “Universal Binaries” on some new products, even though it won’t make a bit of difference until the new hardware is out. But it makes for good copy. The real hope is that you and I won’t be gouged with high prices for those updates. If it’s so easy, it shouldn’t involve more work than a routine bug fix update, maybe even less. Of course, some companies will wait for a major revision before switching to Universal Binaries, so the standard upgrade fee will apply. Microsoft no doubt fits into this category, based on their public pronouncements on the matter.

The other big issue is emulation. Just how fast will Rosetta be once the new hardware is ready for sale? It looked all right during the keynote, on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4, but Photoshop took quite a long time to launch. I expect performance will be tweaked between now and then, and it may only make a difference for processor intensive software. Regardless, Rosetta won’t be a panacea in any case. It has its limits, according to Apple’s latest documentation on the subject. It will, for example, only work on applications that include G3 support, and won’t run code designed to harness the power of the G4 and G5’s Velocity Engine. Oh, and software that predates Mac OS X won’t run either, which appears to indicate that Classic is on the way out.

And once again, I want to dispel the myth that you’ll be able to run Mac OS X on a plain, jane Intel box. Apple says no. Of course, hackers will try, perhaps attempt to reverse engineer the technology, so Apple will have to cover all its bases. Of course, their legal staff will be in readiness just in case.

The real problem I foresee is device drivers, so your printers and other peripherals will continue to operate on your new Mac with Intel Inside. I imagine all the remaining issues will be clarified in the months to come.

But don’t forget that a year is an eternity in the computer business. While Apple will clearly not back out of its deal with Intel, I’m curious to see just what sort of problems developers will face in getting those Universal Binaries out the door in the real world. I’m also curious to see what sort of Power Macs will appear in the interim. Will it be more of the same, minor incremental updates, or a last hurrah from IBM before Apple cuts the umbilical cord?

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Just in case you’re wondering, yes, those rumors are true! Apple is going to switch from the PowerPC to Intel processors over the next two and a half years. Why? For one thing, Apple is less-than-happy with the present PowerPC roadmap, which is why it’s casting its lot with Intel. Consider the lack of a low power G5, or the prospect for one in the foreseeable future, and Apple wants and needs a faster laptop processor solution that will also provide superior battery life.

Before I go on, let me make it perfectly clear that this doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to run the Intel version of Mac OS X on a Dell box. I cornered Steve Jobs right after the keynote, and he said that won’t be possible. “The ROM?” I asked, and he responded “Whatever,” before speeding away.

As the published reports stated, the first Macs with Intel Inside will appear by June 2006, and the transition from PowerPC to Intel will be complete by the end of 2007. However, confirming other rumors, Jobs revealed that, for the past five years, Apple has had a parallel project in place, a secret “double life,” building versions of Mac OS X to run in Intel processors. In fact, his demo was run on a Power Mac outfitted with a 3.6GHz Pentium 4.

The obvious question, of course, is how developers are going to manage the transition, and Jobs said it would be a lot easier than you might expect. Java-related apps, such as a Dashboard widget, will work right away. A new version of Apple’s Xcode developer’s tools, just released, will allow Mac software companies to build what are known as “Universal binaries,” which will run on both PowerPC and Intel processors. He also said that both Carbon and Cocoa apps could be updated with minor tweaks and a recompile, saying the process should take a few weeks.

The next huge question is how an Intel-equipped Mac will handle older apps, and the solution is something called Rosetta, an emulation environment using “dynamic binary translation,” which Jobs claims is both fast and transparent to the user. Kind of like the 680×0 emulation on a PowerPC Mac, but it appears to be a whole lot faster. During his demonstration, Jobs launched Microsoft Excel and Word and Adobe Photoshop, and all delivered good performance in translation mode.

To complete the news of the switch to Intel, Jobs brought Intel’s President & CEO, Paul Otellini, on stage to talk about the history and synergies between the two companies. As you might expect, IBM was nowhere in sight.

After this blockbuster, just about everything during the short keynote was an anticlimax. Despite the competition from Yahoo, Napster and Real Rhapsody, the iTunes Music Store had 82% of the market as of May. So much for speculation that Apple would lose market share any time soon.

In his Tiger update, Steve revealed that over 2,000,000 copies of Tiger have been sold so far, just six weeks after 10.4 made its debut. No doubt this is the fastest selling Mac OS upgrade ever and it represents over 16% of the Mac OS X user base. What’s next? Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, which will appear by the end of 2006 or early 2007, just around the time that Microsoft’s Longhorn is due to appear.

But it’ll be next year before we learn anything about Leopard. The era of Tiger is just beginning.

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