Mac Musings

Awe and Shock at the WWDC: Apple Going Intel

Daniel Knight - 2005.06.06

Awe: Mac Sales Growing Quickly

At today's Worldwide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs announced that Mac unit sales are growing 40% year-over-year - an astounding figure in an industry with 12% growth rate.

Just what do those numbers mean?

The usual figure these days is that Apple has 3% market share. Apple sold about 3.5 million Macs last year, which makes the market about 115 million units. At a 12% growth rate, the market will be about 130 million units in 2005, and with 40% growth, Apple will account for 4.9 million. That's nearly enough to get Apple to 4% market share this year.

If the trend continues, in 2006 the market will reach 145 million units, and Apple will sell 6.8-6.9 million units. Market share: 4.7%. One more year brings the total market to 160 million computers. If this growth rate continues, Apple will sell about 9.6 million Macs for a market share of 6%.

Of course, everything could change with the switch to Intel.

Shock: Apple Switching to Intel

Steve Jobs has been unhappy with IBM for missing the 3 GHz mark on the PowerPC G5, and he's taking all the Mac marbles to Intel's playground. Really.

According to Jobs, there is no future with PowerPC architecture. Jobs even claims that Intel offers lower power consumption than PowerPC - which makes you wonder why all the Windows portables have such pathetic battery life.

Jobs announced that Apple will begin introducing Macs with "Intel Inside" within one year and complete the transition by June 2007, claiming that Intel offers a "better roadmap" for the future than IBM. (Interesting, then, that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have hitched their wagons to IBM.)

Apple has been developing OS X for x86 for five years, and Jobs demonstrated it running on a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 machine. And not only has Apple developed OS X for Intel, but every other software project has also been designed for both hardware platforms.

Apple's development tools, particularly Cocoa and Xcode, should make it relatively easy to port existing programs to the new hardware. Xcode 2 supports "fat binaries".

Jobs reassured Mac owners that Apple is not abandoning the PowerPC installed base. Apple software will continue to support PowerPC for a long time yet. Part of this strategy is something called "universal binaries", which appear be the Macintel equivalent of "fat" applications for the classic Mac OS that had both 680x0 and PowerPC code.

Existing Java apps, scripts, and Dashboard widgets already work on the new hardware.

Jobs also announced the "Rosetta" technology, a realtime PowerPC emulator for Intel CPUs. No word on how efficient Rosetta is compared to a genuine PowerPC processor.

Apple is selling a US$999 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 developer kit, the same Mac Jobs used for today's demo. You do have to be a developer to buy one, and the units must be returned to Apple by the end of 2006. Units will begin shipping in two weeks.

Microsoft is onboard and promises better Exchange support for OS X users. Wolfram demonstrated Mathematica on the new Macintel hardware, and Adobe promises full support as well.

Thoughts on Macintel

As I wrote earlier today, I didn't expect to see Apple announce Intel-based Macs today. In a way they did, but in another way they didn't. I'd consider this more of a pre-announcement.

A year from new Apple will ship Intel-based Macs. It's a heads-up to developers, letting them know what's around the corner. That's far better than Apple dropping a Macintel in our laps today and asking early adopters to depend on PowerPC emulation for all their existing Mac software. By the time the first Mac-on-Intel machines ship (with Leopard?), there should be plenty of "fat" or "universal binaries" software available.

I suspect that OS X on Intel requires Apple hardware, although I imagine Apple could sell a boatload of copies of OS X to Windows users if they released OS X for Intel for that hardware next June.

All in all, I have to applaud Steve Jobs for making a big move like this and giving the industry a whole year to prepare for it. In the long run, I think this will grow the Macintosh platform, further reduce prices, and - anticipating a good Windows emulator - be a great "switcher's" computer.

Other Keynote News

• 1 million customers walk into 109 Apple Stores every week.
• The iPod accounts for 76% of the digital music player market.
• The iTunes Music Store has sold over 430 million tracks and accounts for 82% of the online music market.
• Apple has shipped 2 million copies of Tiger, and 16% of the installed base is already using it.
• There have been five major revisions of OS X, and the next will be called Leopard.

My question: Will I be able to run OS X for Intel on my new Acer laptop?