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The Apple Intel transition is an announced change in the architecture of the of "Macintosh" and "Intel") will run on future versions of Intel's x86 processor architecture. On January 10, 2006, Jobs announced the first two computers in this series, the MacBook Pro and a new IMac Core Duo , both using an Intel Core Duo chip. On February 28, 2006, Jobs announced that the Mac Mini now also comes with an Intel Core chip, in either the Solo or Duo varieties. Apple's initial press release indicated they expected to have the transition complete by the end of 2007 . With the first generation Intel-based Macintoshes being released in January 2006 instead of June, they appear to be ahead of schedule. Jobs is now claiming they will complete the switch to Intel CPUs by the end of 2006. News.com , January 10 2006: ''Jobs: New Intel Macs are "screamers"'' On April 5, 2006 Apple announced the release of Boot Camp which will allow users of Intel based Macs to run Windows XP {Link without Title} PRECEDENTS The Macintosh line underwent a similar transition in the 1990s , when Apple switched from Motorola's 68K series of chips to IBM /Motorola PowerPC processors, developed jointly with Apple and IBM. This took several years, during which Apple produced versions of the Mac OS which could run on either platform, introduced fairly low-level emulation of the 68K architure by the PowerPC models, and encouraged third-party developers to release " Fat Binaries " that could run natively on either architecture. More recently Apple has brought the Macintosh line from the earlier Mac OS family to Mac OS X , a Unix-like operating system. This transition also took a number of years (a small percentage of older Macintoshes still run the earlier operating system), and was facilitated by the inclusion of Classic , an environment in which an instance of Mac OS 9 could be run, permitting the execution of programs which had not been ported to Mac OS X, as well as the introduction of Carbon for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, allowing programs to run natively on either system. A long-rumoured internal project within Apple, rumoured to be called " Marklar ," was designed to ensure that builds of Mac OS X remained largely as Portable as its predecessor NeXTSTEP , so as to compile for both PowerPC and x86-class processors. Jobs confirmed this, stating that every version of OS X had in fact been compiled for Intel processors as well as PowerPC. It is not known for which other processors, if any, Apple maintains current builds. REASONS Jobs stated that Apple's primary motivation for the transition was their disappointment with the progress of IBM's development of PowerPC technology, and their greater faith in Intel to meet Apple's needs. In particular, he cited the performance per watt (that is, the speed per unit of heat generated) projections in the Roadmap provided by Intel. This is an especially important consideration in laptop design. In 2003, Jobs had introduced Macintoshes based on the PowerPC G5 processor and promised that within a year the Clock Speed of the part would be up to 3 GHz . Two years later, 3 GHz G5s were still not available, and rumours continued that IBM's low yields on the POWER4 -derived chip were to blame. Further, the heat produced by the chip proved an obstacle to deploying it in a Laptop computer, which had become the fastest growing segment of the Personal Computer industry. It is rumoured that Steve Jobs has been considering Intel since his return at Apple. However, limited resources and steady speed improvement of the PowerPC familiy (up until the G5) have kept Apple with IBM. Some observers were surprised that Apple had not made a deal with AMD , which has in recent years become a strong competitor to Intel, sometimes introducing technologies more quickly than the traditional industry leader. AMD's shorter track record and smaller production capacity, and Intel's significant Brand awareness among the consumers and ability to also provide Apple with complete motherboard designs, have been offered as possible reasons for the choice of Intel. Also, as the laptop market was cited as a major reason for the switch, Intel was a more appropriate choice than AMD, as the Pentium M line of mobile chips has been proven to deliver better performance and lower heat than AMD's rival Turion 64 chips. BENEFITS OF THE MOVE Advocates of the transition point out the potential for the new Intel Macintosh systems to run four classes of software at near native speeds: OS X binaries; Java / .NET applications; GNU applications and potentially now Win32 /x86 applications. No other hardware vendor can offer more than three of these. Virtual PC , a Windows emulation solution for Apple PowerPC sold by Microsoft , could now enjoy much more success with performance improved through Virtualisation rather than Emulation . For those customers wishing to achieve a more conventional environment, a Dual , triple, or even quadruple boot solution would likely be possible on an x86 Apple device. Apple has already indicated they do not intend to take steps to prevent other operating systems being deployed on their new machines, and have subsequently released the Boot Camp software (including Windows drivers for Mac hardware) to facilitate setting up a dualboot system. Originally, emulation software such as DOSBox or Virtual PC was required in order to run x86 software on the Macintosh platform. Although most games depend on the use of DirectX API s not available for the Apple architecture (on either processor type), it should be possible to port API-independent code, as developers no longer have to resolve Endian issues associated with moving from x86 to PowerPC. HURDLES ASSOCIATED WITH THE MOVE Reaction to the change The announcement of the switch came as a shock to many in the Mac community; many Apple users enjoyed the ready availability of a consumer desktop that was completely separated from the " Wintel " alliance, and advertisements claiming the PowerPC architecture as superior had been a key part of Apple advertising for many years. With that separation gone, many longtime Mac users expressed concern about Apple's future, and whether Apple's Brand Identity would be preserved. Some of the concerns expressed were about:
With the announcement of the first Intel based Macs at Macworld 2006 many of the above fears were put to rest.
Viruses In some quarters there have been fears that the use of Intel processors would render the Macintosh vulnerable to Windows Viruses . Virus code is specific to the operating system or environment it affects, not merely the processor type. However, a Compatibility Layer similar to Wine could potentially make a Macintosh vulnerable, depending on the specifics of the implementation of the compatibility layer, and exactly how the malicious program was written. Also, PowerPC processors enforce some restrictions on the alignment of executable code, which could make exploiting certain vulnerabilities theoretically less difficult on an Intel CPU. (Though the actual significance of this theoretical difference is highly debated.) Regardless of CPU architecture, a user on Mac OS X is by default granted a lower level of privilege than on Windows XP . In the absence of a Privilege Escalation exploit, malicious software running under Mac OS X would only be able to damage files writable by a particular user, but not core system files. Viruses which interact with the system at a very low level would also have to contend with a different system architecture, kernel, APIs and filesystem. Vectors of exposure such as ActiveX and Outlook should also not be a problem, since neither runs natively under Mac OS X. Vulnerabilities such as the recently published WMF Problems in Windows would also not be directly applicable, but similar issues may potentially exist. Hardware-oriented There are questions over the extent to which Apple will retain control over the non-processor components of the system design. Apple is traditionally a systems builder, and some fear that Apple's Industrial Design philosophy may be affected if the company switches to generic parts. Others note that Apple has slowly been switching to standard parts since the introduction of the PCI Power Mac in 1995, and say that using a generic chipset in itself would not harm the Mac's image. The new Intel Macs employ a new Intel technology for , Apple's use of which remains to be seen. The use of the x86 architecture allows Windows to run natively on Apple hardware, and opens the possibility of using the Wine package to run Windows executables directly. Some fear that the change will make OS X a less valuable target for software developers, since OS X users can use a will not be EFI-compatible on 32-bit platforms, but Apple has thus far not given any reason to doubt that it will be possible to run Vista on an Intel Mac. Intel is seen among the Macintosh community as being a purveyor of hot-running chips. Apple themselves mocked the Pentium range in their "Burning Bunnies" advertisements of the late 1990s, and the Pentium 4 needs large amounts of power and cooling to operate, making it unsuitable for laptops and small PCs. However, the Pentium M chips, which were designed for laptop use, run much cooler than the Pentium 4. Apple claims newer Intel designs, including the Core Solo and Core Duo chips, which use the Pentium M microarchitecture, have dramatically better performance per watt than the PowerPC G4 and G5. Finally, the relative quality of the x86 architecture has been discussed. Critics of the switch say that x86 was a poor choice because of its lack of Hardware Register s compared to the PowerPC, the awkwardness of the x86 Instruction Set , and the lack of AltiVec (also known as Velocity Engine ). Proponents have responded by saying that the x86 architecture has evolved greatly since the original 8086 was introduced, and that CPUs in general have combined RISC and CISC philosophies in their internal designs for some time, making the distinction obsolete; they also point out that improvements to SSE that can completely replace AltiVec are coming, and that most programmers rarely deal with x86's peculiarities now because the Compiler does the work. The Core Solo and Core Duo chips are 32-bit designs. Apple has not yet released any plans for 64-bit Intel machines, though the capability will likely be there. Existing applications Java applications that don't rely on JNI , Dashboard Widgets , and Scripts that execute inside an Interpreter all work immediately on both processors and are immune from changes. OS X applications that can't be migrated run inside a PowerPC Dynamic Translator on Intel called ' Rosetta '. Rosetta was originally limited to a G3 instruction set, but now currently supports AltiVec and the G4 instruction set, leaving only the G5 additions unsupported. Rosetta is an instruction translator comparable to the 68K emulator that allows PowerPC Macintoshes to run pre-PowerPC code, rather than a virtual system like Classic ; it does not require a second operating system to be loaded as a subsystem before the application can work. AltiVec itself has been encapsulated since Mac OS 10.3 by a vectorisation library; this library automatically selects between AltiVec on the PowerPC and SSE (or equivalent regular instructions) on x86. A new version of will run after some code changes, described by Apple and Metrowerks. Metrowerks does not appear to have announced the future direction of its compiler suite after the transition, although it has sold its x86 Compiler/Debugger technology to "a third party". Classic will not be supported on the x86 architecture. This means that pre-Mac OS X software will not be able to run, to which some users running older applications (such as QuarkXPress 4 and 5) have objected. SEE ALSO REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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