When Steve Jobs is in his element, he can sell almost anything. That was precisely what he did recently when he announced during the Apple World Wide Developers’ Conference 2005 keynote that Apple is going to use Intel microprocessors in all new computers beginning 2006.
This story has been the buzz on the Internet ever since CNET broke the news on Friday, 3rd June 2005, 3 days before the Jobs’ keynote. Most Mac enthusiasts(including me) initially did not believe such a report and were caught surprised with the official announcement.
The Macintosh’s switch to Intel marks the third major switch that this family of computers has gone through since its introduction in 1984.
1984: The First Generation- Macintosh 128K
Containing a whopping 128 Kbytes of RAM, this machine ran at a screaming 8 MHz. Utilizing a Motorola 68000 microprocessor, it was among the first few personal computers in the market at that time that sported a high-resolution black and white graphical user interface. At that time, the OS didn’t even have a name and was known as version 1.0. This machine went on to change the world by permanently segregating its computer users into 2 groups:- the enlightened (Mac users) and the droll (MS-DOS users).
1994: The Second Generation- Power Macintosh 6100
The Power Macintosh 6100 was the first personal computer to use the new PowerPC microprocessor. The new chip, design by the consortium of Motorola, IBM and Apple, was supposed to stem the growing Wintel hegemony. Running at an incredible 60 MHz, the PowerPC 603 system ran MacOS 7.1.2. Of course, changing to a new chip meant that these machines were slower when it ran older applications meant for the 68×000 microprocessors. But on PowerPC native applications, they trounced Intel.
2000: The Third Generation- MacOS X
Launched with a barely usable MacOS X 10.0, this operating system has matured in just under 5 years to become MacOS X 10.4, one of the best operating system in the world. Consisting of multiple frameworks, MacOS X is made from putting together a few application systems and framework on top of a core OS kernel named Darwin, which in itself is derived from NextSTEP, which is desrived from BSD. While Darwin is open-sourced, application systems like Aqua, Quicktime, Quartz Extreme, etc are not. These sub-systems give every Macintosh the MacOS X experience- snappy windows, licking good graphics and easy to use interface.
2006: The Next Generation- Intel Macs
Information is sketchy at this point in time but some are beginning to emerge. The Mactels are definitely x86 machines as the machine that Jobs was using in the keynote is a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 PowerMac. There is also a new translation technology called Rosetta that does real time binary code translation for PowerPC applications to Intel.