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JUNE 7, 2005
By Peter Burrows Apple Hits the Intel Switch The move from IBM chips is a risk -- history leaves no doubt about that. But it's also a move Steve Jobs says he couldn't avoid About midway through his keynote speech at Apple's (AAPL ) Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 6, Steve Jobs told the audience what it already knew. "It turns out that the rumors were true," he said, proceeding to lay out the details of Apple's plan to drop the PowerPC chip from IBM (IBM ) and Motorola spin-off Freescale semiconductor and build future models around Intel's (INTC ) omnipresent microprocessors.The Mac OS has been leading a "secret double life" for the last five years. That's when Apple engineers first began working to get the Macintosh operating software to run on Intel silicon. That bit of history was one element in a slew of details aimed at limiting the nervousness of Apple's partners, customers, and investors. While computer outfits must upgrade to new chips every decade or so to remain competitive, it's a hugely treacherous endeavor. Not only can an execution problem bring sales to a standstill but even news of the transition can stifle sales of existing models. Apple, which switched from Motorola's (MOT ) 68000 chip to the PowerPC in the early 1990s, presented the outline of a cohesive vision for accomplishing this latest transition. "I think today is a historic event for Apple, but not a disruptive one for its developers or customers," concludes JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg. DEMANDING DESIGNS. Apple's migration to the Intel fold could extend its current Golden Age by boosting Mac sales and by enabling it to reprise its success with the iPod and create new consumer devices. In part, that's because having the "Intel Inside" sticker on its products -- figuratively if not literally, in case that logo doesn't meet with Apple's discriminating sense of style -- could help Jobs & Co. win customers who have been worried about Apple's traditional go-it-alone approach. The substance of this deal, however, is about Apple's desire to tap Intel's chip expertise, not its marketing clout. While long-time partner IBM focuses on making the speediest chips possible -- it specializes in producing some of the world's most powerful computers -- Intel focuses on chips that combine maximum speed with the lowest possible heat. That's a perfect fit for the kinds of thin, portable, minimalist Macs that Jobs probably has in mind. "As we looked down the road, we simply didn't see how we were going to be able to make the products we want to make" using PowerPC chips, Jobs said in an interview. He claims Apple already is far along in making the Mac OS run well on Intel chips. It turns out that Apple kept working on this problem after bringing Jobs back into the fold when it bought his former company, NeXT Software, in 1996. That outfit's operating system, NextStep, ran on Intel chips. CHECK THE BOX. After using that code to create Apple's new Mac OS X operating system in 2000, Jobs insisted that all future versions be able to run on either PowerPC or Intel. Analysts and others at the conference saw convincing evidence during Jobs's keynote presentation, which he ran on an Intel-based Mac. After his talk, developers were surprised that the machine had been able to simultaneously run many different programs, including memory hogs like Adobe (ADBE ) Photoshop. That solves only part of the problem, however. Apple has to get software developers to create programs for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, since Jobs says the transition to Intel won't be complete until the end of 2007. Toward that goal, Apple demonstrated software tools that allow developers to carry out this "recompile" by simply checking off "Intel" in an on-screen dialog box. While it may not prove quite that easy in practice, Jobs conferred credibility to the concept by having Wolfram Research software designer Theo Gray recount how his company was able to recompile its complex Mathematica program in less than two hours. Jobs also encouraged developers to use Apple's "universal binary" technology to create CDs of their programs capable of running on either PowerPC or Intel-based systems. That way, customers would just install the CDs on any Mac, and the right version of the code would automatically load.
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