A Tiger by the Tale

By Jerry Pournelle

June 13, 2005

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Column 299

We've installed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and I can summarize simply enough: It's Grrreaaat! OS X 10.4 (which quickly upgrades to 10.4.1) is wonderful. It has just about all the features Microsoft promises to have in Longhorn Real Soon Now, but Tiger is here today, and It Just Works. Everything about this inspires enthusiasm.

Of course, just as Apple brings out an OS that makes me seriously consider keeping some fast Windows machines for gaming but switching over to the Mac as my main system for writing and mail handling and everything but games, Apple announces that the current Mac hardware is eventually to be replaced by x86 chips which are themselves coming to the end of their development cycle. That is, on Monday the 6th of June—D-Day—Steve Jobs announced that Apple would go over to Intel processors.

That rumor had been around for a while, but without details: There was speculation that Apple would stay with the PowerPC chip, only now those would be made by Intel. That didn't happen. Instead, Apple went the whole hog. Apple is changing to x86 architecture, and in fact all of the recent Apple OS X operating system already runs (in the lab) on the current Intel hardware. With this bold stroke Jobs is clearly announcing his intent to take Apple out of the niche market and compete for real market share. Given Apple's marketing strategies it's unlikely Apple can—or even wants to—become the dominant player in the PC market, but it's pretty clear Jobs is aiming to regain at least the 20 percent market share that Apple almost had back in the early days of small computers; and to do that while staying out ahead in the Way Cool department.

It's as if Ferrari decided to take over the Mercedes share of the automobile market.

The announcement generated a world of speculation, some of it outright silly, some silly only on reflection. For example, the night before the announcement I wondered if this would now make it possible to build "white box" Apple computers? This seems not unreasonable on first thought, but it isn't going to happen.

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