Apples and oranges

My family is around, and my tiny home surprisingly fit everyone for a few days. But this post doesn’t exist to talk about that.

While almost everyone, and definitely all the mac zealots, are foaming at the mouth, fainting, feeling betrayed and declaring war on their beloved Steve Jobs, I am loving the new direction the “world’s most innovative computer company” is going. I applaud you Apple. You’ve finally won me over. I am eager to “make the switch”. I resisted the Imac, Itunes and even the very sexy Ipod, but the concept of a sleek Powerbook running a polished Unix powered by Intel goodness — cue profuse salivation — just blows my mind.

The naysayers will try to remind you of how going Intel is a surefire way to commit corporate suicide. You know what? They’re probably right. I don’t care if Apple goes down the drain as a result of this change, all I know is that over the next year or so, they’re bound to come up with a super sexy titanium Powerbook powered by an x86 processor, and I will own one. After which the company can go down the drain for all I care.

Two key quotes:

“Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple.”

and

“Jobs introduces Wolfram’s CEO, who said they ported Mathematica 5 to Intel-based Macs in 2 hours. Working version in 2 hours flat. Only about 20 lines of code changed.”

And honestly, that’s all I care about.

Background: I’ve been on the lookout for a laptop to replace my aging 7 lb monster, and my choices had boiled down to between an Apple Powerbook and an IBM Thinkpad. The Powerbook, though sexy and slim, was still non-x86. And I was not too keen on an using an architecture with evil endianness. (I’ve had a computer since I was two (1982), and in all that time, only one of those computers has been a non Intel x86 machine (a random Casio non-IBM compatible PC). Old habits die hard.)

Anyone who’s anyone (meaning anyone who cares to know) knows by now that Apple is switching from IBM to Intel as their chip vendor for future products. I for one don’t feel too sorry for IBM, as they’ve nabbed the deals to supply processors for all of major next generation consoles. The XBox360’s core, the PS3’s cell and the Revolution’s gekko. The volumes they will see there will clearly dwarf the business Apple was (and would have been) giving them, and no one at IBM need be too worried.