This last Monday Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage to deliver the keynote address at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) – an event geared towards the programmers and engineers that design and build software for the Macintosh platform. Historically, Jobs’ WWDC keynote has been the venue for important announcements. Last year, Apple’s new Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” was unveiled. Two years ago, Jobs debuted the first Mac built around IBM’s G5 64-bit processor. At that time, Jobs promised, based on what IBM told him, that the G5 processor (which started out life at 1.6 GHz) would be ramped up to 3 GHz within a year, and 4 GHz within a few years. Here we are two years later and the G5 has reached only 2.7 GHz.

Although IBM and Apple never officially announced a PowerBook laptop sporting the G5, it has become obvious that the power requirements and heat generated by the G5 in its present form preclude its use in a laptop computer (unless you want to carry around a battery belt and tank of freon).

IBM’s ability to manufacture the G5 in sufficient quantities has at times constricted Apple’s hardware release schedules, most recently with the iMac G5. Looking ahead, other variants of IBM’s Power architecture (on which the G5 is based) have been selected to power Microsoft’s second-generation XBox360, Sony’s PlayStation 3, and Nintendo’s Revolution game stations. This is quite a win for IBM, as between the three game boxes we’re talking about millions of processors. Plus, IBM has its own line of Power-based servers, which compete directly with Apple’s G5-based Xservers. It’s obvious that Apple’s needs processor needs are moving further and further down the IBM “totem pole”.

In addition, speeds of the G4 processor, originally developed by an alliance between Apple, IBM, and Motorola, and now supplied by a company called Freescale, have not increased as rapidly as expected. The G4, used in all of Apple’s laptop computers as well as the eMac and Mac mini, has recently been eclipsed in both power consumption and speed by Intel’s Pentium M and Centrino processors. As a side note, laptop computer sales eclipsed desktop computer sales in May for the first time in history.

Rather than continue on the present course, and wait for possible chip shortages and languishing processor speeds, and after spending some time with chipmakers looking at future processor “road maps”, Steve Jobs decided it was time for a change.

On Monday, Jobs announced that by this time next year, Apple will offer some Macs powered by Intel processors (presumably laptops and consumer-oriented models). By 2007, Apple’s entire line will have “Intel Inside” (wow, what a catchy slogan – maybe they’ll use it). He also stated that, in the interim, Apple has “great PowerPC products still yet to come”. Basically, he described a two-year transition to an all-Intel lineup.

What about the Mac operating system, and all the applications written for it? Intel’s Ia32 Pentium architecture is very different the PowerPC. Natively, you can’t run Windows on a Mac or vice-versa. Well, Steve Jobs confessed that Mac OS X has been leading a secret “double life”. Every build of OS X in the last five years, and all of Apple’s branded software (iLife, Final Cut Pro, etc.) have secretly been developed for the Intel architecture alongside the released-to-the-public PowerPC versions. Why? Just in case a seismic shift like this was required. Prior planning prevents poor performance.

So what does this all mean for Mac users (and current PC users considering a switch)? Read more in the accompanying column.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski