gottahavacuppamocha

Reading this article at I, Cringely, one of the most interesting predictions he has is about Apple.

As is widely known, Apple is transitioning their product line from the PowerPC to Intel based chips. To do this they (mostly) have to rewrite the code for their OS to work with the new chips. I don’t follow Apple that closely, but from what I understand, Apple has current versions of OS X for the PowerPC (to keep the people with the ‘older’ hardware happy) and for the new Intel line. Cringely postulates that Apple will sell boxed versions of OS X for Intel Macs, but people will buy them and put them any Intel based machine! He further predicts that while Apple won’t support this, they won’t discourage it, either, engaging in a sort of stealth competition with Microsoft.

If you know a little bit about computers (and since you are reading this on the net, you probably do), you probably also know Microsoft’s Windows operating systems run most computers based on Intel and AMD chips. Microsoft has some exclusive deals with computer manufacturers to ship their computers with Windows already installed. This isn’t such a big deal, because for the most part, Windows was the only sophisticated OS available for Intel systems (I’m keeping my Linux bias out of this). Apple’s OS X is a very sophisticated OS, but until now, it was only for use on PowerPC Apple computers. I don’t know what Apple OS X sells for as compared to Windows, but I think if Apple can persuade some other PC makers to offer OS X as alternative, it might benefit both Apple and the manufacturers.

Personally, I still plan on using Linux (currently Ubuntu), because it’s free (as in beer), and IMHO it works better than Windows. However, if I find out Apple’s OS X does work well on commodity Intel/AMD hardware, I might consider it if I had the $$$ to spend.