My answers to Apple on Intel

Dennis Seller of MacsimumNews.com fame asked some questions and voiced some concerns about the Apple move to Intel move. I decided to post my own answers here.

Did anyone see any sign in Apple’s actual situation that pointed Intel could be the answer?
Some would say that IBM’s inability to mature the PowerPC architecture over the last three years, with no roadmap that does so quickly, is the sign anyone needed to see this coming.

Will developers accept it and join the transition?

What choice do they have? Develop for Windows only? There is a change they must make with every processor Apple uses already (G3 to G4 to G5, or even going back to 601 to 603E to 604) Besides which, the large developers already write for the Intel chip, so they are both familiar with it and will probably have less initial development time for new and future upgrades and products.

How many Macs sell between now and the Intel roll-out since some folks may view PowerPC Macs as on the road to obsoletion?
Some, but if Apple had to make the switch over, can you imagine Apple being in a better place fanatically, than they are right now to weather any storm?

What sort of performance hit does the “Rosetta” emulation layer cause?

We shall see.

Does this move open up the Mac to more viruses, spyware, etc?
How would it? All the things you speak of attack core technologies or security lapses in Windows, not the Intel chips.

What of the long-touted benefits of the AltiVec/Velocity Engine technology?
A thing of the past. Or the future, if you ask Microsoft’s XBOX team. Does not matter anymore at this point anyway, does it?

Intel’s fastest chips don’t run in notebooks either so what advantage is there in the laptop arena for Apple to make the move (Jobs touted the lack of a G5 PowerBook as one of the disappointments of the PowerPC platform)?
Intel is working at producing faster chips that run at cooler temperatures, it is high on their roadmap for the Pentium-class chips. IBM has done little, and shown even less, interest in getting a G5 chip to run cooler for laptops. And with laptops now drawing even and even surpassing desktop machines, this is a huge focal point in the Apple business plan.