Ovidiu Predescu's Weblog

MacOS X on x86 hardware?

Apple reportedly has builds of MacOS X 10.2 running on Intel compatible hardware. Don't hold your breath yet, as explained in the article and as I previously noted, Apple needs to move its customers to use the new Cocoa APIs instead of the Carbon ones, which provide an easy migration from the old MacOS. The business model has to also change, which is a major undertaking.

But a switch to Intel or Advanced Micro Devices Inc. processors is probably not in the cards for tomorrow's Macs, sources said. Such a move would require a massive revision of Apple's closed hardware architecture and a fundamental rethinking of its business model, which is founded on tight integration between its proprietary system software and hardware. Apple would have to also coax most of its third-party developers to rewrite their applications from the ground up in the company's Cocoa application environment. (Most major vendors have instead tuned their applications to Carbon, a set of Mac OS X-compatible APIs originally culled from the classic Mac OS and rooted in the PowerPC architecture.)