[Op-Ed]: Finally, At Last, Direct Competition with Microsoft Really Begins


"I want Mac on Intel. I want Mac on Intel," screamed Bill Gates, circa 1985. Well, actually, he said 'PC', not 'Intel'. But you get the idea.

Well. He's got it. But not quite the way he envisaged. And 20 years later.

In a galaxy far, far away (circa 1990), there was a project called 'Star Wars'. No, not the one under Reagan Administration. The one where Apple secretly bunkered down with Intel and got the classic Mac OS running on Intel processors.

At the time, the Mac ran to Quadra-class machines at the top of the line, running Motorola 68040 chips, capable of 40MHz - eventually - on the screaming Quadra 840AV.

But poor management left the project in limbo.

Then in the mid-1990s, Steve Jobs tersely noted the OS wars were "over. Microsoft won," he said bluntly. True. Up to a point.

But we'll wager that Jobs knew - all along - that when he sold NeXT to Apple and went back, ultimately as CEO, that switching to Intel was always an option. After all, he had a FreeBSD Unix variant that could run equally capably on Intel processors. If Motorola failed, that was Plan B.

Maybe IBM was a stopgap measure. Maybe not. Jobs was convincing when he said he was "very happy" with the PowerPC roadmap from Big Blue a couple of years ago. Of course he was - IBM had told him, straight-faced, that they'd achieve 3GHz within a year. And then there was the Power 5, Power 6...

It didn't happen. Not the way it was planned. IBM has struggled with both clock speed and volume with the G5. And the PowerBook, a rich vein of deep, deep profits, clearly cannot - cannot - run any form of G5, irrespective of Jonathan Ive's design genius. That chip is simply too hot to handle for laptops.

But with Intel Pentium M chips, and other Pentium variants, Apple can get processors cheaply and easily. And they run in laptops without need of liquid cooling.

Which brings us to Microsoft. Now Bill & Co. won't exactly be running scared. But for once Windows will be going head-to-head with OS X. And people will have an actual choice of OS.

Now don't fall for some misinformed commentary on blogsites. Already, people are saying, "But if Macs run Windows applications...spyware...viruses..."

No, no. And no.

OS X will not simply run on a white box x86 PC. Whether Apple decide to go back to hardware ROMs plus system enablers, or stay with ROM-in-RAM, or a combination of both, it's a forgone conclusion that you won't simply pop into your friendly Apple Store, buy a copy of Leopard and install it on your Dell. Won't happen. Apple is, after all, a hardware company that happens to have some rather nice software as well.

Will Windows/x86 developers come aboard? Probably a lot of them will, if they can sell more product (like WinAmp v. iTunes). That won't hurt Microsoft though.

No, it's only if OS X - on Mac only, remember - sells millions upon millions of copies that Microsoft will feel in any way threatened. You'll be able to tell, because that'll be the day they announce they're "ceasing development" on Office for OS X.

Buckle up. We're in for a hell of a ride.