Mactel
I was doing some deep thinking in the shower this morning (one of my better spots for thinking), and I was pondering Apple and the Macintosh’s future as the hardware transitions to the Intel platform. I don’t have any information other than what I read on the rumors sites and I don’t even follow things as closely as I did when I was a Mac developer. I see things more from a user perspective both as one who has always enjoyed using the Mac and a developer who just wants to build great software.
There is one thing I’m sure of, and that is that Apple will crush anyone who attempts to get OS X running on a non-Apple box. They will have the lawyers out in force, going after any company, open source project, or 8 year-old in her basement in Brazil. They have to, or they have no reason to build Macs. If you can throw OS X on any old beige box, then Apple looses the premiums it charges and I don’t think they have the supply chain management aptitude to compete with Dell. If Apple doesn’t stop these projects, it signals some shift in business model that I won’t even try to predict.
I’m also pretty sure that some company or open source project will get Windows apps to run seamlessly or nearly seamlessly. Microsoft won’t stop it because for everything to be on the up-and-up, you would need a real copy of a Microsoft OS. Apple won’t stop it because it will help Switchers. And there is the rub, to keep people switching, Apple must keep the perception that OS X provides a better user experience than Windows even though they will be perceived to be running on the same hardware. I know people who switched to Macs because they were just tired of all the viruses and spyware their Windows boxes collected, if that changes Apple is sunk.
One big boost this could give Apple is that games will be more accessible on the Mac. Games that got ported 18-24 months, if ever, will be available if this seamless integration is done or in the worst case with a reboot. This would remove one more objection to Switching. However, this brings up the big wildcard, software developers. Will software developers continue to build Mac applications? If they expect or even bundle the emulation layer, why would they continue to support writing to the OS X API’s? I’m sure there will be Mac only vendors who will continue to write OS X apps, but what about Adobe or Microsoft? Why would Microsoft continue to support an entire development team for Office? Just have a team for the emulation layer and just one Office team. If they bundle, something Microsoft is very good at, Office and the emulator everyone gets what they want and Microsoft gets to save on head count. Adobe could do the same, just license and bundle the emulator and just write to the Windows API’s. Developers can focus on the application and not worry about any cross-platform issues.
Hey, I don’t know how this will play out, but it is a very important point in the evolution of the Mac. Probably even a make-or-break moment for the platform. As for Apple, I think they will continue to try to make the Mac just a portion of their business.
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