Awe and Shock at the WWDC: Apple Going Intel
Daniel Knight - 2005.06.06
Awe: Mac Sales Growing Quickly
At today's Worldwide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs announced
that Mac unit sales are growing 40% year-over-year - an astounding
figure in an industry with 12% growth rate.
Just what do those numbers mean?
The usual figure these days is that Apple has 3% market share.
Apple sold about 3.5 million Macs last year, which makes the market
about 115 million units. At a 12% growth rate, the market will be
about 130 million units in 2005, and with 40% growth, Apple will
account for 4.9 million. That's nearly enough to get Apple to 4%
market share this year.
If the trend continues, in 2006 the market will reach 145
million units, and Apple will sell 6.8-6.9 million units. Market
share: 4.7%. One more year brings the total market to 160 million
computers. If this growth rate continues, Apple will sell about 9.6
million Macs for a market share of 6%.
Of course, everything could change with the switch to Intel.
Shock: Apple Switching to Intel
Steve Jobs has been unhappy with IBM for missing the 3 GHz mark
on the PowerPC G5, and he's taking all the Mac marbles to Intel's
playground. Really.
According to Jobs, there is no future with PowerPC architecture.
Jobs even claims that Intel offers lower power consumption than
PowerPC - which makes you wonder why all the Windows portables have
such pathetic battery life.
Jobs announced that Apple will begin introducing Macs with
"Intel Inside" within one year and complete the transition by June
2007, claiming that Intel offers a "better roadmap" for the future
than IBM. (Interesting, then, that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo
have hitched their wagons to IBM.)
Apple has been developing OS X for x86 for five years, and Jobs
demonstrated it running on a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 machine. And not
only has Apple developed OS X for Intel, but every other
software project has also been designed for both hardware
platforms.
Apple's development tools, particularly Cocoa and Xcode, should
make it relatively easy to port existing programs to the new
hardware. Xcode 2 supports "fat binaries".
Jobs reassured Mac owners that Apple is not abandoning the
PowerPC installed base. Apple software will continue to support
PowerPC for a long time yet. Part of this strategy is something
called "universal binaries", which appear be the Macintel
equivalent of "fat" applications for the classic Mac OS that had
both 680x0 and PowerPC code.
Existing Java apps, scripts, and Dashboard widgets already work
on the new hardware.
Jobs also announced the "Rosetta" technology, a realtime PowerPC
emulator for Intel CPUs. No word on how efficient Rosetta is
compared to a genuine PowerPC processor.
Apple is selling a US$999 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 developer kit, the
same Mac Jobs used for today's demo. You do have to be a developer
to buy one, and the units must be returned to Apple by the end of
2006. Units will begin shipping in two weeks.
Microsoft is onboard and promises better Exchange support for
OS X users. Wolfram demonstrated Mathematica on the new
Macintel hardware, and Adobe promises full support as well.
Thoughts on Macintel
As I wrote earlier today, I
didn't expect to see Apple announce Intel-based Macs today. In a
way they did, but in another way they didn't. I'd consider this
more of a pre-announcement.
A year from new Apple will ship Intel-based Macs. It's a
heads-up to developers, letting them know what's around the corner.
That's far better than Apple dropping a Macintel in our laps today
and asking early adopters to depend on PowerPC emulation for all
their existing Mac software. By the time the first Mac-on-Intel
machines ship (with Leopard?), there should be plenty of "fat" or
"universal binaries" software available.
I suspect that OS X on Intel requires Apple hardware, although I
imagine Apple could sell a boatload of copies of OS X to
Windows users if they released OS X for Intel for that
hardware next June.
All in all, I have to applaud Steve Jobs for making a big move
like this and giving the industry a whole year to prepare for it.
In the long run, I think this will grow the Macintosh platform,
further reduce prices, and - anticipating a good Windows emulator -
be a great "switcher's" computer.
Other Keynote News
- 1 million customers walk into 109 Apple Stores every week.
- The iPod accounts for 76% of the digital music player
market.
- The iTunes Music Store has sold over 430 million tracks and
accounts for 82% of the online music market.
- Apple has shipped 2 million copies of Tiger, and 16% of the
installed base is already using it.
- There have been five major revisions of OS X, and the next will
be called Leopard.
My question: Will I be able to run OS X for Intel on my new Acer
laptop?
