I just received t-mail (telepathic mail) from The Steve himself describing the opening to the WWDC keynote...

The room darkens. A pipe organ plays funeral music. A coffin rises slowly from below and onto the stage. A black drape is lifted slowly off the coffin as music plays. A somber Jobs takes the stage and solemnly walks to the coffin. He clasps his hands in front of his waste as he stands straight and looks down at the coffin, not in prayer, but in reflection. As the music continues to play, he opens the lid of the coffin toward us, so that only he can see the deceased. As he stands and nods his head in disbelief, the music fades.

Silence grips the room. The screen behind him switches from the the camera in front of the stage to the cameraman kneeled to Jobs' right. The audience watches as Jobs reaches into the coffin and grabs a box, shielding its identity with the black of his turtleneck sleeve. He slams the coffin shut, and it drops quickly below the stage, leaving behind only a resounding and dramatic "THUD!". The pipe organist crashes his hands on the keys, filling the room with a deafening noise as the pipes reverberate and the subwoofers amplify the noise to 120 decibels. The room goes dark and silent.

20 seconds later, lights point up from the edges of the stage at Jobs. He stands with legs straight, but 2 feet apart, the box clasped between his hands and in front of his chest, elbows bent precisely to his sides. Looking at the audience, he says, "Remember I told you that Mac OS 9 was dead?". Indeed, the box has the familiar Classic "9" logo inscribed in orange, filling the large screens behind him as the camera in front of the stage points up and focuses on it.

He continues... "Last time, you thought I was kidding, and indeed, Classic has had some life in it.". The two side screens now display an oscilloscope, a green dot tracking the pulse of Classic, and heart beats slowly murmer through the powerful sound system. "But this time, I'm not kidding. We're moving the Mac to Intel, there will be no PowerPC emulation, and your Classic apps won't run. Sorry.".

Jobs walks to the back of the room and pulls a plug. The pulse lines go flat. An audience member shouts, "What about HyperCard?". As the audience chuckles, Jobs reveals his mercurial grin. That question was the punchline of his script, the planted validation that the transition to Mac OS X was the right move some four years ago. Perhaps in another four years, the Mac faithful, especially the developers, will finally bury the PowerPC in their minds as well.

Meanwhile, Jobs prepares his mind for his next skit, the "one more thing" segment scheduled for 1 hour and 37 minutes from now, where he will unveil the widely anticipated speedbumped iMac G5, blazing at 2.06 GHz and with a new soon-to-be industry standard port that hooks up to any standard garden hose for continuous liquid cooling. But the gem of "one more thing", sure to send the stock price soaring, is a new consumer electronics gadget called the iWatch which will be available for $79.95 at Sunglass Hut and Target stores throughout the country starting next Thursday. Designed by Jonathan Ives, this must-have accessory for anyone with a tattoo and an eyebrow stud sports a click-wheel winder (no battery needed!) and delicious aqua face. The hands are available in silver, gold, green, blue, and red, each with its very own SKU.

-THE END-

that was great! i completely forgot Jobs sealed OS 9 in a coffin. If indeed PPC is dead on Apple's side, it would be a nice touch to seal a PPC chip in a coffin too. I hope PPC is here to stay but you never know...

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Bosco wrote:
"What about HyperCard?"

Now THAT’S comedy!

Heh. Thanks. That's where the original ended. I edited to add a new ending. Enjoy!!

"Once you start down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny." - YODA

I can't beleive that Jobs would go INTEL before using IBM's CELL chips! This rumor about a move to INTEL is a bunch of CRAP, as in POO-POO.

CELL is state-of-the-art and geared 100% towards the markets that are most needed by the Mac, like GAMES or VIDEO content!

A move to INTEL is a bad move! It will kill sales and throw everything into Chaos. It makes no sense. Steve has something else up his sleve, like Dual-Core G5's at 3GHz! This is all palnned to hype up attention towards his big, "oh, just one more thing..."

Hyper card is NOT dead! I tel you NOT NOT NOT NOT dead!!!!! I'm still using cyberdog!!!!! You're all crazy!!!

I can't beleive that Jobs would go INTEL before using IBM's CELL chips!

The mere fact that the cell is usable in a game machine indicates that it can't really be all that fast by PC standards. Also, once the PS 3 ships, there is no reason to improve the cell at all for the next five years (except to make it cheaper) - Consoles don't have "speed bumps".

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Without PPC emulation, Mac-on-intel would start with literally zero software, and this would dramatically increase software port times. There may be an intel version of OS X, but is even iLife working on intel?

On the other hand, it's possible that third parties porting to intel might be much easier then porting to PPC:

1) PPC was an all new architecture that programmers had to learn, whereas most programmers would be familiar with x86

2) If you already have a Mac/PPC version and a Win/x86 version, wouldn't combining them do much of the work?

3) Maybe it is easier for Mac/x86 to emulate Windows then to emulate PPC. The box would then be able to run windows software similar to how OS-X runs OS 9 software.

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algr wrote:

On the other hand, it's possible that third parties porting to intel might be much easier then porting to PPC:

This really depends on your development tools. I'm sure if you're using XCode, it will be a mostly painless transition. That is, it will be painless if you don't do any hand assembly or use AltiVec vector extensions in your C source. But the problem with XCode is that it's horrible for cross-platform development (locking devs into Mac support). X-plat developers are likely using CodeWarrior or (my favorite) REALbasic. In the case of CodeWarrior, things will be interesting... Will they see a business case in a MacTel target? Unknown. They seem more focussed on embedded platforms these days and there's always the politics of Motorola (parent company of Metrowerks) and Apple that could come into play. REALbasic? An absolute given that they will support a transition. The problem comes with plugins, which may need their Mac development ported to XCode to support the MacTel target if CodeWarrior doesn't come through.

There are definitely a ton of little hurdles that will affect 3rd party developers. Nothing to kick and scream about yet, but things that have to be worked out over the coming year.

I hope Apple is prepared to sell about 3 computers over the next two years. Who's going to buy a mac now when it will be obsolete in 12 to 24 months? No one would be making software for it once the Intel-powered macs came along...

I suspect that the announcement will have to do with WiFi/WiMax or Video, or Intel based handheld, or Intel based iPod-Movie, or something like that. Intel makes many other chips that do a heck of a lot of other things than the Pentium. Don't assume that because Intel goes in PPC goes out. I pulled the side of my G4 tower open and found several Intel chips in there already.

Just chill people.

It's all about egos.

For years Jobs has been fighting two battles. One against the MHz myth, the other against Micro$oft.

If all the speculation proves to be true then it allows Jobs to focus on his true target - Micro$oft.

I really think it's that simple, sure there will be business arguments etc. etc., but in the end a chip is a chip. Jobs recognises this and is sidestepping battle number 1 quite delicately.

Here's to battle number 2!

some of us folks with PPC may end up developing as a sect or cult (even more so than now as Apple followers), in the future to keep our PPC chips and computers alive. The rebel alliance will resist the urge to go to Intel and get lots of spare "G4/G5 parts" and make our own hybrid computers as they wear out.

We'll have the next linux community.

Let me start to say that I am puzzled by the recent development of this story. That said, I do believe that if are going to see an Intel chip inside a mac may be A) limited to the PB and portable line of products, or
B) is gong to be a new architecture that Intel has developed and offered to Apple.

We know why Apple would benefit from Intel chips to power portables, G5 cannot quite fit the bill and G4 is being left in the dust in term of raw power.

The second consideration I made reflects the time line that has been leaked for the apperance of Intel chips on Apple computers. I think this eventuality is the only one that makes sense. If indeed the deal concerns a new chip Intel has developed then the migration of the platform could be 'evolutionary' and both OS and CPU are probably to be jointly integrated.
This latter aspect is, IMO, critical to Apple continued success. If we are going to see a total change of direction and passive acquisition of a x86 CPU I foresse enormous problems with developers that are basically being punished for focusing on the Apple side of business. At that point I would give up in hoping that Apple would pull this off and sound my own death knell.
So, in short, I believe that if anything is going to happen, it will be of evolutionary nature. It is the only possible rationale way for all of this to happen.

...this needs to be set straight immediately. I'm set to buy a new iMac in a few weeks, and now I'm hesitating. First my iMac is obsolete, then OS9 bites the dust, then eMac is practically obsolete a year after I buy it...I can't afford to buy ANOTHER computer for another 3 or 4 years. If I get this iMac, then it's suddenly worthless in 6 months, I'm screwed.

If they don't get the truth out quick, sales are gonna tank, and all this momentum Apple has built up will have been for nothing.

I think that Apple will not entirely maintain its investment with the PowerPC by introducing an Apple PC division. Eveyone thinks that Apple's biggest blunder was refusing to license the MacOS. Maybe, mabe not. But their next biggest blunder may have been their decision not to come up with an Apple PC. Everyone knows that an Apple PC would sell, with or without Windows inside. If they had, Dell wouldn't have become the biggest PC maker in the world. While nobody could've have stopped Microsoft from dominating the application industry, Apple could've had a strong chance to dominate both hardware and operating systems. What a difference hardware dogma makes...

Apple PC running OS-X(Intel) with a combatibility layer that lets it run Windows Apps....

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Engine Joe wrote:
I hope Apple is prepared to sell about 3 computers over the next two years. Who's going to buy a mac now when it will be obsolete in 12 to 24 months? No one would be making software for it once the Intel-powered macs came along...

Just about any computer is gong to be "obsolete" in 12 to 24 months if you expect to run the latest-and-greatest software. Regardless of that, why would a developer stop making software for the millions of existing computers just because a few hundred thousand new computers are out there?

Do you really think the plan involves selling G5's up to the last second, then completely dropping support for them? Why not wait to see what the transition really involves before freaking out?

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dhp wrote:

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Engine Joe wrote:
I hope Apple is prepared to sell about 3 computers over the next two years. Who's going to buy a mac now when it will be obsolete in 12 to 24 months? No one would be making software for it once the Intel-powered macs came along...

Just about any computer is gong to be "obsolete" in 12 to 24 months if you expect to run the latest-and-greatest software. Regardless of that, why would a developer stop making software for the millions of existing computers just because a few hundred thousand new computers are out there?

Do you really think the plan involves selling G5's up to the last second, then completely dropping support for them? Why not wait to see what the transition really involves before freaking out?

True - they're not about to put the gun up to their own head.

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dhp wrote:

Do you really think the plan involves selling G5's up to the last second, then completely dropping support for them? Why not wait to see what the transition really involves before freaking out?

All of past transitions have involved emulations of some sort.

That's what worries me here. We've never seen any GOOD emulation programs that work between the Mac and PC world. Is it possible they've suddenly invented one? I guess, but why has no one else been successful before?

Apple is all about innovation, right?

Maybe Steve and Otellini will announce a new CPU, which borrows some PPC design from the G5. That would be very easy to swallow, and actually a bit exciting, a special Intel processor that can only be had in a Mac! I think that could really entice Wintel people to switch! Intel wouldn't care, either way they have almost everybodys business in the desktop (and maybe ultimately the server) domain.

Just my 2 cents...

Mark L.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!