There's a chip in there, and a bear as well... [www.apple.com]

... there are people with programs, and stories to tell ...

Well blow me down with a heatsink fan - the rumours were true!

Apple Mac's with Intel processors. Unfortunately it means I will probably never get my G5 laptop, but I'm glad I haven't bought a new G4!

Check out Steve Job's key note speech. The highlight for me was when Paul Otellini from Intel played the "Toasted Bunnies" Apple ad.

Steve also demo's an Intel powered Mac - in true Steve style (I won't give it away in case you want to watch it) - and announced that intel-based development boxes (with OS) were available immediately.

Tum, ta tum ta tum :)

The OS includes on the fly binary re-writing for legacy PowerPC code (not dissimilar to the 68k/PPC migration) in a technology called "Rosetta". Rosetta won't run AltiVec/G4/G5 optimised code which is not really a big deal because if your code was optimised specially for speed, then you are not going to want it to run on an emulated cpu anyway. What IS sad is that it won't support Classic applications :( Not only do i still own a number of little-used classic applications that I have not needed to upgrade, I draw a perverse pleasure from running the likes of Font/DA mover on my G4 tibook :)

Remarkably though, you can debug a running emulated application using gdb - almost like normal. Now that's reality distortion stuff if ever I heard it.

I wonder how long it will take Vmware to support MacOS X/intel (Macos Xi ?) as a supported guest operating system. Conversly, Aqua implementations of WINE / CrossoverOffice for MacOS Xi will be nice as well.

It will also be interesting to see what boot loader/bios arrangement Apple goes for - It's not going to be Open Firmware, and it's probably safe to bet that it won't be the legacy PC Bios - at least I hope not!

Also unanswered is the 64 bit question. The Universal Binary Programming Guidelines only refer to IA32 in various places - never IA64. Hopefully that won't be a backwards step with the first batch of hardware next year. Ironically, I was just this afternnon watching a quicktime movie of Apple's 1984 shareholders meeting - including a radiant Steve Jobs effusing over the new Mac with it's "powerful 32 bit microprocessor"!

Update: Apple Press Release : Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

The comments about the Intel compiler are interesting - I wonder if it will be offered as an alternative to gcc in a forthcoming Xcode release?

Update: Lack of Classic support discussed at eweek.com

Update: Here is a a very interestingWall Street Journal article from 2 weeks ago with very timely question/answers like:

WSJ: Why are Intel's demo products always cooler than the actual products its customers make?
Otellini [intel]:Part of the problem is today the desktop [computer] business is a zero margin business for many of our customers [ But not for Apple :) -- Mark]
WSJ: Pressed about security by Mr. Mossberg, Mr. Otellini had a startling confession: He spends an hour a weekend removing spyware from his daughter's computer. And when further pressed about whether a mainstream computer user in search of immediate safety from security woes ought to buy Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC

Not only would Otellini have been very happy to be able to leave that interview with a smile on the inside, it gives an insight into why intel views Apple as such a desiarble customer - Apple actually builds cool things with chips. And that's something no PC vendor has done in the last 10 years.

Update: I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had heard of a software technology code named Rosetta before - Russell and I presumed that Apple had bought some other binary rewriting technology off someone else, or perhaps it was in fact the same technology as used in the 68k/PPC migration (the caching sounds very similar).

Semi from Tram Town reminded me that Rosetta was the code name for the second generation printed-writing recognition in the Newton - how could I have forgotten that? In memeory, I am using a Newton 2000 as my morning alarm clock!

Wikipedia mentions Rosetta in a reasonably good Newton overview: Apple Newton