Apple is a funny company in that in terms of revenue it is first and foremost a hardware company. So far so good. What's strange is to me the "Mac" experience is almost entirely about OSX. The revenue is made by selling hardware but the real "value" in the platform to me is in the OS. The two can't be separated.
Also, this transition to Intel only works because Apple still controls the hardware. Apple has had the chance to release a boxed version of OSX for 5 years now but they haven't.
They could build the drivers release the boxed version for x86 but how do you get the developers to make software if the hardware isn't eventually going to force the 20-40 million Mac users to the new platform?
That's the key to the Intel switch working....we all know OSX is better than Windows but that's not enough to get us and the developers to x86. If you want OSX (the "Mac" experience) you are forced to eventually go x86.
Because of the hardware connection, Apple is telling developers make x86 programs because it's the future of where our 40 million active "hardware restricted" people are going but still make PPC programs because it's gonna take a lot longer than 2 years to get the majority of Mac users to Intel boxes.
Last edited by FireDancer : 2005-06-09 at 20:11.
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