Defcon Kekekekekakl (blog)

Mactel, Microsoft, and Linux

All kinds of people have been saying Apple's upcoming switch to Intel X86 microprocessors might hurt Linux desktop adoption. I can't see that it will make much of a difference unless Apple decides to directly compete with Microsoft by selling an operating system that would run on non-Apple hardware. And if Apple did that, it would be good for Linux.

For the moment, all Apple is doing is changing some of their computers' guts. For most computer users, this means no change at all. Apple computers will still look like Apples, and will still run Mac OS X -- or XI or XX or whatever. Only people who routinely open up their computers and look at numbers on chips will know the difference. Think of a car manufacturer changing brake parts suppliers. A few automotive cognoscenti will care, but hardly anyone else will notice.

In this scenario, which is the publicly announced one, Apple's chip supplier change matters only to IBM, the dumped supplier, and to Intel, which has picked up a nice new OEM account. Software developers who work with Mac OS will need to make changes, but they survived the change from Mac OS 9 to OS X, so they're used to this sort of thing and, despite grumbling, will come out unscathed.

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