Alright, I needed to talk about this, and my gaming journal seemed like the right place. For all of you who do not keep up on Mac news, which is probably a lot of you, they have recently announced a switch from their IBM made PowerPC chipset to an Intel based chipset. They have said that they will make the switch over the course of the next few years, with Intel based Macs arriving in early 2007 and IBM based Macs being discontinued by the end of that same year.

Many people would look at that and say "So?" while others will have many theories about what this will mean for Mac.

First off, a chipset change has a lot of programming implications. One of the joys of the Mac system is that all of the programs are designed to run specifically to run on Mac hardware. All of the software is a perfect fit, and any hardware changes that Apple makes are usually very sensitive to this, maintaining or strengthening this program/computer relationship. If you ever wondered why people say Macs are fast and reliable, it is for that reason. PCs, on the other hand, have to be designed with many different setups in mind. This leads to the programs not getting the full potential out of the hardware, however, the hardware is usually less expensive for the raw power it provides. Thus, Macs and PCs are hard to compare on paper.

That may seem unrelated to the change, but it isn't. With the program compatibility in mind, many applications are designed to take advantage of very specific processes native to the system. The new chip will be missing some of these processes and replace them with others. Therefore, many programs have to be redesigned in order to take advantage of these new processes, and repair the holes left by those taken out. They have two years to do this, but it will still be difficult, and many applications might just disappear from the already small Mac library out of an inability/lack of desire to go through this.

Though, switching to Intel processors is not all bad. Intel has been chosen because their processors have a bright future. Macs are known for taking advantage of all their hardware's potential, and I am sure that an Intel chipset will be no different. They will still have more power than the numbers seem to suggest, and now those numbers will probably look like PC numbers. Additionally, Mac computers will be able to run Windows, or at least it seems that way. Apple has said they won't support Windows running on a Mac, but they also said they won't stop it. The similarities between the processors also means that a Virtual PC type program will probably be faster, maybe even full speed, because it has less translation to do between the software and hardware. Although, even if Windows runs on an Apple computer, Apple has still stated that Mac OS X will not run on a PC. There will probably be a hack of some sort allowing such a thing, but you would lose a lot of what makes a Mac works so well, namely the hardware/software compatability.

This dual booting ability for Mac hardware may cause Mac to lose some developers. For example, a game company like Atari might not make a Mac version of Unreal Tournament if the Mac user can run the Windows version on their system dual booting Windows XP. However, this is not for certain, and dual booting will probably be a rarity among the most tech savvy users.

All in all, we won't know how things turn out until it happens. But this change will rock the Mac world. A lot of recoding will have to occur to make the Apps work. In the end, the Macs will still have all the things they are known for: reliability, more power than their numbers suggest, less spyware and viruses than Windows, a unique user-friendly interface, and that spiffy Apple logo. But now that spiffy logo will be rubbing up against a little sticker proclaiming to the world "Intel Inside."