Apple Geekery
14 December 2005 16:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravendisplayedNekkid, next month is MWSF where it is all but certain the the first x86 Macs will be introduced. A lot has been said about the reasons why the move is happening, but I have yet to see anyone else mention what seems to me like the most obvious reason.
Sure, the move is going to mean a bit of a price drop, faster speed bumps and all the support intel can offer the hardware teams, but the big reason is Windows emulation.
Sure, you can run most windows apps in OSX now under VirtualPC or dosbox, but that is god awful slow. Once the first x86 Macs are out, how long do you think it will be until the dosbox dynamic core is running on OSX86, or Wine or Cedega? None of these are possible on PPC, but on x86 it will be. I give it a month at the outside, possibly at release.
This is the big thing, being able to run every last windows app, including all the games, on a Mac at full speed.
EDIT
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the other way that windows apps might run on the Mac, the hardware level virtualization that Intel has been pushing.
Sure, the move is going to mean a bit of a price drop, faster speed bumps and all the support intel can offer the hardware teams, but the big reason is Windows emulation.
Sure, you can run most windows apps in OSX now under VirtualPC or dosbox, but that is god awful slow. Once the first x86 Macs are out, how long do you think it will be until the dosbox dynamic core is running on OSX86, or Wine or Cedega? None of these are possible on PPC, but on x86 it will be. I give it a month at the outside, possibly at release.
This is the big thing, being able to run every last windows app, including all the games, on a Mac at full speed.
EDIT
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the other way that windows apps might run on the Mac, the hardware level virtualization that Intel has been pushing.