So... Macs on Intel. Looks like the skeptics were really, really wrong.
Gruber pointed to large technical issues with a switch from PowerPC to x86 for Apple and its third-party developers, though he points out that these are not insurmountable. More intractable, he expected, would be marketing: "Who's going to spend $3,000 for a deprecated CPU architecture?"
Uh, duh, the same people who feel superior spending $3K on an OS you keep deprecating, dummy.
Seriously, there are a lot of questions about where this is going. Jobs is certainly going to have to pull a big rabbit out of the hat to keep Mac sales up between now and the arrival of Intel-based Macs. But Apple has the cash reserves to weather a dip.
The cited reasons are chip speed and cost issues with the PPC platform. I doubt that's the whole story. It's not in the Jobsian worldview to open up OS X to run on Dell machines, but maybe he sees a market in cleaning up that malware-ridden family PC. Maybe he sees a market in the small number of people who'd buy an Apple because it looks cool - and put XP on it (ha ha). I think it's more likely that he's looking to optimize the low end of the product line in a serious home digital hub play - your one-stop DVD player, photo library, digital music library, home video editor, DVR, etc. They're most of the way there. Reformatting the tired PC in the basement is an idea; performance is going to be key, but from what they've done with OS X, it's possible.
But Job has secretly run previous OS X demos on Pentiums in front of everyone - that takes balls. He's going to need them to pull this off.
If they manage it, Apple could leverage from being a niche player to being a high-end minority player (think Lexus vs Taurus). Without challenging Microsoft dominance in business, Apple could multiply their market share many times. Even with income lost to OS X on Dells, that could bring enormous growth. Or, quality cheap machines could steal serious share in the home market.
Possibly, the greatest risk is that Jobs refuses to permit OS X on beige box PCs and Apple fails to make low-end models price-competetive with cheap PCs. He may see those possibilities as Scylla and Charybdis - and he may have to take at least one head on to succeed.
