Apple Makes the Switch

The grapevine was right this time: Apple will indeed be migrating to Intel chips after all. Steve Jobs made the announcement today at the WWDC in San Francisco, CA.

What’s this mean for consumers? Better availability of Apple products.

Apple has struggled with keeping up with demand for several years due to low supplies of the G4 and G5 PowerPC chips that power their computers. Because of the darth of supplies, Apple has had to delay product launches repeatedly, and as failed to close the “Gigahertz Gap” between its computers and those of the PC world.

In a surprising move, Jobs announced that Apple has had Mac OS X running on x86-based Intel chips for the past 5 years.

I’m excited about this move, because it’s going to lead to greater availability of processors for Apple, and… I’m speculating here… maybe it will open up OS X to custom-built computers. Who knows…

Jobs said this transition won’t be completed until 2007. Until then, I’ll be anxiously awaiting this latest evolution of Apple and its offerings.