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Could The iPad Really Kill The Mac, Or Was Intel x86 An Interim Step Toward Apple Silicon Independence?

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

by Charles W. Moore

PC Mag’s Sascha Segan thinks that the rise of the iPhone OS-based iPad could spell the end of the Macintosh as we know it -- and that the Mac’s greatest enemy may ultimately not be archrival Microsoft Windows, but rather but Apple itself, citing Apple’s COO Tim Cook himself defining Apple as a “mobile devices company” at a recent Goldman Sachs technology conference.

industry.bnet.com’s Erik Sherman recently posted a similar riff, predicting that Apple will eventually dump the Macintosh product line -- not tomorrow, and not next year, but relatively soon, asserting that Apple’s future is in products consumers can drop into a pocket, with mobile ascendant not only on the iPhone OS, which the iPad will run, but on the full range of Apple hardware, noting that Apple likes to control markets, has shown willingness to bully competitors, and the Mac turns 26 this year. Original patents are out of date and many more nearing end of life, so a shift from the Mac OS to the iPhone OS would add a potential 20 plus more years of intimidation, more revenue, lower costs, higher profits, and increased control.

Segan theorizes that if Apple could do the Mac all over again, it would use the iPhone OS, and counsels us not to think of the iPad as an overgrown iPod touch but rather as the new Mac -- based on a closed-platform model Apple hopes can eventually migrate up through its entire product line.

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What does this mean in practical terms? Segan suggests that for example it could portend the end of independent software stores, result in fewer open-source projects and possibly a blanket ban on BitTorrent, Flash, and Firefox with a much more restricted peripheral market, and the Mac no longer being a PC as we know it, but an “end-to-end experience” like the iPhone.

There are other theories as to what Apple may be about in the processor chip game.

ZNet blogger Jason Perlow suggests that Apple’s move to the x86 Intel architecture for the Macintosh in 2005 may have only been a temporary stop on the way to its real processor chip objective — the creation of ARM-based personal computers facilitated by its $278 million 2008 acquisition of the PA Semi silicon development firm, arguing that if you closely examine Apple’s history you see time and time again how the company made strategic choices that allowed it to increasingly take control of its customers, its ecosystem and its intellectual property. He notes that Apple has always isolated itself from the rest of the industry, but as it matured and became more powerful, it also became even more locked-down, which presents problems that can only be resolved by yet another paradigm shift, a notable one being that although the x86 Mac uses a different type of firmware than the Intel PC architecture, Mac hackers have been successful at tricking OS X to run on much less expensive PC hardware using software-based EFI emulation on the PC BIOS using modified Darwin bootloaders.

Probably most importantly, Perlow contends, ongoing advances in X86 virtualization technology threaten real potential to enable ordinary consumers in the near future to install the Mac OS on their own PCs without the hassle and bother of any propellerhead “Hackintoshing.”

The solution? Since Apple has already ported much of its core BSD-based operating system, Darwin, to the ARM architecture to power the iPhone/iPod touch (and now iPad) platform, along with its Objective C development platform from Mac OS X, Jason figures Apple may be redrafting their transition/migration roadmap according to what they would actually be doing with their next generation of desktop and portable computers - ie: not abandoning or phasing out the Mac, but introducing a completely new generation of multi-core ARM-based Macs, with PA Semi providing the company the missing element of its grand design of becoming fully independent of Intel and any other third-party microprocessor vendor, allowing Cupertino to return to the completely closed, vertically integrated ecosystem they essentially enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s with Power PC, but this time with full top-to-bottom control — the iPad’s custom ARM Cortex A8-based A4 processor being just the first step along that road, which the next logical step being to evolve the A4 into multiple cores, at higher clock speeds and greater amounts of cache, theoretically developing enough muscle to power the next generations MacBooks, Mac minis and iMacs, with six or eight-core or even sixteen-core Apple ARM chips thinkable down the road, in the same direction Intel and AMD are traveling.

Perlow’s theory sounds plausible to me. Sascha Segan also suggests that rather than continuing to shun, for example, the vastly-expanding netbook market, Apple may counter with its own mini-laptop and even mini-desktop devices running the iPhone OS, once the waters have been tested with the iPad, at which point the Intel Mac platform might well might wither away more or less as the 68K and Power PC platforms did, to be replaced by a smooth but tightly Apple-controlled user experience. Segan thinks that the Intel MacBook and Mac mini lines will likely be the first casualties, being lower-cost and in his view appealing mostly to consumers -- a point I dispute in the context of the mini which has lots of appeal to professional and power-users, and even a niche market as a server (which Apple has acknowledged with its new top-of-the-line Mac mini Server model) due to its uniquely compact form factor. But running the iPhone OS? Maybe not so much.

Mac Pros will probably hang onto Intel the longest, or perhaps indefinitely, since the market they’re designed to serve requires more power and expandability than it may be worth developing on a ARM-based replacement, although that would oblige either continuing parallel development of Intel and ARM versions of the Mac OS or abandoning the high-end of the market served by the Mac Pro.

The biggest distinction between a Mac and an iPad isn’t ARM vs. X86, or multitouch vs. mouse, Segan observes, noting that iWork for the iPad is proof that real computer-style productivity apps can be engineered to work just fine with ARM-based platforms. No, the major difference is the Mac’s status as an open platform, and the iPhone/iPad being a closed one based on a tightly managed ecosystem of software and accessories model, with Apple the all-powerful gatekeeper-cum-dictatorship. Segan contends having a single gatekeeper with no checks or balances is almost never a good thing. I have to agree.

Taking a more optimistic tack, Macsimum News’s Dennis Sellers says he understands Segan’s reasoning, but thinks the scenario Segan has postulated just isn’t going to happen, noting that the iPad is a device for media consumption with some limited productivity features (such as the iWork apps customized for it) that might make a great companion to a laptop or (especially) a desktop Mac.

However, he observes that none of the iPhone OS powered devices have the muscle to do major productivity work, suggesting we try to imagine trying to do video editing or working with FileMaker on the iPhone OS. However, Sellers does think the iPad will kill many netbooks and probably the MacBook Air. On the other hand, if Jason Perlow’s theory ultimately proves correct and a new generation of ARM-powered Macs emerges, they will presumably have plenty of power to run higher-end productivity software.

I’ll keep an open mind while watching whether and how all this plays out, but as much as I love the Mac OS and admire (at least in terms of elegance and industrial design, if not always certain practical nuances like the typical poverty of I/O ports and expandability on Apple laptops) Apple system hardware, philosophically and temperamentally I am more an Open Source kinda’ guy who finds himself inclined to side more with Google than Apple in many aspects of their purported feud.

I’ll remain a devotee of the Mac OS as long as it remains a platform open to third-party innovation and choice (Apple software applications are rarely my first pick in any category other than the Mac OS itself), but the locked-down world of the iPhone and nascent iPad does not conceptually give me the warm-and-fuzzies.

Sascha Segan says that having been a Mac-user since 1986, his vision of an iPhone OS based future makes him “fearful, uncertain, and doubtful,” and while Apple appears to have fallen in love with “end-to-end” experiences, he doesn’t don’t want anyone other than him having the last word on what he can install on his own computer. Me neither, having been on board since 1992, although there’s little percentage in fearing the future, and those who try to stand in the way of what the herd at least imagines to be progress tend to get run over and trampled.

Better to just stand aside, let the stampede pass, and move on to other pastures. I’m not by any means convinced that Apple is fixing to abandon the Mac, but if it does come to pass that open platform Macs really do go the way if the Dodo bird, well Linux distros like Ubuntu and Puppy Linux beckon and are looking a lot more appealing these days, and there are plenty of attractive PC machines available to run them on.

CM