Programing

[sarals]

Apple's Next Test: Get Developers to Write Programs for Intel Chips
By JOHN MARKOFF and LAURIE J. FLYNN
Published: June 7, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO, June 6 - Steven P. Jobs took the stage at Apple Computer's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday to tell more than 3,000 of his most enthusiastic fans - and occasionally also his harshest critics - that he was giving them a new homework assignment: to rework their Macintosh programs to run on chips from Intel.

Apple's decision to shift the Macintosh microprocessor business to Intel, a longtime rival, after more than a decade with I.B.M. was the latest bold maneuver in his eight years back at the Apple helm, a period in which he has reinvigorated the Macintosh line and overseen Apple's ascendancy in the digital music business.

Mr. Jobs said the company would begin incorporating Intel chips in some Macs reaching the market next year and largely complete the changeover by 2008. For the transition, Apple will offer a new version of its operating system, Macintosh OS X Tiger, that will run on both I.B.M. and Intel chips.

One immediate challenge will be to persuade Apple customers to continue to buy Mac computers based on I.B.M.'s PowerPC chip while they wait for the Intel versions to arrive. But in an interview after his presentation on Monday, Mr. Jobs said he believed that Apple would be able to navigate around that obstacle.

To hear Mr. Jobs describe it, the switch was a logical and straightforward business decision.

"It didn't feel to me like a long march," he said, describing a moment several months ago when he realized he would end his relationship with I.B.M. He said the decision seemed obvious to his small team of top managers. "There was a day when we looked at each other and said, 'this is the right thing to do.' "

Indeed, it was a contingency he had been preparing for since he returned to Apple, he said on Monday. He showed a satellite map of Apple's corporate headquarters and pinpointed the building where a secret engineering project, code-named Marklar, had been tuning Apple's software on Intel-powered computers bought off the shelf.

"Macintosh OS X has been leading a secret double life for the past five years," he said.

Apple had been counting on a version of the PowerPC processor that required less power and produced less heat, but had not gotten one from I.B.M. and its partner, Freescale Semiconductor. In addition, several analysts said they believed that I.B.M. had refused Apple's demands for deep discounts.

No financial details of the Apple-Intel deal were disclosed.

On Wall Street on Monday, both Apple and Intel shares moved down slightly. Apple's stock closed at $37.92, down 32 cents, while Intel's stock ended at $27.17, off 16 cents.

Yet a number of Wall Street analysts said the deal made sense. "My belief is that Apple had to do it," said Eugene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. "Clearly, they needed better availability, better pricing and a better development community." Mr. Munster has an outperform rating for Apple stock.

For his part, Mr. Jobs did not ascribe his decision to any pique with I.B.M., of which Apple remains a customer for other chips. Rather, he said he had become convinced that over the next three years Intel would win the race to deliver the most computer processing power per watt. He showed a chart projecting a significant advantage for Intel, which has struggled with heat problems in its own chips in recent years.

Several analysts said Monday that they were skeptical of such claims.

"We're not sure about whether Intel is that much better than A.M.D. or I.B.M.," said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering Group, a consulting firm in Seaford, N.Y. The crucial factor in the deal was probably price, he said.

If outsiders are not true believers, however, Intel is. At the event Monday at the Moscone Center here, Paul S. Otellini, Intel's chief executive, gave Mr. Jobs a bear hug and said his company held no grudges for earlier Apple advertisements that poked fun at Intel's Pentium chips.

Moreover, Mr. Otellini was blunt in pointing out that although Apple's chip purchases might not make a significant contribution to his company's income statement, Intel was eager to move its technical innovations to market more quickly.

"It's a chance to reignite innovation," he said.

Indeed, despite Apple's small share of the personal computer market, the Intel-Apple partnership could affect the balance in the industry, providing Intel's labs with a channel beyond the Windows world of Microsoft - a longtime partner but one that Intel has periodically clashed with regarding competing technologies.

In his presentation today, Mr. Jobs painted a picture of a smooth technical transition from I.B.M. to Intel chips. He mustered support from two crucial Mac program developers, Microsoft and Adobe, whose executives said they were eager to move their programs to Apple's new computers.

Moreover, Apple unveiled a technology called Rosetta, a "dynamic software translation" tool that will make it possible for a user's existing programs to run unmodified on Apple's new Intel-based computers.

Mr. Jobs acknowledged that Rosetta was based in part on technology developed by Transitive Ltd. of Manchester, England, which has a novel approach to making it possible to run programs on disparate kinds of computers.

Al Gillen, research director at IDC, a market research company, said he was skeptical that the transition would be as smooth as Apple portrayed.

"They have a history of pushing platforms that is fairly disruptive," Mr. Gillen said. He pointed to Apple's move from its original Motorola 68000-based systems to systems using the PowerPC. Though Apple had promised the transition would be smooth for Mac users, "it was basically a 'repurchase' operation," he said, requiring new software for those purchasing the new computers. "Their concept of 'fairly easy' sometimes requires buying new things."

Mr. Jobs made it clear that he had no plans to sell Apple software to run on Windows computers. But several analysts said that because the Apple and Microsoft operating systems will be running on similar hardware, he would not be able to stop users from retrofitting Apple software to run on Windows computers.

As for the third-party developers of Mac software, the audience chosen by Mr. Jobs for Monday's announcement, most seemed to feel that he had forged a workable strategy, even though it will force them to revise their programs to run on the Intel chip.

Ray Slakinski, an independent Apple developer whose company, iPodderX, makes software for podcasting on the Macintosh, said Apple's strategy would not cause him any development delays. Apple has been reliable in providing developers with tools for smoothing major transitions, he said.

"It's a good sacrifice for them in the long term," he said of Apple's shift away from the PowerPC. Still, as a Mac user, he thinks the short term may be a bit bumpy. "I think Mac sales are going to take a hit for the next few months," he said. "I was in the market for a new laptop, but I'm holding off."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/technology/07apple.html?th&emc=th