The iPad Might Mean the End of Intel Macs, and That Scares Me

Yeah, yeah, the iPad wasn’t all that great, and it’s underwhelming, and it won’t cure cancer like we thought it would, blahdeblahdeblah. We all know that, and that’s not what I’m going to rant about right now.

The iPad is the first device to use an Apple-designed processor. This is something one could easily have predicted when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008, but now that Apple’s finally gone and used their newly acquired chipmaker to actually make their own chip, the potential ramifications begin to sink in. Now that Apple makes their own processors, what’s to say they’ll still be putting Intel’s in their Macs?

One can see why they wouldn’t want to. Intel Macs are much better for Apple customers than Apple shareholders, because they A) allow people to install Windows or Linux on their Macs, and B) allow people to install Mac OS X on whatever the hell they want. Both are things that Apple would probably like to make more difficult or impossible.

But wasn’t installing Windows on a Mac one of the big features that Apple used to promote? Of course it was, five years ago; back then, it was entirely possible that the average user might still need some of their Windows apps. Well, okay, it probably wasn’t, but over the last five years, millions of people switched to Macs, more and more of what we need computers for has become web-based, and the amount of software for the Mac has grown exponentially. It’s more evident than ever that to the average user, OS X and Windows (and Linux) are, for all intents and purposes, interchangeable. There is nothing you can do with one OS that you can’t do with the other, and it all comes down to personal preference. Even I, a power-user, have no reason whatsoever to boot into Windows except for gaming, and the PC gaming market isn’t perceived as large enough for most companies (like, for example, game publishers) to care very much about.

Apple can drop its commitment to Windows-on-the-Mac at any time, and it would have no adverse effect on their business.

So what of the Hackintoshing issue? It’s not legal in most countries — much like torrenting copyrighted movies, going 70 mph on a 55 mph highway because everyone else is, or clicking the “I’m 18″ button on a porn site when you’re actually 17 — but that’s hardly stopping people from doing it. In fact, I’ve long been considering building some Hackintoshes; my Macbook Pro isn’t great for HD animation and video editing, and buying a Mac Pro and a few Xserves for rendering could be almost triple the cost of building equivalent machines. That kind of thing, I would bet, frightens Apple very much: independent filmmakers who will cost-cut as much as they can to get their projects done without blowing all their rent money.

It’s not that Apple wants to bankrupt millions of starving artists. It’s that they’re a publicly-traded corporation, and they have a duty to their shareholders to make the most money that they can. By ditching Intel processors for a proprietary chip, and eventually phasing out backwards-compatibility with Intel chips, Apple could make Hackintoshing virtually impossible.

So, Zacqary, basically what you’re saying is that you’re upset because maybe now you can’t illegally install OS X on a cheaper computer?

No, Helvetica Bold 10 Maroon, not exactly. I’m upset because Apple has gotten used to taking away their customers’ control over the computer-like-devices they purchase, and it’s not inconceivable to imagine them doing just that for Macs too.

Admittedly, building Macs with Apple processors wouldn’t necessarily change the Mac experience all that much; you just wouldn’t be able to run Windows on it anymore. But if they get away with that, what’s to say they’d stop there? Why not move OS X to a locked-down, App Store-ish model? Why not ban Adobe Premiere from OS X because it competes with Final Cut? Hell, why not ban Photoshop because with the amount of Apple vs. Adobe fighting there’s probably a Photoshop competitor being worked on by Apple right now?

But that would piss off the pros, right? Mere “consumers” might be dumb enough to take that lying down, but graphics and video professionals would never stand for such things. Surely Apple couldn’t do that, right?

Of course they can. They’re Apple. They can do whatever they want. And they seem to want to be in complete control of everything, from the moment it is sold until the moment it deteriorates due to planned obsolescence.

Obviously, it wouldn’t work, and Apple would completely fall apart as people begin to remember why openness was a good thing. That doesn’t mean they won’t try. And that very real possibility that Apple might pull this crap is making me very interested in Linux-based alternatives to the Final Cut suite.

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