The Register heeft een interessant artikel over Darwin (open source BSD operating system gebaseerd op MacOS X), waarvan vorige week de eerste succesvolle x86 build werd gecompileerd. The Register suggereert dat x86 Darwin voor Apple een geschikte uitweg is voor het geval de PowerPC alliantie tussen IBM en Motorola uiteen valt. De relatie tussen beide bedrijven loopt momenteel niet al te voorspoedig...
Without trying to untie the Moto-IBM imbroglio right now - for that, see Motorola, IBM: cold warriors - suffice it to say that Apple is at risk (pun not intended) from a real bust up between IBM and Motorola, who despite being partners seem to get on less well than AMD and Intel. If the cold ware between IBM and Motorola limits the evolution of the PowerPC as a desktop CPU - a limited market for either company, so neither need be too loyal to their only significant customer there - that can cause real problems if you're working, as Apple is, in an industry where performance is all.Apple, in short, needs an exit strategy, and MacOS X provides it. That's not to say that it is going to abandon PowerPC at any time in the future, near or far, but that if it really needs to, it can. MacOS X's Darwin core is, as Sanchez has now proved, cross-platform, and its backward-compatibility system, once called Blue Box, but now known as Classic, can probably be easily converted into an emulator - a sort of VirtualPC in reverse.
Het is onwaarschijnlijk dat het zo ver zal komen, maar de gedachte an sich vinnik interessant.
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