Apple: The Road Ahead

Christ almighty. Keynote speech is over, and the worst has been confirmed. PPC is effectively dead and Marklar is the future of the Mac platform. Tiger demoed on a stock x86, not a word about proprietary hardware.

Apple's and Intel's press release pages are glowing. I don't think my brother who just bought a Powerbook is going to be glowing. The $2500 I sunk 18 months ago into a dual G5 isn't leaving me glowing. I can't imagine the salesfloor staff at Apple stores are cheering, either. Even with a 2 year transition period and all the promises in the world that apps will ship with fat binaries, I can't see PPC Mac sales remaining positive before the Intel boxes are shipping.

Here's what I can't understand.

Apple's entire business model is selling turnkey systems. Computers you don't need to be smart to use, music players an idiot could load and play. Note the emphasis on nouns referring to hardware, hardware that doesn't have clones. In other words, you want the Apple experience, you have to buy the Apple hardware to run it on. And Apple turns a tidy profit selling that hardware, and effectively killed the clone market when it started to dilute their sales.

So, if Leopard is going to run on generic x86 hardware, how does Apple make money when their OS can run on Joe Schmuck's Alienware box and Joe's busy getting Leopard off P2P? Apple's only current software revenue stream is OS upgrades and niche video editing software.

Presumably Intel's recent news about chip level DRM could make it impossible to pirate Longhorn/Leopard, but I don't know.

Second thing: this is putting Apple's feet to the fire on the matter of whether OS X is actually more secure than Windows. Now that OS X will run on stock x86es, how many existing x86 virii will be retooled slightly for it? Is the gamble that virus authors won't bother trying to crack a niche OS, and by the time that its market share is significant enough to be attractive, the OS will be so robust as to make the prospect daunting?

Nothing makes sense any more.

By predicting the future based on what's reasonable, I seem to consistently alter it for the worse. So, here's my "bad rice" prediction.

To Apple's dismay, the mainstream media will not trumpet this as a Good Thing. The blogosphere will be filled with hate, fear and confusion, and the mocking laughter of Apple-bashers. Angry, embittered Mac loyalists will divide between flocking to Windows and Linux, where their financial investments are minimal.

Without any regulation from Republicans in Washington, Microsoft will continue patenting everything and start using the courts to effectively destroy open source. Our future trade agreements with the EU will not-so-thinly imply that not following suit will be considered an act of war. Linux will disappear outside of China.

Within five years Steve Jobs will get on stage and wax about Apple's bright future, right before Bill Gates walks out of the curtains and they jointly tell us MS bought them out, but not to worry, "we have a firm commitment to the future of OS X." Within another twelve months MS management decisions will convince Apple developers to jump ship, and MS stockholders will snuff Apple.

Overnight, Microsoft will "purchase" System V UNIX from their holding company SCO. Congress will pass murkily-worded IP legislation further putting the nails in the coffins of non-commercial licenses, and Microsoft will exploit it to effectively criminalize the existence of FreeBSD, and most likely extort a promise from OpenOffice that it no longer read or write Microsoft formats. The EFF will bankrupt itself trying to defend cases like these; the few that make it to SCOTUS will see Bush appointees ruling solidly in favor of the ownership society.

With naysayers telling us that it couldn't happen, everything will become a monoculture: processors, formats, OS. Windows will transition to a POSIX infrastructure, but they'll have free rein to bastardize its compliance beyond recognition.

This is supposed to be my 12th wedding anniversary. I feel utterly fucked.