Here is the link at news.com

http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nefd.lede

We'll see what they actually announce tomorrow (June 6). Migration of their mainstream desktops and notebooks to Intel makes absolutely no sense. Use of new processors for new products (ex: tablet Macs) might make a great deal of sense.

Then there's guys like me whom are seriously contemplating either a G5 or a BOXX workstation for HD. Now this? Whose gonna buy a G5 now, when something possibly better is coming down the road?

(On the other hand, Microsoft is coming out with their Longhorn OS, so they'll have to prove their worth as well).

Let's see what Steve has to say before this thread get out of hand.... then we rant, whine, and sling mud : )

Or Intel will design a new chip for them. Who knows.

This has been under discussion for awhile in "area 51." Until there's an official announcement, please keep the discussion there:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=45053

Now it really is official, out of Jobs' mouth. (http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/06/06/liveupdate/index.php)

Look for some real bargains on G5's in the coming months!

According to Apple, these machines will dual-boot into Windows. A dream come true for me.

I'm really surprised, but I'm happy with how it came out. We're not going to be forced to use generic computers, we're still going to have that stability and speed, and now we have more options, and easier developed applications.

What a wonderful world.

From what I've read, that isn't quite what they said. They said they have no plans to support Windows, but there wouldn't be anything about the hardware to prevent someone else from doing that. They did say that MacOS would only run on Apple hardware however.

In the interest of sticking to this forum's guidelines, here's Apple's official press release:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

WWDC 2005, SAN FRANCISCO—June 6, 2005—At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple® announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh® computers using Intel® microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007. Apple previewed a version of its critically acclaimed operating system, Mac OS® X Tiger, running on an Intel-based Mac® to the over 3,800 developers attending CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address. Apple also announced the availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system along with preview versions of Apple’s software, which will allow developers to prepare versions of their applications which will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been ten years since our transition to the PowerPC, and we think Intel’s technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years.”

“We are thrilled to have the world’s most innovative personal computer company as a customer,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. “Apple helped found the PC industry and throughout the years has been known for fresh ideas and new approaches. We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come.”

“We plan to create future versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit. “We have a strong relationship with Apple and will work closely with them to continue our long tradition of making great applications for a great platform.”

“We think this is a really smart move on Apple’s part and plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe.

The Developer Transition Kit is available starting today for $999 to all Apple Developer Connection Select and Premier members. Further information for Apple Developer Connection members is available at developer.apple.com. Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple.

Intel (www.intel.com), the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning desktop and notebook computers, OS X operating system, and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital music revolution with its iPod portable music players and iTunes online music store.

Press Contacts:
Natalie Kerris
Apple
(408) 974-6877
nat@apple.com

Steve Dowling
Apple
(408) 974-1896
dowling@apple.com

Tom Beermann
Intel
(408) 765-6855
tom.beermann@intel.com

NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple’s PR website, or call Apple's Media Helpline at (408) 974-2042.

Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

No matter what the advantage, Intels chips are at the end of the road. They already run to hot. Dual core configurations have to be clocked down, (i.e. 3GHz are forced to run at 2.8GHz). AMD has the current lead, and a better system with a direct on chip access the negates the need for FSB on the mobo (as with Intels). That's a more efficient pipeline and better upgrade path, when you can simply swap out the chips and get a few more years out of the same workstation.

I was pricing between a G5 dually and a multicore AMD BOXX workstation. Sorry, but macs are just too risky now. I'll have to stick with a windows PC for another cycle. Maybe in 2008, when I'm ready to upgrade, I'll revisit, if Apple is still around.

Pete

Well if they're going Intel, I doubt it'd be much for them to go AMD as well.

Aaron

Well if they're going Intel, I doubt it'd be much for them to go AMD as well.

Aaron

That's puzzling. AMD looks promissing. Maybe they just want a sure thing, and Intel has the market share.

I was told a dual G5 will still serve me well today. Nonsense. I'm looking five years down the road, when I have five-years of mac specific projects, etc. in storage, with the very real possibility of having to go back to windows. (I can afford a switch now, as I'm moving to HD in process for justification). Personally, I'd love a mac, but this is business, and right now Apple is just too risky. I applaud them for making such a bold move to stay alive, just not at my expense...

Pete

Read the press release above. Business is business, but I don't think Steve would have had that love-fest with Intel's CEO up on stage if he planned to go with AMD.

Personally I don't have the slightest worry about the Mac five years down the road. They will still be here, stronger than ever. My gains on Apple stock will pay for my next few upgrade cycles :-) If I were worried about any companies' survival it would be AMD, especially after this Apple announcement which gives Intel 80% of the market.

Of course, we all have to make our own choices, and I'm sure there will be a number of people who feel the way you do. But given his recent track record, I certainly wouldn't place any bets against Steve Jobs...

Maybe in 2008, when I'm ready to upgrade, I'll revisit, if Apple is still around.

Yeah....and they've been going out-of-business since 1985. ;-)

Like I said in the other thread, this is no big deal at all. Heck, it's certainly no worse than the migration from 68K to PPC (and similar in many ways, especially with the Fat Binaries).

2¢

Here's an article which discusses the "Rosetta" technology, "Leopard", and some more reasons for the transition:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5733756.html?tag=st.num

(Jobs said) that IBM's PowerPC road map would only deliver about a fifth the performance per watt as a comparable Intel chip.

Jobs said there are a lot of products Apple envisions for the coming years, but "we don't know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map."

Classic mode will probably go away with the Intel machines:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5734410.html

Yeah....and they've been going out-of-business since 1985. ;-)

Gil Amelio did his best to try and make that a reality!... ;-)

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8905

... especially after this Apple announcement which gives Intel 80% of the market.


interesting 'fact'... but intel already had 82.7%

apple ships what, a couple million machines per year? in the grand scheme of things that means just about jack. there will be monsterous swing of fortunes here, as the apple hardware will still be gloriously overpriced as ever.

Good! I hope they continue to make the kind of gloriously overpriced hardware they've always made!

I love my gloriously overpriced hardware, just like I love my gloriously overpriced software, and my gloriously overpriced camcorder, etc.

;-)

I never said macs are bad. Just that whenever a company announces a forthcoming product, it takes risk not being able offload it's current product. Who want's to buy a G5, when something better is coming? I'm not talking about replacing a desktop here. I'm talking about an uncompressed workstation between $12K and $30K. Going from Windows to Mac is just more than $3K-5K box. There's software, new processes, (the hidden costs as well),etc. I'm just one guy. What about a print shop, or studio with several workstations? I'm sure the ohh and ah of a mac is not the determining factor is regards to this newest announcement. More like caution, and maybe taking another look at the windows options.

I'm sure most shops with macs are hopeful that their current systems/software will be supported as promised. Do I want to be in their shoes? Why would I spend $25K to join them? Nuts.

Pete

Like I said, I've already been through a transistion like this, and it wasn't really all that bad. And that was in a magazine studio environment with 7 workstations and about $200K in non-Mac specific printing/proofing equipment. Sure, it was kinda scary at first, but for the most part we just kept right on working along. It certainly never stopped us entirely from working, per say.

I just think everyone (especially the media) is blowing this WAY out of proportion...both good and bad.

Here's an interesting take on the switch, from PC Magazine by John C. Dvorak:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1824704,00.asp

Apple and its BSD-UNIX kernel running on the Intel platform should outperform Windows by an extreme and I'd guess outperform the PowerPC running the same software too. So Jobs can change his comparison advertising from PowerPC versus Intel to OS-X versus Windows on the exact same chip. The publicity potential here is chart-topping.

Guess I was mad since I was hooked, had the mac ball in my hand and now somebody up and moved the goal post. (Just not sure if it went up or down field).

After giving it some thought, considering that Steve Jobs is no idiot, and his understanding of the market, he just wouldn't stand on the soap box and say all this without having something lurking in the labs. He obviously inserted foot in mouth and chewed over mirroring IBM's promise for a 3GHz chip that was never delivered. (I'd be pissed-off too).

If my logic serves me correct, and in lieu of windows longhorn on the horizon, I should be just as cautious of Mr. Gates plans for the future as well. (I would just love to see OSX vs. XP on an equal playing field).

Bottom line. I really don't give a damn about the hardware. I just want a stable system, no more bad drivers, configs, firmware updates... I just want to edit, create animations and retouch a few photo's.

Sorry for the rants. I'm just tired of being the pc expert, I never asked to be a part-time IT tech.... well at least there's beer.

Pete

From a developer point of view, WTF? Which platform do you target from this point forward? Risc + PPC which is now all but dead in a year, or Cisc (we assume at least)? Or has Apple done a good enough job with abstracting all hardware so it's essentially a non-issue?

Watch the keynote. If you use XCode, you simply click a checkbox, selecting what architecture you want to compile for. It can create a universal binary that works on both architectures.

They are claiming that if you use Cocoa (And over 50% of their top 100 developers already use this), then porting might take a couple of days.

If you Carbon, maybe a few weeks.

It you use Metrowerks, then you must move to XCode.

In the Keynote, they had the Mathematica people fly to them, with the code and get it up and running on the Intel OSX Tiger Jobs demoed. I think it only took them several hours.

So, if what they're saying pans out, it might be only a small issue for most development houses.


Aaron

For those that haven't read it, here's a FANTASTIC article from Ars Technica about Apple's switch:

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050607.ars

It'a a long article, but well worth reading.

I know there's no easy way to make this kind of switch and IBM/Freescale were limiting Apple's potential, but won't this kill HW/SW Sales for the next year or two?

I am especially concerned about SW - I would not want to make major expenditures for SW until the new platform is released - I value my time and don't think that "pretty good" translation performance would be adequate vs. $hundreds spent.

I suppose it would help if all of the major SW vendors (including Apple) announced that current owners of package XYZ would be granted free upgrade/switching rights to the new platform/OS for a limited period.

rj

Ron it sounded from the key note that at least for the next two years (and probably a year or two after that at least) software will be compiled with a univerasl binary which will allow it to run on the new intelmacs as well as the older powerpcmacs. I think perhaps it will kill hardware sales for a couple of months then it will pick up again for about a year and then it will die down again for another 6 months in anticipation of the next processor. I'm sure we'll see all sorts of articles of how the new intel processors suck at running osx and then an equal number of articles about how it runs better then the ppc chips. I think it's just going to come down to the way it always is in this business if you need a cpu that's the best time to buy one. And there really is very little chance that a new g5 2.7 (or 2.9 or 3.4) will be obsolete in less time then it will take for your extended warrenty to run out.

I agree Nick. And just to be sure, I checked my dual G5/2.5 this morning. It still runs just as well as it did last Friday before the Intel announcement ;-)

I don't own a mac, but I had been planning on getting a dual G5 before the end of the year. Initially it took the wind out of my sails a bit to hear the announcement...but after some thought, I think I will probably go forward with my original plan and get a dual 2.7 within the next 2 months or so.

Apple announed this a year out, which is a whole lot of lead time for both consumers and developers. They won't be switching until the first half of 2006, and even then it will begin with the lower end models. High end models won't be switching over until the second half of 2007, that's 2 years away before any system you'd be editing on will switch at the earliest.

Generally, if you're in a post production environment, you'd already be starting to think about upgrading your editing system after 2 years anyhow.

Even if you were to buy a dual G5 today, it would run great and do everything you needed to do for the next 2 to 3 and maybe even 4 years. After that, you can switch over to a new intel based Mac if you choose.

I agree, I wouldn't buy a PPC based G5 in a year, but I see no reason to worry about buying one today. And, I would worry even less if I already owned a G5, at least now you know the future track the product line will take.

We all know that technology is always changing and that the gear we buy today will be obsolete within a matter or years. The only difference this time is that we know when and how it will happen.

It's like knowing the exact date of your death....while it may help you plan for the future, it's still kind of a bummer.

Just an observation to add about some posts about overpriced Mac hardware. Having just added a Mac to my household after 20 some years of being pc/windows only, I used to think this very same thing. But, I realized that every Apple system right down to the Mac mini, comes with a slew of applications on top of the OS that you would easily spend hundreds of dollars obtaining for your new homebuilt pc. The tightness of the integration of these apps is what really sold me. Plus, being Unix based, it needs less processor horsepower to accomplish the same task. I can truly say without bias that you get your money's worth right out of the box. And, how much is YOUR time worth. Less time fighting with the system and getting more work done translates into a lot of money fast when you use the machine to supply your bread and butter.

I used to look at machine specs only and walk away shaking my head at people who spent so much more on their Mac systems. Start looking beyond specs alone and you'll see that the margin narrows considerably.

Now, I have the best of both worlds so I can use my Windows based machine for apps that are Windows only and I have the Mac to use apps that only exist in the OSX environment.

We truly live in exciting times!

-gb-

I was a partner of a 120-person firm with offices in 5 states and had significant experience with the "joys" of Windows-based PCs in a WAN environment. Even though it was not my primary job, I dealt with WinDell issues almost on a daily basis. When I got home, I took solace in my two Apple systems patiently waiting and, more importantly, working--most of the time.

Now, my wife and I have four Apple systems in our small business. Oh, we do have one WinDell which is used for testing IE functionality on our websites.

So, here is my take on this issue:

Having been one of the progenitors of the PC revolution (let's remember, PC means personal computer, not WinTel computer), Steve jobs has been traversing the treacherous road of innovation and market change for his entire career.

He's started two companies (that I know of) and turned two around. Jobs is a consummate business person with significant business acumen. How many of us would have had the vision and leadership skills to purchase a company for $10 million and grow it into a $2 billion company (market cap) in 14 years? And, do this while at the same time (over the last 9 years) turning around Apple and transforming it into the company it is today. It must be an enormous challenge to run both Apple and Pixar.

Jobs has had failures of course. Some pretty big ones in fact. But, the difference is that his successes have out shined many of his failures to date. He is a risk taker that seems to take the appropriate risk more times than not. That is a difficult attribute to groom in a leader.

Steve Jobs has the Midas touch. My stock portfolio thanks him. (I, on the other hand, have somewhere between a pewter and bronze touch. Or, possibly, I have a touch of the flu. I'm not sure.)

Although I am a big fan of Apple systems and software, I'm not a Steve Jobs sycophant. I'm a watcher of exceptional business people. I learn what I can from their successes and mistakes. To stay alive in business, you have to look toward the future, toward the 10-20 year horizon and anticipate the trends and changes that will reshape the marketplace. Apparently that's what Jobs and Apple have done and they say it's time for another change. Okay, great. Just do it and do it well.

My only issue with this is that in 2 years, when its time for me to upgrade once again, I won't be able to get as much for my used equipment. But the new Apple system that I'll buy I'm sure (or I hope anyway) will be something that is amazing--and something that will help make my business even more successful.

Does anyone want to offer me 80% of the purchase price of my current two NLE systems to be paid to me in 2 years? I'm willing to talk ;)

Jeff, you have a great perspective on all this, nice post!

Fortune Magazine just put up an article on the switch which is very positive:

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,1070380,00.html

In my column two weeks ago, I noted that Jobs would obviously prefer that his legacy be a company with significant market share rather than one with superb products that never broke into the big time.

Sounds like another case of PC envy ;)

From the June 9 Wall Street Journal:

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20050609.html

In the long term, the change will strengthen Apple and the Mac, which is good news for anyone devoted to that platform or considering switching to it.

............................

In the short run, however, the chip changeover should make little difference to average consumers. For all but the techiest techies, changing the processor in these machines will be a nonevent

[QUOTE=Boyd Ostroff]Jeff, you have a great perspective on all this, nice post!

Thanks, Boyd.


***
Here are two interesting articles on the switch that give additional insight:

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050607.ars

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050608.ars

I was a partner of a 120-person firm with offices in 5 states ...Now, my wife and I have four Apple systems in our small business.

the problem here, jeff, is that you don't have any experience supporting 120+ macs... trust me when i tell you that it's nothing like your little 4-mac network at home.

i was part of a 4-man crew that supported both macs and pc's at cal state san marcos back in the late '90's... i can tell you that there are many good reasons why macs have zero market penetration in the business environment these days.

of course it didn't help that steve jobs came along and stopped apple from licensing it's operating system... which screwed several apple business partners out of a bunch of money, and forever condemned apple to be a bit player in the desktop computing market... hardly the work of a genius, the hugely successful microsoft business model of licensing the o.s. was there for everyone to see... steve jobs blew it in a big way.

this trend of using pc parts in macs is nothing new, btw... apple has a long history of bastard proprietary hardware that they had to abandon for the much cheaper pc stuff... wasn't there an apple interface called nubus, for instance?

now apple will put a unix g.u.i. on pc chips... but hasn't this already been done before? maybe not... all i know is that it won't increase the number of software apps being written for the mac platform, so the business community won't care... and neither will i.

the only thing that you really have to remember is that "software sells hardware."

Dan,
My, you seem rather negative on Apple! <g>

We're veering off-topic a bit...but I must remark that Apple and the Mac OS have undergone tectonic changes since the late 1990's. Your experience with Mac OS 9, or earlier, and with circa 1990's Apple hardware is --sorry to day-- ancient history. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised that you're a dinosaur.

Managing IT in an academic environment, as you did, will always be a challenge akin to herding cats. Having retired from heading IT in a major international institutional investment firm I'd have to say that I would strongly consider deploying Macs at various points in the chain if I were starting over today. It's an extremely robust platform for both client and server, much more so than Windows.

Also, in my opinion, regressing from licensing 3rd party hardware was one of the smartest moves that Apple ever made. Yes, there was a handful of companies that were temporarily nicked in the process. But it basically saved the company; there would be no Apple today if they did not make that maneuver.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

What's behind Apple's switch to Intel?

Won't happen. The flaw in all of this is that Apple is not working so that OSX will run on Intel platforms, just an Intel chip designed for Apple. Even Michael Robertson is disappointed with this decision (Linspire's leader - formerly known as Lindows). Intel buying Apple will just delay any general solution. A chip mfgr buying a major OS may meet with DOJ delays too. AMD will have something to say about it.

Another flaw is that Intel is now playing catch-up with AMD. AMD's X2 chips outperform the Intel chips, again. The X2 also beats Xeon pairs at the top end of the workstation space, including cost. The Opteron dual cores may expand the mark.

nice post ken! at least we can agree that apple finally did the smart thing by switching over to pc-based hardware... i think that we'd also agree that it was incredibly foolish of them to have not used standard pc hardware from the beginning, but that's another discussion <vbg>

and of course i don't expect mac people to understand the bill gates business model of licensing the o.s... that lack of business acumen is exactly why apple has an insignificant share of the desktop market today, and it's why nobody in the modern business world is using mac's.

take a trip back in time: http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/business/97/09/03/power.2-0.html

so the lessons that i learned as a dinosaur have been fully embraced in the modern world, lol... and they were also re-enforced when i was the network admin at m/a com and commquest, where i spent about half a million $$ spec'ing out computer hardware and telephone systems... those companies were all sprung from the same group of engineers who started a little company called qualcomm.

i think that apple has cleverly re-invented itself as a toy company... they have a cute little audio player, some online music that's not really a money maker, and they've come out with a cute little computer box that your kids can take to college... but none of that is relevant to serious video editing or business computing in general.

i think that we'd also agree that it was incredibly foolish of them to have not used standard pc hardware from the beginning, but that's another discussion <vbg>

Of course, it should be pointed out that Apple computers pre-date the "standard" PC hardware by several years. ;-)

from the link that radek posted: "If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft."

see how it always comes back around to licensing the o.s.? i'd sure like to see that happen! i hate microsoft because of it's software licensing agreements.

unfortunately it's the only game in town for software developers who want market share for their products, so it's the only choice for computer users who don't want to be severely limited in their software choices... a classic example of that is the abysmal lack of decent mpeg2 and wmv encoding software on the mac side of the fence.

Of course, it should be pointed out that Apple computers pre-date the "standard" PC hardware by several years. ;-)

speaking from the dinosaur perspective :-)

back in the mid-'80's, none of the engineers i worked with wanted macs because they had a dinky little 9-inch screen, while the dos-based pc's had 12-inch screens.

the little macs also kept burning up flyback transformers because they overheated so badly... of course i had a couple of professional electronics purchasers at my disposal to source repair parts, but they were unable to come up with anything... it took me many days to find the parts, which was the beginning of my hatred for the poorly-designed apple hardware.

Wow...that's going back a ways. I completely forgot about those problems. LOL! Yes, if I recall correctly, you had to use a bleeder resistor to discharge the flyback transformers before you replaced them (or the faulty capicators, another common associated problem) or else you could actually be KILLED!!! The later all-in-one units (SE/30 and newer?) included a built-in bleeder resistor. Usually. ;-)

It's hard to disput that those original Macs were--ahem--"lacking" in many ways. The GUI made them a one-trick-pony really, but beyond that the PC was a superior machine in most ways. And to be completely honest, the Atart ST and the Amiga machines were really better computers in many ways than Macs of the same time period.

But they sure were cute. ;-)

i hate microsoft


I hate it more.

Radek

Maybe at least Apple will start using PCI Express instead of the dead end PCI-X interface. Too bad they didn't go with AMD, would have been a cool fit. Dual Opteron dual cores kicking the crud out of Intel. Maverick with Maverick.
I guess Steve Jobs is getting 'safe' in his old age.

I may actually buy one once they cross over. I've heard BSD is a pretty stable and secure OS. (Yes campers, Mac OS is based on BSD, not Unix or Linux).

I've heard BSD is a pretty stable and secure OS. (Yes campers, Mac OS is based on BSD, not Unix or Linux).

Wow....how many more half-truths can we stuff into these recent Mac/Intel threads? LOL!

Yes, Mac OS X is definately BSD...but you're wrong in saying that it's not UNIX; BSD is one of the two major flavors of UNIX (AT&T and BSD). Yes, BSD not the holder of the intellectual property rights of the original implementation of UNIX, but it's a totally legal open-source derivative of what AT&T UNIX was in the late 1970's. In fact the modern AT&T UNIX SVR4 (and +)--put together in the late 1980's--contains huge chunks of BSD (since it was open source, and they could take it). Heck, there's not a modern networking computing device on the planet that doesn't contain some sort of a derivative of BSD UNIX, namely TCP/IP.

ATT and BSD are both are accepted as "real" UNIX, both have been sold commercially as "real" UNIX, and both have been supported commercially as "real" UNIX. Geesh, initially the two kernals shared around 80% of the same code base!

Linux, on the other hand, is a "UNIX-like" clone, and is built around a completely different kernal that shares 0% of the code base. Linux looks like UNIX, it quacts like UNIX, and it waddles like UNIX...but Linux ain't UNIX.

The only way you can say that BSD isn't UNIX is to split hairs at a microscopic level and talk about the original intellectual property rights war that's been going on for years. Don't believe SCO's legal propaganda....no matter what the lawyers want to fight about, they can't change 30 years of history.

Ah yes that brings back some memories... I first learned unix on DEC VAX systems running BSD in the mid eighties, and I learned all about System V on my AT&T 3B/1 "unix pc" which ran on a Motorola 68010 :-) I always liked the BSD implementation better.

Here's another AP story on the transition:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050610/apple_chips.html?.v=2

Interesting thing here is that Apple can use Intel's "Lagrande" technology to insure that OS X will only run on their own hardware:

"You can tie the serial number of the software with the hardware ID, and say these things go together and shall never be separate," said Roger Kay, an analyst at IDC.

When the process is all said in done we will see which OS has better optimization!

It uses Unix command structure, but is not official System V Unix (the one supposedly owned by SCO). They all share command structure, and it's easy to recompile Linux to BSD. But I think the BSD folks would take exception, they think Unix came from them, hehehe.

So just like I guessed, you're splitting hairs over legal ownership issues. :-)