Apple Adopts Podcasting and Intel

Monday June 6, 2005 at 10:18 pm | Filed under Mac

The two big announcements today in Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at Apple’s Annual Developer’s conference…. the first was a really cool one for the podcasting world. iTunes 4.9 will support podcasts in a big way. A new podcast section of the iTunes music store (within iTunes for those not in the know) will become a directory of available podcasts, allowing you to subscribe to any podcast on the web, even those not listed in the directory.

The second big announcement was a huge one. Apple will begin rolling out macs with intel processors in them! Woah. Can that be good? When I first heard, I immediately thought what a nightmare it would be to migrate all of the software that works so well on the PowerPC chip that sits inside of each of our 3 computers at home. Then I watched the keynote and it turns out that every single version of OS X (that’s the last 5 iterations of Apple’s OS) has been compiled to work an intel box. In fact, Steve pulled up the “About this Mac” window on the computer he had been showing demos on throughout the presentation, and it said “Pentium 4 3.4 GHz”! He had been running an intel powered mac all along. Crazy.

Then they rolled out the timeline for the change: intel machines shipping in ’06, no more PowerPC in ’07. They did say they’d be supporting PowerPC for a “long time” and that new apps would work with both platforms. The reason Steve gave for the jump to intel is Apple couldn’t get the performance out of the PowerPC chip anymore. I guess only time will tell, but from what I could tell they’re setting the developers up with everything they need to make the transition a smooth one.

Steve also pointed out that there has been 5 major versions of OS X since Windows XP came out, and that the next version of OS X, named “Leopard” would ship around the same time as Longhorn (the next version of Windows) ships near the end of 2006.

On a totally unrelated note, I’m watching Inside the Actor’s Studio with Angelina Jolie right now. She is one weird chick. Hot… but weird.

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One Response to “Apple Adopts Podcasting and Intel”

  1. Tim Curran Says:
    June 7th, 2005 at 10:21 am

    I heard this rumor a while back, but I didn’t think it would actually happen. Damn, I used to lump the PC, Microsoft and Intel names together when I was belittling the non-Mac world and the people who inhabit it. Now I can’t insult Intel? This will take a little getting used to.