The major announcement is that Apple is transitioning to Intel processors. Apple expects to begin shipping Intel-equipped Macs as of June 2006 with the transition complete by 2007. Jobs confirmed that Apple has had OS X running on Intel processors since OS X 10.0 (“a secret double life”) and demonstrated iCal, iPhoto and Dashboard running on Tiger on Intel (all demos were performed on an Intel-based Mac). To facilitate the transition it was announced that:
- XCode would allow for universal binary compilation allowing a single application to run on both architectures;
- Cocoa-based applications would be the easiest to transition (”a few days”), Carbon-based apps in XCode would require more work (”a few weeks”) whilst developers still utilising Metrowerk’s development environment would need to migrate to XCode (the phrase “??” was used to indicate the amount of work required). Mathemeticia successfully migrated their application in a few days last week;
- A technology called Rosetta would allow for dynamic translation of existing PowerPC applications to run on Intel. Jobs demonstrated current versions of Microsoft Office, Photoshop and Quicken running on OS X on Intel;
- Premier and Select Developer connection members could purchase a $999 Intel-based Macintosh (which would need to be returned by the end of 2006) for development work.
Jobs noted significant benefits of moving to the Intel platform, including more processing power per watt in the future and an inability to deliver the 3GHz PowerPC G5 as promised last year.
Other items of note:
- 16 million iPods have now been sold giving Apple over 70% market share in MP3 players (including flash and hard disk based);
- The iTunes Music Store has over 80% market share (which has grown since competition increased);
- Macintosh system growth has been near 50% (year to year) in the last quarter;
- Apple has sold over $500m worth of third party products in Apple Stores since opening;
- The next version of iTunes will include podcast support with the music store having a podcast directory;
- Apple has shipped 2 million copies of Tiger. Tiger now makes up nearly 20% of all Mac OS X users;
- The next release of OS X (Leopard) will be available in late 2006/early 2007.