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It's long been assumed that Apple has maintained an x86-compatible version of its old NeXT OS, which these days is marketed as Mac OS X. But now a report at eWeek confirms its existence, status and staffing levels.
Nick de Plume and Matt Rothenberg report that an x86 version of "Project Marklar" is maintained in step with the PPC versions, has around a dozen engineers, and is even feature "complete" with the 10.2 Jagwyre version.
(Which presumably means it's got the new calculator that features a paper tape and currency conversions, not the old Apple calculator.)
So will Apple embrace x86? We've been down this road so many times before, it now resembles a muddy, rutted battlefield pocked with the rusting remains of abandoned arguments. (I know you're thinking Route 101 south of San Francisco is bad - this is worse).
So we won't spend too much time returning to those arguments, because you know them well enough. Apple is a high-margin hardware company, and the switch to becoming a software house licensing an OS to all comers might not prove fatal, but it would certainly result in a much smaller, much less significant Apple. It would face the same problems that IBM (with OS/2) and Be Inc. (with BeOS) both encountered in trying to support a wide range of rogue hardware, and in trying to get OEMs to preload the OS.
(When Be snagged Hitachi as an OEM for a dual-boot system, Hitachi wasn't allowed to install the bootloader, or advertise the fact there was another OS on the system at the Windows desktop.)
Marklar most likely doesn't signal a strategy shift, it simply remains prudent business sense: it helps to have a Plan B, if only to use as a bargaining counter. Think of it as Mutually Assured Destruction. ®
Source: The Register.
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