Intel Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett says the Macintosh OS could run fine on Intel equipment--the tough part is convincing Apple Chairman Steve Jobs that it's a good idea.
Barrett briefly described the company's Vanderpool project, a new processor design capable of supporting multiple operating systems at a processor level, rather than in emulation mode.
"If you are able to, say, have two OSs running simultaneously, you won't have to rely on a single OS for everything," Barrett says. "So you could have Mac OS and Longhorn on the same system, using Longhorn for business stuff and Mac OS for personal stuff. But first you'd need to convince Steve Jobs that it's a great idea."
Dual Systems
Asked if the company will ever be able to get Apple to release systems based on Intel chips, Barrett said, "We keep trying, but frankly it gets less and less interesting each year."
Barrett did concede, "There are lots of interesting aspects in there. Steve Jobs is trying to appeal more to the Intel base. You might ask why he doesn't take his OS and try to compete in the other 98 per cent of the market. But he doesn't choose to do that."
Former Apple Chairman John Sculley
recently acknowledged that Apple should have switched to Intel architecture years ago.
A Good Start
Barrett also confirms that Mac OS X's Darwin kernel "runs just fine" on Intel technology, but needs an application stack to make for a serviceable OS.
"You'll have to talk to Steve about that" he adds.
The Intel boss points out that Apple's small market share makes this a less interesting issue for the company. "Our sales can blip by Apple's share quarter on quarter," he says, "so we can shrink or grow by a couple of Apples."
