So yesterday was the big Macworld Keynote, a time for all Apple Fanboys (like yours truly) to bask in the glow of [[Steve Jobs|The Steve]] and get the official announcement of new products. Everyone this year was talking about the switch to Intel, and Steve did not disappoint. Orders for the first Intel-based Macs are now being taken, and the i(ntel)Mac is now shipping. The “MacBook Pro” (worst. product. name. EVAR.), Apple’s replacement for the languishing Powerbook line, will ship next month.

It’s an interesting time to be around Apple, as developers, users, fans, competitors… the company remains an enigma. Though some would argue with me, I hold that Apple is, first and foremost, a hardware company. They make insanely great software, but that only exists to sell their hardware. That’s why I am not holding my breath waiting for a version of Mac OS X that will run on generic Intel-based PCs: it won’t help Apple sell hardware. And also why I don’t think we’ll see a version of iLife for Windows: it won’t help Apple sell hardware. iTunes for Windows only exists to get more people into the iTunes Music Store, which only exists to help sell iPods.

On the software front, there remains a lot to like. Though I’m puzzled by the OS X 10.4.4 upgrade, which seems to only be about eye candy, and the jury is still out on iTunes 6.0.2, which may phone home as you’re playing music. The new iLife’06 remains a steal at $79, though I’m certain that I don’t need the new podcasting features in GarageBand, (nor have they fixed that ugly interface on it), but the new iPhoto features sound really nice, and I’d love a reason to play with iMovie. I couldn’t possibly care less about Aperture, the “Pro” photo management app, and some knowledgable reviewers think it’s crap.

But it’s the hardware that everyone was waiting to hear about. How’s the Intel migration going? When will we see new Macs? Particularly, we all wanted to know about new Mac minis with more media features, and something to replace our aging Powerbooks. We don’t need the whole Bible, Steve, just a couple chapters, OK?

Well, we got it. I was surprised at the choice for the first shipping Intel Mac: the iMac. Gone are the iMac G5’s, the new iMac sports the dual-core “Core Duo” chip from Intel. The numbers are sweet, but I’m not too optimistic about the performance, until I see some indepth reviews. I’m also curious to see how well the iMac runs Windows. For some reason, my oldest son still wants Windows (I suppose it’s for games) in our house, and I’m not going to buy a PC if I can help it. If I can buy an iMac to do both, that’d make me quite happy.

The “One More Thing” that Steve is always doing at these keynotes was the MacBook Pro. Now, I understand the reasoning behind the name change; no more PowerPC, so the “Power” is gone, and I never quite understood why there wasn’t a “Mac” in the name, but I shudder to think that “MacBook Pro” was the best the marketing wizards at Apple could come up with.

But, as with the iMac, the numbers on the MBP are extremely exciting. The Powerbooks, like mine, aren’t speedy devils by any stretch, but they’re quite acceptable for everything I have to do short of the Garageband mixing and DVD ripping and encoding. Having 4-5x of an increase in speed is quite tantalizing. They’re not shipping until February, but I’ll wait until late Spring to request one, as, again, I’d rather wait for some reviews to come in, and also give developers a chance to come out with some more Universal binaries, that are Intel Mac ready.

Which brings me to the most interesting, by my way of thinking, part of the Keynote’s news. Back at the WWDC when Jobs announced the next big switch, the target was June 2006. This was a conference for developers, with an audience of developers, and Steve’s telling them they have a year. Fast forward less than eight months, and they’re shipping an Intel Mac. Mac software developers have to be angry, especially those who were doing their PowerPC binaries with CodeWarrior. Only Xcode can make a universal binary, and the transition from CodeWarrior to Xcode is, shall we say, not a smooth one. Developers and companies that came up with a one-year plan for transition now see those plans shot down by Ringmaster Steve, working a decidedly different crowd into a frenzy telling them that Apple and Intel are ahead of schedule (ahem). Fine. couldn’t you guys have used the next few months to ramp up production, to avoid the inventory shortages that we all know will occur? This smells like a bad decision on the parts of the Apple management, announcing a shipping product that will require a change in software that not everyone is ready for, because you told them they didn’t have to be ready.

There is Rosetta, the software that will sit behind Mac OS X Intel Edition and translate the PowerPC code to Intel code as needed. That’s exciting stuff, but if you saw the demo that Steve did yesterday with Photoshop, it fails to impress with its speed. Yes, it is a solution. No, it is not a good one.

This is not the sound of me complaining that Apple is shipping products ahead of schedule. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m very excited about having a new Intel Powerbook, umm, sorry, MacBook Pro, in my hands this Summer instead of next Winter. But the next few months will not be the time to have one. A lot of developers aren’t ready, and Rosetta isn’t looking like the holy grail we were promised.

Similar to Google’s questionable Pack, Apple’s decision to ship early only makes sense if you think of it from Apple’s perspective: sell hardware. Nowhere in those two words do you see the words “software,” or “developer.” And, yes, it will work.

The “cosmic music” that I referred to is a moment of zen from yesterday that finally convinced me that everything with this Intel switch is going to be just fine. I’ve been programming and working on computers since the early 1980s, from the Radio Shack TRS-80, through the Apple ][ machines, and up through the PCs. A nostalgic smile crossed my face when I saw that Apple’s stock closed yesterday at $80.86 a share. Intel’s 8086 processor, you’ll remember, was the chip used in IBM’s old “PC” machines, along with the 8088. Stop for a moment, to remember the “1984” commercial, all the old battles between IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Compaq, DEC… there’s a lot of history coming around full circle these days, and to have the 8086 make an afterlife appearance was a really neat coincidence.

Oh, and speaking of commercials, I do hope the ad that Steve showed yesterday, which was the greatest Ad I’ve seen from Apple in a long long time, is the precursor of things to come. I really want Apple to start marketing the Mac just as much as they’ve been pushing the iPod.