Why I think Apple’s switch to Intel is great

On Monday, Steve Jobs announced Apple will start using Intel microprocessors beginning in 2006.

Some Mac fans have criticised this move and already there are huge amounts of FUD on the net.

What those guys don’t realize is:

• Your Mac will still look and feel the same. It’s just the processor that gets changed. Not the OS. Not the Hardware/Software integration that Apple is famous for.
• Wine for Mac/Intel: run any Windows app under Mac OS X/Intel in its own window at native speed. Wine already works fine with x86 FreeBSD. I can’t emphasize this enough.
• Free to exploit FreeBSD’s ability to run Linux apps ‘out-of-the-box’, including those who include x86 assembly.
• Most old PowerPC apps will continue to work. All new programs will come as a univseral binary, optimized for both architectures (it’s two binaries in one package actually).

Also, one of the things that very much appeal to me is that Ruby will probably get a VM/just-in-time compiler for 2.0 and from looking at the source I gather it will be optimized towards x86 (first).