Stardate 20040301.1652

(On Screen): Brian Tiemann is overjoyed (and oversmug) to learn that Microsoft's XBox 2 SDK (Software Development Kit) runs on G5 Macs. But there are implications to this announcement that I don't think he noticed.

It was no great surprise to learn that Apple's new generation of machines were based on a cut-down version of IBM's Power4. It had become blatantly obvious that Motorola had shut down its efforts to develop a new version of the PPC to replace the G4, leaving Apple in the position of having to implement a gawdawful hardware kludge as its only way to eke out any more performance from the existing G4, while waiting for something else.

There was never any possibility of Apple porting to X86; the only solution which made sense was the Power4. So there was little surprise when it was announced that was where Apple was going. But when they finally appeared, they caught me by surprise in two ways.

They appeared earlier than I expected; apparently IBM was able to bring production online sooner than they said they would. And I expected G5-based Macs to cost a lot more than they did. For a long time I was really puzzled by this: why was IBM giving Apple a sweet-heart deal on CPU prices, when that same business decision had cost Motorola so dearly?

This announcement answers that question.

The only way that could happen is if IBM expected huge volume, far greater than they could reasonably expect from Apple alone and from IBM's own use of those same CPUs. That meant they expected another market, a big one, a reliable one, one which would involve a lot more volume than Apple.

That was what Moto thought too when they invested in development of the G4. What they bet their money on was a standardized open hardware architecture for PPC computers which would run Apple's software but also WinNT and some version of Unix. Motorola expected computers based on that architecture to be produced and sold by several competing companies, the way that PCs were and are. Apple ended up stomping all over that and in the end Moto lost a huge amount of money and ultimately decided that having Apple as a customer was not an asset. (In fact, Moto recently decided that its entire semiconductor business is not an asset.)

So how did IBM think it would be any different? Now we know: Microsoft decided to use the G5 in XBox 2. It's a very strange choice for Microsoft; why would they do so?

Some Mac freaks will plump themselves up smugly and declare that it's because the G5 is obviously a superior processor, but that answer doesn't wash. In nearly every regard, technically and commercially, an X-86 compatible processor would have made more sense. But in strategic terms, this is a win for Microsoft.

Microsoft is yet again intervening to save Apple and keep it viable. This is not the first time. But each time it happens, Apple pays a price.

Microsoft was responsible for making the transition from MacOS Classic to OSX successful. It was only when Microsoft publicly came out in support of OSX (in Gates' notorious "Big Brother video image" speech at a MacWorld) and announced that Office would be ported, that the other software developers began to take it seriously and became willing to invest in porting their apps to OSX. But to get that Jobs had to give Microsoft licenses to Apple's entire patent portfolio.

And now Microsoft has, against all expectations, decided to use the G5 in XBox 2, which will give IBM the volume on the part needed to permit it to sell G5's to Apple at a price which permits Apple in turn to sell G5-based Macs at a price which is competitive with comparably-powerful PCs. Gates is not known for altruism in his business dealings, so what is Apple giving up this time?

That's the second thing which this announcement makes clear: This time, the architecture definitely will run operating systems other than Apple's own. The SDK for XBox 2 has been released, and it targets the G5. It's quite natural that development will also be based on the G5, and right now that means Macs -- but the SDK doesn't use OSX. It runs on Apple hardware, but the OS is WinNT.

NT also ran on the moribund "standard" G3/G4 architecture, but I don't believe it was ever released in a version which would work on a Mac. This time, it DOES run on the Mac.

The thing to watch for in the next few years is reappearance of commodity G5 units, simultaneous with announcement of a version of Windows which runs on Apple's own hardware and on commodity G5's. Whether OSX will also be made available to run on commodity hardware is more difficult to predict, but I think the price Jobs paid this time is that Apple's architecture will become open – at least to Microsoft, if not to anyone else.

There are two pieces needed for that to happen: the BIOS and the chipset. Everything else in Apple's G5 units is available openly, but those two components are Apple proprietary. But if Microsoft has ported NT, then they know everything they need to about both in order to permit someone else to replicate them.

In fact, both must have been rep