Apple announced yesterday morning that they are dropping IBM’s Power PC processor platform and signing up with Intel to be their processor vendor. At first, this may seem like it won’t have that much impact. The PowerPC platform and Intel’s i386 processors are not compatible though and Apple will be forced to re-write their OS. While Apple’s chip switch may be good news for Mac users, it’s even better for PC users who should now finally get a chance to run Apple’s terrific operating system, now even better with version 10.4.1 (AKA Tiger) without having to run a platform emulator like PearPC. From its new Spotlight search technology to its new Dashboard — which displays information from little Web applications (called Widgets) and simple tools (like a calculator or weather map) and displays them with one click on your desktop — OS X is just plain wonderful. I’m not a MAC user but would be if I didn’t have to blow $3k just for a proprietary machine to run OS X.

What I’m surprised about is why it hasn’t been done sooner. Since OS X is based on UNIX —and many other Unix-based operating systems work on Intel PCs (Linux, for example), you would think OS X would be a snap to port to PCs. One of the reasons I think this hasn’t happened is that Apple felt that the OS X experience has powerful enough to entice people to buy their machines to run it. That being said, most Analysts believe Apple will continue to control the hardware as well as the software —because that’s the way they control quality and also a good way to make money. From a quality standpoint, if Apple controls the hardware, they don’t need to make (or assist with development) 50 different video card drivers. I’ve always wondered whether there was some under the table agreement about Apple not marketing OS X to work on PCs in return for something from Microsoft. Maybe it has something to do with Microsoft continuing to update Office for Mac.

Apple made a point yesterday to announce that they’re not planning on selling the operating system for use on other people’s hardware. Microsoft also announced yesterday that they plan to continue to create future versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac that support both the current PowerPC and future Intel processors. Just a conicidence right?

Whatever Apple and Microsoft’s true intentions, independent programmers will be jumping at the chance to allow OS X to run on any computer, not just Apple’s expensive boxes. I know I’ll be one of the first people to try it.

This announcement also made me think about Apple’s old propaganda about how a 1 GHz G4 PowerPC chip was 3x more powerful than an Intel Pentium IV chip clocked at 3.06 GHz. Something like that. Whatever. Just let me run OS X on my own machine and you can pocket my $129.00.