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Jim Roepcke took me to task for my previous comment about dual-booting an Intel-based Mac with Windows. I said:

Would make my life easier as a developer.

Jim responded:

Easier? How? Easier as in, don’t need to port your app to Mac OS X now?

Dual-boot is a dual-edged sword. The Mac could effectively be dead for gaming. Why would anyone spend the money to port a game to the Mac now when you can just say “install Windows”. Anyone who’s spent enough money on a Mac good enough to run new games on is probably not going to flinch at spending the money to install Windows to play games.

Ditto for plenty of other Windows apps.

Jim makes a good point, though in my case I was referring to the fact that it would be convenient for testing web apps on Windows. However, on an Intel-based Mac, a product like VMWare would run Windows with near-native performance, so dual booting becomes a non-starter.

I do wonder sometimes what second- and third-order consequences this “switch” of Apple’s will have…

Picking up the pieces: John Siracusa mourns the Power PC:

That, in a nutshell, is why this is a dark day for Apple. It’s yet another little thing that Macs used to do, if not always better, then at least differently than Windows PCs. Macs are now slightly less special.

Preach it, John.

I’m hopeful, but melancholy at the same time. Goodbye, PowerPC.

Chatting with Cam Barrett, he brought up a point I had not thought of… He postulates that by switching to Intel CPUs, |Apple| could be the only computer maker to be able to offer hardware that could dual-boot Mac OS X / Windows. Eeeeenteresting. Would make my life easier as a developer.

Like the rest of the Apple/Mac world, I’m waiting for the WWDC SteveNote. What will His Steveness, Dark Lord of the Black Turtleneck unveil? How many Bothans have died to bring us the Apple/Intel rumors? Will the sacrifice be in vain?

UPDATE: IT’S ALL TRUE. WOW.