In case you weren't aware, Steve Jobs announced at the Apple Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC) in June that the entire Macintosh line would switch from PowerPC processors to Intel processors. Much was revealed at the conference, including the fact that Apple has created an x86 version of every one of its Mac OS X builds. As we speak, Apple is renting$999 Mac OS x86 PCs to developers who want them so that they can create x86-based versions of every Mac program. Within two years, Jobs wants the entire Macintosh line to be running x86 processors instead of PowerPC G4 and G5 processors. (This also means, interestingly, that you may now -- for the first time -- run both Mac OS and Windows on your hard drive. On different partitions, of course.)

"x86" refers to Intel processors with the suffix "-86," like 8086, 286, 386, et cetera. This includes the Pentium 4, Intel's most powerful desktop processor. The x86 has a different architecture from the PowerPC processor, which has been inside every Mac since . . . well, the first PowerPC. The PowerPC processors are built by IBM.

Some reports indicate that the x86 version of Mac OS X on the fastest Pentium 4 is faster than Mac OS X on the fastest dual processor G5 systems. But there's a catch to the new x86-based Mac OS X. The kernel (the back-end of the operating system) utilizes Intel's Trusted Computing hardware, a technology built into the x86 chip. Cory Doctrow from Boing Boing explains the problems involved with this:

The point of Trusted Computing is to make it hard -- impossible, if you believe the snake-oil salesmen from the Trusted Computing world -- to open a document in a player other than the one that wrote it in the first place, unless the application vendor authorizes it. It's like a blender that will only chop the food that Cuisinart says you're allowed to chop. It's like a car that will only take the brand of gas that Ford will let you fill it with. It's like a web-site that you can only load in the browser that the author intended it to be seen in.

What this means is that "open formats" is no longer meaningful. An application can write documents in "open formats" but use Trusted Computing to prevent competing applications from reading them. Apple may never implement this in their own apps (though I'll be shocked silly if it isn't used in iTunes and the DVD player), but Trusted Computing in the kernel is like a rifle on the mantelpiece: if it's present in act one, it'll go off by act three.

"Trusted Computing" is nothing more than hardware-based DRM (digital rights management). It means that, theoretically, you would be forced to open AAC (Apple's DRM-enabled audio format) files in iTunes, WMV files in Windows Media Player, or DOC files in Microsoft Word. There would be no way around this, since the content management would be part of the processor, not the operating system. It would also prevent competitors' products from opening certain files. Imagine a dystopic future where only Internet Explorer could open HTML files. Scary, isn't it? It also means that you couldn't use freeware products -- like Windows Media Player Classic if you're on Windows -- to open files that were tied to specific, closed-format applications.

Since I'm on a PowerBook G4, I'm not concerned about speed increases. If it meant surrendering my freedom to open files however I want to someone else, I'd rather have a 1.67 GHz PowerPC G4 than a 3.5 GHz Pentium 4.