20 years of Intel Macs: Why Apple switched, and why it switched again
20 years of Intel Macs: Why Apple switched, and why it switched again
英特尔 Mac 的 20 年：苹果为何转向英特尔，又为何再次转型
The release of macOS 27 later this fall won’t quite close the book on the Intel Mac. The last handful of models that could run macOS 26 Tahoe will be eligible for security and Safari updates for two more years, and elements of the Rosetta compatibility layer for running Intel code on Apple Silicon Macs will be with us in some form for some indeterminate amount of time after that. But macOS 26 is definitely the last chapter of the Intel Mac story. Anything that happens after this is a coda or an epilogue. 今年秋季晚些时候发布的 macOS 27 并不会彻底终结英特尔 Mac 的历史。最后几款能够运行 macOS 26 Tahoe 的机型仍将在未来两年内获得安全更新和 Safari 更新，而用于在 Apple Silicon Mac 上运行英特尔代码的 Rosetta 兼容层组件，在未来一段时间内仍将以某种形式存在。但 macOS 26 无疑是英特尔 Mac 故事的最后一章。此后发生的一切，都只能算是尾声或后记。
Most of our WWDC coverage has been forward-looking, so indulge us if you will in a look backward at the full history of the Intel Mac, a partnership between two companies that made Macs dramatically better, until it started making them worse. 我们大部分的 WWDC 报道都着眼于未来，所以请允许我们回顾一下英特尔 Mac 的完整历史。这是两家公司之间的一次合作，它曾让 Mac 变得极其出色，直到后来它开始让 Mac 变得不再那么理想。
“Project Marklar”
“Marklar 项目”
The Mac’s history with Intel didn’t start with version 10.4.4, the first Mac OS X version to ship on a commercially available Intel Mac. But we won’t go as far back as the x86-compatible versions of NeXTSTEP or Apple’s abortive ’90s efforts to make a version of classic Mac OS that could be licensed for third-party x86-based systems. Let’s begin with JK Scheinberg, an Apple engineer in June of 2000, who was looking for a solo project to help him transition to working from home. His pitch? A version of the then-still-in-progress Mac OS X that could run on Intel processors. Mac 与英特尔的历史并非始于 10.4.4 版本（这是首个在市售英特尔 Mac 上搭载的 Mac OS X 版本）。我们不必追溯到 NeXTSTEP 的 x86 兼容版本，也不必回顾苹果在 90 年代试图开发可授权给第三方 x86 系统的经典 Mac OS 的失败尝试。让我们从 2000 年 6 月的苹果工程师 JK Scheinberg 说起，当时他正在寻找一个独立项目，以帮助他过渡到居家办公。他的提议是什么？开发一个能在英特尔处理器上运行的 Mac OS X 版本（当时该系统仍在开发中）。
“I’ve been working on the Intel platform for the last week getting continuations working,” Scheinberg wrote to his boss in an email shared by his wife. “I’ve found it interesting and enjoyable, and, if this (an Intel version) is something that could be important to us I’d like to discuss working on it full-time.” “过去一周我一直在英特尔平台上工作，以实现连续性，”Scheinberg 在一封由其妻子分享的邮件中写道，“我发现这很有趣且令人愉快。如果这个（英特尔版本）对我们很重要，我想讨论一下全职投入该项目的可能性。”
At the time, all Macs still used PowerPC processors co-developed by Apple, IBM, and Motorola, as they had since 1994. Early Mac OS X versions ran on G3 and G4 chips, and the 64-bit G5 processor was launched in mid-2003. A version of Mac OS X that ran on Intel’s chips wasn’t strictly necessary, and for around a year and a half, it existed only as a sort of hobbyist side project codenamed “Marklar.” 当时，所有 Mac 仍在使用自 1994 年以来由苹果、IBM 和摩托罗拉共同开发的 PowerPC 处理器。早期的 Mac OS X 版本运行在 G3 和 G4 芯片上，而 64 位的 G5 处理器则于 2003 年年中发布。运行在英特尔芯片上的 Mac OS X 版本并非刚需，因此在大约一年半的时间里，它仅作为一个代号为“Marklar”的业余副项目存在。
By early 2002, Marklar had attracted more attention within Apple, and then-CEO Steve Jobs briefly flirted with the idea of allowing Mac OS X to run on Sony’s Vaio laptops. By that August, a dozen or so engineers had been added to the project as it grew from “proof-of-concept” to “contingency plan.” That’s because Apple was having problems with PowerPC chips. Jobs promised that the desktop version of the G5 would climb in clock speed from 2 GHz to 3 GHz within a year, a promise that never came to pass. And Apple was never able to squeeze the hot, power-hungry processor into a laptop—iBooks and PowerBooks were stuck with revised versions of the G4. Future CEO Tim Cook called a G5-based laptop “the mother of all thermal challenges.” 到 2002 年初，Marklar 在苹果内部引起了更多关注，时任 CEO 史蒂夫·乔布斯曾短暂考虑过让 Mac OS X 在索尼 Vaio 笔记本电脑上运行。到当年 8 月，该项目已增加了十几名工程师，从“概念验证”演变为“应急计划”。这是因为苹果在 PowerPC 芯片上遇到了麻烦。乔布斯曾承诺桌面版 G5 的主频将在一年内从 2 GHz 提升至 3 GHz，但这一承诺从未实现。此外，苹果始终无法将这种发热量大、功耗高的处理器塞进笔记本电脑中——iBooks 和 PowerBooks 只能继续使用 G4 的改进版。未来的 CEO 蒂姆·库克曾称基于 G5 的笔记本电脑是“散热挑战之母”。
Jobs had been fuming about PowerPC chips for a while; Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography describes a heated call between Jobs and Motorola CEO Chris Galvin in 1997, in which Jobs declared that PowerPC chips “sucked.” And he may have harbored other bad feelings; Geoffrey Cain’s Steve Jobs in Exile says that Apple’s PowerPC switch doomed further development of the Motorola m68k chips that NeXT’s computers relied on, helping to kill NeXT’s already-struggling hardware business. And IBM, for its part, didn’t want to devote its resources to developing a bunch of chips that would be used exclusively in the low-volume Mac lineup (in 2003, Apple shipped roughly 3 million Macs; the company no longer reports unit sales in its earnings reports, but analysts peg that number at just under 26 million Macs in 2025). 乔布斯对 PowerPC 芯片的不满由来已久；沃尔特·艾萨克森所著的《乔布斯传》描述了 1997 年乔布斯与摩托罗拉 CEO 克里斯·高尔文之间的一次激烈通话，乔布斯在通话中直言 PowerPC 芯片“烂透了”。他可能还怀有其他不满；杰弗里·凯恩在《流亡中的史蒂夫·乔布斯》中提到，苹果转向 PowerPC 导致了 NeXT 电脑所依赖的摩托罗拉 m68k 芯片的进一步开发被终结，从而加速了 NeXT 本已挣扎的硬件业务的消亡。而 IBM 方面，也不愿投入资源去开发仅用于低销量 Mac 产品线的芯片（2003 年，苹果出货量约为 300 万台 Mac；虽然公司不再在财报中披露具体销量，但分析师估计 2025 年这一数字略低于 2600 万台）。
Intel’s Paul Otellini helped convince Jobs to jump to Intel’s chips, and Apple didn’t need to start the software switch from scratch because of its existing work on Marklar. In June of 2005, Apple publicly demonstrated Mac OS X 10.4 running on Intel hardware for the first time. His presentation obliquely mentioned Marklar, though not by name. “And so today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for both PowerPC and Intel,” announced Jobs. “This has been going on for the last five years. Just in case.” 英特尔的保罗·欧德宁帮助说服了乔布斯转向英特尔芯片，而由于 Marklar 项目的既有成果，苹果无需从零开始进行软件迁移。2005 年 6 月，苹果首次公开演示了运行在英特尔硬件上的 Mac OS X 10.4。乔布斯在演讲中隐晦地提到了 Marklar，尽管没有直接点名。“所以今天我第一次可以证实传言，即每一个版本的 Mac OS X 都同时为 PowerPC 和英特尔编译过，”乔布斯宣布，“这种情况已经持续了五年。以防万一。”
The transition
转型
The “first” Intel Mac was a Developer Transition Kit (DTK) made available to software developers after WWDC 2005. It was essentially a Pentium 4-based PC inside a Power Mac G5 case, and it was available strictly as a loan to developers who could pay $499 per year for a developer account and another $999 for the kit. Few, if any, of these DTK kits survived; Apple required developers to return the systems by the end of 2006 and offered to trade them for a real retail Intel Mac to seal the deal. “第一台”英特尔 Mac 是在 WWDC 2005 之后提供给软件开发者的开发者过渡套件（DTK）。它本质上是一台装在 Power Mac G5 机箱里的奔腾 4 PC，仅以借用的形式提供给那些支付了每年 499 美元开发者账号费用并额外支付 999 美元购买套件的开发者。这些 DTK 套件几乎没有留存下来的；苹果要求开发者在 2006 年底前归还系统，并提供用其换取真正的零售版英特尔 Mac 的方案以达成协议。
The WWDC keynote laid out the timeline, in addition to the tools Apple would use to help developers and users navigate the transition. The next version of Mac OS X, version 10.5 Leopard, would be compatible with both PowerPC and Intel Macs. A compatibility layer called Rosetta would run most PowerPC apps tolerably well while developers worked on Intel-native versions, which could be distributed as universal binaries that supported both CPU architectures. This transition worked well enough that Apple essentially handled the Intel-to-Apple-Silicon switch the exact same way. Apple would also take advantage of the fact that its computers would use the same hardware as other PCs. Right from the start, Apple officially supported running Windows directly on Intel Macs via Boot Camp; a Mac OS X app would handle partitioning the Mac’s disk and downloading. WWDC 主题演讲不仅列出了时间表，还介绍了苹果将用于帮助开发者和用户完成过渡的工具。下一代 Mac OS X（10.5 Leopard）将同时兼容 PowerPC 和英特尔 Mac。一个名为 Rosetta 的兼容层可以相当不错地运行大多数 PowerPC 应用，同时开发者可以开发英特尔原生版本，并以支持两种 CPU 架构的通用二进制文件形式发布。这次转型非常成功，以至于苹果在从英特尔转向 Apple Silicon 时，几乎采用了完全相同的方式。苹果还利用了其电脑将使用与其他 PC 相同硬件这一事实。从一开始，苹果就通过 Boot Camp 正式支持在英特尔 Mac 上直接运行 Windows；一个 Mac OS X 应用负责处理 Mac 磁盘的分区和下载。