I love Apple and I love my Mac. I also have been a big proponent of the RISC architecture of the PowerPC chip that has powered the Mac platform since 1994. The CISC chips offered by Intel and AMD have never really been my cup of tea, as they have been frought with FPU computation errors, heat problems in high-speed chipsets, and other such things. For years, Apple and Steve Jobs have openly criticized the Intel chipsets and touted the advantages of RISC computing – namely, you can get the same computational power and speed with a slower CPU.

Now it looks like things are going to change in a big way, as both CNET and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple plans on making the transition to Intel chipsets over the next two years. Apple has been openly critical of both Motorola and IBM (their two partners in the PowerPC consortium) due to their slow gains in processor speed, production problems, and overall stubbornness providing chips in quantity. It seems that Apple has finally given up on waiting.

This will require some tweaking of the OS, though Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD Unix and it direct ancestor, NeXT Step, ran on Intel platforms before NeXT was bought by Apple. But still, it will leave many Mac users, developers and others on an abandoned platform. Who knows how long Apple will continue to provide software and support for the PowerPC platform? And will Apple still be protective of its architecture when it moves to Intel? After all, one of the key advantages to the Mac OS is the inherent stability offered by having control over botht he software and the hardware.

(IBM won’t be left totally dry with Apple’s move to Intel, as they are manufacturing PowerPC chips that will drive the next generations of the XBox, PlayStation and Nintendo. But Motorola will suffer yet another tech sector loss.)

There are a lot of questions to ponder, but it’s a sad turn.