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# Notes on the 2005 WWDC Keynote
- URL: https://www.vjarmy.com/notes-on-the-2005-wwdc-keynote/
- Published: 2005-06-07T00:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-02-09T03:10:42.000Z
- Description: Notes from the precise moment Apple shifted to Intel.
- Author: Dan Dickinson
- Tags: The Internet

💡

Hey, 2026 Dan here. I was at this keynote live and clearly rushed to post these very copious notes; while I have excised most of the old tech content from my site, this felt seismic enough as a moment in Apple's trajectory that they were worth retaining. 

Musical selections: Some hip-hop track, Vertigo by U2, Technologic by Daft Punk, Speed of Sound by Coldplay, the track from the old Macworld iPod ads.

Video coverage of the attendees shows someone with a Windows tablet (slight booing), someone holding up a laptop that says “JIMMY!” on the screen (cheering), someone holding up an iSight to record (laughter), jugglers (what the hell?), Woz (applause).

10:01 and the “program about to begin” sign shows up. 10:03, copyright notice with “Product specifications are subject to change without notice.”

Steve is out, NO JEANS! “Today’s an important day.”

### Conference stats

- 3,800+ attendees, largest in the last decade
- 45 countries, including China and India
- 110 lab sessions, 39 hands-on sessions
- 95 presentation sessions
- 500+ Apple engineers on-site
- 400+ Design Award entries
- 500,000 ADC members

### Retail update

- 109 stores around the world
- 1 million visitors per week
- $500M in third party products in the last year
- Shows the London store, says it’s “phenominal”
- Video shown at a real estate convention made by the retail team. (Music: Rubberneckin’ Oakenfold Remix.)
- $2 billion in sales by the fourth year
- Average earnings of $4000 per square foot

### iPod/iTMS update

- Know you’ve entered popular culture when you’re on the cover of the New Yorker.
- 16 million iPods sold at the end of last quarter total.
- 76% of the entire MP3 market (including flash and hd-based).
- 430 million songs sold on iTMS to date.
- iTMS owns 82% of the marketshare for online music sales in May 2005.
- Podcasting coming in iTunes 4.9
  - Steve elaborates on the “Wayne’s World for radio”; he meant you can do it without a lot of capital.
  - Calls it the “hottest thing in radio”.
  - Gives a list of the major companies that have jumped on Podcasting.
  - You \*can\* type URLs into iTunes 4.9
  - New Podcast item in the source list.
  - Quick and easy way to grab new podcasts.
  - Apple is going to be doing podcasts of new music weekly. As you scrub through the podcast, the artwork changes – big applause. Shows chapter functionality too.
  - Expects this to take podcasting mainstream.

### Mac general update

- Growth rates, year-over-year: PC growth rate has gone from 18% to 13%, Mac growth rate has gone from 8% to 42%.
- Today: QT7 Windows Preview release.
- Over a billion QT downloads over its lifetime.
- Tiger is the “best release we’ve ever shipped”.
- This week, Apple will deliver the 2 millionth copy of Tiger (includes retail/maintenance/new Macs).
- Dashboard widget demo
  - Uses Business Week widget to look up top stories about Apple to laughter.
  - Gets another Longhorn dig in with the countdown widget.
- Tiger represents 16% of OS X user base. Panther is 49%, Jaguar is 25%, 10.0/1 are 10%. Expects Tiger to be 50% for this time next year.
- Next release of OS X will be Leopard. No focus at the conference today. Intend to release it at the end of 2006/early 2007, right around the Longhorn release.

### Transitions

- There is a TON of muttering under breaths.
- Mac in its history has had two major transitions.
  - 680×0 to Power PPC
  - Classic to OS X, set up for the next 20 years
- Time for the third transition
- It’s true (small intel style e)!
- PowerPC to Intel processors starts now for developers and for customers in 2006-2007.
- “Why are we doing this?”  
  - We want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward.
  - Brings up the G5 laptop and the 3.0 GHz Tower, but these aren’t the most important reasons.
  - Looking ahead, while we have great products right now, we have ideas of future products and we can’t make them with PPC
  - Power consumption is a big key to this motivation (gives an integer comparison chart).
- Next year, at this time, Macs shipping with Intel processors
- In 2007, at this time, transition will be mostly complete, totally done by the end of 2007.
- Two major challenges in this transition.
  - First: Making OS X “sing” on Intel
  - OS X has been leading a secret double life for the last 5 years.
    - #1 rule: Designs for OS X must be processor independent
    - #2 rule: Every project must run on Intel and PowerPC
    - EVERY release of OS X for the last 5 years has been compiled for Intel and PowerPC, confirming rumors.
    - Demo system he’s been using has been runing on this morning is Intel (Pentium 4, 3.6 GHz)
    - It’s singing, it’s really indistinguishable from G5 chips.
    - Very far along, but not done, going to put this in developer hands.
  - Second: Your apps
    - Four types of apps
      - Widgets/scripts/Java – just work
      - Cocoa apps: “Small tweak (few days) and recompile”
      - Carbon / Xcode – “Tweak (few weeks) and recompile”
      - Carbon / Metrowerks – “Switch to Xcode, tweak (few weeks), recompile.”
    - Top 100 developers, over half are using Xcode, 25% are in the process of switching.
    - This is “nothing” like Carbonization.
    - Trots out Mathematica who he called last Wednesday to port over to Intel.
      - Theo Grey out to talk about the process.
      - Took two hours to get running on Intel.
      - “Twenty lines of source code from a dead cold start”.
      - “YMMV”
    - Xcode 2.1 out today
      - When you build, check a box for Intel or PowerPC.
      - Universal Binary, runs on both PPC and Intel.
      - Both processors supported for a “very long time”.
    - Not every app is going to be universal on Day 1.
    - Technology called Rosetta.
      - Translates PowerPC to Intel
      - Runs existing apps
      - Dynamic binary translator
      - Transparent to users, nothing like Classic
      - Lightweight, no big memory footprint
      - “Fast (enough)”
      - Demo: Word opens fine. Excel opens fine. Quicken runs fine. Photoshop works fine, although it’s a little slow on load – fine on file open after it’s loaded. Photoshop plugins work fine.
  - Developer Transition Kit
    - 3.6 GHz Pentium 4
    - OS X for Intel 10.4.1
    - Xcode 2.1
    - Universal Binary Porting Guide
    - Development platform only, NOT A PRODUCT
    - Have to return by end of 2006
    - Select and Premier ADC members only
    - \*\*\*$999\*\*\*
    - Shipping in two weeks
- From Microsoft: Roz Ho, General Manager of MBU
  - Not a great speaker.
  - Final touches on updates for Exchange users
  - Releasing a new version of MSN Messanger in the next few months
  - Team has been working closely with Apple on the Intel thing
  - Planning on releasing universal binaries
  - No actual solid announcement, just “looking forward to working together into the future”.
- From Adobe: Bruce Chizen, CEO
  - “Absolutely committed to putting apps running natively on new Intel boxes.”
  - “We will be the first with this transition, as we were for OS X.”
  - “Found something pretty amazing: They’re kind of like us.”
- Paul Otellini, President and CEO of Intel
  - “We are so excited at Intel to have been given the opportunity to work with Apple to bring you really great products.”
  - The story:
    - Intel founded in 1968 in Mountain View.
    - 1976, Apple founded 5 miles away.
    - Bob and Andy Grove were early investors in Apple.
    - 1976, Apple went with MOS, IBM went with Intel.
    - 1993, Apple goes with PPC, Intel launches Pentium.
    - 1996, Apple sets fire to Intel’s bunny man.
    - Shows commerical just for kicks, much cheering.
    - 2005, “The most innovative computer company and the world’s most innovative chip company finally team up.” Big applause.

### Where does this leave us?

- Apple is strong.
- Mac is strong.
- Great time to start building for the future.
- We know transitions.
- We’re getting ready.
- Time for you to get ready, too.
- 90+ of the sessions include content about Universal versions.
- 100+ dev transition systems in 7 labs this week.
- “Soul of the Mac is it’s operating system, and we’re not standing still.”