Intel-based Macs coming soon? - Page 7

Well, I just reread Apple's Unix tech briefing paper. They don't stop mentioning about how optimized for the G5 it is. They also make a point of telling us how optimized for the Velocity Engine it is.

It would be a big step. It really seems to depend on the VE in any performance related area.

It's in PDF format.Here's the page:http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_UNIX_TB.pdf

I'm just thinking: Apple people must be now having real fun reading all this buzz on the net. Just seeing what one piece of information can do....

Anyway it created a lot of public attention.

Here's an article from eWeek. It's from June 3rd, so it's current.

This is why I doubt if this is true:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1823273,00.asp

Actually, it pays to take a look at the bunch of articles here.

Mostly they are pretty skeptical. Some good reasons why not, a few as to why it should.

What I find interesting, to explode the theory that going to Intel would somehow make the chips cheaper, is that apparently it's the opposite. IBM's chips are up to one half cheaper than what Intel could supply.

The experts also seem to think that it would be difficult to move the software over.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1824230,00.asp

And Apple employees are active this weekend on the Apple optimization mailing list talking about future improvements to gcc on PPCs. Perhaps they missed the secret x86 memo?

Except that WSJ doesn't as a rule report things unless they are very, very sure about their soures.

Whatever, we'll find out tomorrow who's assumptions are right and who's are wrong.

If you're right, then great, you picked it better than I did and you can feel good about yourself for the rest of the week for free.

This whole thing is bullshit.

Speculation is fun, but you're right: we'll know a little more tomorrow, and all the good guessers can wear gold stars for the rest of the week. ;-)

I will remain quite skeptical of an Apple conversion to x86 until Steve Jobs himself says it's so -- and then I'll be waiting for a retraction before it gets to market.

Something is up with Intel, but we ain't gonna know just what until Monday.

On the Yahoo Homepage now

Check it out. In case it gets moved, here's the homepage link to the article on Yahoo. But check out the homepage first as the title is "Report: Apple switching to Intel chips"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050605/...te/apple_chips

I wonder if this gives more weight to the story/news

.

That story wasn't original to them.

I think the articles I provided a link to above are more meaningful.

These others are just repeating each others stories. They aren't anything new.

Go to eWeek instead. They have some analysis.

There is not much that can be said now that everyone's head has exploded. I just have one thing to add that i think people are missing. Even if there was acomplete swithc to x86, it would insane trying to cover all the bases of mothernoards, and hardware, at least in my opinion. One of the thing i like about OSX is it either works or doesnt. For me there is no tweaking and trying to install drivers that don't work or then break your system ala windows. Or lack of any support at all like linux in some cases. But that is just my personal opinion. I would acttually like to see a dual core pentium-m powerbook next year with an altivec unit. But hey I can dream.

If I bet, I would agree; the news sounds an awful lot like Intel's gonna make a lowish end PPC for a Mac Mini, Mark II, or possibly an iBook, Mark II.

Reread TFA at Scobleizer. He doesn't say that there at all, and I cannot recall him saything that in the past. Furthermore, he's posted words to the effect of "I'm going to let everyone else make fools out of themselves while I'm in Europe."

Hmph.

"...according to CNET Networks Inc.'s News.com and The Wall Street Journal."

They're regurgitating.

I know, Intel and Apple have reverse engineered the CELL chip.

They are going to make the first CELL clone, no Toshiba, sony, royalties.

I got a crazy bound to be not rue idea.

Intel will be making Dual Core Chips for Apple. BUT one core is a Pentium and one a PowerPC.....

I know not possible but that would be fun.

WOW, my first post!

My $0.02, this is a real barnburner!

C|net, the Register, the WSJ, and that Scrotum guy all saying Intel Inside?

I'm sorry for you fanboyz, but there has got to be some major truth to this one!

1)\tYou all say, "Can't be true because none of the Mac Rumors sitez have any dirt." Duh, none of these sitez have access to Apple's top-level management, where do you think this decision is being made? Further, the normal rumors (hardware/software developments) must be known to a reasonable fraction to those on the Cupertino campus, thus Thinksecret "breaks" the PM update, what 7-10 days ahead of the actual announcement (that was hardware folks, actual tangible hardware shippable at that time). Obviously, that Criminally Insane Jobs (CIJ) is keeping a tight lid on things. Finally, donÂt you think its plausible that CIJ would want it to leak to the mainstream media (vis-Ã*-vis his dislike of Mac rumorz sitez), to diffuse the mass suicide that would occur at WWDC 2005 were he to blindly announce this nuclear option. Imagine, the faithful all seated, ready to hear the CIJ gospel, when poof, Beelzebub appears to announce his takeover of heaven. What a bummer man. My bet is that there is utter silence, followed by a heavy dose of RDF, followed by a mass conversion of biblical proportions. And look, whose that handing out Kool Aid at the back of the conference room, why itÂs Andy Grove. WTF, me first, me first!
2)\tWhatÂs the ratio of PC to Mac developers? Probably not to dissimilar to there respective market shares? How much work is it to port x86 appz to x86 appz? Zero! Their x86 binaries, are they not? Yes, I know, there are Âlittle things like the GUI and what not, but I will assume that CIJ will make every effort to make this as seamless as possible. The same argument goes for gamez. Hardware incompatibilities? What hardware incompatibilities, its x86 peripherals on x86 systems! Jeez, as it stands now, PC peripheral companies make just about 100% of Mac peripherals anyway! What about Mac only (especially Apple Corp.) developers? How about a 25-fold increase in potential sales due to the PC to Mac installed base? IsnÂt this enough incentive. If not, then go develop for Linux. Its do or die, sink or swim, put up or shut up, read Âem and weep, game over! Do you get it now? You have been assimilated; the dark side has got you by the cahones!
3)\tWTF, whereÂs the vaunted PowerBook G5, whereÂs the vaunted PowerMac Quad G5 (with PCIe, etc.), whereÂs the 970GX or 970MP? Yes, I know heat and production issues. WhoÂs making/selling dual core CPUÂs/desktopÂs now? Who will likely be the first to 65nm and then 45nm? Intel and AMD! I can fully understand why CIJ is pissed off! PowerBook? More like SlowerBook to me! ItÂs what, like 12-24 months behind the PC laptops now? And Counting! Why must I wait several months (years?), while my PC brethren get the latest hardware, and at a substantially lower price point? Can you say market share? I fully blame IBM; Apple must by now be such a 3rd tier player in their eyes (after itÂs own hardware needs and now the 3 game console makers). WhatÂs the installed PC base? 300-400 million. Over what time span? 10 years? 20 years? How many PS2Âs have been sold? 90 million. Over what time span? 3-4 years? Do the math! Oh, and forget about Cell on Mac, not going to happen now!
4)\tBTW, IÂve personally owned/purchased Macs over the past 12 years. My choice! Not because of the hardware, but because of the software. To paraphrase Slick Willie, ÂItÂs the OS, stupid.Â
5)\tHowever, my work environment requires that I use PCÂs, and I have done so for over the past 20+ years. Their choice! Times change however, and I can no longer afford the luxury of the Mac price point experience. Unfortunately, my next purchase will be a 64-bit dual-core AMD laptop, which is likely to cost under $2K! Hey Andy, how about another cup of Kool Aid? See yah, donÂt want to be yah! IÂm off to the crack house, then the meth lab, then the head shop, and then a final stop at the S&M Barbie Ho House!
6)\tTrool, trool, trool your boat. Gently down the streamÂ.

Of course its possible ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE !!!




Here's to the crazy ones...

The wallstreet journal source is solid, very solid. You'll see come monday. It took me about a two weeks to be convinced of such a huge ordeal, but i know now ;-)

It took you 2 weeks to be convinced? Was this in the news 2 weeks ago already? I though this just came out a few days ago.

I guess that's that then.

The whole thing is simply a Racket for webhits.

Everybody wants in...

Well you can imagine all you like, but in reality the number of issues that arise in a port like this is surprising, even to those of us who have been doing it for decades. If the code was written simultaneously for multiple platforms, it will be easily portable between those platforms. The more platforms, the easier it is to port. Any time a new platform comes along (and OSX on x86 is a new platform), however, you're going to have some troubles. If you don't believe that you simply haven't been programming or porting code long enough.

This is very, very true. The Wall Street Journal is usually very conservative about its claims...this is likely to be true in some form.

Did anyone see the CNet story about this maybe being related to digital movies?

That's a very interesting angle as well.

If these recent reports are true then the others probably are also.

A couple of weeks ago there was an article that said there was a version of Tiger runnnnnnning on Intel in the labs of Intel and other Intel shops.

I have always tended to believe the rumors that said from the beginning of OS X they have maintained a version running on Intel.

Just because Apple is large enough of a company to do that sort of R&D thing.



I referenced the article in my other posts in the other thread.

If that's the case then Longhorn will be out in no time.

Well, I guess you're definition of bloat and my definition of bloat are two separate things. To me, a bloated application is one that has so many feauters, options, abilities, etc, that it struggles under its own weight. For example, people whine about Mozilla as a bloated application, because it contains a mail client, composer, news reader, etc, as well as a browser. A large application, by default, is NOT bloated. Its just big. And big isn't a big deal with the size of harddisks these days. With separate binaries for x86 and PPC, only half the code is read, anyway, so the other stuff just sits there unused AND unloaded. I never heard anyone complain about Fat apps being bloated when the PPC came out, because people understood that some code would be ignored, and other run, depending on the machine. (Now people complained the files were big, and went through some effort to delete the PPC part if they didn't need it, because disk space was much more of a premium, and much more expensive per megabyte, then).

Also, nothing says an app has to be both a PPC and Intel app. Some 'fat' apps (that ran both on the PPC and 680x0) came in pairs, one for PPC and one for 680x0. But the only advantage here was disk space. Adobe's installer, for example, could be set up to install either binary, rather than both. However, the theory is that they'd need just one set of code to be compiled for each platform (note: no comment here on length of making it compatible for either).

As for the 680x0 emulator in System 7 and beyond, yes, I can somewhat remember that (though I'm old enough to have used my father's 128K Mac back in 1984 for college, so take that you yung'un!). And the emulation wasn't THAT bad. Its performance was offset by the fact the PPC was much faster than the 680x0. And Apple ended up rewriting the emulator to something like connectix's (storing rather than just interpreting and tossing). Some code was incredibly slow (esp floating point, which required Software FPU to emulate, hey, I remember that too!).

[Side point: 10+ years later, in Classic and all, the emulator still exists, and there's large hunks of System 9 that is still written in 680x0 code and still being emulated.]

But I'm pretty sure we're not talking run-time interpreting/compiling here. [Another note: .Net's CLR compiles at run-time, although it actually compiles and stores the code up-front, so loading is slower, but running is just as quick as native, well, not as quick as native, as quick as any MS software can run, I guess. But they seem to get good performance on the PC. Its the Mac where it lags]

I was thinking, well then, where are the weapons of mass destruction?

It took 7 pages to get me to laugh but it finally happened.......

SJ is going headlong against Longhorn.


SOO TRUE WINDOWsusks, but I think they have been testing it for quite a while on Intel and MANY people in the industry now about this, and probably dread it, wish it weren't true.

They dread it because they realize that winWows has never had any real competition, not like the competition Apple will create !!!

I have been a Mac and Windows test lead at almost every place I have worked at and when I am job hunting my result are very strange, and many bazar things have happened to me in this area.

My recomdation is if you have Mac and Intel experience make two resumes, one for each do not both with a mixed resume.



I think it would be VERY WISE to make the new Mac OS Xntel MACchines winWows compatibo !!!

Have you been drinking again?

I cannot see Apple doing x86 Intel chips...unless they are going to announce a product(s) tomorrow and also announce a date within the reasonable future that they are shipping. That's the thing that just plain doesn't sit right with me. If that were settled like so, I might be more persuaded...

The provocation for the search for weapons of Mass Dilution was the arms inspections.

The whole world was in stitches with Soddama over his manipulations of the arms inspectors.

IF THERE WERE NO WEAPONS OF MASS CONSTIPATION THEN WHY DID HE MOLEST THE INSPECTORS ???



Kerry said he would have gone to war and he voted for war, thus your rehistorations are true INSANITY !!!

OK MAC, that seals the deal...you're shut off! We'll call a cab for ya bro...

Being winWows compatibo would be the best thing yet.

Then Apple does NO WORK to support winWows other then perhaps building the hardware to duel boot.

And peopo run the two side by side and learn all the wows of winWows.

They could announce this tommorrow as it would effect software a great deal, but normally I would say you would not hear this until it ships.

If its true I bet they give demos with a duel core Intel laptop MACchine.

I would guess for the same reason Bill Gates has molested the world for so long............what? Why did I provoke this?

Umm, Intel used to act a lot like Soddam0m.

And MS like weapons inspectors.

Maybe Intel's new CEO is more like G Bush !?!?!?!?!

I was a bit polite. Let me re-iterate. I know that Big endianess is not a problem. People at application level are using apis which they expect will deal with this, and so they will. This includes Caron apis for reading from disk and Cocoa apis for reading from disk ( or even IPC). this is not an issue.

The rest of your post is just junk. OSX is not a new platform on intel. The lower level abstracts for all application developers.

Feel free to write code for the mac using existing i/o API that has big endian problems.

As for credentialism, I have been coding for the Mac , and porting, for a decade. At the very lowest level. I have also worked on pre-release versions of OS X 1.0. Since then.

If this is announced tomorrow then all WWDC developers will have their applications ported with the week ( since it would take a recompile) and most by Tuesday. It is that simple.

So the transition will be instantaneous and will involve little if no bugs at all? If moving from PPC to x86 is going to this painless why didn't Jobs do it years ago? (and don't blame it all on IBM)

Not at all. Take a look at the very wording of the article (emphasis mine):

Repeat after me: ECHO CHAMBER