Apple confirms switch to Intel - Page 9

Hmm... and well made PC also has all the cables in harnesses to make sure the airflow is good. The only difference is that, inlike MAC, even a higher end PC only has 3 fans - PSU, CPU, case. Makes it VERY quiet regardless of load.

Hmmm.. obviously you've never looked inside (or heard ) a dual Xeon. The HP DL380 I just put a fibre network card in has about 6 fans and sounds like a jet taking off... ok it IS meant to be used in a server room.. but come on.. get real...

I think overall this is a good move for Apple, sure it is going to cause some problems in the short/medium term, but I for one am in the market for a new Mac and if another speed-bumped Dual G5 comes along shortly I will purchase, otherwise I wait for the first Dual x86 box next year.. don't care... its the OS & the Apps that I use.. and I LOVE them both - are they going to change??? no.

The difference is that until now you could not install windows on a Mac. The only solution was VirtualPC. However, Apple said that with the move to Intel, they will do nothing to prevent the user to install Windows on an Intel-Mac. They will not support it of course, but they will do nothing to prevent it.

Now, I expect that an Intel-Mac will be more expensive than a common Windows PC. So, no one would buy such a Mac in order to run Windows on it. But those who will buy it, will always have the option to revert to Windows for whatever reason something does not work as expected. It is obvious to me that this possibility will harm badly the software development for the Intel-Macintosh platform.

Apple just should not have opened the new machines to Windows. If the machines were locked and prevented Windows from being installed on them (as will do OS X on generic PCs), then you can say that nothing changed in the Macintosh experience. Unfortunately it will not be so. In the worst case scenario, expect for Apple total collapse. The one who has nothing to lose (and only to gain), is Intel.

I am curious as to more details on where Apple said this (not that i doubt ya )
......

This article..

Quote.." After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac.

"That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that."

However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said. "

cool. thanks dude.

maybe this best of both worlds will make Mac-Tels (bleah... horrible name... i'm gonna call it....) <lets try again>

maybe this best of both worlds will make the Apple g6 Sextiums very attractive to people, if it could dual/triple-boot Tiger/Leopard and winXP and maybe linux? that will be hella fun and sexy.

I always thought it would be a good idea . A lot of people are afraid to switch. Apple makes most of their money on hardware. A Macintel box (able to run windows) takes almost all the risk out of the purchase.

here's what you meant

I always thought it would be a good idea. A lot of people are afraid to switch. Apple makes most of their money on hardware. An Apple g6 Sextium box (able to run windows) takes almost all the risk out of the purchase.

Perhaps for the end user, but the danger for the Macintosh software is very high because of this. If you can boot Windows, expect developers to start dropping the Macintosh version.

why so? again, just curious...

edit: nevermind, i get it... people will try and get away with their existing copies of software on windows, and not buy the macintosh versions or macintosh equivalents...

Exactly, that's how things work when you have to face head-on a monopoly. Well, not exactly for the case of Apple (OS X could not be installed in a generic PC), but very close.

Examples: NeXT, Be, OS/2.

Hi Folks,


I would like to know what's the position of "Programmer" regarding Apple's strategy?

For about 3 years, I used to check out his answers to a lot of people from here.

And all I know => He's great. Technically speaking, I mean.

So how about now ? What's your feeling about the alliance between Apple and Intel?

Why does Apple leave the IBM "Boat" so quick? x86 over PowerPC, is it a good move?

In fact, just your own views about what is actually happening and so on....

Anyway, I'd be happy to get all others point of views as well....


PS: Forgive a broken english from a french music composer ;-)

3 fans?

How about the massive fans that are on GPUs thesedays? The one on my 6800GT sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

I can hear the PC (Shuttle XPC) right through the house.

Lots of reaction now in the media to this story.

See www.applenewsfeed.com

I think this is probably more subtle than already discussed. It doesn't mean exactly you can simply put in a MS XP install disc and go on. It could very well be, that the XP kernel needs extensions or adaptions to really do so, let alone the field of hardware drivers that probably would need some fix as well to actually recognize and drive it.

It seems to mean that you could however do these things, but it could mean a simple install won't work out of the box. And it could mean a lot of work would be needed in order to make it happen at all, while being perfectly technically feasible. It could also mean that Phil right now leaves it to MS if they choose to do so. Maybe nothing some hackers could do in a fortnight. Therefore his "They probably will..." .

There are many "maybe" above, I know.

This sums up the point quite well. Actually, it may be worse, since there may still be the often mentioned "Apple Tax". Why pay more for Apple computers with the same or less spec pissing rights?

Well, I read the reactions and thought about this swtich for a day or so now. As a Mac user for about five years, here is what I think.

I think this is a good move for Apple, not just because of the concept of using Intel chips with a better supply and roadmap, but because of the way they're going to go about it.

It doesn't surprise me that Jobs has been planning this for a long time, and that Mac OS X has been "living a double life". Steve had to wait until Mac OS X was stable and he had the majority of the installed base using it before he could go with the plan. Switching to x86 when Mac OS X was an infant would have been suicide.

Those who criticize Apple make the argument that Apple might destroy Mac software development. I don't think that's true. Mac OS X is really picking up speed in the market. It's already known as the most secure operating system. As long as there are OS X users, there will be software. Sure, M$ controls 95% of the OS market, but that might be changing.

By making this switch and thereby increasing Windows compatibility, Apple is eliminating a major obstacle to buying a Mac. In addition, another obstacle may fall when prices drop due to better availability of parts and the use of more standardized parts, such as graphics cards.

The fact of the matter is that after this switch, there will be little reason to buy a WinTel box. That box will do everything the Mac will do save one: Run the best operating system on the planet. On the flip side, Apple will have a dual-boot machine that meets or exceeds anything in the PC world, has better styling, a more competitive price and again, the best OS on the planet.

When I first heard confirmation of this news, I was uneasy and thought that Steve had lost it. But again, after thinking about it...I think that this is an abolsutley fantastic move for Apple. And to those bitching that they can't run OS 9 stuff on new hardware, I say "Get Real". I can't stand when people complain about not being able to run five to seven year old software that is two generations out of date---ona modern machine no less. What do you expect?

Thanks. How can I turn down a request like that?


Over at ArsTechnica.com John Siracusa wrote an article about his feelings on this transition, and it mirrors my own closely. To summarize:

I personally feel that the PowerPC ISA (and AltiVec in particular) is significantly better than the x86 ISA, and thus I am sad to see Apple dropping the use of it. Remember, however, that this is from a point of view that most users will never see -- the best ISA in the world isn't worth anything if there aren't implementations to back it up.

Apple knows a good deal more than we do about the processors coming available to them in the future. They obviously feel that IBM and Motorola's offerings going forward are not aimed at the personal computer market (IBM being concerned with game consoles & media processors, and Motorola with embedded systems and network processors -- neither of which are well suited to the portable and compact machines which are Apple's primary focus), while Intel's bed & butter has always been and continues to be the personal computer market. This means that, despite the hopeful blip represented by the 970, the PowerPC processor woes Apple has had since about '98 are going to continue. With this hardware transition Apple is throwing out any chance of getting ahead in terms of performance, but they have also thrown out the chance of falling behind... and if the chance of getting ahead has dropped to zero then this is the logical choice, isn't it?

History has shown repeatedly that Apple is better off adopting standards (when the standards meet their quality requirements) for key technologies rather than continuing to swim upstream. In the past PowerPC could compete in terms of performance or performance/watt, but it seems those days are past and Apple is now in a position to transition to the processor architecture which is currently leading. It will be interesting to see if they adopt Intel's chipset architecture(s) as well -- Apple has traditionally rolled their own, but they didn't (usually) have a choice because nobody was building top-notch chipsets for the processors they were using. With Intel that is decidedly not the case, and Apple can now reap the benefits by saving significant amounts of R&D. This is undoubtably why they didn't ask Intel for a PPC-flavor core (may be pesky patent issues there too)... it saves them R&D money which can then be spent on the software development, which they'll need to differentiate themselves from the Windows juggernaught.

In the short-term this is going to be (yet another) a painful transition for Apple and its developers. In the longer-term there are issues about whether developers will port to the Mac or just rely on WINE-like technologies. I don't know how those will play out, but it will be better than Apple once again falling farther and farther behind in terms of CPU performance.

The main question for me is, do I buy the last and greatest G5 PowerMac or do I hold onto my MDD for longer and buy a 2nd generation x86-based Mac? If they ship a dual 970MP then I'll probably go for that, otherwise I'll wait.


PS: 12 years (94..06) on the PPC "boat" is a long time in the computer industry. The 68K boat lasted (ignoring Lisa) from '84 to '94, which is only 10 years. Hopefully Intel will be the last boat Apple will have to ride because we're all pretty sick of these transitions.

No one can prove anything at this point, as far as software development on the Macintosh is concerned. However, as I said, history has a hint or two on that and I take notice.


Sorry, I fail to see why this is so.


Where this more competitive price comes from? And how do we know that OS X will be the best OS in the planet? MS has yet to release Longhorn. OK, I admit that they have not a great past, but until the final product comes out, you never know.


Sorry again, I don't share the same sentiment. To me this move is the more dangerous one in Apple's history and I am afraid that Apple will never be what it was. The key is that Apple will not do anything to prevent Windows installation in an Intel-Mac. I would not be surprised to see the company split in two, hardware and software (OS/Applications/Services), with the hardware and perhaps the non-services part of the software taking a deep plunge in the toilet.

The HP DL380 I just put a fibre network card in has about 6 fans and sounds like a jet taking off... ok it IS meant to be used in a server room.. but come on.. get real...
And the Dell 470 Dual Xeon, high end graphics, SATA, yada-yada-yada, boxes that we have on our Engineers' desks are whisper quite. Because they're designed to run on desktops get real...

No more Altivec?
Altivec is not God's gift to computing. Altivec is optomized in a particular direction, SSE is optomized in another. Want to run high precision Scientific applications? Then you'll love SSE. Want to run single precision stuff that benefits from single clock multiply-adds? Then Altivec will have an advantage on a PER CLOCK basis. Which means just about nothing in a world where the x86 clocks faster than the PPC.

Just why in the world do you suppose ALL of the multi-billion dollar a year companies that write the high end engineering software ( I'm talking licensing fees of MILLIIONS of dollars a year ) have moved to x86 and have ZERO PPC platforms?

Is it because all of us who actully design chips are freaking idiots who can't see the magical properties of PPC/Altivec?

No 64 bit?
Seeing as how close to 50% of the chips going out the door at Intel are now 64-b and Intel expects to be 100% 64-b (yes even the dual core lap tops) within the next 12 months...

Inferior hardware?
Isn't Apple designing their own machines?
Have you ever seen and used high quality PCs? Oh never mind.

FAT?
What? What in the world does FAT have to do with running x86 hardware? The File System has jack to do with the CPU that it's running on.

i think one thing we have to consider is the decline in the perception of value of apple's powerPC offerings

i feel as Programmer has mentioned the ISA and Altivec, etc... may be technically superior, but this has not translated into a feeling that one is getting good value for money, with the powermac g5s

i cannot say with any certainty how motorola and ibm's powerpc offerings are doing on their side

but apple seems to strongly feel now, no doubt backed by their market research as well, that the customer, be it an enterprise-it-dude/dudette, a switcher, a mac fan, an artist, a musician, a designer, a kid who just got an imac, someone sick of windows viruses, a small business owner --- these customers have to feel that value for money, and they haven't really with the Mac's real-world (edit: higher-end powerpc offerings) (including software optimised or not for osX-on-powerpc with altivec, etc, etc) in recent times

particulary if you employ a computer for your income generating activities (a lot of us), value-for-money starts to creep up to ya. sure, i might feel a great sense of calm, inspiration, yogic-flying whatever when i am desiging on a powerbook, but if i can get away with a 512mb+ new iBook g4, i might... seeing that i might be competing for web design clients with some other kid on a nicely loaded dell.

i got a nice single 1.6ghz g5 and on reason 2.5 software synthesis it just blew my 6-month old dual-1.25ghz powermac MDD out of the water. a phenomenal level of performance. but then i realised, well, i gotta be producing top-notch music to 1. pay off the g5 (long story) and 2. to make full use of that powerful g5 beast.

i think using an iBook mostly nowadays takes a bit of the pressure of myself, it was almost too good using a g5 or a 17" powerbook... some people are not ready for that kind of 'quality' or 'luxury', they don't 'feel' that value, or are somehow uncomfortable with it and it's preciousness

Ok, how about the CELL? Is IBM so much incompetent? In your way of thinking, why Apple suddenly left the PowerPC "Boat"?

Do you think this company is unaware of it? Don't you think INTEL has more tools for instance to lock some toys with DRM'ized Chipsets?

Is it why they ship onboard on last Monday?

Thanks for your reply.

macfr3ak

PS: Sorry Programmer, Personnely, I'm very upset with Apple's hardware's choice.

Maybe I'm wrong? who knows.....

Apple's leaving was not 'sudden'. It's been happening since Mr. Jobs came back to Apple.

Darwin has always been the obvious future of Apple. It's not a secret. It's been the source of endless discussion of WHEN, not if, WHEN will it happen.

First they had to sort out the OS mess. Cutting over to an OS based on the technology from Next had to happen first. And that was a migration FROM x86 to PPC. Keeping the x86 verions of the OS alive-and-well was just a matter of routine at Apple. Because that was the future.

The path to where we are is strewn with the empty husks of the 'better' architectures that have fallen under the x86 boot. Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, SPARC, good bye and thanks for all the fish.

Over the past 15 years the UNIX world has gone through this same conversion. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard all these same things said by the UNIX geeks as their favorite botique architectures have been replaced by x86 at the desktop, workstation, and small-to-mid sized server levels.

PPC on Macs was the last to go.

Well, except that all of those companies that transitioned are gone (DEC) or are mere shells of their former selves (SGI, Sun).

I agree with your overall sentiment, but I don't think that point is strong...

After milling this over two fitful sleepless nights (why can worrying about a f**ing computer do this to me), I am content and at peace with Apple's decision. It is the best. Are there risks? Of course.

The fact of the matter is that Apple could no longer be in the CPU/Bus Design business. It is FAR better to use the resources the rest of the world rely on. Altivec? Who cares. I used to, but after doing Altivec optimizations for my model (what a pain), I have realized that I would rather have a fast straight-up FPU. The G5 and AMD's have it now, the Intel chips coming out are rumored to surpass them both with ease. This leads to another point. Rumors regarding Intel chips tend to come true. The number of unfulfilled rumors, hope, dreaming, speculation from PPC the past 7 years have been frustrating with only a SINGLE breath of fresh air (G5).

The compilers, optimization libraries, etc. available on the x86 platform are incredible. Hell, we were all excited because Tiger was compiled with gcc 3.4 with more PPC optimization built-in. Building this support was hard work for Apple, now it is free.

Maybe, just maybe, Intel needs Apple. Intel has been at the mercy of Microsoft for too long now. Intel has always been Microsoft's biggest ally/enemy. The prepondance of cheap hardware with the ubiquity of Windows has built a great empire for them both; however, Microsoft is the more powerful as they are software only (excluding the xbox). The threats and manipulations that MS have placed on Intel over the years were exposed during the antitrust trial. Intel has and remains beholden to Microsoft's wishes. Intel thought that Netscape, Java, etc. might be their way out and they were put back into their place.

Intel has been pushing Linux, and will now presumably be an ally of MacOS X because they need software support from someone other than MS. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel gave Apple a big discount on the chips. Hell, they may have given Apple Dell like prices.

The market cap. of HP/Compaq is more than twice (almost 3 times) that of Apple.

Sun Microsystems is at least 1.5x of Apple.



I think that you missed my point. My point was not that the vendors of boutique MPU architectures were doing well in the market. My point was that the market had compelled the UNIX world to abandon those architectures and transition to x86.

Well, to be annoying...

The market cap of Sun is 12B versus 30B for Apple. SGI is 214M. HP's market cap is 64B; however, just because Compaq bought DEC, I don't consider them the same company...

I did miss your point. You are exactly right, the market forced all of these companies (well, Sun still does SPARC development) to stop financing their own CPU's.

But probably not for much longer. I can imagine them going the Apple route (they already started down that path actually).

What makes all of this that much more interesting is the position it puts/keeps Intel in..."Monopolist to the Stars".

Of course both Apple and Sun are smart enough to keep the CPU hidden enough that switching around becomes much easier (Apple is probably doing this better than Sun). Either way, it seems that MS is in a much moer precarious position that way.

Intel would love to see Apple become more successful from a marketshare perspective. It means that there is a more diverse OS base running on their chip. Not just Windows. They must love Linux and Solaris too.

I think there could be some long term problems for MSFT.

Everyone is keeping options all over the place. Microsoft did this back before their OS dominance. One wonders if they are now (e.g., "secret double life for Office...running on Linux") or more concerned about protecting current business.

I think Apple needs to do some serious damage control. But will they?

-BUBBA

Yup, sorry about that. I read today's volume number not today's market cap.

And to be fair, I should have said that the MPU architectures for these vendors had been forced out of the merchant mobile/desktop/workstation/small-to-mid range server space.

Alpha is end-of-life; no designs for any applications.

PA-RISC is end-of-life; no designs for any applications.

MIPS still exists in the embedded space but there are no new MPU designs for non-embedded applications.

SPARC has been abandoned by Sun. Fujitsu will continue to develop newer generation SPARC derivative MPUs. It simply became too expensive for Sun to push Sparc forward and to work on the next generation architecture.

Saddest (tech) sentence I've read this year.

Applies to BeOS, OS/2, Oberon, Plan 9, etc under the heel of Windows, too.

There is no logic or justice in the world. Let's hope OS X doesn't end up as a husk as well.

don't be so sad, dude. we as geeks have been programmed in the 90s to think that RISC is da bomb and CISC is dead... but such things are not as important in the next 10 years. in the next 10 years, it will be squeezing as much as possible out of 90nm, 65, 45?nm to deliver the cost, power, lowheat, etc. consumers demand ~ this will also translate upwards into the server space to some degree...

in 10 years time RISC vs x86 or whatever will be irrelevant with quantum, molecular, biological, nanotech, optical or whatever to bring us on.

we KNOW mac os X has a great future ahead of it, at least 5 years, and people are getting tired of windows, they just don't have any options. 1-10 years out, Intel seems to offer apple what it needs, and yes, i agree with previous posters that Intel can get out from under microsoft's thumb. linux-on-intel, macosX-on-intel, should be alright... mac os X-on-powerPC, well, i am mourning it now, but it's got a few more years left in it, a very safe, stable bet for at least 1-2 years until the dust settles.

Linux has come a very long way. Almost every company that I know of have Windows and Linux boxen but zero Macs.

Every review I've read about this says that LInux is O.K. but OSX
is far superior to ANY operating system in the world.

The people still defending Microsoft are simply over confident about there job security.

Now we have the maker of 80% of the words processors telling the entire industry that Mac OS X IS clearly the superior OS to ANYTHING.

We'll see what kind of song they're singing as Longhorn and Leopard approach.

Longhorn can't even find the door to the stable and it's feet
are stuck in a big nasty fly infested pile of manure

Spend some more time on Slashdot. And Anandtech can be usefull some times: http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436


To quote Johan De Gelas ( of Aceshardware.com fame ), from the final section of that review:

Cell's first implementation is designed for a game console and does not deliver stellar performance on non-vectorized code. Its performance is not terrible, but obviously Apple wants top-notch performance on typical code. This doesn't mean IBM is incompetent, it means they have other goals (i.e. selling many millions of chips in consumer units). That is a distraction from what Apple needs, and that is something I've been afraid of since their involvement in Cell & XBox360 first became known.

I had been hoping that a middle ground could be reached and a Cell variant suited to Apple would keep Apple on the PPC course, but I have my own set of predjudices.


You don't know what DRM support IBM might be providing in Cell.


Unfortunately IBM's main business goals pretty much forced them into it.

Assuming you're talking about 1T cells, then I think IBM would have something to say about that. If you want to talk about DRAM in general, then you definitely cannot credit that to intel. They can claim to have the first commercial product and, of course, they get credit for the 4004.


Again, I'm assuming that you're not limiting the discussion to NOR flash in which case that honor goes to Samsung

Intel has clearly been able to support their ISA for far longer than many have predicted, and they've done it with some very clever hacks. While I'm sure that Intel will continue to add instructions and functionality to their chips, MS certainly won't be intimidated by having new functions available. The only real threat to MS would be if Intel were to abandon x86 in favor of a more modern and elegant ISA. This simply isn't going to happen for a very long time, so this isn't really a credible threat and does not unencumber Intel from that burden.

Frankly what suprises me most about Jobs' statements is the comment about performance/W. Intel has to burn a decent amount of power to simply handle the instruction decoding which was always a clear advantage to PPC. The only interpretation of this that makes sense to me is in the portable space where PPC obviously hasn't kept pace. The other possibility I see is that Apple is looking to make more home media devices and believes that Intel has some rabbits in that area, but given PPC's successes in the embedded market, I'm skeptical.

I agree with previous posters that this announcement and the timeline laid out by Apple will significantly hurt Mac sales. Actually I predict that there will be a spike in sales followed by a drawn out lull as certain groups load up on the hardware they need for the next 3-4 years, including spares, followed by the unwashed masses not wanting to invest in a lame duck platform.

Finally, has anyone else noticed the inconsistency between Rosetta and a very late introduction of the first Mactels? If Rosetta is indeed that great, then why wouldn't Apple be releasing an Intel box before the end of the year just to mitigate any sales losses and to seriously refresh their powerbooks? Or is binary translation really not quite the panacea Jobs makes it out to be (shocking to think that Stevie might be exaggerating I know!), and in order for this switch to work Apple desperately needs the developers to make native binaries. My hypothetical money's on the latter.

a sentiment and hope echoed by many, but sadly, appears to be dashed.

additionally,
my guess is that it looks like i-series/power-series Mac
h.264 hardware-based decode/encode(?) will be handled by intel/ati, very unlikely to be Cell like many were hoping for

you have to remember that apple cannot afford to put all its eggs in intel products right now, once they decide to go intel intel has to commit in a certain way to support apple.

this means that there is still a significant level of investment (r&d, marketing, etc) in the powerpc product pipeline. i feel if they released intel-macs right now (even if it were possible), that would mean a lot of investment in powerpc goes straight into the trash.

with the current scenario.

1. they can recoup their investments on powerpc line by clearing their pipeline of powerpc Macs over next 1-2 years
2. they have powerPC fallback while intel Macs are developed
3. apple and intel have 6-12 months from today to deliver on intel-macs, this has to be pretty much flawless or apple is seriously screwed compared to xp/longhorn/linux on intel
4. they have to give time for the developers to come to grips with this
5. rosetta is very important but i agree, they have decided this is not enough. by apple's standards, fat binaries MUST be employed as far as possible*

*i think the core reason why rosetta won't cut it for the most part is because comparative benchmarks of many applications running on similarly spec'ed intel hardware may show windows/linux versions of those applications with a clear advantage over mac os X-rosetta'ed apps.