IBM unveils dual-core PowerPC chips up to 2.5GHz - Page 3

Well, I've said this before and I'll say it again. Don't expect Macs on Intel to magically bring on a whole new hardware market we don't already have. Your example about PCIe cards is a good example. There's nothing about apple going intel that implies or aides in getting more video card support than apple has now. Nothing. Drivers still need to be written for the OS, not the chip-set. And Apple will NOT distribute drivers for cards they don't sell bundled. You're not going to get an ATI x300 from NewEgg.com, and then get a magical driver from Apple that will let it run. ATI will need to provide those (just like they have to now).

And, going on your later mail, you're next switcher box isn't going to be a Dell with OS X installed if Dell doesn't license the OS. You might think everyone wants to go out, get a computer, then go out, buy an OS, and try to update the computer to the new OS, but most people will NOT do this.


Oh, what a dream. "Apple's revenue won't fall, even though lots of people will buy dell." Exactly how does Apple's revenue not fall when everyone but your parents aren't buying their computers.

Apple will only allow OS X on Dells if AND ONLY IF they can determine they will make more money from OS licensing then they would trying to sell their hardware. And they make a ton of money from hardware right now (as I read last week, last quarter, they earned $2-3billion from computer sales, $200 million from software). And companies and businesses that care on how they spend cash will easily spend money on cheaper dells and a copy of OS X. Esp. if they can get two Dells for the price of one overpriced Mac.

Apple might not die because they have digital hub devices (um, they only have one now, though, so they better get going if they plan on making money and following your schedule), but these aren't big money devices. The iPod sells well, but its a low-revenue product, so a million a quarter only maxes out at $500million, and is probably more like $250-300 million in revenues. Tivo has a hell of a product, and they're still trying to turn a profit. Grand schemes, but why get any of these pieces, when I can buy a cheaper Dell mini with 7.1 and HD output, hooked to my Dell laptops all around the house?


Office is still the defacto, you can't get passed that, no matter how hard you try.

And is it weeks away or 07 or 08? Which is it. And that's funny, saying they'll have an office killer. They already did. It was called AppleWorks. But then Apple killed it. And no one used it instead of office, anyway. And now iWork is so far behind in features people need for work, they have a long way to go to kill office (sorry, but ask anyone who actually writes large documents, Pages has too many holes and issues, mainly because its a Pagemaker replacement, not a Word replacement). And it takes Apple forever to update its apps (how long was it to get Keynote 2.0?) that you don't know whether they ever will update it or let it die. I know with keynote there was lots of speculation whether it was being EOL'd after version 1.

Oh, and you're brilliant idea for Apple to make money is to take pieces that are currently free, make them better (or, as some would argue, make them usable and fix their current slate of problems) and bundle them into an application. Yeah, that's a great idea. No one would complain about that, I'm sure. Just like no one complains about a new OS X version fixing bugs apple never fixed in previous versions.

I watched the presentation three times - I never heard that Apple would use Intel exclusively or that no more PPC based Macs would be made by a certain date. In fact he says they will be supporting PPC for a long time. The message was that they are starting a transition and it would be complete by such and such date. I think the door is open for Apple to have more than one horse to pick from, more competition in the platform is good. I hope Apple takes OSX to a wider range of CPUs from more manufacturers.

Also, those low power version sure look like PB chips to me. Doubt it takes 6 months - my bet is Oct/Nov - after back to school but before christmas - or for January. Also don't forget that g5 have faster system busses, that seem like a big bottleneck for PB today compared to desktop machines. More than just CPU mhz.

I simply slavver at the idea of a dual-core 2Ghz+ iMac 20"

My perfect machine. (My current PBook 1.25 is almost right, but it hasn't quite got the oomph I need sometimes, and a 2Ghz iMac is not a bump far enough (I have no need for big-box PowerMac, and my laptop will stay with me for some time to come anyway :-)

Put a decent graphics card in, and out pops my wallet.

Apple isn't interested in the world of the enterprise client. They have said that many times, and they don't have enterprise friendly policies in place.

It's possible that they might make it in if the new machines will run Windows as an equal client on a Mac. But Apple still won't do machine certification as Dell and others do. There are a lot of problems there. Multiple vendors for the hardware, etc.

Macs will get more popular at home and at the university level, where they are already moving back strongly. It's always possible that it will help as those ex students move into business. But the other problems will remain unless Apple changes their strategy.

Allowing the OS to boot on non Mac's. might work for the overall market, but wouldn't help Apple unless, as I said earlier, Apple has other businesses in place that would reduce their dependance on computer sales significantly.

Only time will tell. After all, we've been surprised before.

Hmm? I really don't feel like going back and looking at the quotes, but that's REALLY not the way it sounded to me.

He did say that their transition would be finished by the end of 2007 when the Powermacs would move to x86. He didn't mention the XServes, but they are classified by Apple as being under the umbrella of professional non-portables. Apple doesn't even break out the numbers of XServes and Powermacs in the sales numbers.

When he says that Apple will continue to support PPC machines, he means that they will have Universal Binaries for several years after the transition.

Also, by federal law, all products must have service and parts available for a minimum of seven years after they are discontinued. So there shouldn't be a problem there as well. I don't know what laws are applicable in other countries. It's probably different. Perhaps others here could let us know.

Did someone not get his coffee this morning? Relax, and read what I actually wrote.


I know this. Most will want to buy a Mac. But by doing so, Apple lowers the "switch" price tag to $129, rather than $499. If people want to try it out, and not drop $500-$1000, then now they can. This means increased OS sales. When this person then wants to buy a new comp, he/she buys a Mac with OS X preinstalled. If this person decides he/she still wants a Dell, then Apple has still gotten $129 from someone who otherwise wouldn't have given them a dime. Personally, I think a good number of people who do that would switch.


So which is it? First you say "most people will NOT do this" [buy a Dell and then OS X and do a clean install]. Then you say "everyone but my parents" will. If you're going to be a troll, at least try and be logical.


As for the hardware vs. software thing, a majority of Apple's hardware revenue comes from iPods now, not CPUs.


A cheap Dell mini with 7.1 and HD output? Running on what? A celeron and integrated graphics?


I said they are a probably a few weeks away from being able to announce an office suite. Get it? Comprendes? "Being able to." I.e., in case they need to. Which they probably will need to if they start approaching 10% marketshare with OS X. I did not say "they are going to announce in a few weeks."

As for AppleWorks, how exactly was it an "Office Killer" if no one used it?


Yes, Pages has some serious deficits, especially for large, professional, corporate uses. But this may perhaps be why Jobs introduced it, saying "Building a successor to AppleWorks." And it may also be why there's that little "i" in from of the bundle. ("iWork"). For that matter, iCal, Mail, and Address Book also have serious problems, if they are going to be used in a large corporate environment. This is why I said they would need to "buff" them. Pump them up into "Pro" versions that people have to pay for.

And in case you didn't notice, people do have to pay for iWork...they are not free. People complain about a lot of things, including things Apple has done. Apple has created free things and then charged for them on several occassions. (iLife--and it didn't even make them pro, just updated and started charging; iTools/.Mac...) But that is not what I'm suggesting. I'm saying they should buff them to pro versions and charge (more) for them. Get it?

Also, try and be a bit more civil in your tone in the future please.

The xserves are an interesting case. What happens with these machines will more clearly define how Apple will handle the change. I could see a plan that would be reasonable where the XServes got up graded early in the process. The reason being low power high performance chips.

I would rather that Apple put into writing exactly what their policies will be and what they mean by support. My feeling is that support would be limited to new revs of OS/X and that is it.

You know I've heard about this mystery law before but I don't really think that it exist. There are some laws governing automobile manufactures but I have yet to see a reference to a general law that states that a manufacture must suport with service and parts for 7 years. In the PC insudtry this clearly would be hard to do.

Agreed, but we still have at least 2 years of good IBM chips coming out and hopefully in Macs soon. I'd buy dual G5's for another year or so with no worries about being out of date when the Mactels come out. I would love to see what the orders for the next years IBM chips are. I'm sure they are going to be healthy.

I don't think Steve or anyone from Apple has publicly said what machines will make the transition when. The rumors were that the laptops and minis would go first, and the Power Macs last, and what we're hearing about the timing of new chips from Intel seems to support that. It also fits my theory that the G4 line is being put down as soon as possible, and the G5s will go last. But I don't believe there is any official announced timeline.

For those thinking there will be lines of both PPC and Intel Macs:

As of the last quarter, cpu sales were close to 50% of Apple's total sales, and iPods were closer to 20%.

As far as the suite goes; that's quite a bit of quessing on your part. You really have no idea what Apple has in that area.

Who knows about the XServes? You could be right, but that could be the last. It would depend on who's buying them. It just happens that the G5 is superior to any x86 chip for scientific purposes. It's thought that Apple might lose customers in that area if they change chips. Remember that all of the high end computer cluster sales that Apple has made has been because of performance vs cost vs ease of use and set-up. Cost factors that even Dell lost out to.

I'm not sure that any company would ever commit that to writing as they reserve that to how the market is responding as well as when they want to force a transition. Look at MS with the Win 2000 support end. 48% of business's are still on 2000, but MS wants them OFF. I think that iLife and the other apps will be around for several years after a change. Apple certainly can't alienate their pro customers, who have large investments.

The law exists. I remember when it was first proposed, and passed. It was in the late '60's or early '70's. The idea was to force importers of cheap foreign goods to support their products, instead of changing models and abandoning their customers. It applies to everyone though, even the Pc industry. European countries followed suite with similar laws though I don't know how they correspond.

It was stated.

Well the press release is admittedly more definitive than what Steve said on stage, thats disappointing. Apple must have struck a hell of a deal with Intel on price.

I guess if were looking for wiggle there is an opening in "macs". A set-top products or top-end workstations, servers might fall under a different nomenclature.

No, if they were happy with their Dell running OSX, they'll more than likely buy another cheap Dell and stick OSX on that too.


That kind of presumes they've written a spreadsheet application in the last x months since iWork05 came out. Let's be generous and presume they've been at it since way before iWork05 but it didn't quite make the cut. Somehow I doubt it's only a few weeks away and they are going to add it to iWork 05. It'll be part of iWork 06 released in January at the earliest.

If they're going after Office or AppleWorks as a replacement they also need a drawing application like Intaglio, which they should buy up and add straight in IMHO.

And if they are beating Office on Windows, they need a database app too - hopefully something more modern than Filemaker too.



People keep repeating this yet I can't think of any major reasons why, having used both somewhat extensively now. Pages isn't Word, and that IMHO is both the reason why it's a breath of fresh air for some and a curse for others incapable of learning a different interface.

End Notes and revision marking seem to be the only real missing features for corporate use other than it just not being Word.


Serious problems such as?

The only problems seem to be minor issues mixing with Microsoft environments - simple answer - don't build your enterprise entirely on a proprietary Microsoft backend.




Have you looked at the price of Microsoft Office?

Please, if you're going to compare Office with iWork, take a reality pill before starting.

I pretty much agree with you. I do think that Filemaker would be a good choice though. It's very popular in the Windows corporate enviornment, and that's important. It would give any attempt in this direction an instant feeling of familiarity. Besides it's a good program, and scales both up and down.

I think that Apple missed the boat by not buying Macromedia. It was hinted for some time that it might be up for sale. The same thing with the apps that Corel ended up buying. Painter would sure look good at this point, as would Poser.

But even if 80% buy the Dell and run OSX on it, Apple will still sell millions of Macs, increase market share to double figures with nearly the same markup AND have tens of millions more dollars from software sales to the Dells.

This is the advantage of starting out with such a small market share now.

No kidding, but the battles with Adobe would have been ugly.

Some people may. But it'll probably be a pain in the rump. (Most people are afraid of their computers, and afraid of ruining them.) And if it's been a year or more, buying a new Mac would have the added benefit of getting them a copy of the latest OS version "free." I'm not disputing that some people will do this, but it'll probably be a small number, since most people don't want to do things like wipe hard drives and clean install new operating systems on brand new machines. They want something that works the way they want it to out of the box. And even if this happens on a significant scale (though I very much doubt it'd happen in such a way that Apple's hardware sales would dry up and kill the company), there are some upsides: more people using OS X, more software revenue, more marketshare, and more clout with developers (..more good press...higher share price...more mindshare...etc.). They could kill this kind of goodwill by being overly stingy and "proprietary" after the transition is done.


Yes, I'm assuming they have one. I mean they already have AppleWorks. I'm sure that there are Apple programmers that have created some wild stuff that may never see the light of day. I mean, they've had OS X on Wintel for, what, five years now? And again, I'm not predicting that there is an imminent "Office killer" announcement. I'm just suggesting that Apple has plans, in case MS decides to try and squash them. I do think that iWork 06 will have a spreadsheet. But I'm only expecting a "pro" office announcement if Apple's marketshare rises dramatically, and if MS responds to try and crush Apple, and not before 08 at the earliest.


That would be nice, but Office's drawing tools are quite pathetic.


Others have responded on Filemaker. I think it's a decent app. It's kinda been forgotten and shoved in the closet for a while. But Apple could really make it shine if they needed it to.


Well, I can't speak for everyone, but not having end notes is a non-starter for me and my wife (academic writing). When I played around with it in my local Apple store, I liked a lot of it, but felt that it hadn't quite figured out how it was going to handle certain issues given its dtp-like model (mostly, deleting pages and linking/flowing text to boxes). I'm hopeful that Pages 2 will take care of those issues.

As for revision marking, I know a lot of people depend on this feature, particularly when working on group projects. (My former company used it often.) But I can understand why Apple didn't bother with it in a consumer level app. Plus, MS's implementation is pretty ugly. [tangent] As a proofreader, I hated seeing the dreaded underlines and strikethroughs. (That was my job, dammit! ) And sometimes it was hard to tell where an edit ended if text was formatted. I always thought that some kind of editing program that could add a non-destructive markup layer to a pdf would be really cool and genuinely useful. Imagine getting a pdf, being able to select text and then choose a bunch of different tools like "Delete," "Replace With," "Move," "Insert," "Note," "Query" etc. And then the original author could "Apply" the edits individually, or completely. Anyway... [/tangent]

Also, I've read that pdf exporting isn't perfect across platforms (drop shadows and the like).


OK. I admit I don't know exactly what problems they'd face in a corporate intranet environment. (I'm imagining my old employer: 12,000 employees globally; 56 offices; 22 countries.) They may work well. But I'd guess that things like integrating iCal functionality into both Mail and iChat would be a minimal necessity (i.e., sending a Calendar invitation as an "attachment"). I don't know...that was just off the top of my head.


I'm confused. I was responding to the claim that this theoretical Office Suite would "just bundle everything that was already free and charge for it." I responded by clarifying that I was not saying that, that if it charged an "Office Suite" price then Apple should make "pro" versions of the apps, and that in any case iWork wasn't free (to drive home the point that Louzer was talking pure nonsense).

I'm not trying to compare MSOffice and iWork. Again, all I'm trying to do is speculate that Apple has things well in hand if its marketshare grows beyond what MS deems is appropriate.

This is not a good strategy -- there is too much overhead per thread in terms of both memory and context switching. Better is to spawn one thread per processing/core and then divide the work among those (2 cores, 100 thumbnails, each thread does 50).


I've seen this comment a couple of times, but I don't believe it to be true. The OSX thread implementation is based on the Mach threaded kernel and so ought to be very efficient. The pthreads are a thin API wrapper on that, and the Cocoa & Carbon threads are a API wrapper on pthreads.


The issue here is not with the threading, but instead with the rest of the OS not being thread-friendly. Prior to Tiger there were only 2 major mutexes (or funnels) in the OS so if you had threads calling the OS they would synchronized where another OS might not be. If they did not call the OS then they would run fine. As of Tiger there is now finer grained locking on parts of the OS, and going forward this will become even better.

FWIW, Windows had (and I believe still has) one really major lock/funnel that tends to force synchronization on a lot of code. Longhorn will probably be the first version of Windows to get away from that major funnel.

haha.....Apple are idiots

I thought IBM had "nothing to offer"

This isn't a brilliant post. Why don't you follow the posts and learn something?

The only timeline I ever heard was part of the news.com story that broke the transition news. The timing might make perfect sense, but that isn't the same as being confirmed by Apple.

whatever happens it is clear to me that we are in for quite a ride. The message to me here is that we don't 100% what to expect from Apple. They must have seen something very cool on the Intel roadmap to make this shift. I also think that Apple is positioning itself to get out of its box one way or another. I am continually amazed at the way Apple engineers and designs products and delivers experiences to consumers. Moving into the Intel camp may be a break with a lot of cool stuff that came with the ppc, but it may also signal the beginning of an entirely new adventure for the platform.

They fixed the 'Delete Page' thing in the v1.01 update although I still think it's badly done since a page could actually be 100 pages if you've just kept typing without sticking in Page Breaks. It's more of a section really. It's just badly termed/implemented but it's now there. How they missed 'Delete Page' in v1.0 though is beyond belief. The developers must have been too close to their perfect ideal and not saw the error.

Text flow works for me - In fact it's one of the things that works stupidly well in comparison to Word. I love it. Click outside the page (in the margin, Click Insert->Text and a box appears. Keep typing and a + appears on the bottom of the box. Click off the box, then on again and small blue boxes appear left/right on the box allowing you to place overflow boxes before or after. And it all happens in realtime flowing between them.

PDF problems are because Apple used the very latest PDF spec that supports drop shadows fully. Some printer drivers and for that matter some print shops don't support that spec. Even Adobe tools don't all support it. It's simply fixed. Instead of using export, use Print and 'Save As...' then select PDF-X as the format. This is a lowest common denominator PDF standard that renders the drop shadows as bitmaps.





You can send iCal invites already. Been there for years.

Put an event in to iCal, right click on it, click 'Mail Event'. It opens a new email with an invite bit of text, plus an iCal .ics file that the person can click on to add it to their calendar.

Again, I think this is just one of those things where because it doesn't work like Office or Outlook, people don't find these things, or don't try.

How about AddressBook and iCal - did you know you can drag contacts from address book to an event's attendees list or just dropping a group onto a spare slot in iCal automatically sets up a meeting with all those in the group?

It's not perfect though I'll give you that. It'd be nice to share calendars without having to set up an internal webdav server or use .Mac and it's not as simple as Outlook to publish/subscribe calendars but given some reasonable training or semi-intelligent users it's perfectly practical IME.

Only problem is, like Outlook, everyone has to use the same calendar application so that kind of means everyone has to use a Mac in the office.

The following predates Tiger but comparing Linux v OSX on the same G5...

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...r-mw11LinxOnG5

Look at the LMBench scores, some of which are just shocking.

Then there was also the recent Anandtech MySQL and Apache shootout which had similar problems although I hate to quote that as proof as it was fundamentally flawed.

A lot of it was concluded to be the file system and Dominic Giampolo said it was because HFS+ was 'right' whereas EXT3 had greater potential to lose data but having run webservers for a number of years, seeing performance not just a few percent better but a few 100 percent better, I'll stick with Linux thanks there.

In Tiger, I believe they got rid of the kernel funnel and network funnel and made the kernel lock at a finer level.

For those purposes there are faster file systems around. Hell, Dominic knows all too well just how frickin fast and nice BFS was, but that is long gone, alas. HFS+ may get there, but I think some changes are underway. I read an article on ARS about Spotlight and how it uses an external database for the purpose of storing the metadata, rather than the file system itself. Not that that is any reason to draw any conclusions, but it seems sorta stop gap to me. I guess time will tell.

When you see results like this there is typically "something strange going on" that is being exposed by the particular test. Even the author acknowledges this:
He also goes on to state that he's not a benchmarking expert and doesn't properly understand what he's doing. So I'd be inclined to ignore the 500x difference on the one test because my Macs sure as heck aren't 500x slower than my PCs or Linux boxes. The 1-2x differences are certainly believeable, but every release of OSX has been getting faster and that is because Apple is addressing these kinds of issues over time.

Of all those LMBench tests, however, none of them really say much about MacOSX "threading" per-se. Most reflect on the file and memory systems. The context switch time for the smallest unit of work is about the closest to a measurement of threading, and it is about 10-20% slower. The larger amounts of work start reflecting on the VM setup of MacOS X. It would be interesting to see these tests re-run to compare 10.3.4 vs. 10.4.1 to see how much progress Apple is making on the low-level issues.

None of these really says much about how effectively MacOS X could take advantage of more cores compared to other OSes. These test are measure context switching times on a single processor... more cores means fewer context switches which means that MacOS X might actually benefit more from more cores than an OS that is more optimized.


Yes, the flush in OSX actually works. That's like writing a sort function that is 50 times faster but doesn't generate a sorted array as output. And, FWIW, Dominic said you could disable the flush and performance would increase dramatically. The real bugs are in Linux and the server software -- (a) for having a non-functional flush and (b) for calling flush inappropriately. Apple is working to fix the server software so that they don't have to break the OS to make it performant.


Yes, plus they have put more internal APIs in place which will allow them to make deeper changes in how the OS works in the future.

Do not look at it this way. Mac OS X handles perfectly multiple processors and will distribute the load accordingly. This means that you can fully utilise the four cores by running, for example, three or four independent CPU-intensive applications. Each one of them will take one processor to go.

Now telling about the efficiency is not that simple. There has been some speculation (I don't remember if it was based on info from the leaked IBM document on the 970MP) that the 970MP chip will sit on the G5 bus we have today and that there will be a special "bridge" to allow a very fast inter-chip communication between the two cores. Or something like that. So, in a quad system, we would have two chips with two independent FSB as of today, but each chip will have two processing cores, each capable to speak to the other using the special bridge without needing the FSB. What the efficiency of such a design is, remains to be seen.

A note of interest about quads coming. Apple boldly emphasizes the fine grain locking feature in Tiger (the first in the "New in Tiger" section). Now read this about funnels and Mac OS X (Programmer already made a remark on that). And then remember the 4 CPU reference in the CHUD tools that leaked some time ago. Oh, add to that the 970MP announcement. Oh, and the fact that the Power Mac need to be updated at least once in the coming two years with PowerPC processors, before the Intel switch. Does it start to make sense now ?

I would also imagine that the new 1MB per core L2 is also because both cores will ride on the same FSB, unlike the older single core cpu's. This would lessen the dependence on the bus throughput and contention that would result from the two cores sharing that bus.

Of course, if what I remember is correct, the 970 can also use a full 1:1 speed FSB as well. It would certainly be interesting to see if Apple considered going to that, or whether it would simply be to expensive with the changes in the support chips that would be required. That would sure shake things up!

I don't know, more L2 helps in many things. Maybe inter-chip communication is one of them.


Yeah, you are right, I forgot about that. I doubt it though, because of power dissipation (with everything this implies) and cost considerations.

Something else that we don't know at this point is what similarities and differences exist between the cores in the MP and the FX low power(LP).

We know that the LP has a 512KB L2 vs a 1MB L2. But that's it! I'm assuming that otherwise they are pretty much the same, except for whatever is neccessary for the interchip communication. Is the MP core PL like the FX? I would think so. Any other differences???

We don't know far more about these chips than we do. Support chips???

If IBM intends the FX LP to be used for mobile machines, they MUST have some reason as to why this would be possible.

If it's really just intended for embedded operations, it might not be as important, depending on what they are.

Right now we're blowing a lot of hot air over cold coals.

Quite true. And I wonder why IBM do not just reveal the specifications of these chips.


Equally true, but as far as the Apple notebooks are concerned, I don't believe that we will see the low power 970FX chips in them. This would require an overhaul at hardware level and with the Intel transition in sight, another major hardware shift, it just does not make sense. Besides, there is this 7448 from Freescale (I think it is already out at limited quantities) which can give the Powerbooks a reasonable update until the Intel transition starts, making at the same time room for an iBook update with the current Powerbook G4 (or close to that). It seems to me that Apple just waits for the 7448 to be available in sufficient quantities before going on and update the iBook and the Powerbook.

Actually, you will be able use any PCIe graphics card available on Newegg as long as there are drivers. An Apple engineer confirmed this at WWDC. With the endian issue gone, there's nothing stopping it. Apple is also apparently going to not write drivers anymore.

ATI and NVidia will now write drivers and so they should be downloadable from the website, new updates monthly, like their Linux and Windows drivers.

Well that is a huge hurdle if it is true! I can't wait to get the next generation Quadro up, and running on OS X. Shit! Now I hope they have SLI as well. That would be stellar for a Mac 3d station. I doubt you would hear gamers complian about it either.

I agree with most of this, except for one thing. PPC 601's and every chip version after them could read either little endian or big endian. Except for one - the G5. So, if that was the problem, we should have had no problem all along.

Smells like Scientology-grade B.S. to me, Existence. The Stinktel switch will magically transfer the burden of OS X GPU drivers from Apple to ATI and Nvidia?

i would say that Existence's idea is not complete rubbish, in that right now you can only purchase specific ATI- or Nvidia- fully branded cards that Apple supports.

if the Stinktel switcheroo allows for using third-party ati/nvidia cards (eg, MSI, Asus, Chaintech) then i think there would be a huge incentive for the graphics card industry, and video game manufacturers, as a whole to start catering for the Macintel crowd.

also in this case Apple not having to do drivers leaves that stuff to the "experts" themselves, ATi and nVidia, i'm sure apple has a good enough relationship with them to ensure that ATi and nVidia code for Macintel to Apple standards.

We have to stop meeting like this!

Right now, Apple only does drivers for its own version of the video boards. I'm still not sure why this switch would make much of a difference. Drivers and software still have to be written for the features of each variation of a board. That wouldn't change. We would still need Mac OS drivers and software. If the market size is still too small for them to bother with, then they won't. we won't be able to use Win drivers, and the boards are the same except for the firmware, and that's no big deal.

ok cool..
NOW TURN OFF THE COMPUTER AND GO TO SLEEP !! heh