I simply cannot stomach this transition

Perhaps a cold shower too . Look, by all evidence up to now, it seems that there are not good perspectives for the PPC in the desktop and, mostly, laptop arena, for some time to come yet. Intel was the natural choice. If they fail to deliver (see Apple Curse), Apple could at any time revert to PPC with minimal effort. I think that overall this transition has only good to do (hardware agnostic Mac OS), if done carefully.

What I want is the possibility to use some incarnation of Mac OS ten years from now, with a healthy choice of software and a striving underground of small shareware, freeware and open software developers. And I want a varity of hardware choices from Apple, not nessesary a lot of different computer models, but stuff that connects seamlessly, like iPods, Airport, screens and input devices. Thats MY goal.

The means is for Apple to stay healthy, have inspired workers, a not too small piece of the marked and not too expensive hardware platform. Since I am not an expert in how to achieve the means I trust that Apple is doing a better job than I would. If Apple thinks its nessesary to move to Intel to do so I am not the one to second guess. Especially not since the move to Intel doesn´t have a direct negative effect on my goal.

You have it backwards. MacOS X, although built on the opensource Darwin implementation of BSD, is proprietary. The PPC-based Macintosh hardware platform is built on a published open standard. However, all evidence to date indicates that Intel-based Macs will not be built on a published open standard.

I can no longer drive a Porsche - they switched to Nitchicon capacitors in the ECU computer! Just the thought of those nasty little buggers in there ruins the whole experience for me.

I think I would rather drive a Dodge than a Porsche with Nitchicon capacitors in the ECU. The Dodge uses the same capacitors, but at least I am not driving a tainted Porsche!

What utter nonsense!

When you take delivery of your first Intel based mac - and switch it on. Exactly how will you be able to perceive this "important change to the user's experience" ?

Do you open the case, pry off the heat sink and stare in horror at the logo on the back of the biggest chip?
Or perhaps you get a hex editor and sit glumly regarding the alien opcodes nested deep within one fork of the universal binaries?
Or do you cheat and click "About this Mac" and then burst into floods of tears as the word "Power" fails to appear?

It really makes no difference whatsoever to the user's experience. Providing that the Intel build of OS X is every bit as great as the PPC variant.

Even if you program the darn machine, if you sit writing Objective C in Cocoa all day long - trust me, you'll barely notice the difference.

Once upon a time there was a philosophical difference in the type of engineering done by Intel and a radical new upstart philosophy of so called RISC processors. For a while, it was an interesting battleground, with Apple championing this aggressive new underdog, and Intel plodding away with their aging instruction set.

But that was then and this is now. The technologies which Risc camp used were quickly embraced by Intel and AMD. These techniques allowed them to make the same sort of performance gains without the inconvenience of changing their instruction set. The war's over. Use your skill and judgement to see who won. Hint - I am still using a 3 year old 1GHz Powerbook, because it is hardly worth upgrading.

This transition moves Apple in a uniqely strong position. Currently it is regarded as a PPC to Intel move. But with the transition over, and commercial contracts fulfilled, Apple will be in a position to move to AMD, Power 5, Cell or whatever. The move also makes it possible for Apple to even consider challenging Microsoft directly in selling boxed copies of OS X to PCs.

How exactly is that bad?

Carni

Cry more, noob.

Yes of course they have. They have a commercial deal. Which at some point will end. It's like a marriage but not all marriages last forever.



Ah it's Rosetta you are worried about!
Well I can understand that, but Rosetta is a temporary thing. No one will be using Rosetta for more than a year or so because all developers of significance will be making the transition to native universal binaries.

The most significant application which will not be ready at the launch of PRO machines will probably be Photoshop. And yes if someone has a job which relies on the program, I would advise them to hold fire until
a) Adobe get their act together and finish the port
or b) Wait until an intel machine appears which can match the performance.

But no one is forcing anyone to buy a new machine at gunpoint, The PPC powermac is still quite usable you know.

My guess is that Adobe will release a halfway-house build. Still PPC code - but with SSE3 filter code from the PC version.

I note your hardware concerns - but really there are one or two engineers out there who do know how to put together intel PCs

Carni.

Carni,

Don't you think that the Intel processors to be used in future Apple gear as soon as possibly January may be fast enough in Rosetta to be comperable in performance to the G4? It has been said many times over in various forums and people that I talk to that the Pentium M blows the doors off a G4.

With rewrited software supporting the universal binaries, you won't see any difference between a G5 and a Intelmac.
That's said, it's obvious that everysoftware run under Rosetta woulb be painful in an experience user point of vue.
That's why I decided to buy a quad powermac G5, because a small speed bump apart, Apple will never make a more powerfull PPC based powermac. In three or 4 years the Intel stuff will have achieved it's full transition and the intel macs will be much faster than my quad.

My opinion is : you have a G5, keep it, enjoy it, and wait.

There was no way that Apple / IBM could keep up with Intel. With PPC, IBM made the processor and it was up to Apple to come up with the MB and support chips. This was like Apple having half of a partner to help them keep pace with an entire industry. Intel is looking at taking CPU activities and utting them off on special support chips, they are looking at using flash memory for instant on, they are evolving the wireless communications. The switch to Intel was not about the CPU, it was the development cost of the CPU ++ the cost of the CPU, and the cost of the support chips and the evelopment of the MB. Look at it like this, you will get equal or better performance, and maybe slightly lower prices.

Yeah, know what you mean Mr. Big - however, I sorta look at it this way ...

I suspect Uncle Steve merely said complete transition in order to force developers to write to Universal Binaries; after all, if he only said "in some cases, we'll be going Intel, and in others we won't", it would confuse the market, make it appear that Apple is waffling, and convince developers that it's not worth their time to write Universal Binaries as who knows what's going to happen: and in not doing so, they could essentially halt any degree of transition because not enough apps would get on board.

I don't think Uncle Steve likes other people grabbing hold of the reins like that ...

So, we have complete "transition" ... and who knows, maybe they will go all the way with it? But frankly, I doubt it (unless Intel has some serious serious snazz up their sleeves) - I mean, the die size alone of the two chips tells you at least something, plus, there's plenty of institutions who've put a lot of effort into PPC, and are loathe to drop it all ...

What I think is going to happen is simply this - Apple wants all developers to just get into the habbit of writing Universal Binaries no matter what; then, they'll be the only mainstream computer company in the world that can take their pick between PPC and Intel, and simply use whichever is best for the task at hand ... for portables, Intel, for racks in scientific computer, PPC ... I mean, who knows where PPC and Cell might wind up? Could you imagine what a killer media machine production machine built upon a kick ass Cell architecture might be like? Obviously nobody knows at this point really exactly what's going to happen - so why would Apple want to cut themselves off from a potentially huge advantage?

Nah, to my mind, it's "tell the developers we're going to move entirely to Intel, get them to write Universal Binaries, and then be the only computer company in the world that can cherry pick between Intel or IBM": that's potentially one hell of an advantage!

Personally I don't mind about the transition itself. Intel/PPC...who cares. Apple knows what its doing, and as long as it runs Apples OS all is fine by me.

I do however find the whole waiting process HARD to take. I was waiting for almost 2 years for the infamous G5 powerbook. So when Apple dropped the intel bomb...I was excited...until I realized HEY!! Thats gonna mean even MORE waiting!

DOH!

And on top of that when the intel books finally arrive(rumor now has it early 2006)....we'll have to WAIT almost another year for a OS upgrade that will fully utilize its chip!

DOUBLE DOH!

Apple is a cruel mistress. But ya gotta love em.

My main delema will be trying to decide between the upcoming ibook and powerbook. If rumors are correct, pbs will get an intel, a built in isight and drop the 12" model....while the ibooks get a widescreen 13". I hope the ibook gets an intel too. Otherwise that would make the decision even more confusing. I still find it hard to believe apple will both drop the 12" pb AND not offer a 13" pb don't you? I want a small laptop...so probably won't go with a 15" pb anyway...and will be forced to get a 13" ibook with or without an intel chip.

Argh...so many decisions.

whenever I get nagging feeling that the Mac won't be a Mac unless it has an IBM processor I do 2 things:

1. remember how the Mac was still a Mac when we went from Motorola to IBM

2. Climb on top of my girlfriend.

I guess that explains your sig?!?

Quote from the girlfriend...?!?

;^p

(sorry, could not pass that one by...!)

I don't think that's really true. OS X has apparently been able to run intel since the beginning. What exactly won't tiger be utilizing once the intel machines come out?

Nothing, all of the tools / frameworks are in place. This is not a boutique shop, this the industry leader. They have the whole package, and make utilization easy, because they want to remain the industry leader. Rosetta, acceleration framework, and currently OSX x86 was updated to 10.4.3 and few days earlier than PPC. Nothing will not be utilized, so everything will be utilized.

Don't worry, be happy. Unless you are in one or two very specialized domains, or you are a low level optimization-obsessed programmer like me, then you simply aren't going to notice that your next Mac has Intel Inside (tm). What you will notice is that your iMac, mini, or notebook will perform considerably better than the equivalent you could buy today. When you can buy a Mac tower with Intel Inside (tm), it will also outperform whatever was the last PPC-based Mac that Apple shipped. There will be exceptions here and there where the developer hasn't created a Universal Binary, or where Rosetta doesn't work, or software that plays directly to the strengths of the PPC (rare!)... but by the end of 2007 the whole Mac ecosystem will be purring along very happily on Intel-based chips and you won't be any the wiser unless you open the box, examine the spec sheet, or look at the system profile -- and do you really do those things more than once or twice? Most of the time you are doing things with the computer, and how well that works is far more important than what it says on the spec sheet.

And you can buy more new Mac software and hardware, confident in the knowledge that Apple's inability to keep pace with the x86 hardware is gone. 2008 is going to be a great to buy a Mac (or two).


Oh, and as an added bonus: VirtualPC (and the numerous other VMs likely to pop up) runs really really f%^&ing fast!!!

Big Mac

Trust me when I heard the transition was to take place I too flipped a bit and was extremely upset. However I finally came to my senses and looked into why Apple has moved to "enemy territory"

What I found was an Intel that was so sure of it's new path with low watt low pipeline processors they cancelled billions in investment dollars in Netburst.

They had finally seen the light and were hard at work correcting their misstep. If things go well we will be better off because of it. I love the G5 and PPC but the investment money they need cannot be provided by Apple and PPC just isn't strong enough to get a lot of investment dollars elsewhere.

Steve made the most sane decision he could. Hop aboard the X86 hardware gravy train and ride it for all it's worth. I think he made the right decision. If Intel hits it's goals we'll have relatively low wattage dual core laptops for the first half of 2006 and dual core low wattage desktop and server cpu for the latter half.

Could we be there with PPC? Sure we could be not at the 65nm and the low wattage that we need. I'm officially drinking the koolaid here.

I think that Apple is victim of it own mantra : X86 chips sucks. Unlike cars engines, you won't notice any difference between an intel chip and a PPC chips : it would be more or less faster (more most of the time)

Here's the blog you need: wilshipley.com, "I Invite you to wine"

wil is no slouch. He was a founding partner of Omni. He wrote Delicious Library and made his second mint. He recruits great programmers and UI designers who in turn are lured away by Apple.

He's not worried.

I'm not worried.

You shouldn't be worried.

The point is this: Apple is moving cautiously. They have to open their doors too more hardware...and eventually they will be at the point where OS X can be installed on any PC boxen. Even with the first gen Macs with Intel chips, what's to stop users from dropping in a pin-compatible AMD chip when they want to upgrade? It's a whole new ball-game Apple is playing. They CAN'T control the insides of their computers anymore. If they don't know this, then Apple is doomed. If they do, then you can be sure that in about 4 years, you'll be able make DIY Macs. If they do this well, Microsoft's monopoly will take a serious hit.

i got drunk with him in chicago..... he's a good guy.... and he's right.

anyway, cpu architecture means nothing. there. i said it. I spent years studying it while collecting graduate degrees in it, and while working for a certain majorly major CPU manufacturer, and bottom line: it doesn't matter. for general purpose software, economies of scale, and fabrication technology have a bigger impact on performance per $. intel was the right way to go. as for all of this whining and identity crisis because a flake of silicon is different in your next mac... get a xanax.

-The same thing that has stopped users from dropping in a pin-compatible PPC970 will stop them from dropping in a p-c Intel or AMD upgrade. It won't work. Plus, no AMDs are p-c with Intel at the moment.

At first, I was 100% against it. However, I've reconsidered and now think it makes business sense.
I only hope that Apple doesn't charge a premium for an Apple box if its comparably equipped to a Dell or some other PC maker.

I also hope Apple is working with Intel on an Intel chip that strips the chip of its ability to run X86 legacy code. From what I've read, this would make the chip smaller and cooler (and maybe even faster). Altivec on a MacIntel chip would also be nice.

Don't hold your breath, Intel has already signaled to Apple that they are another customer. Intel is not a boutique, they will do the things that address their markets, and when I say this think big picture not small. They would not be able to address the issues of the whole market if they are trying to solve problems that affect 5% of the market. Intel as a company would like perhaps to move away from x86, but that is a place with no market, or little market. So move away from x86, and kill the company. Intel is the market leader but they are not the market, they follow the market just like any other company.

I'm still pretty nervous about this.

On the plus side, the rumors are that Intel has made great strides with their 45nm process. This should be pretty exciting in a year or two.

On the down side I worry that some vendors might stop supporting OS X. Suppose the Mac share grows to 10 or 15%. With PPC Macs someone like Autodesk would be compelled to write software for OS X. However, if it becomes easy to run windows software on OS X then those companies could simply tell customers to do so rather than rewrite their software for OS X.

Certainly, in cases where there is competition companies would have to write for OS X. Adobe would be compelled to write for OS X to compete with Quark.

It already happens in some cases that vendors tell Mac customers to run their product via VPC. It will be worse when OS X is running on Intel. The better windows programs run on OS X/Intel the less need they have to rewrite.

And here´s another one:

I see the Mac-Hardware line doomed. Right now, it is relatively simple to install OS X X86 on other hardware than the Developer Box - just imagine how it will turn out in 2006: Who will buy a "oh so expensive" Macintosh if they can call the local nerd / geek to install OS X on their loud Dell?

And don´t give me this "Oh no, this won´t happen, we have the super chip that checks wether you run OS X X86 on a Mac or not".
It took other people (of course... ) 4 secs to delete the *.kext responsible for the checking on 1.4.1. And I use computers long enough to know that this won´t change much with 10.5.

Suckage.

Denmaru.

I beg to differ with you my dellusional friend. Yee have lost yee little mind me thinks.

How many times have I heard people like u ringing the death nell for apple.

Your "scenario" won't pan out.

THAT much I do know.

U make-ah me laugh.

har dee har har it is to laugh.

You haven't, however, used computers long enough to find out where the apostrophe (') key is.

It is also well worth remembering that in 1984 the "1984" commercial which introduced the Macintosh to the world identified IBM (Big Blue) as "the enemy". Ten years later Apple got in bed with IBM as their processor supplier. 11 years after that Apple is getting into bed with the other enemy. The moral of the story is that Apple with sleep with whomever they need to in order to make the hardware and software they need to in order to compete in the market.

This isn´t some "Apple will die because they won´t let it play protected WMAs" or "Apple is dead" #3443 - it is a fact that there are FAR more illegal Installations of 10.4.1 out there than Developerboxes.
Just google, and you will see.

And this is just a developer build. Now think a little more, and you should see my (valid) point.

And of course, all of the people (I don´t know them, of course) I´ve seen installing OS X X86 on their PCs will buy a Mac....


It already did, to a certain extend.


You haven´t thought a single moment where Vienna is located, didn´t you?

think different:
no software vendor would force it's clients to buy a copy of an unsupported os.
they'll lose customers that way, especially as the mac-userbase grows.

While I haven't personally been to Vienna, I do in fact very much know where it is, unless we are talking about a different city by the same name. Unless I'm mistaken and Austrians use a different keyboard layout for whatever reason, I expect you to use the same layout as Germans do. To write an apostrophe, you use shift+#, which gives '.

The key with ´ and `, on the other hand, is mainly for accents.

P.S.: since you assumed that I checked your profile, maybe you should have looked a little into mine; the name might have given you some kind of indication that I am certainly not ignorant to Europe, having lived there for almost my entirely life.

The only thing that could be a problem for the OS X software market is a dirt cheap (or free) emulation layer that ran Windows software smoothly inside OS X. This would likely cause some companies to withdraw explicit OS X support.
The apps would still be clunky. If you have ever ran X11 software, that's about what it'd feel like. Or a "native" app which uses platform features poorly, like Firefox. If there really was a way to make a Windows app feel like a native one, it would have been done already.

Haxored OS X on X86 is not a threat to the Mac software market. I'm sure people will be able to hack any copy protection if they want to, and some tinkerers will do it just as a matter of principle. The limiting factor for widespread adoption is lack of graphics and chipset drivers. If you are reduced to picking component by component into your box just so you can run a haxored OS X, not only are you one person in a hundred thousand, you'd get off cheaper by just buying a Mac.

Dualbooting to Windows is also not a threat. Like gar said, software vendors can't do business if they ask their customers to run an unsupported OS.
Businesses certainly won't do this, it would be an administrative nightmare. If they want Windows they can buy another box, it's peanuts to them.
Few consumers will bother. The ones who do are likely doing it to run games, which are simply not up to par on OS X now, so nothing lost there, but probably many users gained.

Just a while ago, my new neighbor bought a computer. He came to me for advice. He uttered the magic words "... and play some games". He ended up with an Athlon64 / X800XL box built at a local vendor. I wish dualbooting Intel Macs had been available so I could have recommended one of those for him.