Apple on x86: Redux
The caveats: I have never had any inside information before and it is highly likely that this is the only piece I will ever get. This is everything that I know and I cannot get further clarification. For protection of the innocent reasons I can?t talk about sources.
Apparently, Steve was not lying about options and next year Apple should have three. In addition to the IBM PPC rumors and the expectation that the G4 will continue in the consumer line for a while Apple is planning on introducing a line of low-cost entry-level Macs for the education market.
With companies like Gateway and Dell flooding the education market with ultra-cheap PC?s, Apple plans to introduce their own very low-cost alternative running on x86 hardware from one of the Big 2 chip manufacturers. The BIOS will be modified on these machines so that the can only run OSX.
Apple has had OSX running on x86 for quite a while trying to decide how best to profit from this option and this is the tack that they?ve decided to take.
One other tidbit:
Apple will post a firmware update at the beginning of the year for current machines that will only allow OSX boot. (Editior's note: Obviously the update will be optional, but I presume that some performance incentive will be included to encourage updating.)
Well, that?s all. When pillorying me, remember that, while I have good reason to believe that they are accurate, these are just rumors.
Apparently, Steve was not lying about options and next year Apple should have three. In addition to the IBM PPC rumors and the expectation that the G4 will continue in the consumer line for a while Apple is planning on introducing a line of low-cost entry-level Macs for the education market.
With companies like Gateway and Dell flooding the education market with ultra-cheap PC?s, Apple plans to introduce their own very low-cost alternative running on x86 hardware from one of the Big 2 chip manufacturers. The BIOS will be modified on these machines so that the can only run OSX.
Apple has had OSX running on x86 for quite a while trying to decide how best to profit from this option and this is the tack that they?ve decided to take.
One other tidbit:
Apple will post a firmware update at the beginning of the year for current machines that will only allow OSX boot. (Editior's note: Obviously the update will be optional, but I presume that some performance incentive will be included to encourage updating.)
Well, that?s all. When pillorying me, remember that, while I have good reason to believe that they are accurate, these are just rumors.
Comments
Or maybe its all about marketshare and tempting people to make the "switch".
With the loyalty of macusers maybe Apple should adopt a similar policy as consolemakers (Nintendo etc.). Sell the cheapest consumer macs underpriced and make up for it in . Mac memberships and Apple Software...?
Funny how NO DEVELOPER has ever received any SEED CODE for OSX x86. That would be a nightmare and its been talked about to death here.
Puck.
However, if Apple could bring back the CUBE G4 at a price of $499, my company would BUY dozens of them tomorrow.
-Also I've always said if the CUBE was under $500 and had a RCA/S-video video out, it could be positioned as the ultimate home entertainment device.
[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: JPF ]</p>
and you've talked to every developer about this?
if apple is going to compatiblity there is now need to bring in the third parties. its not like they are going to ship this in nov or anything.
phhhht.
The only thing that would make X86 OSX a success is Developers and it's tough enough getting them to carbonize their current apps.
The motives for these asinine posts are always the same.
Apple goes to X86 because it's cheaper. I contend that Apple hardware beyond the case is just as inexpensive as the typical Tier1 vendor. UMA has allowed them to realize economies of scale on the motherboards.
There is no reasonable explanation to why Apple would benefit from X86.
And then they ask me, how the heck are they suppose to test all their great Mac software (that they just ported to OSX PPC with Carbon), if they don't have the seed Apple x86 hardware to run their seed OSX x86 code?
Then I said, "oh" and then I quickly came to the AI boards and posted what I just found it.
Paging Jamie...Jamie to Future Hardware....can you please confirm that this guys post is the exact same thing I told you about a month ago!!!
This is going to happen in January. I never said anything because my source told me the x86 Macs were for "Education" and I didn't believe it. I thought he/she had their info wrong.
[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Willoughby ]</p>
Gawd. Apple has to address the sub $500 market with a machine. This market is growing like 100 flod everyday. Every major PC OEM (except for IBM $609) has a PC under $500.
Apple will release a PowerPC based machine with no monitor at a very very reasonable cost. I think its the relaunch of the Cube at $499.
<strong>....
There is no reasonable explanation to why Apple would benefit from X86.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Because the G4 is a slow POS of a CPU with no prospects of getting much better anytime soon?
Step one. Everyone turn a half step to left and put your hands around the neck of the person next to you. Now everyone pull hard and help your neighbor get his head out of his ass. If you're at the right most end of the line, sorry, you're out of luck. Unless we can make a circle. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
<strong>
Because the G4 is a slow POS of a CPU with no prospects of getting much better anytime soon?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why would you say that? I think it's a nice processor. The P4 doesn't even do SMP for Chrissakes.
Matsu's right. X86 would only dilute Apple resources for minimal gain.
However, the rumours of AMD being 'involved' somehow...(in light of Moki's AMD 'hint', 'powerful allie...') make the thread header very interesting. AMD's least expensive XP chips are more powerful than the best G4s.
The idea of a cheap monitorless edu' box in itself is not outlandish. Dell are giving Apple's Edu' boxes a damn hammering. And the school I work at goes on bottom line. Price. And what everybody else has: 'windows xp'. Still. A sub £500 Cube? G4?
If Apple could stick them in a dirt cheap Cube x86 box to compete with the Dells in Education? Why not?
But where do the Apps come from? Or maybe...maybe a unique dual x86/PPC boot system? A system edu' guys could run Mac and PC on?
Apple needs rid of 9 because x is the future. No gain keeping 9 on. But an x86 dual boot? If people are going to buy x86 ANYWAY for education...then they at least get Apple's edu' iapps for free! It's a trojan horse. No sales, no sales = no sales. Therefore, producing a dual boot of x86 and PPC...slightly more expensive motherboard...cheap G4, cheap xp...still work out cheaper than Apple's eMac cos no monitor et al. Bare bones?
A cheap G4 bundled with Virtual PC?
Apple needs marketshare and money. If they can make a sub £500 in this growing market...they'll do it if they can make money off each one. They don't make that much money off each iPod reportedly. AND that's available for Mac and PC...
I wonder how Apple would implement such a thing for a cheap edu' box?
If Apple ever did implement x86...I guess they'd come up with something unique. What else would we expect from the company that did the impossible? Mac on Unix.
Hmmm. This whole thing makes my head hurt. Only apple knows for sure. Maybe they are thinking the 'unthinkable.' I still refuse to rule it out. Most people come at this from one angle and dismiss it. But considering the greater evil of Dell? Who knows what might force Apple's hand. The so called 'eMacs' just aren't cheap enough, are they?
Lemon bon bon
[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
Reflux, you mean...
G-News
Just the switch to OS X is going to take 6-8 years - compound that with by fracturing the user base between two processor architectures and I think you've got yourself an exodus of biblical proportions.
I swear that if I could strangle people over the internet . . .
However, the rumours of AMD being 'involved' somehow...(in light of Moki's AMD 'hint', 'powerful allie...') make the thread header very interesting. AMD's least expensive XP chips are more powerful than the best G4s.</strong>
AMD is not a powerful ally. If Apple needs an ally, they would have to go with 1) Intel 2) maybe IBM or 3) a multinational conglomerate. If you haven't noticed, AMD is already going down path number 3 to shore up its fab front.
The fact that AMD has nice processors based on their K7/8 microarchitectures doesn't mean much when AMD is starting to fall behind in fab. Under this light, I don't see how AMD could be a powerful ally at all.
<strong>If Apple could stick them in a dirt cheap Cube x86 box to compete with the Dells in Education? Why not?</strong>
Apple, or rather the PowerPC market, can have cheap PPC boxes if they want to. It's more a question of if they want to, not if they can. Going x86 doesn't buy them anything whatsoever since it'll limit Mac OS 10 apps. In fact any move towards x86 boxes at all is foolishness because there is no room between battling a combined x86 "no margin" box companies and MS group-think and bundling.
<strong>I wonder how Apple would implement such a thing for a cheap edu' box?</strong>
Well, if Moto would actually produce a 0.13u G4, they can probably sell an 800 MHz G4 sans monitor for $700, maybe less. Essentially eMac guts without the moniter.
reflux adj. Returning, or flowing back; reflex.
Interesting, practically synonymous, connotations aside.
Apple has been getting pummeled in the education market lately. Anecdotally, a friend who is involved in the local school system mentioned that two of the schools recently switched from Mac to PC. The main reason was that they couldn?t turn down the Gateway price, which was less than $400 per machine.
I certainly don?t know what path Apple will take, and before this weekend would have been highly dubious that they would consider an OSX on x86 solution at the same time that they were pondering the switch to IBM. However, they do need to drastically reduce price in order to compete in this arena and the Marklar info does support that Apple has been playing with x86 for some time.
There is a wealth of disparate opinions on this and other boards as to how difficult this would be to implement. If it turns out to be easier than some have indicated, OSX on cheap x86 boxes for the education market could make things interesting.
PC motherboards enjoy a significant economy of scale, but porting OS X to generic PC motherboards opens a great big can of worms. Modifying them basically eliminates the economy of scale. They might as well recycle the iMac mobo; that would allow them to bring down costs on the iMac and the eMac as well.
Apple has access to a low-cost chip: The G3. I remember reading that it cost them $25 a pop in the original iMac. So that's not a problem. I doubt the G4 is pricey either at this point, or it wouldn't be showing up in eMacs.
It seems like Apple has several concerns: Profit margins are low on their low-end stuff, so I don't think this is one, but they might be desperate enough to gain education share to risk a loss leader. AIO's are great for education - the eMac was basically designed for the LA unified school district, after all - but they do inflate the cost of entry for the most parsimonious schools, and more importantly the perceived cost of entry. Apple also uses high-quality cases. They can't chintz on that too much without releasing a machine that will be destroyed by students, though.
They could, right now, release a plain little pizza box with an iMac CRT mobo for dirt. It would be good enough. It would allow schools to recycle monitors. They could release a higher-end pizza box with an iMac/eMac mobo inexpensively.
Certainly, the means exist within OS X to ship fat applications, with x86 binaries and PPC binaries coexisting transparently in the same bundle, but that doesn't mean it's easy to get to the point where you have one of those bundles. Code will need to be ported, and reoptimized. Not only OS 9, but Classic itself will probably be gone. Good luck selling a machine that can't run OS 9 to the education market.
Besides, the argument used to shoehorn PCs into schools is not only up-front cost: There is also the "learn what's used in the real-world" argument, which, however ridiculous, seems to be persuasive - and that means Windows, not x86. There is also the unspoken argument that the IT people making these recommendations will recommend what they're familiar with (and what will keep them employed), and that's Windows on x86, not just x86.
Finally, 32 bit x86 is a trailing-edge technology. Why would Apple jump on it now?
- Quartz 2 becomes "remotable" a la the "NXRemote" feature of Display Postscript back in the NEXTSTEP days.
- Xserve gets a CPU boost.
- eMac 2 becomes an inexpensive (< $500), diskless workstation (along the lines of a X-windows workstation) which requires an Xserver to boot from.
It seems like a solution like this would work in a lot of school computer labs.
For Apple to ever get the average person to choose a Mac they need to offer a regular PC that can run Windows and also OS X. Your average person is not adventurous. It is too much to expect them to take a blind jump to the Mac. They are not going to spend $1100 for a machine that can't run Windows (VPC doesn't count). BUT, if you give them a regular PC that costs $200 more than a Dell, looks really cool, and also runs OS X, then they have very little to lose. If they don't like the Mac, they paid a little more and still have a cool looking computer that runs Windows.
The other reason to go to x86 is that sales of PowerMac G4s have steadily decreased from 350K-400K down to 167K last quarter. It's got nothing to do with the recession. The drop has been going on for two years and started exactly when the megahertz gap opened up. Steve would have more info than us to decide whether Motorola had any really hope of keeping up with x86 and he probably knew they didn't.
So let's assume Steve has wanted to move to x86 since he started at Apple. Don't argue with it, just look at how it explains a number of things. First of all, before Apple had any real possibility to move to x86 they need for most developers to have done their work in Carbonizing. They couldn't tell developers both to carbonize AND to get ready for x86 because some would have just quit the platform. OS X is not as strong as OS 9 is in developer support and Apple needs as many programs as they can get on OS X. They can't alienate half their developers. So for five years Steve Jobs tells analysts "We have no plans to move to x86". Then, when the date finally arrives that it is within reach he says"Soon we'll have options, and we like having options".
If Apple is going to move to x86, quite obviously it is the best time and probably necessary to totally leave Classic behind. Classic can't be ported to x86. Is it just coincidence that the time when they stop booting of Classic is the exact same time when Steve says it is now possible to look at other processor options? I don't think so. Not having Classic will require less RAM and a lttle less hard drive space. Ditching Classic is one of the obvious steps necessary in moving to x86.
So you have OS X finally having satisfactory support, Apple killing Classic although it may bother some customers, and Steve talking about having processor options all happening at the exact same time, Jan 2003, which is MacWorld. If Steve wants to move to x86, it's now or never. There are no more reasons to wait. He's already shown he has no problem infuriating Microsoft. he doesn't care how they will respond. And don't forget about the talk about OpenOffice being ported to Aqua. First it came out and then Sun actually blamed News.com for lying and then took it back. That sounds fishy. OpenOffice would be necessary to have around to fall back on if Microsoft gets nasty. So maybe at MacWorld we'll see a major attack from Apple. Macs starting to move to x86 and OpenOffice being promoted because Microsoft Office costs $459 which keeps a lot of people from switching.
<strong>OMG! This is spot on with what I heard. :eek: </strong><hr></blockquote>
Really? What's your source?
Beause a little birdy told me that Mac OS X/x86 is simply a back-up plan. Apple believes that using CPUs 100% compatible (with exeption of AltiVec and 32v64-bit) will yeild better performance, costs and applications.
There is a faction inside Apple that wants X to be ported to x86, for egalitarian reasons (eg wanting all to have the benifits of their work... not just Mac users). However, the people in control are business men and women who do not share this view.
Barto