On the outside chance that the CNET story is literally true -- without the unspoken x86 part being read into it -- the only realistic scenario I can imagine would be if Apple had convinced Intel to make PPC-compatible chips.
That such a timeline for these transitions would be announced seems especially suspect. When was the last time Apple wasn't tight lipped about where it was going with hardware in the future? Announcing that 3 GHz G5s would be ready one year after the first G5s ring a bell?
The one major recent case of Apple not remaining tight-lipped was one where Apple got burned. Given Apple's general policy of secretiveness, and having been burned the last time they strayed from that policy, doesn't the idea that Apple would announce a phased roll-out to new processors, a roll-out that doesn't even start until 2006 and doesn't hit Power Macs until 2007, strike anyone as a bit odd?
The day Steve Jobs makes an announcement like that, he'll be munching on a ham sandwich and offering a free hunting rifle with the purchase of every new iBook.
Putting an Intel X86 processor in the Mac is not going to change the competitive picture for Apple at all. Buying an X86 Mac still means all new software for a Windows user, as well as new Mac hardware. Apple and Microsoft will not be any more or any less head-to-head if the Mac changes to Intel X86. Why not stay with the PPC?
A new Windows box would mean just as much new software for many low-end users as a new Mac box. I'm talking about the kind of people who don't install any new software. They run what came of the box. OS X and iLife vs. Windows and Office, both running on Intel hardware.
For high end users, the transition should be near the the Adobe CS4 upgrade cycle. Apple would likely need to provide free or low cost upgrades/cross grades to its pro software, not only to show goodwill to its installed base but as a marketing tactic to show that recompiling and optimizing for the new architecture isn't that hard.
The reason to jump from the PPC -- and this will be a matter of debate for years -- is because Apple does not believe being on the PPC in Nov. 2006 will put it in a good position to compete with Longhorn running on Intel or AMD hardware.
Quote:
Originally posted by snoopy
Since a X86 will not change the competitive picture, it will not significantly improve the Mac's market share. Au contraire -- going with the X86 will hurt the Mac market share for two years, until the transitions is complete. It will be fortunate if it can recover to today's share.
It will hurt sales for two years. But what will it do to the installed base? (The real market share) Will the installed base shrink? Perhaps a little. But where are users going to go? Most people will hang with their current Macs through the transition and see where things shake out. For its extensive installed base, Windows has serious problems and its own uncertainties.
When I talked about chances of success earlier, I never defined success. To me, success would be doubling market share by 2010. Failure would be folding. I think it's an all-or-nothing proposition.
This is a very risky move for Apple. They need to persuade the developers to come along (again -- but at least they have practice ), hardware sales will slump, and considering the timing of the switch box sales for OS 10.5 will be near nonexistent.
All that said, Apple is sitting on a pile of cash that can get them through the slumping sales, and if they actually have the goods, they'll be able to start printing money.
The danger of Apple as a stock is that behind the balance sheets, the company has always been managed by people who might spend the cash reserves and good will on something like this. Insanely great or just insane.
Intel processors execute the code of Windows software and that code also makes calls to Windows OS, it should be relatively easy for Mac OS X to accommodate those OS calls as well.
Most professional apps do not make tones of OS calls most of it is just C or C++ you seem to be suggesting that these OSs are runtime environments like Basic of old or worse Small-talk no that's not it. The code is compiled and turned into assembly language code, which the processors executes directly, only OS calls require help from the OS. Windows and menus all that is just simple calls there is usually much more high level language code in any given professional application.
The main event loop is a link to the OS that is like a runtime but the amount of code in the app required to make all the OS calls is rather tiny.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Today, if Windows users buy Macs, none of their Windows software will run on Mac OS X. Tomorrow, if Windows users buy X86 Macs, none of their Window software will run on Mac OS X. No change.
So how has the competitive picture improved with regard to Microsoft? What special advantage does the X86 architecture give to a Mac that will help it increase market share? A change over to X86 provides nothing special and boils down to the usual criteria of price and performance.
After reading the two new articles above, of course I have no idea how reliable those articles are, it all is starting to seem a bit surreal.
I have been an advocate of this kind of move for years, not totally to Intel just processor independence, but if I were Jobs I would build most of it before I announced it so that the transition would be as short as it can get -- that would be about a year or two, mostly for developers internally it would be done in a month or two.
This may actually be what they will do.
But back to the articles above, what if Billy G. and Stevey J. were playing a trick on Intel and IBM, SJs hatred of IBM in the early days was EPIC, I think the strangest thing of all is Apple working with IBM.
Maybe somehow MS and Apple are faking competition and will later join hands and buy out the processor market, by buying important patents.
I also believe that many people in the industry have known about this plan since about 2000, my life has been very strange since then, it is as though a very large plan is about to play out and all has been on hold until NOW !!!
If this is the case the people running things care about only ONE THING, loyalty.
Not are you loyal to them but what THINGS are you naturally loyal to.
Tomorrow, if Windows users buy X86 Macs, none of their Window software will run on Mac OS X.
Why not.
Quote:
What special advantage does the X86 architecture give to a Mac that will help it increase market share? A change over to X86 provides nothing special and boils down to the usual criteria of price and performance.
Many businesses will not buy a computer that does not run on Intel, simply because it is a mass market with multiple players, open platform. Those companies don't care about price/performance they simply assume Win/Tel is best and buy that.
Normally these people would NOT be interested in Macs even with Intel accept that the Mac mini is soo cheap.
See Intel is getting ready to ship a dual core laptop processor...
I did not know about this before but If Apple was not aching to get a processor like this something would be seriously wrong.
If this all turns out to be a red herring and people hassle me saying see it was all bull, I will just say its too bad because Apple is about to get their clock cleaned because even a G5 laptop can't complete with a duelies from Intel and AMD.
Businesses buy computers that run the applications they need. They don't care about who makes it but it just so happens that Microsoft has many of the applications they need and said applications run on Intel or AMD hardware.
Apple gains absolutely nothing moving to X86. Macs don't have the breadth of biz apps regardless of hardware.
This is why we'll find out on June 6th that Cnet and WSF are bothing hitting the crackpipe.
This is why we'll find out on June 6th that Cnet and WSF are bothing hitting the crackpipe.
Do you honestly believe that? That CNet, WSJ, and now The Inquirer are all totally wrong. The blogger from Microsoft, and Paul Thurrot sources within Intel are wrong? That's a lot of faith and or stubbornness in the face of mounting evidence.
Just three stories? Chances are C|Net saw the WSJ piece, tracked down the same source (that's giving them a lot for effort really) and just rehashed the same content in a less "journalistic" style. It's a great me too article as it is an emotional topic and gets lots of attention. So now we know not only C|Net are hit whores, but also the Inquirer.
To quote MS or Thurrott as unbiased analysis is just retarded. I'm not going to even argue that one.
Things blown out of proportion due to NO rumours surfacing I bet.
Lets see if other pictures could be painted.
Jobs and Ives seen in talks with Intel
Knee-jerk reaction : OMFG, Apple on Intel!
Did anything happen AFTER that was first reported that involved Intel in some way?
Yes.
Mac-Mini rip-off...
Do you REALLY think that this one would worry them in any way at all? It looks so identical that if I were to co-produce that product I'd make sure I showed whomever I was complementing(by copying them) what I had made just incase they decide to slap a legal team to stop said item. Possible sure, not a BIG thing of course but that might just be all there was to it.
Other than that I would only believe Intel will fab PPC's for Apple, and possibly share technologies... plus that new wifi stuff Intel have up the left sleeve may be it also.
There are a number of reasons I'm not convinced of this meaning Intel based Macs:
1. Software compatibility - I have 7 years of software, 99% of which runs under 10.3, I can't see that being possible under x86.
2. AltiVec - sure you can probably build a reasonable compatibility layer for normal legacy apps but anything that use altivec will crawl.
3. Cell - lots of technology in 10.3 points to offloading to focussed processors. Cell fits this design well.
4. Freescale - there are new dual core G4 variants coming very soon that are ideal for the 'books and mini. Dual cure G5s will be available in the next quarter too.
5. Timeline - announcing tomorrow that in 24 months you will be on x86 will kill all Pro sales and a fair few consumer sales too.
6. Microsoft - like it or not x86 OS X *will* end up on generic PCs, even just as a hack. This will seriously threaten MS who will drop Mac support. No MS Office is a serious issue.
***
The pro MacTel crowd seem to think we will be getting dual core Powerbooks and $300 Macs this week. We won't. The switch from 680x0 to PPC took a long time, and that was allowing for the fact PPC was designed to be quite 680x0 register friendly. x86 is in no way compatible meaning no high speed PPC emulation can be done.
So, while I can see the quick fix is tempting, I'm not convinced it is the answer. I think it will cause more hassle than it's really worth.
Apple just launches Tiger, and then drops a bomb like this that immediately makes people stop programming for it in it's current form?
Unlikely.
How about that they now have a version of the OS that supports multiple processor architectures much better and so they can now do it. Remember Steve's comment about "having options" once Tiger was released?
Darwin supports x86 solidly and that's where most of the endianess problems have to be resolved.
Since OS X is a derivative of NEXTSTEP/OpenStep, there is a lot of experience with dealing with the endian issues in AppKit, Foundation etc. - all the readers and writers for objects support endian swaps if necessary.
Having ported a lot! of software from NeXTSTEP on 68K to Intel and to PA-RISC, I can tell you that rebuilding your apps for the new architecture is not difficult. The only places it becomes a problem is where you've used bad programming practices that make assumptions about how data is stored internally - e.g. directly manipulating multi-byte data. That is likely to be a problem for apps like Photoshop since there's a lot of hand optimization in there, but at least Adobe wouldn't be starting from scratch - they already have hand optimized x86 code - that kind of code is generally independent of the OS APIs.
My guess is that the rumors of Marklar a couple of years ago were absolutely true - Steve's had an x86 version of OS X in place for a long time. By this point I would guess it's close to a beta test point.
So, here's my prediction of what we'll see in the Keynote:
Steve talks about Tiger and the wonderful features then notes that there's a feature that people didn't know about - It can support Intel processors.
He then rolls up an Intel based Mac prototype and demo's Tiger running on it. He then demos Apple's apps - including Final Cut, running happily on Intel.
He calls the CEO of Adobe onto the stage to demo a beta version of Photoshop for Intel.
He demos VMWare of somesuch running on OS X for Intel with performance 90% of the native Windows performance.
He finishes by telling everyone that the free developer tools they'll receive includes a beta of the OS X tools for Intel and that people can start building for Intel now, and that Apple will sell a specially configured PC from Intel to ADC members that will run OS X for Intel Beta so they can start porting now.
The beta will not run on generic hardware, and the final release will not run on anything but Macs with an Intel processor.
Then the world is amazed further when the Intel based Macs start shipping and cost no less than the PPC based machines...
Swedish maintsream media is covering the story. This must be the first time ever they've tacken any interest of an Apple rumor. True or not, this is big!
Do you honestly believe that? That CNet, WSJ, and now The Inquirer are all totally wrong. The blogger from Microsoft, and Paul Thurrot sources within Intel are wrong? That's a lot of faith and or stubbornness in the face of mounting evidence.
You're laboring under the illusion that hearing the same story from multiple sources in any way, shape or form represents corroboration of that story.
They're all just repeating the CNET story and taking CNET's word for it. Do you imagine that there's some sort of investigative process going on here where each news service independently verifies a story before repeating it? Hah!
If that's what you're thinking, you terribly underestimate the laziness of modern media, the pack mentality of modern media, and how much "fast" is valued over "accurate".
Comments
That such a timeline for these transitions would be announced seems especially suspect. When was the last time Apple wasn't tight lipped about where it was going with hardware in the future? Announcing that 3 GHz G5s would be ready one year after the first G5s ring a bell?
The one major recent case of Apple not remaining tight-lipped was one where Apple got burned. Given Apple's general policy of secretiveness, and having been burned the last time they strayed from that policy, doesn't the idea that Apple would announce a phased roll-out to new processors, a roll-out that doesn't even start until 2006 and doesn't hit Power Macs until 2007, strike anyone as a bit odd?
The day Steve Jobs makes an announcement like that, he'll be munching on a ham sandwich and offering a free hunting rifle with the purchase of every new iBook.
Originally posted by snoopy
Putting an Intel X86 processor in the Mac is not going to change the competitive picture for Apple at all. Buying an X86 Mac still means all new software for a Windows user, as well as new Mac hardware. Apple and Microsoft will not be any more or any less head-to-head if the Mac changes to Intel X86. Why not stay with the PPC?
A new Windows box would mean just as much new software for many low-end users as a new Mac box. I'm talking about the kind of people who don't install any new software. They run what came of the box. OS X and iLife vs. Windows and Office, both running on Intel hardware.
For high end users, the transition should be near the the Adobe CS4 upgrade cycle. Apple would likely need to provide free or low cost upgrades/cross grades to its pro software, not only to show goodwill to its installed base but as a marketing tactic to show that recompiling and optimizing for the new architecture isn't that hard.
The reason to jump from the PPC -- and this will be a matter of debate for years -- is because Apple does not believe being on the PPC in Nov. 2006 will put it in a good position to compete with Longhorn running on Intel or AMD hardware.
Originally posted by snoopy
Since a X86 will not change the competitive picture, it will not significantly improve the Mac's market share. Au contraire -- going with the X86 will hurt the Mac market share for two years, until the transitions is complete. It will be fortunate if it can recover to today's share.
It will hurt sales for two years. But what will it do to the installed base? (The real market share) Will the installed base shrink? Perhaps a little. But where are users going to go? Most people will hang with their current Macs through the transition and see where things shake out. For its extensive installed base, Windows has serious problems and its own uncertainties.
When I talked about chances of success earlier, I never defined success. To me, success would be doubling market share by 2010. Failure would be folding. I think it's an all-or-nothing proposition.
This is a very risky move for Apple. They need to persuade the developers to come along (again -- but at least they have practice
All that said, Apple is sitting on a pile of cash that can get them through the slumping sales, and if they actually have the goods, they'll be able to start printing money.
The danger of Apple as a stock is that behind the balance sheets, the company has always been managed by people who might spend the cash reserves and good will on something like this. Insanely great or just insane.
Originally posted by MACchine
I can't see how you can say this.
Intel processors execute the code of Windows software and that code also makes calls to Windows OS, it should be relatively easy for Mac OS X to accommodate those OS calls as well.
Most professional apps do not make tones of OS calls most of it is just C or C++ you seem to be suggesting that these OSs are runtime environments like Basic of old or worse Small-talk no that's not it. The code is compiled and turned into assembly language code, which the processors executes directly, only OS calls require help from the OS. Windows and menus all that is just simple calls there is usually much more high level language code in any given professional application.
The main event loop is a link to the OS that is like a runtime but the amount of code in the app required to make all the OS calls is rather tiny.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Today, if Windows users buy Macs, none of their Windows software will run on Mac OS X. Tomorrow, if Windows users buy X86 Macs, none of their Window software will run on Mac OS X. No change.
So how has the competitive picture improved with regard to Microsoft? What special advantage does the X86 architecture give to a Mac that will help it increase market share? A change over to X86 provides nothing special and boils down to the usual criteria of price and performance.
I have been an advocate of this kind of move for years, not totally to Intel just processor independence, but if I were Jobs I would build most of it before I announced it so that the transition would be as short as it can get -- that would be about a year or two, mostly for developers internally it would be done in a month or two.
This may actually be what they will do.
But back to the articles above, what if Billy G. and Stevey J. were playing a trick on Intel and IBM, SJs hatred of IBM in the early days was EPIC, I think the strangest thing of all is Apple working with IBM.
Maybe somehow MS and Apple are faking competition and will later join hands and buy out the processor market, by buying important patents.
I also believe that many people in the industry have known about this plan since about 2000, my life has been very strange since then, it is as though a very large plan is about to play out and all has been on hold until NOW !!!
If this is the case the people running things care about only ONE THING, loyalty.
Not are you loyal to them but what THINGS are you naturally loyal to.
Originally posted by snoopy
Tomorrow, if Windows users buy X86 Macs, none of their Window software will run on Mac OS X.
Why not.
What special advantage does the X86 architecture give to a Mac that will help it increase market share? A change over to X86 provides nothing special and boils down to the usual criteria of price and performance.
Many businesses will not buy a computer that does not run on Intel, simply because it is a mass market with multiple players, open platform. Those companies don't care about price/performance they simply assume Win/Tel is best and buy that.
Normally these people would NOT be interested in Macs even with Intel accept that the Mac mini is soo cheap.
See Intel is getting ready to ship a dual core laptop processor...
http://www.smallbizpipeline.com/163703266
I did not know about this before but If Apple was not aching to get a processor like this something would be seriously wrong.
If this all turns out to be a red herring and people hassle me saying see it was all bull, I will just say its too bad because Apple is about to get their clock cleaned because even a G5 laptop can't complete with a duelies from Intel and AMD.
Apple gains absolutely nothing moving to X86. Macs don't have the breadth of biz apps regardless of hardware.
This is why we'll find out on June 6th that Cnet and WSF are bothing hitting the crackpipe.
Originally posted by hmurchison
This is why we'll find out on June 6th that Cnet and WSF are bothing hitting the crackpipe.
Do you honestly believe that? That CNet, WSJ, and now The Inquirer are all totally wrong. The blogger from Microsoft, and Paul Thurrot sources within Intel are wrong? That's a lot of faith and or stubbornness in the face of mounting evidence.
To quote MS or Thurrott as unbiased analysis is just retarded. I'm not going to even argue that one.
http://news.com.com/Intel%2C+Apple+c...38.html?tag=nl
Lets see if other pictures could be painted.
Jobs and Ives seen in talks with Intel
Knee-jerk reaction : OMFG, Apple on Intel!
Did anything happen AFTER that was first reported that involved Intel in some way?
Yes.
Mac-Mini rip-off...
Do you REALLY think that this one would worry them in any way at all? It looks so identical that if I were to co-produce that product I'd make sure I showed whomever I was complementing(by copying them) what I had made just incase they decide to slap a legal team to stop said item. Possible sure, not a BIG thing of course but that might just be all there was to it.
Other than that I would only believe Intel will fab PPC's for Apple, and possibly share technologies... plus that new wifi stuff Intel have up the left sleeve may be it also.
/ramble off
1. Software compatibility - I have 7 years of software, 99% of which runs under 10.3, I can't see that being possible under x86.
2. AltiVec - sure you can probably build a reasonable compatibility layer for normal legacy apps but anything that use altivec will crawl.
3. Cell - lots of technology in 10.3 points to offloading to focussed processors. Cell fits this design well.
4. Freescale - there are new dual core G4 variants coming very soon that are ideal for the 'books and mini. Dual cure G5s will be available in the next quarter too.
5. Timeline - announcing tomorrow that in 24 months you will be on x86 will kill all Pro sales and a fair few consumer sales too.
6. Microsoft - like it or not x86 OS X *will* end up on generic PCs, even just as a hack. This will seriously threaten MS who will drop Mac support. No MS Office is a serious issue.
***
The pro MacTel crowd seem to think we will be getting dual core Powerbooks and $300 Macs this week. We won't. The switch from 680x0 to PPC took a long time, and that was allowing for the fact PPC was designed to be quite 680x0 register friendly. x86 is in no way compatible meaning no high speed PPC emulation can be done.
So, while I can see the quick fix is tempting, I'm not convinced it is the answer. I think it will cause more hassle than it's really worth.
Unlikely.
Originally posted by rageous
Apple just launches Tiger, and then drops a bomb like this that immediately makes people stop programming for it in it's current form?
Unlikely.
How about that they now have a version of the OS that supports multiple processor architectures much better and so they can now do it. Remember Steve's comment about "having options" once Tiger was released?
Darwin supports x86 solidly and that's where most of the endianess problems have to be resolved.
Since OS X is a derivative of NEXTSTEP/OpenStep, there is a lot of experience with dealing with the endian issues in AppKit, Foundation etc. - all the readers and writers for objects support endian swaps if necessary.
Having ported a lot! of software from NeXTSTEP on 68K to Intel and to PA-RISC, I can tell you that rebuilding your apps for the new architecture is not difficult. The only places it becomes a problem is where you've used bad programming practices that make assumptions about how data is stored internally - e.g. directly manipulating multi-byte data. That is likely to be a problem for apps like Photoshop since there's a lot of hand optimization in there, but at least Adobe wouldn't be starting from scratch - they already have hand optimized x86 code - that kind of code is generally independent of the OS APIs.
My guess is that the rumors of Marklar a couple of years ago were absolutely true - Steve's had an x86 version of OS X in place for a long time. By this point I would guess it's close to a beta test point.
So, here's my prediction of what we'll see in the Keynote:
Steve talks about Tiger and the wonderful features then notes that there's a feature that people didn't know about - It can support Intel processors.
He then rolls up an Intel based Mac prototype and demo's Tiger running on it. He then demos Apple's apps - including Final Cut, running happily on Intel.
He calls the CEO of Adobe onto the stage to demo a beta version of Photoshop for Intel.
He demos VMWare of somesuch running on OS X for Intel with performance 90% of the native Windows performance.
He finishes by telling everyone that the free developer tools they'll receive includes a beta of the OS X tools for Intel and that people can start building for Intel now, and that Apple will sell a specially configured PC from Intel to ADC members that will run OS X for Intel Beta so they can start porting now.
The beta will not run on generic hardware, and the final release will not run on anything but Macs with an Intel processor.
Then the world is amazed further when the Intel based Macs start shipping and cost no less than the PPC based machines...
Swedish maintsream media is covering the story. This must be the first time ever they've tacken any interest of an Apple rumor. True or not, this is big!
Viktor
Originally posted by FotNS
Do you honestly believe that? That CNet, WSJ, and now The Inquirer are all totally wrong. The blogger from Microsoft, and Paul Thurrot sources within Intel are wrong? That's a lot of faith and or stubbornness in the face of mounting evidence.
You're laboring under the illusion that hearing the same story from multiple sources in any way, shape or form represents corroboration of that story.
They're all just repeating the CNET story and taking CNET's word for it. Do you imagine that there's some sort of investigative process going on here where each news service independently verifies a story before repeating it? Hah!
If that's what you're thinking, you terribly underestimate the laziness of modern media, the pack mentality of modern media, and how much "fast" is valued over "accurate".
can cause an entire full scale industry wide media blitz, based on a speculative rumor.
AMD and Intel may have beaten Apple to the punch on dual core processors,
but now it seems that all eyes are on Apple.
Hopefully SJ will take full advantage of all this free publicity tomorrow.
Originally posted by Black_Dragon
here read all of this
http://news.com.com/Intel%2C+Apple+c...38.html?tag=nl
No meat to that story whatsoever. 100% fluff.