Look, I am just enjoying the sight of you lot squirming. Even if the switch does not come to pass, which is likely, reading people's rationalizations, backpedalling, disbelief, etc has been hugely entertaining. The creative attempts at explaining away the Switch have been hilarious.
Somehow your posts read more like you wished the people would squirm, rationalize, backpedall, etc. so you can gloat. There are no creative attempts at explaining away the switch, the people are merely discussing the possible scenarios which range from an Intel PPC chip, to an existing Intel core with a PPC decoder to a true x86 CPU. You, on the other hand, seem to be desperately looking for some Mac zealots losing face (cue in your egg on face.. comments to programmer's posts, which don't seem at all desperate or zealotish, at least not the way you are implying) so you can point and lol at them.
If you need to point and lol on people on a message board to feel better - well, maybe Intel and Apple will give you enough oppurtunity to do so. You just need to actually do it with people who really are on the desperate zealot side insted of making yourself look stupid by lolling reasonable arguments.
Somehow your posts read more like you wished the people would squirm, rationalize, backpedall, etc. so you can gloat.
No need for wishing - enough material as it is
And it's not as if schadenfraude is new to this forums. Witness the, sometimes justified, gloating and abuse heaped on Windows users.
Quote:
Originally posted by xype
You, on the other hand, seem to be desperately looking for some Mac zealots losing face (cue in your egg on face.. comments to programmer's posts, which don't seem at all desperate or zealotish, at least not the way you are implying)
Actaully Programmer is one of the more level-header people around here as long as you dont mention x86. As for "desperately looking" - dude the only thing I am desperate for is the final of the French Open which promises to be excellent.
Quote:
Originally posted by xype
You just need to actually do it with people who really are on the desperate zealot side insted of making yourself look stupid by lolling reasonable arguments.
What reasonable arguments can be put forward when solid facts are lacking? All is much hot air and speculation. Only fools, and analysts, are given to that sort of thing. I prefer to wait for Monday.
I don't know how many more transitions Apple can make and still keep their installed base and developers behind the Mac. If Apple is struggling with the G5, it would seem to make more sense to stick with a Xenon or Cell, but tweaked for the desktop. On the otherhand if x86 was the basis of a new Mac, it would be much easier to port Windows software over. You can then say that OS X and Windows would be competing on the same level somewhat, although I'm sure you'll probably still have Apple designed hardware.
If the news is true, I would expect Mac sales to slow and this wouldn't be good news for the bottom line and of couse the APPL stock. I know I wouldn't want to purchase a new Mac if I knew the processors were going to change. Besides, what are the developers to do? Are they going to want to go through this?
Another point ... how will Apple support OS X on the PowerPC for existing systems/customers and OS X on Intel for new systems/customers? I would think that Apple would need to ramp up on numerous levels ... developers, management, support, sales, etc ... That isn't going to be cheap.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal on Saturday confirmed CNET's report, stating that an industry executive "familiar with the matter" verified the schedule outlined in the story.
----
This sounds nothing more than the WSJ reading Scoble's blog, which I've referenced in another post.
I don't know how many more transitions Apple can make and still keep their installed base and developers behind the Mac. If Apple is struggling with the G5, it would seem to make more sense to stick with a Xenon or Cell, but tweaked for the desktop. On the otherhand if x86 was the basis of a new Mac, it would be much easier to port Windows software over. You can then say that OS X and Windows would be competing on the same level somewhat, although I'm sure you'll probably still have Apple designed hardware.
x86 does not at all make it easier to port Windows software over. They use two completely separate sets of APIs and Frameworks. The only way it's "easier" is if Apple integrates a windows emulator, which would be kinda lame unless it actually displays the programs with an Aqua look.
I don't know how many more transitions Apple can make and still keep their installed base and developers behind the Mac. If Apple is struggling with the G5, it would seem to make more sense to stick with a Xenon or Cell, but tweaked for the desktop. On the otherhand if x86 was the basis of a new Mac, it would be much easier to port Windows software over. You can then say that OS X and Windows would be competing on the same level somewhat, although I'm sure you'll probably still have Apple designed hardware.
When we look at Apple with PPC then they must also have some custom support chips as well. These chips could make manufacturing more difficult. Put yourself in Apples shoes and you are managing the flow of chips to your MB manufacturer, if they have problems how is it resolved? For example say a company is assembling the MBs and iBooks, if they run out of a curtain chip then they have to wait for more supply. Now let's say that they have problems making a similar 'book for Dell, they pick up the phone and talk to the other assembler down the road and get enough of a supply to get them through. In other words, the custom chips are not only more expensive but can be expensive to manufacture with. If Apple is to compete they need to be on board the same boat. I would also think that IBMs inability to produce a low enough power chip to go into the 'Books is hurting Apple. Using PowerPC chips and support chips means that Apple must help design the MB maybe to the point of doing it all. On the Intel side Apple can pick-up the phone and any number of factories in China have a long experience with those chip-sets. Send the SOPs, the QC / QA requirements, the drawings custom or purchased, have their engineers get with Apples engineers and a new MB is on its way. An entire industry is built around this, using custom chips Apple must swim up-stream most of the time.
And it's not as if schadenfraude is new to this forums. Witness the, sometimes justified, gloating and abuse heaped on Windows users.
Actaully Programmer is one of the more level-header people around here as long as you dont mention x86. As for "desperately looking" - dude the only thing I am desperate for is the final of the French Open which promises to be excellent.
What reasonable arguments can be put forward when solid facts are lacking? All is much hot air and speculation. Only fools, and analysts, are given to that sort of thing. I prefer to wait for Monday.
UnixPoet, just who do you think you're impressing with your inane commentaries? Anyone remotely familiar with AI knows that Programmer is the real deal. It was quite kind of him to even dignify your posts with his responses.
A switch to an Intel ISA makes absolutely no sense. Anyone who believes such a move would be profitable is ignorant and seriously deluded. Intel ISA = Apple's demise. People say SJ is mercurial, but it would take a deranged person to plot the course outlined by C|Net.
Because I let go, seeing as he/she doesn't really know what it means to be POSIX compliant, does not mean that she actually scored any point in this debate.
In any case, GNU/Linux is POSIX compliant and is the only OS that runs on as many as 10 different architectures.
it's cool mate, i was just being a smartass
btw, i'm not up late. it's 9PM now where i am and french open finals on now
gawd its going to be a painful 24++ hours till the steveNote. why do we always make ourselves suffer like this? oh, the insanity
if this is true i will personally paypal $5.00 AUD to you. once the keynote is complete, if it is true, you can PM me your paypal account. $5.00 AUD = US$4.something
The more I think about this, the more it doesn't make sense. Even if Apple was switching, Steve would never announce it during a keynote. Think about it. Steve gets up there and works the crowd to generate applause. Any x86 announcement would generate either crickets chirping or some serious boos. Steve doesn't like to be booed, I would think.
And x86 makes no sense. It would make backwards compatibility with PPC Macs a royal pain in the butt unless they plopped another chip in there.
I do think Intel could fab something for Apple, but I also think this could be smoke from other sources in an attempt to cloud a big announcement by IBM and Apple.
Here's my 2 cents. Maybe Intel is providing a custom OEM daughter card for Apple that will allow the Mac to have the PPC chip and the x86 chip in the same box, with lo level software that recognizes the difference. Now imagine being able to run Windows Programs NATIVELY on the Mac. Insert a PC install disc and it "just works". Developers have a choice... Mac or PC. Launch MS Access or some other MS only program, and it just runs... albeit with some ugly interface leftovers for the program. This becomes the final incentive for PC users to switch to Mac software when they see how the Ugly MS counterparts look. Mac users get the best of both worlds. Virtual PC is history. Your Mac is simply THE computer. Software platforms become a thing of the past. All the Windows people could start using Macs and not lose their software investment. Switchers in the droves. Intel makes more money, MS makes less and less. Dell can jump in a lake.
The oerating system is 100% Mac with custom software directing the CPU calls to the right CPU.
Thoughts??
I would love that , Apple would then have insective to use WINE and make it better like they did with Konqueror -> safari and they can give back to the community to make linux an even more viable option for "legacy" x86-32 hardware
I will kill myself if Mac OS X gets ported to x86 but Apple makes this little snotty proprietary system check that only lets me run Mac OS X on x86-based Macs. That would be the stupidest thing ever. Instead, throw your hardware away, Apple, and make your profits off of a Mac OS X that any person with a computer can run. I think that if that happened, we'd see 25% Mac marketshare over the course of a year or less.
UnixPoet, just who do you think you're impressing with your inane commentaries? Anyone remotely familiar with AI knows that Programmer is the real deal. It was quite kind of him to even dignify your posts with his responses.
A switch to an Intel ISA makes absolutely no sense. Anyone who believes such a move would be profitable is ignorant and seriously deluded. Intel ISA = Apple's demise. People say SJ is mercurial, but it would take a deranged person to plot the course outlined by C|Net.
No pedestal, please. UnixPoet has a legitimate difference of opinion on the importance of ISA.
As a software guy, I have a clear view of what it costs to modify existing software. What the X on x86 rumor proposes is a massive change to all software in the Mac universe. The cost of doing this will be enormous, even for those companies which simply hit a switch and recompile... if that happens even once. If nothing else you have to go back through your quality assurance testing (you do have that right) to make sure that it all worked. And on any piece of software of significant size there are going to be issues that require programmer time to fix. Software that is already cross-platform is not 100% cross-platform between OSX on PPC vs. x86 because the x86 variant has not been available for testing. There is much more to software development than just recompiling. Apple has a huge investment in their software, so they must know this.
Hardware is expensive too, but a single project could bring a PPC product into Intel's lineup. This project could be the conversion of an existing PPC to Intel's fab, or it could be the modification of one of Intel's own core designs to support the PPC ISA (hugely simplified by their seperate decoder architecture -- modifying a PPC to decode x86 would be much much harder). Either way it would leave Apple able to buy from 3 processor vendors, covering a very wide range of performance/price/power capabilities. It would also not disrupt the customer base at all, and it is well within even a fraction of the value of the money that Apple has in the bank right now.
We'll see tomorrow what truth there is behind these rumors, and what reasoning Steve's team is using.
Comments
Originally posted by UnixPoet
Look, I am just enjoying the sight of you lot squirming. Even if the switch does not come to pass, which is likely, reading people's rationalizations, backpedalling, disbelief, etc has been hugely entertaining. The creative attempts at explaining away the Switch have been hilarious.
Somehow your posts read more like you wished the people would squirm, rationalize, backpedall, etc. so you can gloat. There are no creative attempts at explaining away the switch, the people are merely discussing the possible scenarios which range from an Intel PPC chip, to an existing Intel core with a PPC decoder to a true x86 CPU. You, on the other hand, seem to be desperately looking for some Mac zealots losing face (cue in your egg on face.. comments to programmer's posts, which don't seem at all desperate or zealotish, at least not the way you are implying) so you can point and lol at them.
If you need to point and lol on people on a message board to feel better - well, maybe Intel and Apple will give you enough oppurtunity to do so. You just need to actually do it with people who really are on the desperate zealot side insted of making yourself look stupid by lolling reasonable arguments.
Originally posted by xype
Somehow your posts read more like you wished the people would squirm, rationalize, backpedall, etc. so you can gloat.
No need for wishing - enough material as it is
And it's not as if schadenfraude is new to this forums. Witness the, sometimes justified, gloating and abuse heaped on Windows users.
Originally posted by xype
You, on the other hand, seem to be desperately looking for some Mac zealots losing face (cue in your egg on face.. comments to programmer's posts, which don't seem at all desperate or zealotish, at least not the way you are implying)
Actaully Programmer is one of the more level-header people around here as long as you dont mention x86. As for "desperately looking" - dude the only thing I am desperate for is the final of the French Open which promises to be excellent.
Originally posted by xype
You just need to actually do it with people who really are on the desperate zealot side insted of making yourself look stupid by lolling reasonable arguments.
Another point ... how will Apple support OS X on the PowerPC for existing systems/customers and OS X on Intel for new systems/customers? I would think that Apple would need to ramp up on numerous levels ... developers, management, support, sales, etc ... That isn't going to be cheap.
Originally posted by AppleInsider
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal on Saturday confirmed CNET's report, stating that an industry executive "familiar with the matter" verified the schedule outlined in the story.
----
This sounds nothing more than the WSJ reading Scoble's blog, which I've referenced in another post.
Originally posted by iCreate
I don't know how many more transitions Apple can make and still keep their installed base and developers behind the Mac. If Apple is struggling with the G5, it would seem to make more sense to stick with a Xenon or Cell, but tweaked for the desktop. On the otherhand if x86 was the basis of a new Mac, it would be much easier to port Windows software over. You can then say that OS X and Windows would be competing on the same level somewhat, although I'm sure you'll probably still have Apple designed hardware.
x86 does not at all make it easier to port Windows software over. They use two completely separate sets of APIs and Frameworks. The only way it's "easier" is if Apple integrates a windows emulator, which would be kinda lame unless it actually displays the programs with an Aqua look.
Originally posted by iCreate
I don't know how many more transitions Apple can make and still keep their installed base and developers behind the Mac. If Apple is struggling with the G5, it would seem to make more sense to stick with a Xenon or Cell, but tweaked for the desktop. On the otherhand if x86 was the basis of a new Mac, it would be much easier to port Windows software over. You can then say that OS X and Windows would be competing on the same level somewhat, although I'm sure you'll probably still have Apple designed hardware.
When we look at Apple with PPC then they must also have some custom support chips as well. These chips could make manufacturing more difficult. Put yourself in Apples shoes and you are managing the flow of chips to your MB manufacturer, if they have problems how is it resolved? For example say a company is assembling the MBs and iBooks, if they run out of a curtain chip then they have to wait for more supply. Now let's say that they have problems making a similar 'book for Dell, they pick up the phone and talk to the other assembler down the road and get enough of a supply to get them through. In other words, the custom chips are not only more expensive but can be expensive to manufacture with. If Apple is to compete they need to be on board the same boat. I would also think that IBMs inability to produce a low enough power chip to go into the 'Books is hurting Apple. Using PowerPC chips and support chips means that Apple must help design the MB maybe to the point of doing it all. On the Intel side Apple can pick-up the phone and any number of factories in China have a long experience with those chip-sets. Send the SOPs, the QC / QA requirements, the drawings custom or purchased, have their engineers get with Apples engineers and a new MB is on its way. An entire industry is built around this, using custom chips Apple must swim up-stream most of the time.
Originally posted by UnixPoet
No need for wishing - enough material as it is
And it's not as if schadenfraude is new to this forums. Witness the, sometimes justified, gloating and abuse heaped on Windows users.
Actaully Programmer is one of the more level-header people around here as long as you dont mention x86. As for "desperately looking" - dude the only thing I am desperate for is the final of the French Open which promises to be excellent.
UnixPoet, just who do you think you're impressing with your inane commentaries? Anyone remotely familiar with AI knows that Programmer is the real deal. It was quite kind of him to even dignify your posts with his responses.
A switch to an Intel ISA makes absolutely no sense. Anyone who believes such a move would be profitable is ignorant and seriously deluded. Intel ISA = Apple's demise. People say SJ is mercurial, but it would take a deranged person to plot the course outlined by C|Net.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Because I let go, seeing as he/she doesn't really know what it means to be POSIX compliant, does not mean that she actually scored any point in this debate.
In any case, GNU/Linux is POSIX compliant and is the only OS that runs on as many as 10 different architectures.
it's cool mate, i was just being a smartass
btw, i'm not up late. it's 9PM now where i am and french open finals on now
gawd its going to be a painful 24++ hours till the steveNote. why do we always make ourselves suffer like this? oh, the insanity
PowerMacintosh G6 @ 4ghz.
Originally posted by g3pro
You heard it here first, folks:
PowerMacintosh G6 @ 4ghz.
if this is true i will personally paypal $5.00 AUD to you. once the keynote is complete, if it is true, you can PM me your paypal account. $5.00 AUD = US$4.something
Originally posted by sunilraman
btw, i'm not up late. it's 9PM now where i am and french open finals on now
Sunilraman - the time you quoted is either a crude approximation or you live in one very strange timezone!
Originally posted by Ensign Pulver
Why do fuckheads like this only ever show up on AI?
Never been to MacDailyNews I take it?
Consider yourself lucky.
Originally posted by g3pro
You heard it here first, folks:
PowerMacintosh G6 @ 4ghz.
Great, I'm looking for it.
And x86 makes no sense. It would make backwards compatibility with PPC Macs a royal pain in the butt unless they plopped another chip in there.
I do think Intel could fab something for Apple, but I also think this could be smoke from other sources in an attempt to cloud a big announcement by IBM and Apple.
Originally posted by segovius
You're confident enough to bet against it but only up to $5 AUD ?
i am poor at the moment, so i am confident, but poor
i've been using my dad's ibook for the past 7 months
Originally posted by IQatEdo
Sunilraman - the time you quoted is either a crude approximation or you live in one very strange timezone!
GMT+8
now is 10.37pm
1+ hour into the french open men's finals
Originally posted by jfdesign
Here's my 2 cents. Maybe Intel is providing a custom OEM daughter card for Apple that will allow the Mac to have the PPC chip and the x86 chip in the same box, with lo level software that recognizes the difference. Now imagine being able to run Windows Programs NATIVELY on the Mac. Insert a PC install disc and it "just works". Developers have a choice... Mac or PC. Launch MS Access or some other MS only program, and it just runs... albeit with some ugly interface leftovers for the program. This becomes the final incentive for PC users to switch to Mac software when they see how the Ugly MS counterparts look. Mac users get the best of both worlds. Virtual PC is history. Your Mac is simply THE computer. Software platforms become a thing of the past. All the Windows people could start using Macs and not lose their software investment. Switchers in the droves. Intel makes more money, MS makes less and less. Dell can jump in a lake.
The oerating system is 100% Mac with custom software directing the CPU calls to the right CPU.
Thoughts??
I would love that , Apple would then have insective to use WINE and make it better like they did with Konqueror -> safari and they can give back to the community to make linux an even more viable option for "legacy" x86-32 hardware
Originally posted by Big Mac
UnixPoet, just who do you think you're impressing with your inane commentaries? Anyone remotely familiar with AI knows that Programmer is the real deal. It was quite kind of him to even dignify your posts with his responses.
A switch to an Intel ISA makes absolutely no sense. Anyone who believes such a move would be profitable is ignorant and seriously deluded. Intel ISA = Apple's demise. People say SJ is mercurial, but it would take a deranged person to plot the course outlined by C|Net.
No pedestal, please. UnixPoet has a legitimate difference of opinion on the importance of ISA.
As a software guy, I have a clear view of what it costs to modify existing software. What the X on x86 rumor proposes is a massive change to all software in the Mac universe. The cost of doing this will be enormous, even for those companies which simply hit a switch and recompile... if that happens even once. If nothing else you have to go back through your quality assurance testing (you do have that right) to make sure that it all worked. And on any piece of software of significant size there are going to be issues that require programmer time to fix. Software that is already cross-platform is not 100% cross-platform between OSX on PPC vs. x86 because the x86 variant has not been available for testing. There is much more to software development than just recompiling. Apple has a huge investment in their software, so they must know this.
Hardware is expensive too, but a single project could bring a PPC product into Intel's lineup. This project could be the conversion of an existing PPC to Intel's fab, or it could be the modification of one of Intel's own core designs to support the PPC ISA (hugely simplified by their seperate decoder architecture -- modifying a PPC to decode x86 would be much much harder). Either way it would leave Apple able to buy from 3 processor vendors, covering a very wide range of performance/price/power capabilities. It would also not disrupt the customer base at all, and it is well within even a fraction of the value of the money that Apple has in the bank right now.
We'll see tomorrow what truth there is behind these rumors, and what reasoning Steve's team is using.