People think getting chip parity with windows will close the perceived performance gap. I'm not sure it will.
Well, I know it means nothing, but Steve's demo of iPhoto was pretty fucken fast. Single processor too.
*Oh shit - the girlfriend wants sex NOW - I answer the rest later. YIPEE!
You also get a lot of "Windows Sucks" posts here and on Slashdot, but the average user is comfortable and happy with Windows.
Anyway, here's another Arstecnichnica that pretty much sums up how I feel. Even if it was only a pipe-dream, while Apple was on a separate architechture I could always hope for some Mac Only breakthrough. Something that would launch my favorite computer into the lead. Now we have parity, and that's all we'll ever have with hardware--parity. That's probably good enough, but it's sad to see the dream die.
On a side note, did anyone else notice in the conference Steve's somewhat somber tone at saying they were switching to Intel?
Somber? I have never seen him that nervous, tense and somewhat frightened as in the last keynote. I guess he knows how hard the next 24 months will be for Apple.
One of the touted advantages of this in the media is that it will be easier to port Wintel programs.
What media is writing this? Whatever the case I'd rather see a developer that has ported an app for both PPC OS X, and x86 OS X say that before I believe it.
Quote:
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
But most users don't seem to think Windows sucks, otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation because Macs would be selling in huge volumes. I think Apple will have to try harder to keep it's unique brand.
You probably have not had computing experience enough to realize that you are about 99% wrong on that. Even 90%+ of Windows users think windows sucks. (99.9% of Mac users do for sure) The obvious thing when selling a computer is there is more software on the windows side, and more choices when buying a computer. If I worked in a an electronics chain on sales commissions how would I survive . Show the customers more pretty software boxes with pretty pictures, more computers that all look different. All that, and more options to get them all the more excited, That is also why Apples volume is not that of wintel. Along with years of fear from Microsoft in the Office space. The majority of Microsoft's business (after they got on every x86 computer) came in exploiting the Office. H3ll.. What's the biggest app they make for the Mac = Office.
Quote:
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
But the game console market at least wasn't actively hostile to Apple, which Dell and MS are.
M$ hasn't really been hostile towards Apple for some time. They are going to win really big on the XBOX 360, and then they can worry about long-tooth, and Apple in another 2 years. They are going to be tying everything into the 360, so unless Apple gets into the home media game M$ should remain docile for a while. MS at this point has nothing to fear from Apple, but I'm sure they are paying quite close attention. But for them in a nutshell. I think the 360 is their killer app, and that is their iPod. If Apple was smart, and they are. If they do get into the home meadia space they need not to compete with 360 they need to be 100% compatible with it, and compliment it in such a way no one would want to be without it. iTunes can possibly get them part of the way there. (*onlooker flies straight out the wondow looking for the oroginal topic)
I'm really excited about the whole thing. As Steve said at the Keynote, the Mac is about the OS. In two years time we will have a OS and platform that can run on chips from all the main players. This will mean that Apple can always bring out products with the latest performance while Microsoft is locked into only Intel and AMD. If the software is all universal binaries then it matters nothing on what processor is in the machine. I don't fear buying a PowerPC machine in the next 12 months as it will run no differently to any future Mac. The future Intel machines will be up to date with the competition, will have far more options and flexibility when it comes to compatibility across platforms. I look forward to the day when I can combine the money I pay for a Mac and a PC now and just replace it with one shiny Intel PowerMac running OS X 10.5 and the ability to play games like Far Cry and Halflife 2.
Apple has been doing pretty good for the past few years. Every thing they do we seem to moan and then are proved wrong. We moan when they trashed SCSI and a floppy drive on the original iMac. Now we feel stupid to think that we needed them. Most laughed at the idea of the iPod when it first arrived, look at that now. Most also predicted that the Apple Music Store was a mistake......I rest my case.
We all know that Mac is better than PC, now we will have the opportunity to prove it.
This might especially be problematic if, as an Ars Technica review seemed to indicate, there are problems with the mach kernal. In their benchmarks, it seemed to have trouble with threading. Now, as long as the hardware was slightly different, the benchmark remain unclear. But now, if it's slower than the NT kernal then Apple's will just be slower. No chance to leapfrog, not even on very specific benchmarks.
It was only certain types of situations more typical of server than workstation usage, like MySQL trying to handle numerous simulataneous queries, that brought out a major performance problem. Going from PPC to x86 probably won't help or hurt this problem is any particular way. What the test showed is that if Apple wants to have their systems considered seriously for certain kinds of heavy-duty server use, they need to look at some issues with thread-switching overhead and kernel access bottlenecks.
You probably have not had computing experience enough to realize that you are about 99% wrong on that. Even 90%+ of Windows users think windows sucks. (99.9% of Mac users do for sure) The obvious thing when selling a computer is there is more software on the windows side, and more choices when buying a computer. If I worked in a an electronics chain on sales commissions how would I survive . Show the customers more pretty software boxes with pretty pictures, more computers that all look different. All that, and more options to get them all the more excited, That is also why Apples volume is not that of wintel. Along with years of fear from Microsoft in the Office space. The majority of Microsoft's business (after they got on every x86 computer) came in exploiting the Office. H3ll.. What's the biggest app they make for the Mac = Office.
Yeah, I've only been using computers professionally since 1987, so I really don't know much. I'm so old, I learned to program Pascal on Apple II's in college. I can still remember how to code in Assembly on those machines.
I think windows sucks. Two others on my development team do as well. The rest quite happily use windows. They complain about it the same way they complain about the weather.
Selling software to Disney and Hallmark, we practically had to force the Mac versions on them. The market, baffling as it may be, just doesn't seem to care. Big businesses still buy Windows, most customers still by Windows. The sales figures just don't lie. People are not yet motivated enough to consider Linux or Mac worth the hassle.
It's seemed to be starting to change. Sales have been good lately. Which is why the timing of this is strange. Apple needs to tell more of the story to convince fence sitters not to just wait out the next 18 month
We won't have any more options than we have today. Powermacintel will be locked down. You can run windows I presume but OSX will stay on Apple hardware thus you will pay a premium.
The benefit to the consumer is the same as it was before Steve announced the transition, you get a Mac. I do not expect to have more options now that Intel will be supplying the chips because, to me, Apple sells computers, not hardware, not software, not a combination of the two, even though that is what they do, but a computer. This is no different than when you buy a new car. They sell a base system and you can upgrade components (i.e. no A/C to A/C, AM/FM radio to AM/FM radio with 6 CD changer, etc.), but they decide what you can upgrade and what the upgrade will be.
Microsoft, on the other hand, says "We will provide you with an operating system, but you will have to get your hardware from wherever you can get it, put it together, and if they followed our guidelines you will have a working computer. This is why people can slap a Windows box together for a couple hundred bucks.
Even if Apple and Dell used the same CPU, RAM, hard/CD/DVD drives, FSB speed, and manufactured at the same factory, but Apple charged $300.00 more for their computer, consumers would not be paying more for the same thing because of the following two reasons:
It's seemed to be starting to change. Sales have been good lately. Which is why the timing of this is strange. Apple needs to tell more of the story to convince fence sitters not to just wait out the next 18 month
Not that strange. Apple is on the up in a good position to switch. I cant think of a better time for them. They probably have the next years worth of Products planned out, and plan on continuing their up rise. It's the future that concerned them. If they saw another G4 dive bomb coming, I'd rather they get moving now rather than wait 2 years, and watch the rest of the world pass me by again. I think they had us in mind when they decided to make the switch, and If they think IBM is going to "tank it" on them I can see why they are prepairing. I think everything should be great as long as you get your developer package, and do what you can when you can do it.
Yet you seem to outline the problem right here. The switch will be unnoticeable to consumers--no real advantages except faster clock-speed on portables. And yet it's a burden on the already shrinking number of Mac developers.
Shrinking? Where on earth did you get that idea from?
Largest WWDC attendance ever - over 500,000 ADC members - more and more enterprise software appearing on Mac OS X.
A problem for us armchair CEOs is that we don't have access to what Steve knows. Both IBM and Intel have given him a private look at their futures. It is clear from what they told him that he believes that the future is much better with Intel than it is with IBM.
It doesn't look like IBM is able to solve the heat problem. And things will only get more difficult at 65nm.
I think this is an incredibly complicated change. On the one hand we have Intel. It looks like they have better solutions for the low power market. That is a hugely important part of the market. Also, we don't know what other horse-trading went on. Apple can help Intel launch new technologies. Apple can help showcase Intel hardware. It is no secret that Intel has been unhappy from time to time with MS. We don't yet know exactly what processors will be used by Apple in the high end two or more years from now. Will Intel adopt Altivec for some processors? Apple has no interest in legacy x86 code. This might be a great opportunity for Intel to come release a chip that is free of legacy support.
On the other hand. Apple has said they will be using G4/G5 CPUs for at least two years. That means they will support universal binaries for at least about seven years. That is a very long time. If IBM pulls out a miracle in that time there is nothing to prevent Apple from using a future G5 (G6/G7). Apple now has the option of picking and choosing from the best of both worlds.
If IBM pulls out a miracle in that time there is nothing to prevent Apple from using a future G5 (G6/G7). Apple now has the option of picking and choosing from the best of both worlds.
Bingo. Nothing to stop Apple from continuing to use PowerPCs in, say, servers if they choose to do so.
Only the future will tell if this decision is the worst busisness decision of SJ. Apple has the culture of secret, and we don't know all the reasons behind this decision.
My self I have said a week ago, that the switch to Intel would be stupid for several reasons. I was wrong, Apple did the switch. I just hope that SJ made the good decision : future will tell us.
Now the biggest advantage of this switch is that you will not have to choose between Apple and windows : you can have both word in one system.
As far as "how will Apple get people to pay a premium for Dell kit?":
Same way Sony does. Same way Alienware does. Same way as they always have.
The idea that a computer is nothing more than its CPU, and that therefore Apple will somehow look extra greedy trying to sell a box with a given processor for more than Dell sells a box with the same processor is clearly ridiculous. A quick look at the some of the premium PC manufacturer's line-up tells you that.
OS, fit and finish, industrial design, integration of all the parts, early adoption of new technology, clever packaging-- that's the stuff that has kept Apple going all these years, market share be damned. They do it because they care about the user experience in a way that the vast majority PC manufacturers, and clearly Dell in particular, don't. Do you think having a Pentium in it would have mysteriously caused the iMac to turn into Dell's clunky idea of an "all-in-one?" Or that Apple is suddenly going to start jamming their boards into beige boxes which they brazenly charge extra for?
And if you think all the stuff that makes a Mac more than a prettied-up beige box are just marketing gimmicks that will be exposed once it has the same processor as the PC on the next shelf over, wtf are you doing on the platform in the first place?
Anybody who says that switching to Intel inside means Apple will be selling "overpriced commodity PCs" is just using the same slander that PC enthusiasts have using against the Mac all along ("Ha! You Mac zealots are willing to pay the Steve tax for your precious pretty plastic!"), which would be amusingly ironic if it weren't so pig stupid and irritating.
Well said. I expect Apple's hardware to be EVEN MORE PIMPING when Yonahs and whatnot are under the hood. The G4 sucks for performance (100/133/166mhz bus, sorry, but true.). The G5 is a hot, power hungry 64 bit behemoth. The future of consumer macs lies with neither of the above. Thank God.
However I will say that now Apple has no perceived advantage anymore.
...nor does it have any perceived disadvantage. This takes the CPU out of the equation and it becomes a fight between OSs - something, interestingly, Mr. Jobs made specific reference to at the end of the keynote.
Hmmm... About time to contribute to my own thread, methinks.
Having calmed down and thought about this a lot, I think I'll stick with my original feeling that switching to x86 is a poor decision.
firstly apologies in advance for any rambling and/or incoherency. There are so many interwoven issues here and I don't really have time to work out the best order in which to say things.
John Siracusa at ars technica has summed up quite a lot of my feelings here.
If anybody thinks that x86 is superior in every single area of performance to the PPC 970 RIGHT NOW, you are seriously deluding yourself. There is absolutely no way that motion, final cut pro HD and the like would run as fast on x86 hardware. There are plenty of other areas where the G5 is better, as evidenced by the Top 500 list of supercomputers. Now, I'm not saying that the x86 is total rubbish - it is better for some tasks. For example, the Mac platform does have a problem in portable computing at the moment. The freescale 8641D does look very, very promising, but maybe it got delayed yet again.
Lots of people are speculating that if the PPC is still better than x86 for certain tasks in 2007, then Apple will just stick with them and have a dual processor strategy* for a while. But as I said, this is just pure speculation. Apple should have explicitly made that their strategy, rather than planning from the outset to eventually completely abandon PPC. IMHO, the sort of people who are technically savvy enough to realise that the PPC is currently vastly superior to x86 FOR SOME TASKS (such as multimedia) are just the sort of people who would be seriously concerned about the fact that their machines will become obsolete pretty quickly.
Which software vendors do you think are going to bother doing any PPC optimisations at all from now on? If Apple had announced a dual processor strategy*, PPC optimisations would still be done by some developers.
(* i.e., some Apple computers have x86, others have PPC)
Additionally, this would have encouraged competition between IBM, Freescale, Intel and AMD for Apple's business. Perhaps IBM and Freescale would have decided that it wasn't worth it, PPC would be overtaken by x86, and then Apple could abandon PPC. I just can't understand why they're already saying they will definitely abandon it.
As smircle says...I doubt people are going to spend $100s of dollars more for what is the exact same computer down to the CPU. It's not going to happen. Before we could all revel in Jobsian fantasy about megahertz myths and how uber cool the PowerPC was. Today he just demolished that fantasy. Apple has a much harder road now.
Longhorn is going to perform better on the same hardware it's going to be more secure and good enough to keep the denizens onboard. What we just heard today was Apple raising the white flag.
A bit melodramatic to my taste.
Anyway, and finally it all boils down to the
processor roadmap intel, ibm and others
explained to apple. I guess intel explained it best.
I believe (and experienced it several times) that the
PPC was AND is a pretty good processor compared
to intel offerings. Now. But in 2 years? What about in
to intel offerings. Now. But in 2 years? What about in
6 years? I guess intel answered these questions
more than adequate.
Well, S.J. finally realised that the PowerPC is a
pipedream and intel got its pipeline straight.
my2cents [/B]
Sorry talking about anything in future beyond 2 years is nonsense. Simply by looking in the past the development in VLSI you can tell that things don't work out the way they were planned (e.g. 130nm -> 90nm).
My take on this switch is simply: Currently I simply don't know how this will turn out! But the reasons for the switch are surely not technical alone. Steve's ego cannot deal with the fact the Apple is a small fish in the CPU business. He wants the set the rules but neither Mot nor Ibm where willing to accept this. The switch shows his inability to make compromises. Cell looks 10 times more promising than anything Intel has to offer now or in 2 years. For me Apple will become a JAIB (just another Intel box) maker. My excitement for future Apple events has vanished.
I'm sad now *Hugging my cube and sigh*
BTW: I had the chance to see a little Programm running on Longhorn. All I can say MS is clearly becoming more sexy, so don't fool yourselfs thinking that X will crush Longhorn.
Which software vendors do you think are going to bother doing any PPC optimisations at all from now on? If Apple had announced a dual processor strategy*, PPC optimisations would still be done by some developers.
If they use the tools available (auto vectorization and the Accelerate framework), apps will be optimized for both processors.
But all the HPC people are nervous as Intel doesn't have something that can replace AltiVec at the moment.
Comments
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
People think getting chip parity with windows will close the perceived performance gap. I'm not sure it will.
Well, I know it means nothing, but Steve's demo of iPhoto was pretty fucken fast. Single processor too.
*Oh shit - the girlfriend wants sex NOW - I answer the rest later. YIPEE!
You also get a lot of "Windows Sucks" posts here and on Slashdot, but the average user is comfortable and happy with Windows.
Anyway, here's another Arstecnichnica that pretty much sums up how I feel. Even if it was only a pipe-dream, while Apple was on a separate architechture I could always hope for some Mac Only breakthrough. Something that would launch my favorite computer into the lead. Now we have parity, and that's all we'll ever have with hardware--parity. That's probably good enough, but it's sad to see the dream die.
http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050607.ars [/B]
Originally posted by octane
On a side note, did anyone else notice in the conference Steve's somewhat somber tone at saying they were switching to Intel?
Somber? I have never seen him that nervous, tense and somewhat frightened as in the last keynote. I guess he knows how hard the next 24 months will be for Apple.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
One of the touted advantages of this in the media is that it will be easier to port Wintel programs.
What media is writing this? Whatever the case I'd rather see a developer that has ported an app for both PPC OS X, and x86 OS X say that before I believe it.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
But most users don't seem to think Windows sucks, otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation because Macs would be selling in huge volumes. I think Apple will have to try harder to keep it's unique brand.
You probably have not had computing experience enough to realize that you are about 99% wrong on that. Even 90%+ of Windows users think windows sucks. (99.9% of Mac users do for sure) The obvious thing when selling a computer is there is more software on the windows side, and more choices when buying a computer. If I worked in a an electronics chain on sales commissions how would I survive . Show the customers more pretty software boxes with pretty pictures, more computers that all look different. All that, and more options to get them all the more excited, That is also why Apples volume is not that of wintel. Along with years of fear from Microsoft in the Office space. The majority of Microsoft's business (after they got on every x86 computer) came in exploiting the Office. H3ll.. What's the biggest app they make for the Mac = Office.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
But the game console market at least wasn't actively hostile to Apple, which Dell and MS are.
M$ hasn't really been hostile towards Apple for some time. They are going to win really big on the XBOX 360, and then they can worry about long-tooth, and Apple in another 2 years. They are going to be tying everything into the 360, so unless Apple gets into the home media game M$ should remain docile for a while. MS at this point has nothing to fear from Apple, but I'm sure they are paying quite close attention. But for them in a nutshell. I think the 360 is their killer app, and that is their iPod. If Apple was smart, and they are. If they do get into the home meadia space they need not to compete with 360 they need to be 100% compatible with it, and compliment it in such a way no one would want to be without it. iTunes can possibly get them part of the way there. (*onlooker flies straight out the wondow looking for the oroginal topic)
Apple has been doing pretty good for the past few years. Every thing they do we seem to moan and then are proved wrong. We moan when they trashed SCSI and a floppy drive on the original iMac. Now we feel stupid to think that we needed them. Most laughed at the idea of the iPod when it first arrived, look at that now. Most also predicted that the Apple Music Store was a mistake......I rest my case.
We all know that Mac is better than PC, now we will have the opportunity to prove it.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
This might especially be problematic if, as an Ars Technica review seemed to indicate, there are problems with the mach kernal. In their benchmarks, it seemed to have trouble with threading. Now, as long as the hardware was slightly different, the benchmark remain unclear. But now, if it's slower than the NT kernal then Apple's will just be slower. No chance to leapfrog, not even on very specific benchmarks.
It was only certain types of situations more typical of server than workstation usage, like MySQL trying to handle numerous simulataneous queries, that brought out a major performance problem. Going from PPC to x86 probably won't help or hurt this problem is any particular way. What the test showed is that if Apple wants to have their systems considered seriously for certain kinds of heavy-duty server use, they need to look at some issues with thread-switching overhead and kernel access bottlenecks.
Originally posted by onlooker
You probably have not had computing experience enough to realize that you are about 99% wrong on that. Even 90%+ of Windows users think windows sucks. (99.9% of Mac users do for sure) The obvious thing when selling a computer is there is more software on the windows side, and more choices when buying a computer. If I worked in a an electronics chain on sales commissions how would I survive . Show the customers more pretty software boxes with pretty pictures, more computers that all look different. All that, and more options to get them all the more excited, That is also why Apples volume is not that of wintel. Along with years of fear from Microsoft in the Office space. The majority of Microsoft's business (after they got on every x86 computer) came in exploiting the Office. H3ll.. What's the biggest app they make for the Mac = Office.
Yeah, I've only been using computers professionally since 1987, so I really don't know much.
I think windows sucks. Two others on my development team do as well. The rest quite happily use windows. They complain about it the same way they complain about the weather.
Selling software to Disney and Hallmark, we practically had to force the Mac versions on them. The market, baffling as it may be, just doesn't seem to care. Big businesses still buy Windows, most customers still by Windows. The sales figures just don't lie. People are not yet motivated enough to consider Linux or Mac worth the hassle.
It's seemed to be starting to change. Sales have been good lately. Which is why the timing of this is strange. Apple needs to tell more of the story to convince fence sitters not to just wait out the next 18 month
Originally posted by hmurchison
What's the benefit to the consumer here?
We won't have any more options than we have today. Powermacintel will be locked down. You can run windows I presume but OSX will stay on Apple hardware thus you will pay a premium.
The benefit to the consumer is the same as it was before Steve announced the transition, you get a Mac. I do not expect to have more options now that Intel will be supplying the chips because, to me, Apple sells computers, not hardware, not software, not a combination of the two, even though that is what they do, but a computer. This is no different than when you buy a new car. They sell a base system and you can upgrade components (i.e. no A/C to A/C, AM/FM radio to AM/FM radio with 6 CD changer, etc.), but they decide what you can upgrade and what the upgrade will be.
Microsoft, on the other hand, says "We will provide you with an operating system, but you will have to get your hardware from wherever you can get it, put it together, and if they followed our guidelines you will have a working computer. This is why people can slap a Windows box together for a couple hundred bucks.
Even if Apple and Dell used the same CPU, RAM, hard/CD/DVD drives, FSB speed, and manufactured at the same factory, but Apple charged $300.00 more for their computer, consumers would not be paying more for the same thing because of the following two reasons:
1) The OS
2) The design of the mother board.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
It's seemed to be starting to change. Sales have been good lately. Which is why the timing of this is strange. Apple needs to tell more of the story to convince fence sitters not to just wait out the next 18 month
Not that strange. Apple is on the up in a good position to switch. I cant think of a better time for them. They probably have the next years worth of Products planned out, and plan on continuing their up rise. It's the future that concerned them. If they saw another G4 dive bomb coming, I'd rather they get moving now rather than wait 2 years, and watch the rest of the world pass me by again. I think they had us in mind when they decided to make the switch, and If they think IBM is going to "tank it" on them I can see why they are prepairing. I think everything should be great as long as you get your developer package, and do what you can when you can do it.
Originally posted by Simple Ranger
And Jobs wasn't at the helm of Apple during the switch to PPC.
I was refering to the switch from Motorola's G4 to IBM's G5. Jobs was there and it was his call, wasn't it? I can barely remember.
The poll question can't be answered without considering ancient history.
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
Yet you seem to outline the problem right here. The switch will be unnoticeable to consumers--no real advantages except faster clock-speed on portables. And yet it's a burden on the already shrinking number of Mac developers.
Shrinking? Where on earth did you get that idea from?
Largest WWDC attendance ever - over 500,000 ADC members - more and more enterprise software appearing on Mac OS X.
Shrinking?
It doesn't look like IBM is able to solve the heat problem. And things will only get more difficult at 65nm.
I think this is an incredibly complicated change. On the one hand we have Intel. It looks like they have better solutions for the low power market. That is a hugely important part of the market. Also, we don't know what other horse-trading went on. Apple can help Intel launch new technologies. Apple can help showcase Intel hardware. It is no secret that Intel has been unhappy from time to time with MS. We don't yet know exactly what processors will be used by Apple in the high end two or more years from now. Will Intel adopt Altivec for some processors? Apple has no interest in legacy x86 code. This might be a great opportunity for Intel to come release a chip that is free of legacy support.
On the other hand. Apple has said they will be using G4/G5 CPUs for at least two years. That means they will support universal binaries for at least about seven years. That is a very long time. If IBM pulls out a miracle in that time there is nothing to prevent Apple from using a future G5 (G6/G7). Apple now has the option of picking and choosing from the best of both worlds.
Originally posted by neutrino23
If IBM pulls out a miracle in that time there is nothing to prevent Apple from using a future G5 (G6/G7). Apple now has the option of picking and choosing from the best of both worlds.
Bingo. Nothing to stop Apple from continuing to use PowerPCs in, say, servers if they choose to do so.
My self I have said a week ago, that the switch to Intel would be stupid for several reasons. I was wrong, Apple did the switch. I just hope that SJ made the good decision : future will tell us.
Now the biggest advantage of this switch is that you will not have to choose between Apple and windows : you can have both word in one system.
Same way Sony does. Same way Alienware does. Same way as they always have.
The idea that a computer is nothing more than its CPU, and that therefore Apple will somehow look extra greedy trying to sell a box with a given processor for more than Dell sells a box with the same processor is clearly ridiculous. A quick look at the some of the premium PC manufacturer's line-up tells you that.
OS, fit and finish, industrial design, integration of all the parts, early adoption of new technology, clever packaging-- that's the stuff that has kept Apple going all these years, market share be damned. They do it because they care about the user experience in a way that the vast majority PC manufacturers, and clearly Dell in particular, don't. Do you think having a Pentium in it would have mysteriously caused the iMac to turn into Dell's clunky idea of an "all-in-one?" Or that Apple is suddenly going to start jamming their boards into beige boxes which they brazenly charge extra for?
And if you think all the stuff that makes a Mac more than a prettied-up beige box are just marketing gimmicks that will be exposed once it has the same processor as the PC on the next shelf over, wtf are you doing on the platform in the first place?
Anybody who says that switching to Intel inside means Apple will be selling "overpriced commodity PCs" is just using the same slander that PC enthusiasts have using against the Mac all along ("Ha! You Mac zealots are willing to pay the Steve tax for your precious pretty plastic!"), which would be amusingly ironic if it weren't so pig stupid and irritating.
Originally posted by hmurchison
However I will say that now Apple has no perceived advantage anymore.
...nor does it have any perceived disadvantage. This takes the CPU out of the equation and it becomes a fight between OSs - something, interestingly, Mr. Jobs made specific reference to at the end of the keynote.
Having calmed down and thought about this a lot, I think I'll stick with my original feeling that switching to x86 is a poor decision.
firstly apologies in advance for any rambling and/or incoherency. There are so many interwoven issues here and I don't really have time to work out the best order in which to say things.
John Siracusa at ars technica has summed up quite a lot of my feelings here.
If anybody thinks that x86 is superior in every single area of performance to the PPC 970 RIGHT NOW, you are seriously deluding yourself. There is absolutely no way that motion, final cut pro HD and the like would run as fast on x86 hardware. There are plenty of other areas where the G5 is better, as evidenced by the Top 500 list of supercomputers. Now, I'm not saying that the x86 is total rubbish - it is better for some tasks. For example, the Mac platform does have a problem in portable computing at the moment. The freescale 8641D does look very, very promising, but maybe it got delayed yet again.
Lots of people are speculating that if the PPC is still better than x86 for certain tasks in 2007, then Apple will just stick with them and have a dual processor strategy* for a while. But as I said, this is just pure speculation. Apple should have explicitly made that their strategy, rather than planning from the outset to eventually completely abandon PPC. IMHO, the sort of people who are technically savvy enough to realise that the PPC is currently vastly superior to x86 FOR SOME TASKS (such as multimedia) are just the sort of people who would be seriously concerned about the fact that their machines will become obsolete pretty quickly.
Which software vendors do you think are going to bother doing any PPC optimisations at all from now on? If Apple had announced a dual processor strategy*, PPC optimisations would still be done by some developers.
(* i.e., some Apple computers have x86, others have PPC)
Additionally, this would have encouraged competition between IBM, Freescale, Intel and AMD for Apple's business. Perhaps IBM and Freescale would have decided that it wasn't worth it, PPC would be overtaken by x86, and then Apple could abandon PPC. I just can't understand why they're already saying they will definitely abandon it.
Originally posted by hmurchison
...
As smircle says...I doubt people are going to spend $100s of dollars more for what is the exact same computer down to the CPU. It's not going to happen. Before we could all revel in Jobsian fantasy about megahertz myths and how uber cool the PowerPC was. Today he just demolished that fantasy. Apple has a much harder road now.
Longhorn is going to perform better on the same hardware it's going to be more secure and good enough to keep the denizens onboard. What we just heard today was Apple raising the white flag.
A bit melodramatic to my taste.
Anyway, and finally it all boils down to the
processor roadmap intel, ibm and others
explained to apple. I guess intel explained it best.
I believe (and experienced it several times) that the
PPC was AND is a pretty good processor compared
to intel offerings. Now. But in 2 years? What about in
6 years? I guess intel answered these questions
more than adequate.
Well, S.J. finally realised that the PowerPC is a
pipedream and intel got its pipeline straight.
my2cents
Originally posted by Vox Barbara
PPC was AND is a pretty good processor compared
to intel offerings. Now. But in 2 years? What about in
6 years? I guess intel answered these questions
more than adequate.
Well, S.J. finally realised that the PowerPC is a
pipedream and intel got its pipeline straight.
my2cents [/B]
Sorry talking about anything in future beyond 2 years is nonsense. Simply by looking in the past the development in VLSI you can tell that things don't work out the way they were planned (e.g. 130nm -> 90nm).
My take on this switch is simply: Currently I simply don't know how this will turn out! But the reasons for the switch are surely not technical alone. Steve's ego cannot deal with the fact the Apple is a small fish in the CPU business. He wants the set the rules but neither Mot nor Ibm where willing to accept this. The switch shows his inability to make compromises. Cell looks 10 times more promising than anything Intel has to offer now or in 2 years. For me Apple will become a JAIB (just another Intel box) maker. My excitement for future Apple events has vanished.
I'm sad now
BTW: I had the chance to see a little Programm running on Longhorn. All I can say MS is clearly becoming more sexy, so don't fool yourselfs thinking that X will crush Longhorn.
Originally posted by Mr. H
Which software vendors do you think are going to bother doing any PPC optimisations at all from now on? If Apple had announced a dual processor strategy*, PPC optimisations would still be done by some developers.
If they use the tools available (auto vectorization and the Accelerate framework), apps will be optimized for both processors.
But all the HPC people are nervous as Intel doesn't have something that can replace AltiVec at the moment.