Thoughts on the 5 year secret project.
What if the ongoing five year secret project that kept OSX running on Intel was not staffed like a side project? To run such a program for five years would require a commitment beyond just a simple hacked translation of OSX to Intel. They must have become pro at it.
What if as the five year project progressed, the Intel side of OSX software development began to outleap the performance of the PPC side?
I imagine ever since The Battle of Motorola Molassas Junction, Steve stepped up the efforts of the OSX on Intel project, perhaps to the point that it outpaced the PPC efforts. There may have even come a time when development was done first on Intel THEN translated for PPC. Think about that wild possibility for a minute. Maybe it's not so wild.
If this were true, it could explain the performance problems OSX has had. If you think about it, it's crazy that OSX on the fastest G5 with gigs of memory does not yet run faster than it does. For goodness sake, it STILL takes longer to open and view a window with a huge number of files than it did in OS9 on a G3 or OS 8.6 on a 200MHz 604e!
We may want to consider that there may have been more than just dissatisfaction with IBM that has brought us to this point in Apple's history, and it's this thought that I'm holding on to. That is, the thought that Steve already has the gun loaded for bear. His reported trepidation with revealing the Intel switch was probably due only to the fact that he was directly addressing the people in the trenches.
What if as the five year project progressed, the Intel side of OSX software development began to outleap the performance of the PPC side?
I imagine ever since The Battle of Motorola Molassas Junction, Steve stepped up the efforts of the OSX on Intel project, perhaps to the point that it outpaced the PPC efforts. There may have even come a time when development was done first on Intel THEN translated for PPC. Think about that wild possibility for a minute. Maybe it's not so wild.
If this were true, it could explain the performance problems OSX has had. If you think about it, it's crazy that OSX on the fastest G5 with gigs of memory does not yet run faster than it does. For goodness sake, it STILL takes longer to open and view a window with a huge number of files than it did in OS9 on a G3 or OS 8.6 on a 200MHz 604e!
We may want to consider that there may have been more than just dissatisfaction with IBM that has brought us to this point in Apple's history, and it's this thought that I'm holding on to. That is, the thought that Steve already has the gun loaded for bear. His reported trepidation with revealing the Intel switch was probably due only to the fact that he was directly addressing the people in the trenches.
Comments
need to change back to PPC in 5 to 8 years?
Using cross-compilation is a fantastic way of ensuring that your system is well-abstracted, regardless of your product plans.
From an engineering clarity point of view alone, this is a worthwhile endeavor.
Originally posted by Aurora
What is a MarkLar?
Apparently it's from South Park.
Originally posted by BRussell
Apparently it's from South Park.
It's a planet that some aliens in an episode of South Park is from. Starvin Marvin and his ethiopian friends moved to Marklar last Marklar because the Marklar Marklar were trying to get their marklar.
The Marklar are marklars from Marklar. In one marklar of marklar, the marklar came to Marklar, and Marklar took the marklar that they left behind. Later, Marklar and his whole marklar moved to the marklar Marklar. Oh yeah.. the Marklar call every noun Marklar.
I guess that that the situation at IBM become so bad - no desktop multi-core chips nor a true mobile/power efficient solution on the horizon - they simply had to take desperate measures.
I still wonder whether they will only be using Intel processors or the chipsets as well - PowerBook Centrino, anyone?
First step was to migrate the Mac OS to a Unix like platform and of course they chose the platform that came from Next. That meant porting from x86 to PPC.
So basically what Apple did was to keep the x86 version of the Next Computer OS in sync with the PPC version. Because they knew full well that that step two was to move to x86.
When you're the only guy using PPC, for year, after year, after year, after year... and you see all the other computer companies moving to x86, you know what your future holds.
Add to that the not pretty sight of Motorola's CPU division crumbling and IBM backing away from the market. Well, it's not exactly rocket science.
Inquiring minds want to kow!
Originally posted by Dr. J
I'm just impressed that in 5 years a version of OS X built for intel never leaked, or that no one was ever able to run it beside Apple.
Yeah, that should make for an interesting chapter in someone's book someday.
Originally posted by groverat
I really don't know why so much secrecy was found to be necessary.
Have you been watching the FUD flinging?? My god, if it had been found out years ago that they had an Intel project, nobody would have bought a PPC Mac, waiting endlessly for that 'around the corner' Intel box. :P
It's insane *now*.
Originally posted by inslider
If this were true, it could explain the performance problems OSX has had. If you think about it, it's crazy that OSX on the fastest G5 with gigs of memory does not yet run faster than it does. For goodness sake, it STILL takes longer to open and view a window with a huge number of files than it did in OS9 on a G3 or OS 8.6 on a 200MHz 604e!
This is one thing that I have surely noticed lately. I get the BBOD (beach ball of death) quite a lot when I am using an application that has to open up a browser window so that I can select a file or folder. It gets annoying sometimes.
Nonetheless, I am still much happier with the Mac than I am with my Dell laptop running Windows XP.
Originally posted by Dr. J
I'm just impressed that in 5 years a version of OS X built for intel never leaked, or that no one was ever able to run it beside Apple.
It leaked plenty of times, and was dismissed as rediculous. I brought it up as an option myself 6 months ago, and was bombarded with condesending hate posts.
Originally posted by e1618978
It leaked plenty of times, and was dismissed as rediculous. I brought it up as an option myself 6 months ago, and was bombarded with condesending hate posts.
I'm better than you and I hate you.
I'm just impressed that in 5 years a version of OS X built for intel never leaked, or that no one was ever able to run it beside Apple.
I don't mean to be rude but this was no secret. There were endless discussion threads on this topic on UNIX oriented web pages. The code (and variations of the code) have been running around in the public domain for years.
Have you been watching the FUD flinging?? My god, if it had been found out years ago that they had an Intel project, nobody would have bought a PPC Mac, waiting endlessly for that 'around the corner' Intel box.
If you had been hanging out on slashdot.org for the last five years you would have know all about this. Heck, you could have been running Darwin at home.
Here's a link for you from Sunday March 26, 2000 talking about 'Darwin' and the OS X version of x86. Like any other discussion forum there is a mixture of fact in fiction in those postings. Anyone who followed this story quickly learned that OS X was running on x86 and was being kept in sync with the PPC version: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/26/023253.shtml