BTW, I don't give a shit what is what according to MS or its mother.
Well, he might have been referring to this blog from a Microsoft MacBU programmer: MacBU programmer opinion
But that quite clearly states the conversion for Office should be easy as it is already in Intel byte order.
Quote:
You have consider one things:
=> At WWDC Jobs was addressing the geek developer crowd. So of course he couldn't tell them that it's going to be as easy as pie. They would laugh at him.
And yet there are developers who are happy and want to bring the transition on.
These guys are all professional programmers and they are talking about porting their programs, and the porting of other programmers programs at and since WWDC.
So there seems to be little support for an alarmist position on this transition by developers.
Big Mac, if someone sat you down in front of a mac with intel chips in it, you'd have no idea what was inside it and would assume it had a PPC.
This is because processors do math, whether it is a G4 or a P4.
To say 'it is not a mac because it has a pentium chipset in it' is, as someone pointed out, like saying 'it is not a mac because it does not have a 680x0 processor in it'
Apple's finally doing something about their all too frequently really lame system specs, finally achieve permanent processor parity with the Wintel world, and all you can do is complain, and say the sky is falling.
I'm first in line for a Yonah powerbook. It WON'T have a 166mhz system bus, I can promise you that.
You've been drinking the mac koolaid for so long, you've clearly no idea what Intel has coming, versus what Freescale and IBM have coming. If you did, you wouldn't complain, believe me.
You'll know you're not really on a Mac when heavier duty Mac software chokes on Rosetta. You'll know you're not on a Mac when you find out an important third-party peripheral you have will refuse to work since there will be no recompiled Intel binary driver for it. You'll know you're not on a Mac when the less significant yet bothersome incompatibilities and quirks pop up.
But that's really not my main concern. Apple is risking it all on a prolonged transition that will literally wreck Mac sales. If these Apple PCs were really Macs, it wouldn't take Apple a year and half (conservatively) to start rolling them out. If these were Macs, there would not be such a sharp contradistinction with the lines that preceded them. Beyond that, chances are quite good that the computers Apple finally debuts will have Intel boards to match their Intel processors. Many around here assume that to be the case, and it's a reasonable assumption given business realities. But when your "Mac" is internally identical to your Pavilion, come back and tell me it's still a Mac.
I don't claim to have all the answers. As I said before, I hope I will be proven wrong. Now you can accuse me of drinking the Kool-Aid, but I'm certainly not buying the company line. You are clearly enamored with MHz, yet I doubt you're at all mindful of the other substantive issues involved here. I just hope Jobs is.
That's a very general statement which contains very little useful information. I could say the same about OSX UI.
If you don't like it, change it. XP allows you to change UI however you want to.
Not to jump into a fashion debate here, but OSX's interface handily beats WinXP's. Also, XP doesn't really allow you to change the interface: you can either switch back to the old (pre-XP) look UI, or you can download (and pay for) a skinning application. At least Linux is somewhat configurable when it comes to looks.
Sort of a sidenote, I recently saw a site devoted to Windows users who were trying to make their XP look like OSX (google it if you're really interested)
No I don't think so. Apple has to wait until Intel is ready with the Merom core so we're stuck waiting until 2007 before that is upon us.
Sales shouldn't be all that bad. I'm not talking to many worried people. They are choosing to purchase Macs for what they need today. They seem to easily grasp that it's just a processor change. In fact the move from 68k to PPC was just as profound a leap. Been there done that.
[B]Not to jump into a fashion debate here, but OSX's interface handily beats WinXP's. Also, XP doesn't really allow you to change the interface: you can either switch back to the old (pre-XP) look UI, or you can download (and pay for) a skinning application.
Do you mean that you don't have to pay for ShapeShifter in OS X?
Quote:
At least Linux is somewhat configurable when it comes to looks.
well, i can offer my uninformed gut-opinion: the debut of the hardware will depend upon the tipping point of 3rd party software that will run natively on os x for intel. only apple internally knows what that line is. my guess is that most (or maybe all) of apple's software is ready. the only other two apple really cares about are adobe and microsoft (and they might just let office run under rosetta for a while... i mean, who needs a screaming fast word processor?)
so even if the sales are cool-to-frigid, apple won't release a hardware unit that can't run very much, and they can afford to wait for ms and adobe.. remember this company has an obscene amount of cash for a company its size. it can ride out a heck of a storm, and ipod sales won't slip enough in the next year for apple to really worry (unless something catastrophic happens... apple corps music, i am looking in YOUR direction)
so that's my guess.
p.s. wouldn't you hate to be coding for quark, where your name has been dragged through the mud for the past several years because you were ordered to add web features to an app by your execs instead of getting the code ready for os x, then when you finally get it going for almost two years, you find out the platform chip is changing, and you look at all that legacy code you hacked to bits to just run under os x and classic mode, and now this... ugh. mind you, i don't feel sorry for quark management -- they should have seen this coming. but the coders will bear the brunt of this clustf*ck.
. . . If Mac sales are cool to frigid, do you think this will accelerate the timetable for the debut of Intel-based Macs?
As others pointed out, accelerating the introduction of Intel Mac is likely not an option. What Apple can and should do is make sure sales of PPC Macs stay strong. Dropping prices, as many suggest, is not the way to do it. Doing so would signal buyers that their suspicions are correct -- PPC Macs will soon be worthless. Not the message Apple wants to convey.
Introducing some great new PPC Mac products and giving customers a guarantee of long term support would be the best way, in my opinion.
Not to jump into a fashion debate here, but OSX's interface handily beats WinXP's.
No it doesn't. XP's interface beats OSX's... see the problem with this argument yet?!
Quote:
Also, XP doesn't really allow you to change the interface: you can either switch back to the old (pre-XP) look UI, or you can download (and pay for) a skinning application. At least Linux is somewhat configurable when it comes to looks.
Hmm... how does that relate to the core function of OS? You just mentioned that it's an "application".
And even that is not true. XP provides built-in skinning using themes. You can download or buy and application such as windowsblinds to complete change functionality, but that is something different.
Quote:
These guys are all professional programmers and they are talking about porting their programs, and the porting of other programmers programs at and since WWDC.
So there seems to be little support for an alarmist position on this transition by developers.
How do you suggest they accomplish that second part?
Introduce the same OS features for PPC as well as Intel. Not like with iChat that is available for 10.3, but not for 10.2 unless you buy it. That's cheating.
Assure the customer that you will support them with bugfixes and security fixes for at least 5 years, and with new OS versions for at least 3 years and you'll see how easily they can accomplish that.
As per 3rd party applications, it's up to the buyer to make a decision wether he should buy or wait. That's something else.
How do you suggest they accomplish that second part?
The Mac OS must continue to support both Intel and the PPC processors, like it has for the last five years in secret. Apple needs to commit to such support for a specific number of years; vague generalities are not enough. I think to the year 2012 would be acceptable to almost everyone, five years beyond the final transition. I have a beige G3 from 1998 that I'm typing on. It runs Jaguar, which was the current Mac OS in the summer of 2003, five years from when the beige G3 was built.
In addition to the Mac OS, Apple needs to make a similar commitment for most of their applications. It can't be all inclusive, however, since Apple could produce an application that will not run even on early Intel Macs. Yet, Apple could certainly do it for their more common applications.
When Apple makes such a commitment, it wouldn't hurt to reiterate how easy it can be for developers to keep their application running on both PPC and Intel Macs. I think it would be good if Apple could also state that these are minimum commitments, that it may be longer.
Comments
Originally posted by skatman
[B]Who at the MS did you ask?
BTW, I don't give a shit what is what according to MS or its mother.
Well, he might have been referring to this blog from a Microsoft MacBU programmer: MacBU programmer opinion
But that quite clearly states the conversion for Office should be easy as it is already in Intel byte order.
You have consider one things:
=> At WWDC Jobs was addressing the geek developer crowd. So of course he couldn't tell them that it's going to be as easy as pie. They would laugh at him.
And yet there are developers who are happy and want to bring the transition on.
Cocoalicious Developer (and Apple employee)
Brent Simmons Weblog
James Duncan Davidson's Weblog
Mozilla developer Josh Ash (scroll down to the July 3 entry)
These guys are all professional programmers and they are talking about porting their programs, and the porting of other programmers programs at and since WWDC.
So there seems to be little support for an alarmist position on this transition by developers.
Originally posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R
Big Mac, if someone sat you down in front of a mac with intel chips in it, you'd have no idea what was inside it and would assume it had a PPC.
This is because processors do math, whether it is a G4 or a P4.
To say 'it is not a mac because it has a pentium chipset in it' is, as someone pointed out, like saying 'it is not a mac because it does not have a 680x0 processor in it'
Apple's finally doing something about their all too frequently really lame system specs, finally achieve permanent processor parity with the Wintel world, and all you can do is complain, and say the sky is falling.
I'm first in line for a Yonah powerbook. It WON'T have a 166mhz system bus, I can promise you that.
You've been drinking the mac koolaid for so long, you've clearly no idea what Intel has coming, versus what Freescale and IBM have coming. If you did, you wouldn't complain, believe me.
You'll know you're not really on a Mac when heavier duty Mac software chokes on Rosetta. You'll know you're not on a Mac when you find out an important third-party peripheral you have will refuse to work since there will be no recompiled Intel binary driver for it. You'll know you're not on a Mac when the less significant yet bothersome incompatibilities and quirks pop up.
But that's really not my main concern. Apple is risking it all on a prolonged transition that will literally wreck Mac sales. If these Apple PCs were really Macs, it wouldn't take Apple a year and half (conservatively) to start rolling them out. If these were Macs, there would not be such a sharp contradistinction with the lines that preceded them. Beyond that, chances are quite good that the computers Apple finally debuts will have Intel boards to match their Intel processors. Many around here assume that to be the case, and it's a reasonable assumption given business realities. But when your "Mac" is internally identical to your Pavilion, come back and tell me it's still a Mac.
I don't claim to have all the answers. As I said before, I hope I will be proven wrong. Now you can accuse me of drinking the Kool-Aid, but I'm certainly not buying the company line. You are clearly enamored with MHz, yet I doubt you're at all mindful of the other substantive issues involved here. I just hope Jobs is.
But I think you're in the minority there.
Originally posted by skatman
That's a very general statement which contains very little useful information. I could say the same about OSX UI.
If you don't like it, change it. XP allows you to change UI however you want to.
Not to jump into a fashion debate here, but OSX's interface handily beats WinXP's. Also, XP doesn't really allow you to change the interface: you can either switch back to the old (pre-XP) look UI, or you can download (and pay for) a skinning application. At least Linux is somewhat configurable when it comes to looks.
Sort of a sidenote, I recently saw a site devoted to Windows users who were trying to make their XP look like OSX (google it if you're really interested)
My (int)2.5 cents;
Originally posted by Big Mac
You are clearly enamored with MHz, yet I doubt you're at all mindful of the other substantive issues involved here. I just hope Jobs is.
Why don't you give him a call, just to make sure he's up to speed with all of this stuff?
Originally posted by DHagan4755
Here's a question:
If Mac sales are cool to frigid, do you think this will accelerate the timetable for the debut of Intel-based Macs?
Anyone care to tackle my question?
Sales shouldn't be all that bad. I'm not talking to many worried people. They are choosing to purchase Macs for what they need today. They seem to easily grasp that it's just a processor change. In fact the move from 68k to PPC was just as profound a leap. Been there done that.
Originally posted by mynamehere
[B]Not to jump into a fashion debate here, but OSX's interface handily beats WinXP's. Also, XP doesn't really allow you to change the interface: you can either switch back to the old (pre-XP) look UI, or you can download (and pay for) a skinning application.
Do you mean that you don't have to pay for ShapeShifter in OS X?
At least Linux is somewhat configurable when it comes to looks.
Somewhat? Again, somewhat?
Originally posted by DHagan4755
Anyone care to tackle my question?
well, i can offer my uninformed gut-opinion: the debut of the hardware will depend upon the tipping point of 3rd party software that will run natively on os x for intel. only apple internally knows what that line is. my guess is that most (or maybe all) of apple's software is ready. the only other two apple really cares about are adobe and microsoft (and they might just let office run under rosetta for a while... i mean, who needs a screaming fast word processor?)
so even if the sales are cool-to-frigid, apple won't release a hardware unit that can't run very much, and they can afford to wait for ms and adobe.. remember this company has an obscene amount of cash for a company its size. it can ride out a heck of a storm, and ipod sales won't slip enough in the next year for apple to really worry (unless something catastrophic happens... apple corps music, i am looking in YOUR direction)
so that's my guess.
p.s. wouldn't you hate to be coding for quark, where your name has been dragged through the mud for the past several years because you were ordered to add web features to an app by your execs instead of getting the code ready for os x, then when you finally get it going for almost two years, you find out the platform chip is changing, and you look at all that legacy code you hacked to bits to just run under os x and classic mode, and now this... ugh. mind you, i don't feel sorry for quark management -- they should have seen this coming. but the coders will bear the brunt of this clustf*ck.
Originally posted by DHagan4755
. . . If Mac sales are cool to frigid, do you think this will accelerate the timetable for the debut of Intel-based Macs?
As others pointed out, accelerating the introduction of Intel Mac is likely not an option. What Apple can and should do is make sure sales of PPC Macs stay strong. Dropping prices, as many suggest, is not the way to do it. Doing so would signal buyers that their suspicions are correct -- PPC Macs will soon be worthless. Not the message Apple wants to convey.
Introducing some great new PPC Mac products and giving customers a guarantee of long term support would be the best way, in my opinion.
Not to jump into a fashion debate here, but OSX's interface handily beats WinXP's.
No it doesn't. XP's interface beats OSX's... see the problem with this argument yet?!
Also, XP doesn't really allow you to change the interface: you can either switch back to the old (pre-XP) look UI, or you can download (and pay for) a skinning application. At least Linux is somewhat configurable when it comes to looks.
Hmm... how does that relate to the core function of OS? You just mentioned that it's an "application".
And even that is not true. XP provides built-in skinning using themes. You can download or buy and application such as windowsblinds to complete change functionality, but that is something different.
These guys are all professional programmers and they are talking about porting their programs, and the porting of other programmers programs at and since WWDC.
So there seems to be little support for an alarmist position on this transition by developers.
I agree with you there.
Originally posted by snoopy
Introducing some great new PPC Mac products and giving customers a guarantee of long term support would be the best way, in my opinion.
How do you suggest they accomplish that second part?
Originally posted by Big Mac
How do you suggest they accomplish that second part?
Introduce the same OS features for PPC as well as Intel. Not like with iChat that is available for 10.3, but not for 10.2 unless you buy it. That's cheating.
Assure the customer that you will support them with bugfixes and security fixes for at least 5 years, and with new OS versions for at least 3 years and you'll see how easily they can accomplish that.
As per 3rd party applications, it's up to the buyer to make a decision wether he should buy or wait. That's something else.
Originally posted by Big Mac
How do you suggest they accomplish that second part?
The Mac OS must continue to support both Intel and the PPC processors, like it has for the last five years in secret. Apple needs to commit to such support for a specific number of years; vague generalities are not enough. I think to the year 2012 would be acceptable to almost everyone, five years beyond the final transition. I have a beige G3 from 1998 that I'm typing on. It runs Jaguar, which was the current Mac OS in the summer of 2003, five years from when the beige G3 was built.
In addition to the Mac OS, Apple needs to make a similar commitment for most of their applications. It can't be all inclusive, however, since Apple could produce an application that will not run even on early Intel Macs. Yet, Apple could certainly do it for their more common applications.
When Apple makes such a commitment, it wouldn't hurt to reiterate how easy it can be for developers to keep their application running on both PPC and Intel Macs. I think it would be good if Apple could also state that these are minimum commitments, that it may be longer.