Apple orders Mac sites to remove OS X on x86 videos

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  • Reply 121 of 187
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gene Clean

    Better than a similarly clocked/equipped PPC.



    Ahh, okay. If I were wagering on any speculation here that's the one I'd put my money on.
  • Reply 122 of 187
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Re: what the Apple - Intel product will do



    What if...



    Since Mac OS X does not suffer from having hundreds of legacy x86 apps which need to be supported, it could be compiled for ANY ISA that Intel would make, as long as there was a compiler for it. It wouldn't matter that this hardware wouldn't run x86 binaries natively - there are none for Mac OS X.



    Did Jobs say "x86" specifically, or did he just say "Intel"?



    What if Intel needs somebody to use a new 64-bit ISA without having to crack x86 instructions into the real micro-ops that the CPU uses? What if Mac OS X could be compiled directly into the native ISA of the chip, bypassing x86 altogether?



    And - what if this native ISA would have a full-blown vector unit as powerful as Altivec, abstracted out by the Accelerate framework of Cocoa?



    Third-party developers who code with Xcode would not need to do anything - their source code stays the same (unless it has assembler), and their object code is produced by Xcode with an Intel compiler that generates code that is the native ISA of the new Intel chip.



    So..



    Mac OS X binaries are in the native code of the chip. They won't run on a chip that expects an x86 instruction stream. All of the Mac OS X apps are likewise - PPC or native Intel ISA, no x86.



    Future Tiger and Leopard builds won't run on legacy x86, only on the new ISA chip. The chip would still have x86 cracking, so that Windows would run.



    Intel and Apple would agree that the ability to run chip's native ISA would only be enabled in Apple chips. It's the exact same chip that Dell would buy, except Dell's chips would only run in the x86 instruction cracking mode. Dell doesn't care, as that is how Windows and all of the existing Windows software wants to run anyway.



    Apple computers would run Windows, but OS X would only run on Apples.
  • Reply 123 of 187
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lundy



    Did Jobs say "x86" specifically, or did he just say "Intel"?





    He said Intel, but simply in an attempt to prevent people from trying to hack it onto PCs on the whole. It runs on AMD setups.
  • Reply 124 of 187
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:

    Did Jobs say "x86" specifically, or did he just say "Intel"?



    I think you are absolutely right.



    What you have layed out may or may not be Apple's exact plan, but I do believe they will do something similar.



    I seriously doubt Apple will and can't see why they would bog themselves down in x86 legacy.



    This is an opportunity for Apple/Intel to do something creative and new.
  • Reply 125 of 187
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    He said Intel, but simply in an attempt to prevent people from trying to hack it onto PCs on the whole. It runs on AMD setups.



    Yeah, but see, when you say "it", you mean the x86 version of Mac OS X. The final product may not be x86 code, but another type of Intel code. As long as Intel has a compiler that compiles it, and that compiler is in Xcode, nobody will care.



    Even the developers who insist on staying with CodeWarrior won't have to worry - the Apple chip will still run x86 binaries. Just Mac OS itself would not be an x86 binary.



    That's my theory. And I think if Steve in fact never said "x86", then it would be the perfect solution. Intel has no other customers that want the new ISA, because everything is written for Windows and Windows is x86.
  • Reply 126 of 187
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Lundy:



    Are you theorizing that Apple will receive different CPU's than everyone else?



    Or that Apple will have a different chipset?



    Or that Conroe, Merom, and Woodcrest in general will be able to run this new 64 bit ISA?



    And Apple will be the only vendor to take advantage of the new ISA.
  • Reply 127 of 187
    brendonbrendon Posts: 642member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by TenoBell

    Brendon you are saying the same thing over and over.



    I keep saying it because I believe what I'm saying is true, this time and the next.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by sjk

    So, Apple is going to risk cannibalizing its own computer sales by licensing OS X to other vendors?



    I'm not convinced that Apple is as interested in having OS X run on as many different computers as possible as they are in selling as many of their own computers as possible with OS X (and even other OSs) running on them. Of course no one knows what'll happen after the first Intel Macs are released. If profits are too low then licensing OS X might be a worthwhile strategy. Otherwise, the benefits for them (not us ) of doing it any sooner elude me.




    I'm not convinced either but I can see that if curtain pieces fall in place there may be no other choice. I believe that I have outlined the numbers earlier in this thread about software. Canablizing would happen but not to the expent that you might think. The profits from software would more than offset the canabilization. The earlier experiment with clones was bad because the hardware locked the market to Mac users only. Again who would try, key word, try a Mac if they would not at least end up with a PC at the end of it if things did not workout. The hardware on the PC side is a commodity the only difference is the software and packaging, ripe for picking. Security issues alone make this a great market. You talk about the current Mac market I talk about Dell selling 5% of their sales to people buying MacOSX machines, as well as Sony, HP, etc., add those numbers up. Apple alone could not supply that market, that is something like 4 to 5 times current sales, ballpark estimating. Apple is removing a big barrer for the switchers by going to x86, this alone could spur a big swing in Apple sales.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by TenoBell

    Over all the argument for Apple opening OS X is being made by those who want to build their own boxes. Those who are willing to buy expensive components and tweek for their own needs.



    This is an alligation.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by TenoBell

    My last trip I sat with my PowerBook surfing the web.



    During the time I wait for my flight, I have three people come to me asking if I were able to get online.



    I tell them yes I was online.



    They tell me they are having trouble connecting wirelessly to the internet. They are all using PC laptops and Windows.



    Two of the people I offer to look at their connection software. I'm not sure if this was the connection software that comes with XP or a third party app, but both were very confusing. One I figured out, but the other was beyond my knowledge.



    I showed them both how simple it is to connect using a Mac. How using the Air Traffic Control widget in Dashboard makes it even more simple.




    Little snip not to offend. Good story, and my point is that these people may buy a Mac if it was on x86 hardware, which it will be soon enough. They most likely would not buy a Mac if they were locked out of their HW, just in case... Going to x86 alone could spur a big market swing.



    I'm including this because it kind of sums up what people are dancing around.

    Quote:

    Originally posted by DeaPeaJay

    Ok, I'm curious, how many people here are PC users that are simply desperate for OS X on their boxes?



    Apple is a company that is interested in growing sales, not just making computers for about 4million buyers per year. Why do the switchers? What I see is the PC market full of potential buyers. Let's face it if a person were to buy a PowerPC Mac and they did not like it, what would they do? Sell it? What about all of the wasted time and energy. No if you were a potential switcher and wanted to try a Mac and you were told by the sales person that if you did not like the Mac you could load Windows on this HW and it would run fine, it is after all an Intel PC. Now you risk maybe a little time, and very little money. Again the previous tiime the HW basically locked the cloners and Apple into the same sandbox. In this arena, no, this market is do huge that very little sales of Apple would go to Dell. Apple may be able to grow into this market but it could come so fast that Apple may be compelled to use others to satisfy the market. Security is a huge problem for PC users and they still want to surf and e-mail.



    On a personal note: Cube now and a Powerbook prior to that, been on a Mac for the last 8 or 9 years, started with 6 but at the end of 6.
  • Reply 128 of 187
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brendon

    On a personal note: Cube now and a Powerbook prior to that, been on a Mac for the last 8 or 9 years, started with 6 but at the end of 6.



    huh? What do you mean? started with 6 but at the end of 6? I don't understand what your saying. That doesn't make any sense.



    Anyway, I agree completely with most of what you said. Being able to load Windows on a Mac may help their market share. I just don't think it will work both ways.
  • Reply 129 of 187
    brendonbrendon Posts: 642member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    There's absolutely no reason to believe that Intel-based Macs will be any cheaper. After all, the only thing that Intel is making is the motherboard and the CPU. If the motherboard became $0.00, that would only be a $70 price drop. And the Intel CPUs are marginally less expensive than the PPC970, and they'll only get more expensive when they become dual-core across the line.



    Right now, I'm seeing $1200 as the maximum price for a computer with a sizzling AMD 3800+ and a 7800 Ultra. Do you think a Powermac is going to be cheaper than that? Ever? Didn't think so.




    There have been many comparisons on price, I believe that Apple competes very well and in most cases beats PC on price/performance. threads area disaster on PoewerPC but other than that they are very comparable, Barefeets. Apple was in the middle of the pack at the high end and I believe that they are fine on the low end, the only thing that I see that is out of line is the monitor prices, currently. Apple will do just fine in pricing on the Intel side. So currently I think that the Mac is a little cheap for the performance. Maybe a little cheaper on Intel, might as well, since their development costs will plummit. No chipset design and manufacturing costs, even if the manufacturing is out sourced. Apple still had to track those deadlines and shipments to ensure that their assembliers were not waiting on Apple parts. Centrino anyone, it is included with Intel if the customer wants, you provide yourself on the IBM side. Some costs go way down and overall most go down some. I don't care what they do I'm an investor and profit is profit $$$$, grow the market or keep the money either way I win. I would buy a Mac because it is the best value.
  • Reply 130 of 187
    brendonbrendon Posts: 642member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DeaPeaJay

    huh? What do you mean? started with 6 but at the end of 6? I don't understand what your saying. That doesn't make any sense.



    Anyway, I agree completely with most of what you said. Being able to load Windows on a Mac may help their market share. I just don't think it will work both ways.




    Sorry OS6, then were the dark times of 7 wow, bad. OS7.5 much better.
  • Reply 131 of 187
    brendonbrendon Posts: 642member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by TenoBell

    Lundy:



    Are you theorizing that Apple will receive different CPU's than everyone else?



    Or that Apple will have a different chipset?



    Or that Conroe, Merom, and Woodcrest in general will be able to run this new 64 bit ISA?



    And Apple will be the only vendor to take advantage of the new ISA.




    Not my questions but...

    No different CPUs sorry Intel too big for this.



    No different chipset, I think don't kow why they would need one.



    ISA?? No the digital rights chip that Intel has will lock this. Apple had little time to prepare for the developer boxes. Utilized fully, every library and every framework could call this chip. Hackers would not bother, too much trouble, or at least very difficult. No need to lock the hardware the chip does that for everyone.
  • Reply 132 of 187
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by TenoBell

    Lundy:



    Are you theorizing that Apple will receive different CPU's than everyone else?



    It would only have to be different in that it would run the native ISA as well as the x86 ISA.

    Quote:

    Or that Apple will have a different chipset?



    Nope. The chipset would be exactly the same.

    Quote:

    Or that Conroe, Merom, and Woodcrest in general will be able to run this new 64 bit ISA?



    Depends what you mean by "run". Natively, no customers except Apple.

    Quote:

    And Apple will be the only vendor to take advantage of the new ISA.



    The others can't - all existing apps would have to be recompiled. Not gonna happen. This isn't a problem for Apple, because there aren't any existing x86 apps.
  • Reply 133 of 187
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DeaPeaJay

    Being able to load Windows on a Mac may help their market share.



    Which I suggested earlier, especially with business customers not previously buying Macs restricted to running OS X (and Linux) but would consider them if they ran Windows, too. And what if Intel Macs happen to run Windows "better" than comparably priced Dells (etc.)? That's could make things quite interesting. And could MacIntel become a more viable platform for Linux users? Coming up with these unanswerable questions gets too easy.



    Quote:

    I just don't think it will work both ways.



    Both ways, as in Windows running on a Mac but OS X not running on other Intel computers? That's the strategy I believe Apple is intending, at least initially. I think some of lundy's interesting "no x86" speculation would support that. Btw, is x64 an accurate moniker for the ISA in the new Intel chips we've discussed? I used x86 in some previous posts where I probably meant x86/x64.



    Of course there are lots of other issues, like supporting operating systems other than OS X on Macs. There's already a niche for that with Linux on PPC systems. With Windows on MacIntel, ... heck, that could be its own topic so enough about that here.
  • Reply 134 of 187
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lundy

    That's my theory. And I think if Steve in fact never said "x86", then it would be the perfect solution. Intel has no other customers that want the new ISA, because everything is written for Windows and Windows is x86.



    Your theory and analysis has been particularly interesting, thorough, and convincing to me.
  • Reply 135 of 187
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    If they release a product that supports Linux (as in, they release Linux drivers of AirPort and such..) then I can easily see it becoming a viable option for Linux users.



    Right now, when it comes to laptops, Linux users pretty much fluctuate between ThinkPads, HP's, and Toshiba's who all offer support for Linux and even ship laptops with Linux.



    I could easily see Linux users using PowerBooks. I would want one to run Linux and OS X.
  • Reply 136 of 187
    gsxrboygsxrboy Posts: 565member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lundy

    Re: what the Apple - Intel product will do



    What if...



    Since Mac OS X does not suffer from having hundreds of legacy x86 apps which need to be supported, it could be compiled for ANY ISA that Intel would make, as long as there was a compiler for it.




    This is a great post, and with intel announcing a new compiler to bolt in xcode maybe you are looking in the right direction. It would mean then than yonah is out of the loop and merom and its like cored brethren will be the first intel powered jobbies.. I guess thats only another 6 months away from yonah so it might be well worth the wait.
  • Reply 137 of 187
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Re: my "I'm not convinced that Apple is as interested in having OS X run on as many different computers as possible as they are in selling as many of their own computers as possible with OS X (and even other OSs) running on them" comment.
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brendon

    I'm not convinced either but I can see that if curtain pieces fall in place there may be no other choice. I believe that I have outlined the numbers earlier in this thread about software.



    I don't remember you specifically mentioning that, which isn't surprising considering the length of this thread. If you've got a link I'll go back and read it.

    Quote:

    Canablizing would happen but not to the expent that you might think. The profits from software would more than offset the canabilization.



    I've thought about that and you may well be right. It could also mean undesirably increased concern for Apple with piracy-related issues, which they've already gotten bent about re: the original topic of this thread, among other things. And it's gotten enough out of hand with Windows for Microsoft to recently start taking more aggressive action. More about this at the end.

    Quote:

    The hardware on the PC side is a commodity the only difference is the software and packaging, ripe for picking. Security issues alone make this a great market. You talk about the current Mac market I talk about Dell selling 5% of their sales to people buying MacOSX machines, as well as Sony, HP, etc., add those numbers up. Apple alone could not supply that market, that is something like 4 to 5 times current sales, ballpark estimating. Apple is removing a big barrer for the switchers by going to x86, this alone could spur a big swing in Apple sales.



    Not sure I fully understand all of your thought stream, sorry. An obvious question would be whether Apple is prepared (or preparing) to handle a significant growth spurt ("big swing", as you say) in computer and/or OS X sales, depending on their strategies and what actually unfolds.



    From a later post (responding to someone else):

    Quote:

    ISA?? No the digital rights chip that Intel has will lock this. Apple had little time to prepare for the developer boxes. Utilized fully, every library and every framework could call this chip. Hackers would not bother, too much trouble, or at least very difficult. No need to lock the hardware the chip does that for everyone.



    You sound quite convinced about that.



    There's plenty of intense activity going on about that and I'm concerned how it may negatively impact Apple customers (including myself) although I haven't followed the topic much (so far). John Gruber goes into it a bit in his "Trusted" (Daring Fireball) article. And Placebo here seems to know a thing or two.



    I dislike and would never advocate DRM although I haven't let it stop me from occasionally buying a track from iTMS, knowing there's a "back door" around it (which I'd never abuse) if that ever became necessary (which it hopefully never will).



    If Apple does use some form of TCP DRM (or something else) with MacIntel products I'll be seriously investigating it before making any purchases and will recommend that everyone else do the same. I'd much prefer a scenario that plays out similar to what lundy described, hopefully avoiding DRM altogether.
  • Reply 138 of 187
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    And let's not forget that Jobs said they were going Intel not because Intel was faster, or cheaper, or had amazing new features - he said they had a better performance per watt . What kind of CPU has markedly less complexity, fewer transistors, and therefore less power dissipation? A VLIW CPU, of course, with a VLIW compiler. All of the branch prediction and scheduling is done in the compiler, not in the logic circuits of the chip. It might take longer to compile, but who cares? You only compile it once.



    That is what the Itanium is, of course, and it also decodes and runs x86 instructions by decoding them into VLIW. But its performance on x86 isn't any better than a P4 yet. And the Windows users and MS are not interested, because there is no way MS is going to recompile Windows for an Itanium-type instruction set - there would not be any apps that would use it. Not to mention convincing all 300 million Windows installations to change to the new version.



    It may be something completely new, or an improved/modified Itanium architecture. Or I could be full of shit.



    Now what about the developers who are frantically recompiling their PPC apps to Intel x86? Well, their apps run just fine on the P4 now and will still run just fine on whatever the new chip is, as it will still have the x86 decoder.



    But Mac OS X will be compiled with the VLIW compiler. And thus it WON'T RUN on P4s, P3s, or AMD anything. The initial versions may be straight x86 of course, but that only gets the hackers addicted to OS X and when Leopard is VLIW only (i.e. Apple only), there is a reason to switch to the Apple hardware.



    If developers want to recompile their apps in the future, they can; but there is no ultra-compelling reason to do so - they can't be pirated to a Dell because OS X won't run on a Dell (unless Apple wants to allow Dell to use the VLIW chips under strict co-branding).



    There must have been some deal made with Intel other than just the price of the chip - and I think it had to do with Apple getting to make a machine that will run Windows while still keeping OS X completely Apple-only. Intel could have agreed to sell the VLIW chips in x86-only mode to everyone except Apple - nobody else would want the VLIW anyway except people who want to get OS X without buying an Apple machine.



    Anybody think of why this wouldn't work?
  • Reply 139 of 187
    I just had a thought, what would compell Windows users to go out and buy OS X if it were in their market? Most average windows users that I know, don't know or care about their operating system, as long as it does what they need it to do. I try explaining to them how there's something much much better, but they don't seem to get it. They're not gonna dish out over 100 bucks to get another OS when the one they have (sort of) works fine. I'm talking about your average Windows user. The point I'm making is that taking this fact that windows users aren't ever quick to upgrade into consideration. I don't think that apple would be able to support itself on OS sales alone.
  • Reply 140 of 187
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DeaPeaJay



    Ill answer.

    Just a few...

    -Popups (most windows users hate it and some are to dumb to switch to FF)-and they end up buying expeensive software from best buy to stop IE from getting them

    -When theyre computer crashes and all there precious family photos they took with there digital camera are gone

    -spyware/virus
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