Remember folks it is the ever growing portable market that has forced Apple to switch over to Intel. The towers would do fine sticking with PowerPC, but the PowerPC portables have fallen way behind Intel's offerings, and it is only going to get worse in the future.
That being said, I don't know why people are saying that Apple is going with only "good enough" computing: they are going to match the hardware of the top end windows offerings. Why are people acting like Apple is planing to abandon the high end?
That being said, I don't know why people are saying that Apple is going with only "good enough" computing: they are going to match the hardware of the top end windows offerings.
That's the problem. With Intel, Apple could at most match the high end PCs. Before they had the potential to exceed it, as they did in the past. Imagine a dual or quad Power5-lite configuration in a Power Mac. I bet that's what Jobs hoped for back to 2003 with his famous bold statements. There would be not a serious competition to that from the x86 land for a long time.
But it did not happened. And with the lost interest of Freescale and IBM to compete in the desktop arena, Intel is the obvious solution (ok, there is also the publicly non-available roadmaps story).
Doesn't really matter what chips were more powerful 2 years ago, or what's even more powerful now. What matters is what's more powerful in 2 years when the switch is done.
Those are marketing quotes. Entirely grain of salt material anyway.
Regardless of what you can extrapolate as a likely scenario, the topic at hand addresses what's faster NOW, counting in the soon-to-be-released dual core G5s. We have enough threads already to validate Apple's switch to Intel. This is something different.
... That being said, I don't know why people are saying that Apple is going with only "good enough" computing: they are going to match the hardware of the top end windows offerings. Why are people acting like Apple is planing to abandon the high end?
Maybe in two years they might be able to match the top end, but as you should know, Intel CPUs are not at the top end today. From a performance standpoint, AMD owns the top-end, and Intel is an also-ran.
Boxx's announced quad dual-core Opteron machines are the top performance in any desktop computer today. You cannot build anything even close to that with Intel chips. It would also blow the doors off the 2.7 G5.
Anders' and Towel's posts make clear the key thing to understand. The consumer machines, the bread and butter machines, they must be at least competitive with the consumer PCs and laptops.
Perhaps Apple will address the top end sometime in a couple of years, who knows. It certainly won't be anytime soon.
Perhaps Apple will address the top end sometime in a couple of years, who knows. It certainly won't be anytime soon.
As much as you and others would like to see Apple 'address the top end', I think Apple is abandoning the idea of 'big ass computers that double as furnaces'.
Look at what Apple has put out in the last year or two: the iMac G5, the whole computer behind the screen; the Mac mini, the whole computer inside a tiny box; the iPod nano, impossibly small
While AMD and nVidia have plans to make CPUs much faster by making them bigger and hotter, ATI, Apple and Intel have plans to make them run faster but smaller and cooler.
Who's going to win? Beats me...some people are probably willing to go back to the 1950s and have the entire computer inside a mid-sized room inside the house. But looking at the love the nano is getting and how the Mac mini is turning heads, I think the future isn't about speed but about functionality and size.
If you want speed, you'll cluster computers together.
The winner? I think it's Apple, ATI and Intel despite what the hardcore gamers and speed freaks (which make up a tiny little portion of this world) would like to make us believe.
Dual dual-core Yonah in Powerbooks, single dual-core Yonah in iBooks, and quad dual-core Merom in Powermacs. That could beat AMD without having to do extra research on materials that don't melt at 300?C...[QUOTE]
I would be happy with a dual/dual yonah Powerbook (total of 4 Yonah cores). But it would have to be a dual/dual for me to be willing to accept a Yonah based powerbook due to it's lack of 64-bit support and relatively low clock speed. It does handle power consumption very well so a dual/dual config. isn't out of the question.
My concern is the numberous rumors suggesting the PowerBook will become a single/single 32-bit (Yonah), that's just unacceptable for a "Power" product.
Either of the following configs would be acceptable enough for me to buy one (realistically I understand the last two in this list are unlikely in the near, near future):
dual/dual 32-bit (Intel "Yonah")
single/single 64-bit (IBM 970FX LP or Intel "Merom")
single/dual 64-bit (IBM 970MP)
dual/dual 64-bit (IBM 970MP or Intel "Merom")
I will not be interested in the following:
single/single 32-bit (Intel "Yonah")
single/dual 32-bit (Intel "Yonah")
Basically what I'm saying is if I see a Yonah in the PB, there better be a total of 4 cores in there. I need a portable machine that can handle HD video editing, so single/single 32-bit is not an attractive solution.
Maybe in two years they might be able to match the top end, but as you should know, Intel CPUs are not at the top end today. From a performance standpoint, AMD owns the top-end, and Intel is an also-ran.
Opterons are on top right now, but the honor of fastest chip for PCs will continue to bounce back and forth between Intel and AMD every six months. And, once apple has switch over to x86 there is nothing keeping them from using AMD chips if they are better.
Intel has its own Fabs, AMD doesnt its the big reason Apple is using Intel along with their very very deep pockets and R & D arm. PPC sucks, show me one PPC that can hang with my old AMD 3500????? thought so.
Intel has its own Fabs, AMD doesnt its the big reason Apple is using Intel along with their very very deep pockets and R & D arm. PPC sucks, show me one PPC that can hang with my old AMD 3500????? thought so.
I think Jobs is using Intel branding only for the PR. Intel lost the desktop cpu war to AMD since first opteron came out, however Intel may be the better mobile solution at this time.
I can see Dual core AMD equipped PowerMacs in the near future once the transition is done. Dual Core Intel still sucks compared to AMD. Do you think Intel will start copying AMD on the desktop CPU design?....... I bet this is already happening....
But it would have to be a dual/dual for me to be willing to accept a Yonah based powerbook due to it's lack of 64-bit support and relatively low clock speed. It does handle power consumption very well so a dual/dual config. isn't out of the question.
Why do you f***ing care about 64-bit??
Quote:
My concern is the numberous rumors suggesting the PowerBook will become a single/single 32-bit (Yonah), that's just unacceptable for a "Power" product.
The Powerbook won't BECOME a single/single 32-bit, for it has ALWAYS been single/single 32-bit. Period.
I think Jobs is using Intel branding only for the PR. Intel lost the desktop cpu war to AMD since first opteron came out, however Intel may be the better mobile solution at this time.
I can see Dual core AMD equipped PowerMacs in the near future once the transition is done. Dual Core Intel still sucks compared to AMD. Do you think Intel will start copying AMD on the desktop CPU design?....... I bet this is already happening....
Thanks for the correction, i was sure that IBM was producing AMD chips for AMD??
My concern is the numberous rumors suggesting the PowerBook will become a single/single 32-bit (Yonah), that's just unacceptable for a "Power" product.
...
Basically what I'm saying is if I see a Yonah in the PB, there better be a total of 4 cores in there.
A single-core Yonah is faster than the fastest 7448, but it's "unacceptable" to you? You are living in a fantasy. Yonah does not support 4-core systems, so we can eliminate that possibility right away. Of course Apple will use the dual-core Yonah, so why not just be happy about the increased performance?
A single-core Yonah is faster than the fastest 7448, but it's "unacceptable" to you? You are living in a fantasy. Yonah does not support 4-core systems, so we can eliminate that possibility right away. Of course Apple will use the dual-core Yonah, so why not just be happy about the increased performance?
It's [Yonah] deffinately faster than the current G4, no question there. However I preffer to compare Yonah to other candidate chips that Apple theoretically "could" put in the next PowerBook, (including the low power IBM 970FX and AMD's offerings) rather than the terribly outdated G4.
It's [Yonah] deffinately faster than the current G4, no question there. However I preffer to compare Yonah to other candidate chips that Apple theoretically "could" put in the next PowerBook, (including the low power IBM 970FX and AMD's offerings) rather than the terribly outdated G4.
A Powerbook is a 1" thick laptop. It needs really cool chips. 970FX and AMD's offerings are NOT among them.
I can't see SJ announcing that the new Powerbook is twice the volume of the current one, with a fan permanently on to cool it.
Apple is a hardware company right? Nmost of it's profits come from hardware sales - fact, so OSX is never gooing to be available to non Apple hardware?
Well if you look at the sums, you can see that Apple will sell about 4 million computers per year generating $? profit. How many EXTRA copies of OSX would they have to sell bearing in mind that the media costs nothing to makeup for the shortfall in hardware sales - probably not that many.
personally, I think that in the short term it would have only a marginal effect on the sales of Apple hardware, but that millions of additional copies of OSX would be sold, leading to a bigger user base. Apples share of hardware would fall, but they would sell more in numbers. Each new itteration of software be it OSX, FCP, iWork, quicktime etc etc would all benifit and outweigh the lost share of hardware sales.
ONLY the move to x86 will make this possible. I am not sayingthat this will happen, but I think the possibility is far higher than most people on these boards seem to think. Everything that Apple is doing right now is following the subscripition model, we are all forced to upgrade software to keep it working.
I bought DVD Studio Pro 4, and I now have to upgrade Quicktime pro, I was quite happy with the version I was using but I had no option, Tiger comes with QT7
As much as you and others would like to see Apple 'address the top end', I think Apple is abandoning the idea of 'big ass computers that double as furnaces'.
Look at what Apple has put out in the last year or two: the iMac G5, the whole computer behind the screen; the Mac mini, the whole computer inside a tiny box; the iPod nano, impossibly small
While AMD and nVidia have plans to make CPUs much faster by making them bigger and hotter, ATI, Apple and Intel have plans to make them run faster but smaller and cooler.
Who's going to win? Beats me...some people are probably willing to go back to the 1950s and have the entire computer inside a mid-sized room inside the house. But looking at the love the nano is getting and how the Mac mini is turning heads, I think the future isn't about speed but about functionality and size.
If you want speed, you'll cluster computers together.
The winner? I think it's Apple, ATI and Intel despite what the hardcore gamers and speed freaks (which make up a tiny little portion of this world) would like to make us believe.
I agree with you. I personally take a small drop of performance, and even a 30 % one over a giant furnace. Today computers are very performant, as much performant than supercomputers 15 years ago.
By now, for the majority of the users, the design and silence of the computer is more important than raw power.
Comments
That being said, I don't know why people are saying that Apple is going with only "good enough" computing: they are going to match the hardware of the top end windows offerings. Why are people acting like Apple is planing to abandon the high end?
Originally posted by Messiah
I thought that the x86 Developer Kit was the fastest platform for OS X to date?
I seem to remember that the inital feedback suggesting that the x86 based Mac trounced the dual 2.7GHz Power Mac G5?
That was one report that said it was faster at booting.
The DTK is fast though, and in many cases just as fast as my DP2.5GHz PMG5.
Originally posted by Res
That being said, I don't know why people are saying that Apple is going with only "good enough" computing: they are going to match the hardware of the top end windows offerings.
That's the problem. With Intel, Apple could at most match the high end PCs. Before they had the potential to exceed it, as they did in the past. Imagine a dual or quad Power5-lite configuration in a Power Mac. I bet that's what Jobs hoped for back to 2003 with his famous bold statements. There would be not a serious competition to that from the x86 land for a long time.
But it did not happened. And with the lost interest of Freescale and IBM to compete in the desktop arena, Intel is the obvious solution (ok, there is also the publicly non-available roadmaps story).
Originally posted by nowayout11
Doesn't really matter what chips were more powerful 2 years ago, or what's even more powerful now. What matters is what's more powerful in 2 years when the switch is done.
Those are marketing quotes. Entirely grain of salt material anyway.
Regardless of what you can extrapolate as a likely scenario, the topic at hand addresses what's faster NOW, counting in the soon-to-be-released dual core G5s. We have enough threads already to validate Apple's switch to Intel. This is something different.
Originally posted by Res
... That being said, I don't know why people are saying that Apple is going with only "good enough" computing: they are going to match the hardware of the top end windows offerings. Why are people acting like Apple is planing to abandon the high end?
Maybe in two years they might be able to match the top end, but as you should know, Intel CPUs are not at the top end today. From a performance standpoint, AMD owns the top-end, and Intel is an also-ran.
Boxx's announced quad dual-core Opteron machines are the top performance in any desktop computer today. You cannot build anything even close to that with Intel chips. It would also blow the doors off the 2.7 G5.
Anders' and Towel's posts make clear the key thing to understand. The consumer machines, the bread and butter machines, they must be at least competitive with the consumer PCs and laptops.
Perhaps Apple will address the top end sometime in a couple of years, who knows. It certainly won't be anytime soon.
Originally posted by cubist
Perhaps Apple will address the top end sometime in a couple of years, who knows. It certainly won't be anytime soon.
As much as you and others would like to see Apple 'address the top end', I think Apple is abandoning the idea of 'big ass computers that double as furnaces'.
Look at what Apple has put out in the last year or two: the iMac G5, the whole computer behind the screen; the Mac mini, the whole computer inside a tiny box; the iPod nano, impossibly small
While AMD and nVidia have plans to make CPUs much faster by making them bigger and hotter, ATI, Apple and Intel have plans to make them run faster but smaller and cooler.
Who's going to win? Beats me...some people are probably willing to go back to the 1950s and have the entire computer inside a mid-sized room inside the house. But looking at the love the nano is getting and how the Mac mini is turning heads, I think the future isn't about speed but about functionality and size.
If you want speed, you'll cluster computers together.
The winner? I think it's Apple, ATI and Intel despite what the hardcore gamers and speed freaks (which make up a tiny little portion of this world) would like to make us believe.
Dual dual-core Yonah in Powerbooks, single dual-core Yonah in iBooks, and quad dual-core Merom in Powermacs. That could beat AMD without having to do extra research on materials that don't melt at 300?C...[QUOTE]
I would be happy with a dual/dual yonah Powerbook (total of 4 Yonah cores). But it would have to be a dual/dual for me to be willing to accept a Yonah based powerbook due to it's lack of 64-bit support and relatively low clock speed. It does handle power consumption very well so a dual/dual config. isn't out of the question.
My concern is the numberous rumors suggesting the PowerBook will become a single/single 32-bit (Yonah), that's just unacceptable for a "Power" product.
Either of the following configs would be acceptable enough for me to buy one (realistically I understand the last two in this list are unlikely in the near, near future):
dual/dual 32-bit (Intel "Yonah")
single/single 64-bit (IBM 970FX LP or Intel "Merom")
single/dual 64-bit (IBM 970MP)
dual/dual 64-bit (IBM 970MP or Intel "Merom")
I will not be interested in the following:
single/single 32-bit (Intel "Yonah")
single/dual 32-bit (Intel "Yonah")
Basically what I'm saying is if I see a Yonah in the PB, there better be a total of 4 cores in there. I need a portable machine that can handle HD video editing, so single/single 32-bit is not an attractive solution.
Originally posted by cubist
Maybe in two years they might be able to match the top end, but as you should know, Intel CPUs are not at the top end today. From a performance standpoint, AMD owns the top-end, and Intel is an also-ran.
Opterons are on top right now, but the honor of fastest chip for PCs will continue to bounce back and forth between Intel and AMD every six months. And, once apple has switch over to x86 there is nothing keeping them from using AMD chips if they are better.
Originally posted by Aurora
Intel has its own Fabs, AMD doesnt its the big reason Apple is using Intel along with their very very deep pockets and R & D arm. PPC sucks, show me one PPC that can hang with my old AMD 3500????? thought so.
hm....
then who owns this fab?
http://www.amd-jobs.de/de/unternehmen/amddresden.php
I think Jobs is using Intel branding only for the PR. Intel lost the desktop cpu war to AMD since first opteron came out, however Intel may be the better mobile solution at this time.
I can see Dual core AMD equipped PowerMacs in the near future once the transition is done. Dual Core Intel still sucks compared to AMD. Do you think Intel will start copying AMD on the desktop CPU design?....... I bet this is already happening....
Intel has its own Fabs, AMD doesnt its the big reason Apple is using Intel along
Really? Then whose FABs are the ones in Austin and Dresden?
Originally posted by ngmapple
But it would have to be a dual/dual for me to be willing to accept a Yonah based powerbook due to it's lack of 64-bit support and relatively low clock speed. It does handle power consumption very well so a dual/dual config. isn't out of the question.
Why do you f***ing care about 64-bit??
My concern is the numberous rumors suggesting the PowerBook will become a single/single 32-bit (Yonah), that's just unacceptable for a "Power" product.
The Powerbook won't BECOME a single/single 32-bit, for it has ALWAYS been single/single 32-bit. Period.
Originally posted by bitemymac
hm....
then who owns this fab?
http://www.amd-jobs.de/de/unternehmen/amddresden.php
I think Jobs is using Intel branding only for the PR. Intel lost the desktop cpu war to AMD since first opteron came out, however Intel may be the better mobile solution at this time.
I can see Dual core AMD equipped PowerMacs in the near future once the transition is done. Dual Core Intel still sucks compared to AMD. Do you think Intel will start copying AMD on the desktop CPU design?....... I bet this is already happening....
Thanks for the correction, i was sure that IBM was producing AMD chips for AMD??
Originally posted by Aurora
Thanks for the correction, i was sure that IBM was producing AMD chips for AMD??
No IBM helped AMD with their last two big processors that took them above intel in true x86 speed. AMD needed IBM's help with their dual core design.
Originally posted by ngmapple
My concern is the numberous rumors suggesting the PowerBook will become a single/single 32-bit (Yonah), that's just unacceptable for a "Power" product.
...
Basically what I'm saying is if I see a Yonah in the PB, there better be a total of 4 cores in there.
A single-core Yonah is faster than the fastest 7448, but it's "unacceptable" to you? You are living in a fantasy. Yonah does not support 4-core systems, so we can eliminate that possibility right away. Of course Apple will use the dual-core Yonah, so why not just be happy about the increased performance?
Originally posted by wmf
A single-core Yonah is faster than the fastest 7448, but it's "unacceptable" to you? You are living in a fantasy. Yonah does not support 4-core systems, so we can eliminate that possibility right away. Of course Apple will use the dual-core Yonah, so why not just be happy about the increased performance?
It's [Yonah] deffinately faster than the current G4, no question there. However I preffer to compare Yonah to other candidate chips that Apple theoretically "could" put in the next PowerBook, (including the low power IBM 970FX and AMD's offerings) rather than the terribly outdated G4.
Originally posted by ngmapple
It's [Yonah] deffinately faster than the current G4, no question there. However I preffer to compare Yonah to other candidate chips that Apple theoretically "could" put in the next PowerBook, (including the low power IBM 970FX and AMD's offerings) rather than the terribly outdated G4.
A Powerbook is a 1" thick laptop. It needs really cool chips. 970FX and AMD's offerings are NOT among them.
I can't see SJ announcing that the new Powerbook is twice the volume of the current one, with a fan permanently on to cool it.
Well if you look at the sums, you can see that Apple will sell about 4 million computers per year generating $? profit. How many EXTRA copies of OSX would they have to sell bearing in mind that the media costs nothing to makeup for the shortfall in hardware sales - probably not that many.
personally, I think that in the short term it would have only a marginal effect on the sales of Apple hardware, but that millions of additional copies of OSX would be sold, leading to a bigger user base. Apples share of hardware would fall, but they would sell more in numbers. Each new itteration of software be it OSX, FCP, iWork, quicktime etc etc would all benifit and outweigh the lost share of hardware sales.
ONLY the move to x86 will make this possible. I am not sayingthat this will happen, but I think the possibility is far higher than most people on these boards seem to think. Everything that Apple is doing right now is following the subscripition model, we are all forced to upgrade software to keep it working.
I bought DVD Studio Pro 4, and I now have to upgrade Quicktime pro, I was quite happy with the version I was using but I had no option, Tiger comes with QT7
Originally posted by kim kap sol
As much as you and others would like to see Apple 'address the top end', I think Apple is abandoning the idea of 'big ass computers that double as furnaces'.
Look at what Apple has put out in the last year or two: the iMac G5, the whole computer behind the screen; the Mac mini, the whole computer inside a tiny box; the iPod nano, impossibly small
While AMD and nVidia have plans to make CPUs much faster by making them bigger and hotter, ATI, Apple and Intel have plans to make them run faster but smaller and cooler.
Who's going to win? Beats me...some people are probably willing to go back to the 1950s and have the entire computer inside a mid-sized room inside the house. But looking at the love the nano is getting and how the Mac mini is turning heads, I think the future isn't about speed but about functionality and size.
If you want speed, you'll cluster computers together.
The winner? I think it's Apple, ATI and Intel despite what the hardcore gamers and speed freaks (which make up a tiny little portion of this world) would like to make us believe.
I agree with you. I personally take a small drop of performance, and even a 30 % one over a giant furnace. Today computers are very performant, as much performant than supercomputers 15 years ago.
By now, for the majority of the users, the design and silence of the computer is more important than raw power.