This is a misperception I see repeated over and over. Selling two Macs at $2500 does bring in $5000, which is more than $3500, but what if Apple's cost on each Mac is $2300? Selling two of those at $2500 gives them $400 profit while selling one of them at $3500 gives them $1200 profit. Business isn't about the greatest possible gross sales revenue, it's about profits.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>I think people aren't getting Moki's point -- he is saying that Apple may introduce an additional line of Macintoshes which are based on an x86 processor. They will still be Macs, and as such be capable of running (a future version of) MacOSX. This does not imply that this version of MacOSX will automatically run on any x86-based PC, just like Solaris won't. They also may not be able to run Windows (more interesting would be a "Classic-like" environment for Windows apps, but we don't know what MS' or Apple's position on that would be).</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd blame that on the fact that there are two opposing goals for the x86 proponents that have been conflated:
First, there is the "x86 Mac" camp: If Apple releases a Mac-with-an-Athlon (say) - a custom, non-ATX Apple mobo that happens to have an x86 processor on board - then, after some system reengineering, they would gain whatever performance advantages the new processor has (and lose whatever performance advantages the G4 has). But this would do very little for their market share: Curious PC users would still have to fork out for a new Mac to get OS X, and as moki has pointed out, most people don't care what CPU is under the covers. Furthermore, if the x86 machines were purely in the pro desktop space Apple would get a terrible price on the processors, because they'd be moving a few hundred thousand a year. Since x86 processors are already more expensive than PPCs, any hope of price-competitive hardware is in vain. The only hope for an x86 Mac would be in the pro desktop space, because the x86 lines all lose badly to the G4 in performance/watt, which matters in (essentially embedded) designs like the notebooks and the [i|e]Mac. There would still be a market in the pro desktop and server spaces for the G4s, because of the power (and therefore space) efficiency of e.g. the XServe, and because of the real, tangible benefits that AltiVec has for several of Apple's key markets. So this strikes me as an expensive and limited solution to a small and transient problem.
Second, there is the "X on x86 camp:" If Apple is to realize the huge inflation of market share that some people here are predicting, they would have to release an OS that ran on existing PCs - no special ROMs, no license restrictions. Of course, if it can run on existing PCs then it can run on new PCs, and suddenly Apple is competing with the PC OEMs, except for the little detail that they have to support OS development as well. In this scenario iBooks and iMacs and eMacs might continue to sell briskly, because the advantages of Apple hardware - transparency (in the sense that everything works simply and seamlessly, not in the sense that the plastic is see-through), elegance, and reliability are most important to consumers. But Apple doesn't make any money off these machines. They make money off the professional machines, and guess what a lot of professionals are going to do? The same thing they did when the clones came out: Buy the cheaper stuff, and put up with the added frustration. Pros have been juggling extensions, troubleshooting SCSI chains, and otherwise wrestling with hardware for years, so they're prepared for this.
So, Apple will find its net profits from hardware slashed. Unfortunately, they're not going to get any help from the PC OEMs; Microsoft is already squeezing them hard, they won't allow them to bundle a competing OS. So Apple would have to go retail. And the odds that they would succeed are... uh.... well. Also, AMD has to get MS' permission to have Windows run on their processors (as came out in the trial not long ago). That permission can be rescinded. Ditto Intel - MS has in fact threatened to prevent Windows from running on Intel hardware if Intel didn't comply, so there's precedent. Even if MS doesn't exercize this kind of control immediately, do we really want MS to effectively control the Mac platform? More to the point, does anyone think that Steve does?
Like I said: Not gonna happen. The POWER/PPC family has plenty of advantages right now, and lots of room to grow. The analysts who think that Apple's moving to x86 are as wrong as analysts tend to be.
<strong>Since x86 processors are already more expensive than PPCs, any hope of price-competitive hardware is in vain. </strong><hr></blockquote>
While I tend to agree on all the points you make - how much does a single 1 ghz PPC CPU cost? I know that down here 200 $ gets you an Athlon XP rated 1800 (or maybe more already). Which would probaby translate somewhere to a 800-1ghz PPC CPU, or?
[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>Like I said: Not gonna happen. The POWER/PPC family has plenty of advantages right now, and lots of room to grow. The analysts who think that Apple's moving to x86 are as wrong as analysts tend to be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You can check a few nice point BadAndy makes about that x86 transition madness/stupidity
<strong>Company stock value is usually based on profits to earnings ratio (P/E ratio) and sales value is usually based on cash flow. Choose your fate. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Bzzzzt. P/E ratio is PRICE/earnings ratio, meaning the stock's share price divided by the company's earnings per share. There's no such thing as a "profits to earnings" ratio since profits and earnings are basically the same thing.
Sizzle chest: market share. That in turn creates mind share, as well as the economies of scale making Macs cheaper. I'd rather see Apple sacrifice profit for a while to increase market share. In the end this would be beneficial I think.
And all you "OS X Intel" guys will be the first in line saying how great the G5 is
First, there is the "x86 Mac" camp: If Apple releases a Mac-with-an-Athlon (say) - a custom, non-ATX Apple mobo that happens to have an x86 processor on board - then, after some system reengineering, they would gain whatever performance advantages the new processor has (and lose whatever performance advantages the G4 has). But this would do very little for their market share.
<hr></blockquote>
Agreed, in itself it wouldn't give Apple an automatic increase in marketshare. PC users don't buy Macs because of real or perceived price deficits; in addition to the inability to run Windows software. Not because they have a Power PC CPU instead of an x86.
But as a matter of maintaining marketshare, Apple should offer competitive performance with the PC world, in addition to continuing to offer the benefits of their operating system.
For the home market, some of the latest games require the absolute latest in Mac hardware to play. Warcraft III, for example, appears to need a fast tower to run nicely (it's okay on my TiBook 667, but hardly great - especially during large battles). Even on Apple's flagship consumer machine (iMac G4 800), I've heard of performance problems. I don't know how accurate these reports are, however. But 2 or 3 year old PCs appear to have few performance problems with the game (though I've heard it's unstable under Windows )
Even in Photoshop, Apple's performance advantage isn't what it once was. For many tasks where AltiVec isn't involved, there seems to be a performance disadvantage on the Mac side - sometimes a significant one.
I agree that by switching to x86, Apple would not be able to offer a performance advantage (well, Mac OS X could be faster than Windows XP in some areas on the same hardware). At best they'd be on par or slightly better than the PC world, but I'll take that over the present situation.
Frankly, with the G4 languishing the way it is, I don't see what alternative Apple has. The gaps in CPU performance (non SIMD), and memory bandwidth almost seem insurmountable.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Mac isn't a viable purchase. I think that with Mac OS X, it's a heck of a lot more viable than it was two years ago. But it would be a lot more compelling if there was greater performance to go with an already great OS.
<strong>Sizzle chest: market share. That in turn creates mind share, as well as the economies of scale making Macs cheaper. I'd rather see Apple sacrifice profit for a while to increase market share. In the end this would be beneficial I think.</strong><hr></blockquote>
by reducing prices by 28% (from $3500 to $2500) as suggested, would have cost apple over $400 million for the quarter (over a billion dollars in the last year). considering that apple's net profit for the last quarter was only $40 million, i'm not convinced this would be beneficial in the end. if apple were to reduce prices to just break even, the consumer's discount would be negligible. playing with these numbers is not a particularly fruitful way of increasing market share.
First, there is the "x86 Mac" camp: If Apple releases a Mac-with-an-Athlon (say) - a custom, non-ATX Apple mobo that happens to have an x86 processor on board - then, after some system reengineering, they would gain whatever performance advantages the new processor has (and lose whatever performance advantages the G4 has). But this would do very little for their market share: Curious PC users would still have to fork out for a new Mac to get OS X, and as moki has pointed out, most people don't care what CPU is under the covers. Furthermore, if the x86 machines were purely in the pro desktop space Apple would get a terrible price on the processors, because they'd be moving a few hundred thousand a year. Since x86 processors are already more expensive than PPCs, any hope of price-competitive hardware is in vain. The only hope for an x86 Mac would be in the pro desktop space, because the x86 lines all lose badly to the G4 in performance/watt, which matters in (essentially embedded) designs like the notebooks and the [i|e]Mac. There would still be a market in the pro desktop and server spaces for the G4s, because of the power (and therefore space) efficiency of e.g. the XServe, and because of the real, tangible benefits that AltiVec has for several of Apple's key markets. So this strikes me as an expensive and limited solution to a small and transient problem.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly.
If Dell sells a dual 3 GHz x86 for $2000...
...and Apple sells pretty much the _identical_ box (because Dell copied what Apple did) for $3000. And restricts the 'x86 Mac' to OSX. There's just no way this is a sane plan.
If they priced it as a loss-leader, sure, they'd sell shiploads. But in order to _compete_ with Dell, it's have to be on the order of 10 million a quarter. Ten million units a quarter on a loss-leader... is one very very quick way to spend 4 billion. Gosh, you'd have great marketshare though, and we all know marketshare is king. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
It probably wouldn't take more than one billion to turn to IBM (or maybe 2 if they went back to Mot) and said 'We'd like to buy a completely new-design kick arse processor that you could use in your other projects & is compatible with the ppc ISA' AKA pretty much the same thing they're doing but showing the money up front a little more & getting a better set of performance requirements out of the contractor.
It'd probably take a couple of years to do this. If they were smart, they saw how Mot dropped the ball at 500 MHz, and planned ahead. That was about two years ago say?
Looking at the embedded motorolas, there's a lot of interesting stuff. So something's up.
A Shake behemoth might have an x86 co-proc, which would be an insignificant fraction of the machine's cost.
Or it might be something specific, like the 'Airport Base Station'... which has an x86 inside.
Or a PCI card maybe for $700 extra. That tanked last time around though.
All I know is I'm benchmarking this particular thread to a file 'Read Dec2003'.
for graphical intensive application, faster cpu can not solve everything. take a look at an sgi machine. it has darn slow cpu, but i can gauarantee that the low end machine from sgi could easily beat any top speed pc or mac in many aspects.
<hr></blockquote>
That used to be the case a few years ago, but now even an Octane2 is slower than a much cheaper 2GHz Pentium 4 workstation. SGI workstations exist almost solely on reputation.
The only x86-compatible hardware I see coming from Cupertino would be an actual Apple PC - a PC with an x86 processor running Windows, but made by Apple.
I'm not sure Steve would be willing to go there, but Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. There would probably be a fair-sized market for the industrial design and quality for which Apple is admired within the Windows crowd. It would be a way of "breaking the ice", as it were, and get people comfortable with owning an Apple before converting them to the superior Mac OS later. Apple could charge a premium over the bottom-feeders like Dell and get away with it, making a nice profit on the deal.
It probably will never happen, for a large number of good reasons, but it seems much more likely than seeing OSX on a Dell within my lifetime.
First the Mac OS is replaced with a candy coated Unix. If apple moved to Intel/AMD then technically they would cease to exist anymore. What would be the difference between Apple and Dell? or gateway or HP? Or any one of a million PC makers now experimenting with nice looking cases?
Jobs knew that clones would kill apple - that's why he dumped the programme.
OSX + x86 = PC
Apple needs to be the Playstation of computers - make it so that people can do things on their computers that they can't do on other platforms. Hell, it worked with the original playstation. Better graphics, plays CDs, better looking, memory cards, add ons etc. Other game stations had one or other of these features. The PS just cleaned up.
Originally apple had colour, graphics apps, audio, networking, SCSI, AV and Hypercard - a designer's dream machine. PCs did not.
Apple needs to find a way to make the PPC Mac compelling. Simply having a nice looking machine with an OS that STILL is finished, with seemingly lower specs, running the kind of apps that can be found on windows AND having fewer peripheral options just doesn't cut it.
Like I said: Not gonna happen. The POWER/PPC family has plenty of advantages right now, and lots of room to grow. The analysts who think that Apple's moving to x86 are as wrong as analysts tend to be.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not an analyst, I'm an engineer -- I am not basing any of my speculation on what the various pundits are writing, but rather on... other information.
I think what we're looking at in this forum is two opinions: That of programmers (and hardware folks) who realize the immense problems involved in a switch to a fundamentally different chip, and people who look at it from an economic POV: e.g. cheaper components, cheaper processor, etc.
You have to remember though, and even though we may gripe and groan, the reason we buy macs isn't neccessarily because they're the fastest or the best value, but because they have class. It's like a beautiful classic Chevy versus a hopped up Ultima. It doesn't really make economic sense, it's a psychological thing.
Off topic: what 'appened to AI some time before the white iBooks came out? They dissappeared for a few months.
Who cares what type of processor it has (its under the heat sink and you can't see it anyway) as long as it's OS X and fast.
A 2.4 GHz Intel with QDR or a 1.8 Ghz AMD MP (I still like the underdog though) would be fine by me. My loyalty is to Apple, its clean OS, ease of use, run time, etc. I got Winblows: its ugly and a big pain to use (at least for me).
Comments
<strong>
This is a misperception I see repeated over and over. Selling two Macs at $2500 does bring in $5000, which is more than $3500, but what if Apple's cost on each Mac is $2300? Selling two of those at $2500 gives them $400 profit while selling one of them at $3500 gives them $1200 profit. Business isn't about the greatest possible gross sales revenue, it's about profits.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Good post and welcome to the 1000+ post club!
Always better to have both if you can but stock value allows you to borrow at lower rates for operating costs. But with $4B in the bank ?
<strong>I think people aren't getting Moki's point -- he is saying that Apple may introduce an additional line of Macintoshes which are based on an x86 processor. They will still be Macs, and as such be capable of running (a future version of) MacOSX. This does not imply that this version of MacOSX will automatically run on any x86-based PC, just like Solaris won't. They also may not be able to run Windows (more interesting would be a "Classic-like" environment for Windows apps, but we don't know what MS' or Apple's position on that would be).</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd blame that on the fact that there are two opposing goals for the x86 proponents that have been conflated:
First, there is the "x86 Mac" camp: If Apple releases a Mac-with-an-Athlon (say) - a custom, non-ATX Apple mobo that happens to have an x86 processor on board - then, after some system reengineering, they would gain whatever performance advantages the new processor has (and lose whatever performance advantages the G4 has). But this would do very little for their market share: Curious PC users would still have to fork out for a new Mac to get OS X, and as moki has pointed out, most people don't care what CPU is under the covers. Furthermore, if the x86 machines were purely in the pro desktop space Apple would get a terrible price on the processors, because they'd be moving a few hundred thousand a year. Since x86 processors are already more expensive than PPCs, any hope of price-competitive hardware is in vain. The only hope for an x86 Mac would be in the pro desktop space, because the x86 lines all lose badly to the G4 in performance/watt, which matters in (essentially embedded) designs like the notebooks and the [i|e]Mac. There would still be a market in the pro desktop and server spaces for the G4s, because of the power (and therefore space) efficiency of e.g. the XServe, and because of the real, tangible benefits that AltiVec has for several of Apple's key markets. So this strikes me as an expensive and limited solution to a small and transient problem.
Second, there is the "X on x86 camp:" If Apple is to realize the huge inflation of market share that some people here are predicting, they would have to release an OS that ran on existing PCs - no special ROMs, no license restrictions. Of course, if it can run on existing PCs then it can run on new PCs, and suddenly Apple is competing with the PC OEMs, except for the little detail that they have to support OS development as well. In this scenario iBooks and iMacs and eMacs might continue to sell briskly, because the advantages of Apple hardware - transparency (in the sense that everything works simply and seamlessly, not in the sense that the plastic is see-through), elegance, and reliability are most important to consumers. But Apple doesn't make any money off these machines. They make money off the professional machines, and guess what a lot of professionals are going to do? The same thing they did when the clones came out: Buy the cheaper stuff, and put up with the added frustration. Pros have been juggling extensions, troubleshooting SCSI chains, and otherwise wrestling with hardware for years, so they're prepared for this.
So, Apple will find its net profits from hardware slashed. Unfortunately, they're not going to get any help from the PC OEMs; Microsoft is already squeezing them hard, they won't allow them to bundle a competing OS. So Apple would have to go retail. And the odds that they would succeed are... uh.... well. Also, AMD has to get MS' permission to have Windows run on their processors (as came out in the trial not long ago). That permission can be rescinded. Ditto Intel - MS has in fact threatened to prevent Windows from running on Intel hardware if Intel didn't comply, so there's precedent. Even if MS doesn't exercize this kind of control immediately, do we really want MS to effectively control the Mac platform? More to the point, does anyone think that Steve does?
Like I said: Not gonna happen. The POWER/PPC family has plenty of advantages right now, and lots of room to grow. The analysts who think that Apple's moving to x86 are as wrong as analysts tend to be.
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>Since x86 processors are already more expensive than PPCs, any hope of price-competitive hardware is in vain. </strong><hr></blockquote>
While I tend to agree on all the points you make - how much does a single 1 ghz PPC CPU cost? I know that down here 200 $ gets you an Athlon XP rated 1800 (or maybe more already). Which would probaby translate somewhere to a 800-1ghz PPC CPU, or?
[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>Like I said: Not gonna happen. The POWER/PPC family has plenty of advantages right now, and lots of room to grow. The analysts who think that Apple's moving to x86 are as wrong as analysts tend to be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You can check a few nice point BadAndy makes about that x86 transition madness/stupidity
<a href="http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=8570964925&r= 7290994925#7290994925" target="_blank">Good points by BadAndy</a>
<strong>Company stock value is usually based on profits to earnings ratio (P/E ratio) and sales value is usually based on cash flow. Choose your fate. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Bzzzzt. P/E ratio is PRICE/earnings ratio, meaning the stock's share price divided by the company's earnings per share. There's no such thing as a "profits to earnings" ratio since profits and earnings are basically the same thing.
And all you "OS X Intel" guys will be the first in line saying how great the G5 is
First, there is the "x86 Mac" camp: If Apple releases a Mac-with-an-Athlon (say) - a custom, non-ATX Apple mobo that happens to have an x86 processor on board - then, after some system reengineering, they would gain whatever performance advantages the new processor has (and lose whatever performance advantages the G4 has). But this would do very little for their market share.
<hr></blockquote>
Agreed, in itself it wouldn't give Apple an automatic increase in marketshare. PC users don't buy Macs because of real or perceived price deficits; in addition to the inability to run Windows software. Not because they have a Power PC CPU instead of an x86.
But as a matter of maintaining marketshare, Apple should offer competitive performance with the PC world, in addition to continuing to offer the benefits of their operating system.
For the home market, some of the latest games require the absolute latest in Mac hardware to play. Warcraft III, for example, appears to need a fast tower to run nicely (it's okay on my TiBook 667, but hardly great - especially during large battles). Even on Apple's flagship consumer machine (iMac G4 800), I've heard of performance problems. I don't know how accurate these reports are, however. But 2 or 3 year old PCs appear to have few performance problems with the game (though I've heard it's unstable under Windows
Even in Photoshop, Apple's performance advantage isn't what it once was. For many tasks where AltiVec isn't involved, there seems to be a performance disadvantage on the Mac side - sometimes a significant one.
I agree that by switching to x86, Apple would not be able to offer a performance advantage (well, Mac OS X could be faster than Windows XP in some areas on the same hardware). At best they'd be on par or slightly better than the PC world, but I'll take that over the present situation.
Frankly, with the G4 languishing the way it is, I don't see what alternative Apple has. The gaps in CPU performance (non SIMD), and memory bandwidth almost seem insurmountable.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Mac isn't a viable purchase. I think that with Mac OS X, it's a heck of a lot more viable than it was two years ago. But it would be a lot more compelling if there was greater performance to go with an already great OS.
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: PipelineStall ]</p>
Makes head spin.
I think I'll consider myself a white belt in smack fu...
Head spinning...
Lemon Bon Bon <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" />
PS. Apple gets the 7500 on Rio...next year...(well, the Register says so..so..er...it must be true
I think that then we'll just shut our mouths.
For a few seconds anyhow.
When we do get trickle down Power tech'...following in late 2003/2004...
We won't be spanking the x86 monkey...
PPC seems to 'have legs'. Let's see those legs we keep hearing about...
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
<strong>Sizzle chest: market share. That in turn creates mind share, as well as the economies of scale making Macs cheaper. I'd rather see Apple sacrifice profit for a while to increase market share. In the end this would be beneficial I think.</strong><hr></blockquote>
by reducing prices by 28% (from $3500 to $2500) as suggested, would have cost apple over $400 million for the quarter (over a billion dollars in the last year). considering that apple's net profit for the last quarter was only $40 million, i'm not convinced this would be beneficial in the end. if apple were to reduce prices to just break even, the consumer's discount would be negligible. playing with these numbers is not a particularly fruitful way of increasing market share.
<strong>Conclusions???
.....1- the 1600 machine is bogus, but has been there a long time(why hasn't it been removed)
.....2-the results for the 1000MHz machines are for single processors.
.........If so where did said 1GHz single processor machines come from?
.....3-the result for the 1600MHz machine is for a dual 800MHz machine.
.....4-Some "wild and crazy guy" overclocked a single to 1.6GHz
</strong><hr></blockquote>
The 1.6GHz is probably bogus, but could be an overclocked chip. The numbers seem to scale correctly.
The 1GHz score that was listed was for a single processor. Not a single processor machine, but the RC5 client running on only a single processor.
Here are the scores for a dual 1GHz machine:
<a href="http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/query.cgi?cputype=99&arch=all&contest=all&multi=1&; recordid=0" target="_blank">http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/query.cgi?cputype=99&arch=all&contest=all&multi=1&; recordid=0</a>
20,847,444...not too shabby.
I see myself confirmed.
G-news
<strong>
First, there is the "x86 Mac" camp: If Apple releases a Mac-with-an-Athlon (say) - a custom, non-ATX Apple mobo that happens to have an x86 processor on board - then, after some system reengineering, they would gain whatever performance advantages the new processor has (and lose whatever performance advantages the G4 has). But this would do very little for their market share: Curious PC users would still have to fork out for a new Mac to get OS X, and as moki has pointed out, most people don't care what CPU is under the covers. Furthermore, if the x86 machines were purely in the pro desktop space Apple would get a terrible price on the processors, because they'd be moving a few hundred thousand a year. Since x86 processors are already more expensive than PPCs, any hope of price-competitive hardware is in vain. The only hope for an x86 Mac would be in the pro desktop space, because the x86 lines all lose badly to the G4 in performance/watt, which matters in (essentially embedded) designs like the notebooks and the [i|e]Mac. There would still be a market in the pro desktop and server spaces for the G4s, because of the power (and therefore space) efficiency of e.g. the XServe, and because of the real, tangible benefits that AltiVec has for several of Apple's key markets. So this strikes me as an expensive and limited solution to a small and transient problem.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly.
If Dell sells a dual 3 GHz x86 for $2000...
...and Apple sells pretty much the _identical_ box (because Dell copied what Apple did) for $3000. And restricts the 'x86 Mac' to OSX. There's just no way this is a sane plan.
If they priced it as a loss-leader, sure, they'd sell shiploads. But in order to _compete_ with Dell, it's have to be on the order of 10 million a quarter. Ten million units a quarter on a loss-leader... is one very very quick way to spend 4 billion. Gosh, you'd have great marketshare though, and we all know marketshare is king. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
It probably wouldn't take more than one billion to turn to IBM (or maybe 2 if they went back to Mot) and said 'We'd like to buy a completely new-design kick arse processor that you could use in your other projects & is compatible with the ppc ISA' AKA pretty much the same thing they're doing but showing the money up front a little more & getting a better set of performance requirements out of the contractor.
It'd probably take a couple of years to do this. If they were smart, they saw how Mot dropped the ball at 500 MHz, and planned ahead. That was about two years ago say?
Looking at the embedded motorolas, there's a lot of interesting stuff. So something's up.
A Shake behemoth might have an x86 co-proc, which would be an insignificant fraction of the machine's cost.
Or it might be something specific, like the 'Airport Base Station'... which has an x86 inside.
Or a PCI card maybe for $700 extra. That tanked last time around though.
All I know is I'm benchmarking this particular thread to a file 'Read Dec2003'.
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: PipelineStall ]</p>
for graphical intensive application, faster cpu can not solve everything. take a look at an sgi machine. it has darn slow cpu, but i can gauarantee that the low end machine from sgi could easily beat any top speed pc or mac in many aspects.
<hr></blockquote>
That used to be the case a few years ago, but now even an Octane2 is slower than a much cheaper 2GHz Pentium 4 workstation. SGI workstations exist almost solely on reputation.
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: Analogue bubblebath ]</p>
<strong>
[Well stated synopsis of x86/Mac problems - well done!]
[ 08-05-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
The only x86-compatible hardware I see coming from Cupertino would be an actual Apple PC - a PC with an x86 processor running Windows, but made by Apple.
I'm not sure Steve would be willing to go there, but Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. There would probably be a fair-sized market for the industrial design and quality for which Apple is admired within the Windows crowd. It would be a way of "breaking the ice", as it were, and get people comfortable with owning an Apple before converting them to the superior Mac OS later. Apple could charge a premium over the bottom-feeders like Dell and get away with it, making a nice profit on the deal.
It probably will never happen, for a large number of good reasons, but it seems much more likely than seeing OSX on a Dell within my lifetime.
Jobs knew that clones would kill apple - that's why he dumped the programme.
OSX + x86 = PC
Apple needs to be the Playstation of computers - make it so that people can do things on their computers that they can't do on other platforms. Hell, it worked with the original playstation. Better graphics, plays CDs, better looking, memory cards, add ons etc. Other game stations had one or other of these features. The PS just cleaned up.
Originally apple had colour, graphics apps, audio, networking, SCSI, AV and Hypercard - a designer's dream machine. PCs did not.
Apple needs to find a way to make the PPC Mac compelling. Simply having a nice looking machine with an OS that STILL is finished, with seemingly lower specs, running the kind of apps that can be found on windows AND having fewer peripheral options just doesn't cut it.
oh, and my 9500/200 rocks! (PPC)
<strong>
Like I said: Not gonna happen. The POWER/PPC family has plenty of advantages right now, and lots of room to grow. The analysts who think that Apple's moving to x86 are as wrong as analysts tend to be.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not an analyst, I'm an engineer -- I am not basing any of my speculation on what the various pundits are writing, but rather on... other information.
I think what we're looking at in this forum is two opinions: That of programmers (and hardware folks) who realize the immense problems involved in a switch to a fundamentally different chip, and people who look at it from an economic POV: e.g. cheaper components, cheaper processor, etc.
You have to remember though, and even though we may gripe and groan, the reason we buy macs isn't neccessarily because they're the fastest or the best value, but because they have class. It's like a beautiful classic Chevy versus a hopped up Ultima. It doesn't really make economic sense, it's a psychological thing.
Off topic: what 'appened to AI some time before the white iBooks came out? They dissappeared for a few months.
A 2.4 GHz Intel with QDR or a 1.8 Ghz AMD MP (I still like the underdog though) would be fine by me. My loyalty is to Apple, its clean OS, ease of use, run time, etc. I got Winblows: its ugly and a big pain to use (at least for me).