MacQuadra840av
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What the PowerPC to Intel transition tells us about Apple Silicon release dates
"Apple is championing this Apple silicon and you don't champion something by making its design be a copy of previous machine."
Apple did exactly that in 2006. The first Intel iMac and Intel MacBook Pro were clones of the iMac G5 and PowerBook G4 that they replaced. Why? Because they were a design that people loved! It worked.
Apple released the last iMac G5 in October 2005 and then replaced it with the Intel iMac in January 2006 with a model that was 3x faster. You could expect the same this time around. Apple could easily repeat history with a new Apple Silicon iMac and Apple Silicon MacBook Pro that exceed the performance of the Intel models. The keynote discussed the scalability of the A-chip and how they were working on a desktop-class chip. The development Intel Mac was an Intel Pentium 4, just like the development A-chip Mac mini is an existing A12Z. Apple released a much faster Intel Mac when the machines were ready. My iPad Pro (2018) with the 8-core A12X is faster than my 2015 2.8 quad i7 MacBook Pro.
Apple did not support PowerPC 'for years'. Don't expect the same with Intel. Apple cut off PowerPC support with Snow Leopard, only releasing PowerPC/Intel versions of Tiger and Leopard (Tiger being the first commercially available Intel version, but only shipped with the Intel iMac and MacBook Pro. Leopard was the first and only retail version of OS X for both PowerPC and Intel). You can likely expect the same with Big Sur and the version to follow Big Sur. After that, Intel support would likely be dropped in favor of Apple Silicon. You can also expect the Apple Silicon Macs to have more 'supported features' than the Intel Macs.
It would be awesome if the new Apple Silicon iMac would be available in Space Grey, and not only available on the 3-year-old iMac Pro, which is on its way out since it hasn't been updated in 3 years, and the new 2020 iMac 10-Core i9 beats the base model 10-Core Xeon.
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What the PowerPC to Intel transition tells us about Apple Silicon release dates
IBM was supplying PowerPC chips, not Motorola. Motorola bailed long before that. Apple wasn't forced. The PowerPC roadmap was not good for laptops or desktops because of the cooling and power requirements. A G5 in a laptop was impossible and the fastest G5 required liquid cooling in a desktop. The Intel switch was not a quick solution because all versions of OS X were both native for Intel and PowerPC since 2000. Apple's financial situation was very strong in 2005 because the iMac and iPod were enormous successes. Apple was a very profitable company at that time. Microsoft's investment in Apple was back in 1997 and they mistakenly sold their Apple stock after the 5 year agreement. Microsoft had nothing to do with switching to Intel.qwerty52 said:I think there is a very significant difference between the situations in 2005 and now.The processor transition in 2005 was forced by two factors which putted Appel onder huge pressure to find quick solutions:
1) Motorola announced that it wil stop supplying Apple with their RISC processors
2) The financial situation of Apple was far from good. It was not coincidence that Bill Gates and Microsoft were also involved.
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What the PowerPC to Intel transition tells us about Apple Silicon release dates
In case you did not know, Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.4 ran 100% natively on Intel processors (derived from OpenStep, which was also 100% Intel native). As Steve Jobs said, it was cross-platform by design. The development tools were just as mature back then because the Apple engineers were coding everything for both PowerPC and Intel. Far different than the 680x0 to PowerPC transition in which the majority of the OS and Apps all ran through a 680x0 emulator for years.godofbiscuits said:For Apple Silicon, it's an even easier transition, I think, because they're Apple's SoCs. They've been tested, they've been derived from extraordinarily field-tested chips, the dev tools are FAR more mature than PPC->Intel era, etc.
The transition to Apple Silicon is no different since iOS devices have been running a variation of OS X natively on ARM for 10 years. -
CompUSA brand lurches back from the grave
Have you seen the Magnolia store inside Best Buy? It is exactly what you describe. A dark room to test TVs in. That is the closest thing we have to the old days of shopping at the original concept of Circuity City and The Good Guys....before they dropped their commissions and changed their stores to look like Target. Back when salesmen knew what they were selling and knew how to demonstrate a product.dysamoria said:We need a place, let’s call it a “show room”, where we can actually see and test products in person... Like a fairly dark room to test TVs in, instead of being forced to guess how they look when they’re not in the absolute most flattering scenarios... as well as computer displays, pointing devices, gaming controllers...
Imagine that concept. -
CompUSA brand lurches back from the grave
8 years ago was a long time ago in technology. Next time you go shopping for a TV, you will be amazed by the picture quality of an LG OLED. Also, when you look at a TV in a store, they are not set correctly with their brightness and contrast jacked way up. So what you might think looks bad, is just bad picture settings on the TV in a store.maestro64 said:
I had the same idea a while back, you can never replace in person experience, and I like looking at and touching things first.dysamoria said:We need a place, let’s call it a “show room”, where we can actually see and test products in person... Like a fairly dark room to test TVs in, instead of being forced to guess how they look when they’re not in the absolute most flattering scenarios... as well as computer displays, pointing devices, gaming controllers...
Imagine that concept.
You can read all the reviews you like, at some point you realize most people doing reviews have no idea what they are talking about or they are complaining because they bought the wrong product and some how it is the product's fault. Then the professional reviewers are all bias since they get paid in some way to write reviews and they are careful about how they say a product sucks, it is not like Top Gear where they rip on cars which really suck.
Last time I bought a new TV which was 8 yrs ago, I went into HH Greg and lucky for me the 4 TV's I was most interested in were very close to one another on the wall of TV's. Because it was late in the day I was able to convince them to turn off all the TV's I was not interested in, then play a nature scene verses a CGI video like Avatar (no naturally occurring colors) I was able to really compare TV's. If you only looked at the bright and pretties color TV you eye went to Samsung (the bug light), if you look for the best picture with nature color reproduction your eye went to Sony. If you only interested in the easiest smart TV interface LG was the choice. But LG and Samsung sucked at natural color reproduction of a nature scene since their colors were over saturated but for Avatar the picture looks great. No review I read at the time talk about this, unless you got into the real techie stuff which required a degree in digital images.
Not sure how I am going to buy my next TV if I can not do the side by side since I did not buy any of the above mention ones, I would have gone for Sony but it was not worth the extra $600 for the slightly better image it offer over everything else, and I did not care about smart TV's since I only use the ATV.
