Pentium-Based Macs The Future of Apple? 817
seek3r writes "Found this interesting article on BusinessWeek.com regarding Apple's potential switch to Intel chips. I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support. Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel?"
This will be only be rumors.. (Score:2, Troll)
Do you mean the G5??? (Score:4, Informative)
...Or am I missing something? the G4 chip has been around for a long time...
Re:Do you mean the G5??? (Score:4, Informative)
There's also been rumors of Apple showing interest in AMD's native 64 bit mode of the Hammer/Operton line, which wouldn't be a terribly stupid move if they're going to up and move. Going to Pentium (x86) would be a step backward, into a braindead and inefficient architecture, and probably cause a riot among developers. This would only make sense if Apple wanted to completely be out of making hardware, because they'd be aiming OSX at commodity hardware, and that's just too hideous to imagine, particularly if you start thinking about supporting drivers for everything. Probably better, to maintain their slim marketshare, to keep a firm hand on hardware options.
Re:Do you mean the G5??? (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, but then you say:
Going to Pentium (x86) would be a step backward, into a braindead and inefficient architecture, and probably cause a riot among developers
Um, you do realize, right, that AMD's 64bit architecture is basically just an extension to x86 in the same way Intel's 32bit architecture introduced with 386 was an extension of the 16 x86 from before (from the 8086, 8088, 80286, etc)
I don't see how you can call moving to a 64bit extension of x86 a good idea while calling x86 itself "braindead and inefficient". Unless, of course, you don't know what you're talking about.
Anyway, while you can certanly say that x86 code is backwards (it's big endian and all!), I don't see how you can call a chip that run code faster then what apple currently uses 'inefficient'.
Re:This will be only be rumors.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Carbon is designed to provide a gentle migration path for developers transitioning from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.
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Cocoa provides developers starting new Mac OS X-only projects the fastest way to full-featured implementations
Let me take a guess? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let me take a guess? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless this is mandated by law Apple should not touch this stuff with a 10 foot pole. They would gain leverage in the marketplace by offering computers free from this crap.
If they did this rip -> mix -> burn would have to be changed to rip -> ask for permission to play -> ask for permission to play -> burn? (are you of your mind, you can't do that)
If Intel pushes this palladium crap they deserve to be driven out of business, I don't care how damn many GHz these chips would run at, I'd consider any DRM enabled chip to be defective.
Re:Let me take a guess? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lack of competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lack of competition (Score:2)
64 Bit PowerPC? (Score:5, Funny)
Wish I remembered where I saw the article.
-Pete
APPLE & IBM 64-bit PPC Article (Score:5, Informative)
I think this is more a more reasonable plan than Apple making the "Switch" to Intel processors.
Here it is ... (Score:2, Informative)
Personally until something materializes everything is FUD. I will use what works now and change later when the change happens. There are too many things to get stressed about in life, so just accept that things don't always turn out as you wish, or as someone else says.
Re:Here it is ... (Score:2, Funny)
Methinks you misunderstand "FUD". It's not at all synonymous with "vapor".
Re:64 Bit PowerPC? (Score:4, Interesting)
By that time, comparible intel chips will be in the 4-5 ghz range easily.
If this is the case, you have to keep in mind that Apple/IBM/Motorola will have a much smoother transition to 64 bit processors than Intel or AMD, both in terms of hardware design, and software support.
They've got several years of experience in building high-quality 64 bit PPC chips. They just need to migrate that experience to building processors aimed at the desktop.
Don't discount the advantages of processing more efficiently versus simply brute force to solve a problem.
Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I respect about the PowerPC chips is that the power consumption is drastically lower than for x86 chips. Drastically. It would be a shame to lose that and have everyone using 100 watt processors a couple of years down the road.
[*] Those few people are disproportionately loud.
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:5, Informative)
Definitely. PC manufacturers love to compete on Mhz, but a fast CPU is useless if it's starved of useful work by bottlenecks in I/O, memory bandwidth, etc. It's not unusual for a sub 1Ghz PC with good SCSI disks to handily outperform a 2Ghz+ machine with mere IDE.
Sun, SGI et al realized this years ago. Serious computing is limited not by clock speed of the CPU but by bus and memory bandwidth. That's why Sun sell systems with 300-400Mhz processors and gigaplane XB crossbar active backplanes. Nowadays with the increasing sophistication of consumer software (like the latest games), the same issues are recurring.
If you're buying a system in the near future, drop 500-1000 Mhz in CPU speed and buy faster disks or more memory with the money you saved.
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:5, Informative)
If you said "a clustered array of RAID5 15,000 RPM drives versus a 5400RPM single drive", then that would have made sense, but to use SCSI versus IDE as the big differentiation is just silly: The intrinsic SCSI advantage has been disproven countless times.
Sun sell systems with 300-400Mhz processors and gigaplane XB crossbar active backplanes
That's pretty disingenuous: Sun sells systems with tens or hundreds of those "300-400Mhz" processors, disproving your "CPU power doesn't matter" BS. I guarantee you that if Sun weren't sliding behind in the CPU game (it's hard to compete with AMD and Intel with such a small niche market) they'd sell much more powerful CPUs. Instead they compensate by clustering dozens of them together.
If you're buying a system in the near future, drop 500-1000 Mhz in CPU speed and buy faster disks or more memory with the money you saved.
You'd save next to nothing. An Athlon 2200+ costs $220 Canadian here, and puts you in the upper realm of CPUs. Considering that most power PCs have 512MB of RAM (which is virtually never exhausted. Despite having several development tools open, and SQL Server running, and several different browsers, I currently have 370MB free. Adding more memory will merely increase the capacitive load of my PC). Secondly, adding a faster disk only matters if you do tasks which are heavily disk I/O intensive, which the overwhelming majority are not (especially because people have so much memory, and hence disk cache). It's like saying you'll get better video encoding performance by equipping your PC with a faster CD-ROM drive.
This BS "CPUs are faster than we'll ever need" nonsense is as tired of an argument as it was a decade ago when contrarians were assuring us that a 386 was more power than any reasonable man would ever need. History has shown their claims to be absurd, yet as they say: History repeats itself. Take a man who claims that his Pentium 667 is "faster than I'll ever need" and give him a P4 2.2 to use for a week. Put him back on his 667. 9 times out of 10 he'll be on the phone to Dell to upgrade his PC. Most people who claim that they don't need better say so because they've never SEEN better.
Additionally, try doing some video editing on your PC. While the hard drive is a factor (because massive amounts of data are read and written), the processor is massively more an influence: An Athlon 2200+ will perform the task that much quicker than a Athlon 1500+, again thoroughly reputing your claims that processors are overpowered. That's especially telling as video processing is one of the most disk and memory bound activities.
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:3, Informative)
This highly depends on the application. A single SCSI drive against a single IDE drive performing a single task may show the same performance. However, when you add multiple tasks and a lot of disk access , SCSI beats IDE hands down. As you add drives (don't even bring up RAID yet), tag command queing and parallel data paths blows away IDE no question. Now, add RAID into the equation, especially looking a the huge caching controllers available for SCSI with no IDE counterpart and you see that SCSI is certainly the way to go. Computer manufactures aren't idiots; IDE is cheaper and if it were on equal footing with SCSI no one would offer SCSI solutions. That having been said, no high-performance workstations or servers use IDE.
Sun, HP, etc., have for years sold small MHz machines that outperform the GHz machines available mainly because they use RISC technology and aligned instructions. Clustering has not been a large part of Sun's business -- ever! And, as far as multiple CPU's in a single box, yes, all these systems offer and endorse this, but then so does Intel if you read their journals. Intel ran themselves into needing GHz clocking because of poor chip design (backward compatible to x86). Sun and others don't design chips in those ranges because of the cooling requirements and heat failure rates. It is far easier for them to make lower MHz machines with multiple processors because they run OS's and software that can work UMP or SMP, where Intel has issues in the common market environment (example: Windows 95/98 unable to work SMP).
It's funny... (Score:5, Interesting)
I also work on single processor Sun, SGI, and IBMs, all of which at lower Mhz are MUCH faster than my PC (except maybe the slower SGIs, like the Indigo R10000s; at 150Mhz, they're showing their age but STILL keep up with the PC in rendering speed). Sun's problem is not technology, it's sales. IBM is just killing them in marketing. I talked to a guy the other day that's getting ready to begin replacing their 1800 Sun servers with AIX boxes. He concedes the Suns are superior, but they have been convinced from the confidence bestowed by IBM's superior marketing skills. It's widely known that Sun has superior tech, inferior business sense.
I totally agree with you that it's BS the people that say 'current CPU speed is all we'll ever need', but it's equally BS to assume that the 'faster' Intel chips are actually the 'fastest' chips out there because of some marketing-driven clockrates. Superior architecture trumps clockrates any day of the week, and Intel is still lacking in the former. Incidentally, I'd take a single processor Ultra Sparc III box at 1.05 Ghz over a 2.0Ghz PC, even running *nix, any day of the week. As a matter of fact, I usually do.
Re:It's funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
First off enable DMA for the disks - there's no way you should be getting any noticable CPU usage from the disks, even if they are IDE. I can run a defragger on my box and it never gets above 1% CPU usage.
Secondly, if you are a CAD user WTF are you doing buying a games card? Hardly any surprise it doesn't perform too well. Will be sweet for Doom 3 though
Like you say, your box is being killed by some dodgy disk settings, the wrong gfx card, and probably a lack of memory. However you use that as a reason to slate the processor - hello? The processor isn't getting a chance to do anything because of all the bottlenecks.
Please help! (Score:3, Funny)
I am in the roofing business and recently my boss took away my hammer and gave me a handsaw instead. Now it takes MUCH longer to pound in my roofing nails. Saws suck! Who designed these things anyhow? There are sharp bits all along one edge and I often cut my hands as this crazy saw flaps back and forth. =(
GIVE ME BACK MY OLD HAMMER!
IDE performance (Score:3, Informative)
Most modern IDE drives have write caching enabled by default. However, under every OS I've tested this configuration can lose data, even with a journaling filesystem. The problem is that the filesystem thinks that the data is successfully written to disk, but it's actually in the drive's cache buffer. If you lose power at the wrong moment, you lose that data. I've reproduced this problem with Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor 7200rpm 4MB buffer 80GB IDE drives under both Linux 2.4.X kernels and Microsoft 98/2000/XP platforms.
I've written in to each of those drive manufacturers and they have confirmed that the cache buffer isn't backed by some battery or other type of power reserve, and that data can be lost when power is removed.
Apparently this isn't an issue in SCSI land because SCSI drives respect a flush command, while some IDE drives do not.
The bottom line is that if you want a reliable system with IDE drives you need to disable write caching, which drastically increases disk access latency and results in reduced throughput for many tasks.
I'd love it if a kernel hacker can provide some more details as to why journaling filesystems can't forceably flush the IDE disk's buffer... I've found many older threads on the issue on the linux kernel list but haven't found any definitive resolution or action items recently.
As the situation stands now, my iozone benchmarks show a 15k RPM 80GB SCSI drive performing 2x to 3x better across all tests than a 7.2k RPM 80GB IDE drive with write caching disabled, DMA turned on, and all other hdparm options optimized for maximal performance. That is a pretty large difference. Yes, I did verify that the hdparm tuning options were working correctly.
And yes, the 3ware IDE RAID controllers have the exact same problem. They have an on-board raid cache, but it's not battery backed, so it is not a good idea to enable write caching in most cases. The 3ware cards are great and cheap, but they don't perform as well as their scsi equivalents.
Before someone tries to flame me, yes I have heard of a UPS, but for the machines I'm trying to protect I can't trust that the UPS will be properly maintained, not overloaded, strong enough to survive a long outage, or that the customer won't hit the power button themselves out of ignorance when they think that the system has "hung".
Re:The "Need" for speed? Bah! (Score:4, Interesting)
While you make a good argument for purchasing an aftermarket IDE controller (which can perform tasks with the CPU utilization of SCSI), the reality of the matter is that virtually zero OEMs ship a system that way, they use whatever is built in on the motherboard. Which almost always consume a large amount of CPU time when performing disk I/O.
This is why the only people who build enterprise-class database servers with IDE drives at their core are idiots. That or they're penny-wise and dollar-stupid.
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:3, Interesting)
That being said, I think OSX beats the crap out of Windows as an OS, and I'd really love to see such a great OS on a cheap, fast box. Can't have everything, I suppose.
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. There have been several, yet oddly enough, those points in history were among the worst for Apple's profits and market share. When the G4 tower first came out, it had mosterous $ for ! compared to similarilly equipped Windows towers.
This was especially true in the Laptop arena, where Apple occationally had products out that didn't even have an x86 equivalent, because they were so much faster than any Windows laptop. For example, when the Powerbook 3500 came out, and when the first Powerbook G4 came out. In both cases, they were the world's fasted consumer laptops at the time.
I had just bought P4@1.6Ghz pc laptop for $2400
And I would not even consider trading my 700 MHz G3 iBook for your Dell, even though I have a slower CPU and spent a fraction of what you did. Six hours on one battery, baby!
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:3, Interesting)
first, apple needs to use the idea of a Power Rating, advertising the approximate equivalence to Intel's numbers. additionally, apple needs to donate high-end machines to benchmarking sites like tom's hardware so that we can see third-party comparisons of apple vs intel vs amd.
second, apple needs to be more generous in allowing the changing of clock cycles (overclocking); what happens when one juices up these chips with more power (and adequate cooling)?
Uh uh. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not a good idea. All the while you're comparing Apples to Oranges no-one questions the difference. Start painting Apples orange and someone will notice that they're not very good Oranges.
Apple (the company that is) don't really give a stuff about benchmarks. To be honest the only people who care are the pro users and they're only a small part of Apple's sales. Apple would just love for consumers to never hear about benchmarks.
For writing letters to Mom and surfing the web a Mac is as fast as any PC. What Apple needs to - and indeed does - focus on is the user experience.
Apple want people to choose computers based on what would look good in their living room, not on abstract performance numbers.
Re:Uh uh. (Score:3, Interesting)
My 5-year-old PC is just as good for this as a new PC. A friend (who has been using Macs for 6 years now) was looking for a new computer to do just that. After looking around a bit, he will buy a $350 dollar used PC laptop. Sure there is no warranty, but for that little money, he'll buy another if something goes wrong that can't be fixed easily.
"Apple want people to choose computers based on what would look good in their living room, not on abstract performance numbers."
Unfortunately for Apple, this isn't how most people choose their computers.
People want computers that work with other people's computers. (Yes, all of us know Macs and PCs can work together, but you know what? I work for a video software company and after 6 years, our IT dept still can't get PCs and Macs to work together perfectly).
People want CHEAP computers. Apple has never understood this. Sure I can buy an IMAC for under $1000. But what if I don't want a computer that looks like an Easy Bake Oven on acid? (Ok - the new IMacs look better, but how do I add a cheap second internal drive?)
Can't Apple give us what we really need? A cheap box that can be easily upgraded, not have to pay top dollar because there is no (truly valid) competition and not charging me for point releases. (I'm sorry but if you sell me OSX, don't charge me again until OSII - for ALL of M$ shortcomings, I get updates for free for what has been at least 2 years at a time before I need to upgrade)
Unfortunately, the entire computer industry, except for Apple, has decided that they will compete on margin. I like to think I am getting the best deal I can. I can spend an extra $100 and get a really cool case mod on top of the $900 I spent on a dual Athalon (2.0) and gig of ram and have a computer I think looks better than a Mac (IMHO).
Someday I will use OSX for more than testing my web apps and browser compatibility, but not until I can install it on a PC (read - cheap and non proprietary hardware).
Re:Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Inte (Score:2)
Only if you consider much higher power consumption in exchange for extra speed that most people don't really need--but like to think that they do--to be be a win.
I have an 866MHz Pentium III on my desktop, and I use it for commercial game development. Do I have *any* complaints about speed? None. And I'm completely serious.
Probably just a ploy.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple's had that single supplier of cpu's for SO LONG now... no wonder the chips have started to be less "supercomputerish" over time. I doubt seriously that Apple really would want to switch, but as long as they CAN switch then suddenly Intel/AMD is a real potential competitor for Motorola, (hopefully) forcing them to push the technology of their chips a little faster. Just a splash of market economics wisely added by Apple to keep the barrel fresh...
(Nevertheless, I still want to see what OSX can do on my fasssst AMD systems... and I'm not about to buy a $3000 PPC system just to see it...)
Re:Probably just a ploy.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not AGAIN! (Score:3, Informative)
Heh. (Score:5, Funny)
"The G4 CRUSHES the Pentium in... oh shit, wait, no, it doesn't. Gimme some of that 2.8 gigahertz love."
- A.P.
Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
Apple is a HARDWARE company.
You will NEVER see another Mac OS running on a third-party box. Somebody might crack the OS to run on a biege box, but they'ed never be able to distribute that crack, or even publish it. After all, Apple's lawyers are second only to Disney's in terms of vicious pursuit of trademark, copyright, and other IP infringement.
Re:Mac OS/X on x86 makes a lot of sense (Score:3, Interesting)
10 largest? They are #1.
IBM GPUL is the latest rumor (Score:3, Interesting)
BSD did it. (Score:2)
That is THE only way Mac can truely compete with Windows is to compete on the PC market.
Re:BSD did it. (Score:2)
That is THE only way Mac can truely compete with Windows is to compete on the PC market.
Apple isn't competing with Windows, they are competing with Dell, HPaq, IBM, and Gateway. OS X will probably never be available on commodity beige boxes.
Expect to see Apple go with a 64-bit RISC CPU. That way they can play their own numbers game ("Dell - 32 bit. Gateway - 32 bit. Compaq - 32 bit. Apple - 64 bit!"). Some consumers may still remember the 32-bit/64-bit/128-bit video game arms race of the late 90s and decide that a 64-bit chip is necessarily better than a 32-bit one.
Has Motorolla really fallen behind? Unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, despite my love for the mac platform, and my desire to claim that our hardware is "just as good"... it's not. RISC vs CISC stopped being an issue when Intel chips became RISC chips pretending to be x86's. PowerPC's still do more per clock than Pentiums, but the differences in clock speed, bus speed, and sundry other ephemerals has finally gotten to the point where for 90% of tasks, intel chips are just faster.
Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to switch until they pry my computer from my clenched, arthritic hands... but I can no longer look a computer-newbie in the eye and tell him that "Macs are just as fast". Better experiences, maybe... but as fast? No.
Of course, for most people, we're close to that point where chip-speed stops mattering... (maybe 1-2 more cycles of Moore's Law ought to do it.) How many people think about the speed of their computer while surfing, emailing, word-processing, or any such thing? (I know, I know, it's a cliche, but cliches are cliches because they're _true_.)
I think, business-wise, a switch to intel would be near-suicide for Apple. But Motorolla is dead in the water, desktop-computer-wise. Perhaps this theoretical IBM chip is the future... who knows?
You will NEVER see Mac's with Pentiums (Score:3, Insightful)
That's right folks. If OSX works on PC hardware, it has suddenly just become a competitor to Windows. What happens then? No more Mac IE, no more Mac Office. Suddenly Macs are nothing more than expensive linux boxes with a groovy desktop.
Apple can't "test" the waters by having some PPC boxes and some Intel boxes, they just have to jump head long into competition against essentially Dell for hardware and Microsoft for software. It'll never happen.
Problems Ahead! (Score:2, Interesting)
Since this rumour has been around for a long time without anything actually happening, I'd say that Apple will keep on building proper RISC based machines. We can all agree that it would be a step backwards to go from PPC to x86 from an architectual point of view, can't we.
Re:Problems Ahead! (Score:2)
Well (Score:2)
It was pointed out that this guy was the same guy that, 5 years ago, predicted the merger of HP and Compaq for all the same reasons that they used today.
Personally I know very little about Mac's, but I can't see why moving to Intel would be a bad thing in any way.
I often found (in the old days, and were talking 8 years ago) that a Mac always appeared to run slower than the same speed PC and was substantially more expensive. I don't know if this is the same these days (having never used OSX - merely looked) but if it's true, anything that can reduce the cost and boost the speed must be good.
Uhm, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
One: Apple's revenue comes from it's hardware sales. If people can go out and buy plain vanilla PCs and install MacOS on them for significantly cheaper than they can buy a Mac, Apple's income will drop a great deal.
Two: As others have said, Apple's been with IBM and Mot. for a Very Long Time (tm). There have been rumors equally as valid as this one about apple developing it's *own* chip for fabbing at IBM (a company, unlike Mot., who can actually get decent yields).
Three: Again, as others have said, it's more probable that Apple will go with IBM's next-gen 64-bit desktop CPU. IBM makes good chips. They're not big in the desktop market, but the Power4 has been a big server chip for a while now, and with good reason. It was one of the first dual-chip-on-die procs that actually made public usage (afik), and did a large amount of ass-whipping.
To conclude: Apple going x86 would be stupid.
Have a nice day.
Re:Uhm, no. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does everyone assume that using Intel-chips would make the computer compatible with PCs?
Apple could design the hardware in a very specific non-compatible way and just take advantage of the fact that Intel-chips are a commodity.
Re:Uhm, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple sells $2k machine, gets 22% margin, or about $440 out of the machine.
Apple sells $130 box, gets 60% margin (wildly generous guess), or about $80.
So instead of selling 2 million Macs, they have to sell 11 million boxes of OS X to make the same amount. That's a significant amount to make it worthwhile.
That's what *your* post seems to suggest should happen.
The parent poster, however, was talking about Apple making a AMD or Intel powered PowerMac; Apple would *still* sell 2 million Macs, and they would *still* cost $2k, but instead of a $440 margin, they get a $480 margin cause the chips are *cheaper*, and they also get *faster* CPUs (by about, 600MHz, and an innumerable amount of IPC).
So, not measuring the transition costs, Apple could get an additional $80 million out of switching.
Your *only* benefit would be a 1.8GHz AMD powered Mac at $2k, instead of a dual 867MHz G4 at $2k.
2003 is going to be rough for apple (Score:5, Insightful)
But on the topic. So Apple has 3 choices:
1. Wait for Motorola to get their act together. All the code optimization in the world won't make OS X as fast as it could be. Jaguar, for example, made my B&W G3 REALLY responsive compared to 10.1.5. But it occured to me, that's probably the last speed boost from software. You can only go so far.
2. Get the new IBM chip working. Hey, fine, it'll probably work. But it'll take a year or more to get it ported, documented, and in production. It won't be cheap, most likely. It will most likely be fast and powerful, but Apple walks a fine line WRT price.
3. Get Intel working. Hey, fine. Port OpenFirmware to an Intel-type mobo, then ship a computer that runs NONE of the software outside of the core OS. Wait for developers to buy one of these new machines to recompile their packages. This is where proprietary software bites you on the ass - you can't just wander between architectures with your source tarball and hope for the best. Oh, and of course, Classic won't work, and you're going to be stuck with whatever devices are already "cross platform". YOu can't just pick up a device from CompUSA and expect it to work.
The only plus I see to OSX/x86 is that the possibility for cheaper hardware might mean more people picking up an OS X box, and maybe some more drivers will be written. I'd buy one in a second, except... the majority of stuff in my Dock probably wouldn't be "ported" in the first year. So if it's under a grand, say, what good does it do me? No MacSQL, no EV Nova, no Remote Desktop... I need that stuff.
Why is this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this so? Having never done dev work on an Apple I am pretty ignorant, but doesn't Apple release a basic API that doesn't change even when the underlying hardware changes (apparently not)? And why not release free tools into open source, so piles of developers are writing software for Apple for free?
Motorola lagging behind Intel is "perception" (Score:2)
As any knowledgable engineer knows this is not the case at all (as a matter a fact, in some benchmarks the PowerPC architecture beats the x86 architecture even when running at a much lower clock rate; just try photoshop on both platforms).
However, I also believe that market perception is a very important part of our society, and if you don't play the game you'll pretty much be left out unless you come with a revolutionaty technology that clearly makes a 10Ghz x86 chip feels like a snail compared to your clock-less chip. So in this regard, yes, Motorola is lagging behind x86 chips, and if I were Apple I'd be VERY worried about this. Just remember, Joe Somebody who just bought a 1.2 Ghz Mac will feel a little weird when his friend just bought a 2.5 Ghz PC, even when in real-world ussage both would perform about the same. Perception.
Pentium-Based Macs The Future of Apple? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait, they would be taking it out.
I'm confused
Excellent example (mod flamebait and offtopic) (Score:2)
Sadly, one thing that could 'break' Palladium would be the 'secret' x86 port of OS X. There are *many* people who would switch to OS X in a heartbeat (on their recent PCs). MS would at last be fighting an opponent with skill and product. Apple could put MS to bed.
I think that MS is really going for the total domination of hardware/software, and Apple is the only company that could stop it. Linux is great for many things, but Apple is *ready*.
Be careful what you wish for...
still not cheap.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple makes its money on hardware, so no matter which processor is in the box, buying a Mac will be necessary to run OS X, and it will still cost big bucks.
-A
Maybe this is redundant, (Score:4, Informative)
From the article:
No.
I don't want a laptop that blows hot air like hair drier or desktops that have three fans. As people realizing (as another poster mentioned) the CPUs are fast enough, I don't see much point in abandoning the PowerPCs that are small, consume little energy, and hence run so much cooler. For me, computers that are quiet and cool are much preferable to the opposite.
Another thing the author of the column seems to forget is that PowerPC is not a chip solely from Motorola. The point that IBM is also a partner and develops PowerPC chips is completely missing.
Re:Apple ought to promote the Mac's energy efficie (Score:3, Informative)
For an 18" LCD vs a 19" CRT, I'd have to keep the LCD for something like 17 years before it paid for the price difference in power costs, compared to a CRT running 9 hours per day. (Home computer, where I'm at work or asleep most of the day and so the CRT is turned off or in powersave mode when I'm not in front of it.) $200 for the CRT, $600 for the LCD, and 7cents per kilowatt-hour. Don't remember where I got the power usage figures, I think it was from NEC CRT and LCD monitor spec sheets.
I did not include power costs for running the AC extra in the summer. Bear in mind, though, that you run the heater less in winter too, so it is possible that you will balance this out. I didn't look into this, but it may be a wash.
This let me know that power consumption/cost alone was not a reason to get an LCD monitor for a desktop computer.
You don't realize how little power really costs... An extra 50watts, used 24 hours per day, increases a power bill about $30 per year. Takes a long time to make up for $1000 difference in system price at $30 per year.
Costs (Score:2, Insightful)
Ugh--Please stop posting this story every week (Score:5, Informative)
Such a move on Apple's part would complicate matters significantly. Consider that if hardware devices would STILL need mac specific drivers to meet whatever "hardware security" apple uses to make their machines proprietary--Meaning much hardware STILL won't function with OS X, whether it's on top of Intel or a PowerPC proc from Motorola or IBM.
My favorite uninformed reader was this guy:
This guy doesn't understand the term "switch." If he starts off running an Intel PC, and buys an "Intel mac" what has he really changed? Still using the same ancient hardware architecture kludged on top of a 32-bit chip sucking more juice that an a electric battleship.
Hear say (Score:2)
Here's the most compelling reason to abandon Motorola's PowerPC chip: It's falling further behind in the speed race as Intel's chips leave Motorola's in the dust.
Yes, if you are going per Mhz this is true, but once again Intel is a CISC chip with plenty of legacy components and the PowerPC is a RISC chip,
with plenty fewer transistors. Mhz is not an indication of work or performance. It is on the other hand a good indication of the heat that the chip will emit.
Several engineers familiar with the hardware work that goes on inside Apple wrote to say that, yes, it has quietly developed a Pentium microprocessor that could power a Mac.
It is a known fact that Apple has an internal project, known as Maklar, where MacOS X works on Intel chips. Apple is a hardware company and while plenty of R&D might be going on, only so much actually ends up as a product. It may end up being real, but any smart company has backup plans, even if they never see the light of day.
Add to all this that e-week, the same source that started this hornets nest, also mentioned [eweek.com] that Apple is working with IBM to use the 64-bit PowerPC chip in future Macs. The truth is, Apple is likely to abandon Motorola, as Motorola is incapable of developing any chips that have a market other than embedded solutions. Motorola has really appears to be trying to get out of the desktop processor market.
These are my points of view - you are free to disagree.
I wonder... (Score:2)
Of course, we wonder how long it will be until some astute hacker makes this ability null and Mac OS X will be able to run on Beige Boxes. And if this happens, will it be a big problem? I mean, if Microsoft hauled off and proclaimed "you must now use Dell systems and if you don't you're not allowed to gripe about BSOD's anymore" people would have their head (again), but Apple wouldn't even have to say that - they could come out with an Intel OS and it would just be agreed/assumed that no one using a non-Apple box could go stuff themselves. Developers could have the best of both worlds - the Intel architecture they're used to and the closed nature consoles afford them (plus they can use this to make non-game applications, to boot).
Still, on the topic of similar hardware I'm shocked that it's been close to a year and we've had no XBox emulators for the PC. I mean, sure there's things to work around on the XBox (not the least of which is supposedly the fact that the data on XBox DVD's is backwards) but I figure if they can get Linux on the XBox, surely they could get XBox games to run on the PC. Perhaps the above scenario isn't so plausible after all.
This can happen..... (Score:2)
Apple can simply continue to only allow certain hardware to work with its OS. Just because they move to a new processor doesn't mean they can't continue to do what they have always done. If Motorola and IBM can't help Apple keep up in the Mhz wars (Ghz, now), then why not contimplate a move to Intel or AMD? Use one or the other, and continue on. This could lower prices a bit, and keep the Apple moto of "It just works" intact.
It's not the chip speed, it's the bus speed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Back when the G4 was designed, things were looking bad for Apple, so Motorola retrenched into the embedded market. These processors need low power, not high bandwidth. That is why Apple laptops are so nice and Apple desktops are so lousy right now.
Furthermore, the focus on the embedded market is why Motorola does no deep instruction analysis (Again not needed in this market). Intel's investment in this area is what has helped their SPEC score over the years, not the clock speed.
There are rumors flying about a new IBM chip that fixes all of these problems, but that is all they are right now -- rumors.
Re:It's not the chip speed, it's the bus speed. (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but not completely the reason. Don't discount the effect of Steve Jobs' killing of the Mac clone market, which shrank Motorola's market for selling its non-embedded PowerPCs to one vendor. This angered the company far more than the press would have you believe, since Steve Jobs single handedly kicked Motorola out of a market and left them with a huge stock of unsold systems.
If Motorola were really worried about the non-embedded PPC market, they would've allocated additional resources to the project long ago. There are plenty of smart people working there.
this horse must be spinning in its grave (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally can't see it happening for several reasons, the number one being software. Apple has commited to the intel/moto design, which includes a cpu library (altivec). Any 3rd party apps if not rewritten will need to be run in some horrible altivec->intel emulation kludge, which will be nightmareishly slow, and defeat the purpose.
Slower than the cartoon we know as XP? - probably not, but still slow.
The other thing is power consumption/heat dissipation - for mobile applications intel/amd just plain suck up too much juice and run too hot.
Apple is currently suffering because its chip suppliers have not been producing faster ships at the rate they should be, but until next month (chip conference) its all speculation as to what apples' long term plans are.
I've read this guy's writings before, and I find it annoying that his article got slashdotted. Now he is probably an even more highly regarded hack.
Speculation! (Score:3, Insightful)
What interests me is that Apple hasn't said anything about this matter so far. These rumours must have their impact on Apple's sales; if I'd run a Mac-based shop and have plans to upgrade my systems, I would wait until I'm certain about the future; if they're really making the move I may postpone the upgrade. Apple must know this and must know about the rumours. Now there are 3 possibilities:
1. They're thinking about the possibility of making the move but don't know yet. In this case they will probably not say anything about this matter because it increases uncertainty.
2.They're not thinking about a move at all. They would most certainly let their customers know this to take away any uncertainty.
3.They're indeed planning to move. They don't want to make this known too soon since it will most certainly make buyers wait until the new systems are on the market.
So. We haven't heard anything from Apple yet so we're probably dealing with case 1. or case 3. here. :)
The G4 myth (Score:5, Informative)
The only real advantage of the PPC at the moment is that it lacks a lot of backwards compatibility cruft and, because of its RISC design, consumes less power and spreads less heat. It is a fine notebook CPU (and Apple is a fine notebook manufacturer). But Apple seems to have had no other chance but giving up this advantage by selling its newest line of desktop G4 Macs with dual CPUs, keeping up with Intel at least halfway with such a "hack".
Classic Bait and Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
PPC != Apple. You start by attacking the XServe, which may be deserved, and expand the attack to the rest of the PPC family. It doesn't wash.
G4 does not compete with Xeon. POWER4 (itself a wholely compliant PPC chip) does, and you know what it Smokes Xeon as a server chip. Xeon scales to what 8 way, with a contorted memory bus structure? POWER4 scales to at least 24 way, probably higher if IBM cared to offer something bigger and integrates onto a modern server crossbar switch.
If Xeon is so good, why aren't companies converting their Sun/Oracle installations to it rather than RS/6000 POWER4 machines?
Please spare us the classic bait and switch strategy of arguments.
Re:The G4 myth (Score:3, Insightful)
At work we benchmarked a large variety of systems and for our task (compiling a large software base) the PIII 1.4 was the best choice by far. Better than any P4, of course alot of that had to do with the fact that the PIIIs can be run dual CPU where the P4 cannot.
The PIII 1.4 has 512K of L2 cache on chip, this is the biggest difference. Also the PIII has a superior design; the P4 is a *huge* mistake that only Intel's gigantic momentum in the industry could allow them to get away with.
That being said, the PIII 1.4 is also quite expensive, $300+ per chip. I have no idea how much G4's go for but I'm guessing they are expensive, as are the top-of-the-line P4 chips. The athlons are alot cheaper but in our tests on-chip cache seemed to be supremely important and even the mighty and inexpensive Athlons fell to the PIII 1.4.
I make these points only because you seem to be suggesting that a "mere" PIII-1.4 bested a G4. I just wanted to make it clear that a PIII-1.4 is actually a very fast x86 processor, comparable to a 2.X Ghz P4, where X is > 4, especially on the kinds of benchmarks that c't was running
This article smells like a troll (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's go over this one last time. First, Apple will never release OS X to run on a generic Intel PC. If they did, they'd sell about 100,000 copies to geeks who don't want to buy Apple hardware. When those geeks find out that there's no software for OS X/Intel, they'll gradually move back to dual booting Linux and WinXP, leaving OS X as an interesting oddity like the copy of BeOS they installed once too. I mean, you can only watch the genie effect or transparent Terminal windows on top of a screensaver running on the desktop so many times before it gets old.
Let's not even get into the nightmare that it is to support every piece of crap cheapo PC hardware combination like MS has to. Apple does not want that, period.
Why will there be no software? Look at how long it took (and is still taking in many cases) vendors to update their software for OS X. Now imagine Apple pissing them off by telling them to recompile and retest under OS X for Intel. Sure, that part probably won't be as big as moving from OS 9 (unless they've got a lot of endian or other hardware specific code), but recall how long it took vendors to switch to PowerPC native code. Ain't gonna happen. Let's imagine: OS X Intel comes out; Apple tries to convince developers to support it, but they (wisely) wait and see how it goes. Nobody buys it, and software vendors see that it's going nowhere, so they don't bother with it. No software == no point. Good luck!
Furthermore, what's the incentive to port to OS X Intel if (a) it's a relatively small, untested market, and (b) more importantly, they already have a Windows version that works fine? Along these lines, for Apple to provide any sort of VMware-like Windows emulation under OS X Intel would be suicide for the platform. Application vendors would just tell their customers to run it under Windows/VMware. What then is the incentive to develop a version for OS X Intel?
For Apple to move their own hardware to Intel would also piss off a lot of people. They pulled it off once with PowerPC, but that was truly necessary. It went amazingly smoothly, but it was really a couple of years before PowerPC native apps starting showing up in numbers and the newest PowerPCs were fast enough to emulate the old 68ks as fast as the last ones. Does anyone really want to go through all that again? It would be a couple of years before Apple would even hope to be up to par with Windows in performance! Not gonna happen.
Sure, I don't doubt that Marklar exists. It does give them that last desperation option, when there's no hope for anything else. But perhaps more importantly, it serves to improve the OS X codebase simply by making it platform transparent. The one instance where I could possibly see an Intel-based product from Apple would be XServe. Just a thought - but if you're not likely to be running PhotoShop or ProTools or Quark on a server, perhaps an Apple branded unit with Intel would work out with all Apple server software.
The only intelligent thing Haddad says is in the second to last paragraph, where he essentially acknowledges that software would be the biggest roadblock. Developers will likely balk at the prospect of porting to yet another platform, and "without software support, the Mac would truly be dead." Exactly.
Of course, the most likely scenario lies with the rumors of the Apple/IBM collaboration on a next generation PowerPC chip. That's where I'd put my money. Nobody knows if/when G5 will ever come out and Motorola doesn't seem to care about the non-embedded market. Hopefully IBM can bring Apple back to the days when PowerPC really did crush the Pentium. We'll see.
Switching to Intel Guarantees a Slow Death for Mac (Score:4, Interesting)
Some users, however, would welcome a PC version of OS X. That would enable Windows emulation software, such as VirtualPC by Connectix, to run much faster. "The ability to switch back and forth easily between OS X and Windows would be a major coup," says Sasaki. Ian Crooks, operations engineer at Pennsylvania-American Water Co., declares: "I for one would switch tomorrow if they would release a [Pentium] machine."
This is exactly why Apple should never port OS X to an Intel architecture.
Virtual PC would run much faster if it didn't have to emulate the microprocessor, true. So much faster that it would discourage companies from coding for OS X itself, because you could run their Windows products on VPC.
Not only that, but eventually somebody -- not Apple, certainly -- would release a project similar to WINE that would allow Windows programs to co-exist with OS X programs. It won't be completely compatible, of course -- especially as Microsoft changes the APIs -- but it would give companies another excuse not to develop for OS X.
A third factor is the cost of porting existing Macintosh OS X software to this new architecture. Facing that cost, why not port to Windows and let the Mac run your program through these emulation options?
As time goes by, Macintosh users would have to depend more and more on Windows software. Sure, they'd prefer software designed specifically for their platform, but developers won't be selling it, because it's easier and cheaper to code for Windows. Eventually, the users would just switch to Windows because Windows programs will run better on Windows computers.
IF Apple went X86, they'd go with the AMD Hammer (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, they might go x86-64 on the AMD Hammer series. Gobs of memory bandwidth, excellent FPU, high clockspeed and VERY high performence. Plus, by targeting x86-64 as their starting point, they get both optimized performence AND by definition don't run on 32-bit chips, so there's less whining from users about not running on their 32-bit generic PCs. They can go 8-way multiprocessor economically with the Opteron series too.
Re:IF Apple went X86, they'd go with the AMD Hamme (Score:3)
Never mind that that useless pipeline easily outperforms the current best offerings from AMD and Motorola (though Intel and AMD are playing leapfrog, Intel's on top at this moment.) Do you even know what processor pipelines are for? Do you know that Apple's past comments comparing pipeline depths of powerpc processors to the pentium 4 was complete and utter FUD? Have you even looked at fair and reasonable benchmarks?
The plain truth is that powerpc processors and Macs have been lagging behind in performance for a long time. Top of the line G4s use 1.25Ghz processors. Even if they were twice as wide superscalar (I don't believe they are) AND the majority of programs could take advantage of all the extra execution units most of the time (which is not often the case on any superscalar CPU), they would still not match the performance of a top-of-the-line P4. Not to mention the fact that the Apple hardware would STILL be much more expensive.
How long has Apple been demonstrating performace superiority by relying on artificial benchmarks that consist of a select group of Photoshop filters? Preciesely as long as they've been lagging behind in performance. They've even given up on the performance edge lie completely now (though plenty of Mac cultists think comparisons made five or ten years ago are still relavent.)
Unfortunately, Apple's current marketing campaign sucks. Instead of showing some snob talking in vague ambiguous terms about how OSX is so much better than Windows, actually SHOW OFF THE OS. Demonstrate how easily you're able to open you're co-worker's MS Office documents (the Mac version of Office is much better than the XP version IMO). Then start minimizing and maximizing crap. After they cream their shorts, lots of PC users will be lining up to pay for overpriced Apple hardware.
This post is not a dig against Hammer. OSX running on Hammer would be pretty damn sweet. If I could run OSX on commodity PC hardware, I'd do it in a hot minute (or at least dual boot to it). In fact, there's nothing stopping Apple from dressing up PC hardware nice and pretty and running OSX on it. Unfortunately, they'd almost certainly make it proprietary hardware using an x86 processor (and probably still nVidia graphics hardware, which would be nice). Anything else would probably be suicide, even if they decided to just be an OS company.
My dream would be if Apple made OSX more conformant to unix standards (i.e. the unix standard filesystem layout). Imagine running the Aqua gui on your *nix of choice. I'd drop X11 like the dirty slut that it is.
Developers (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, yeah. That's why.
Imagine running an x86 Mac that has no native version of Office or Photoshop and runs PPC-based versions like molasses, but runs Windows versions at native speed. Imagine trying to convince developers to write for OS X instead of Windows at that point. Why should they bother?
Another Alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
A) develop a new architecture
or
B) continue development on the PPC architecture, just with a new company.
After all, IBM makes x86 chips, but they're developing PPC chips for Appple too. It seems to me that if Apple could provide them with the correct tools to do the job, AMD or another manufacturer would be happy to take on the extra revenue that the PPC chips could bring in. Assuming they can justify the R&D costs.
On a side note, if Apple does switch, it seems highly unlikely that they would switch to Intel. Maybe IBM, maybe AMD, but they've spent too much time bashing Intel that to switch over to them would be a worse PR move than the M$-Apple alliance.
Just love this.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Put OSX on a pentium and watch XP die a quick death. Even if it costs apple the office suite, given a year that will be all M$ has to offer and they will be porting it for anyone willing to pay.
It will never happen (Score:3, Informative)
Will Apple Put Intel Inside?
August 9, 2002
Rumors are buzzing that Apple computers may one day be stamped "Intel Inside." It won't happen.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/09/0809apple.html
One switch advantage: WINE for OSX (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, while the guy is right that the transition would be a big pain for the developers, in the long run it might make things easier for them, because most of them keep a seperate branch of x86-optimized code because they also sell it for Windows. Post-transition, these two branches would be able to have much more in common. That might make things easier in the long run.
Alright--here is a reason for not making the transition: the upcoming desktop Power4's from IBM. I am almost certain these will be in Macs sometime in 2003, and when they are, most of our beige pc keyboards will be covered with drool.
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:5, Informative)
new Bus but not new arch (Score:4, Interesting)
BUT
1/ you would have to get adobe to port photoshop all over again
(photoshop is a carbon app and has lots of PowerPC asm still in the mac version)
2/you would have to have an emulator not only for PowerPC but all the OS interfaces much like running VMware with the whole OS
(although VMware approach is of emulating the whole machine you could shortcut it as you only have limited amount to emulate)
3/ the back catalog of hardware that you have like the apple system controller + gigabit NIC ASIC would have to have serious work not just a tweak
so whats really going to happen then smarty pants ?
apple tweaks the system controller for either RapidIO or IBM interface depending on supplier
(you get the real thing which matters in computing BANDWIDTH )
they have a seperate level 3 cache that apple can mess around with to get extra performance and so sell differant machines at differant price points
apple use's MOT chips for laptops and IBM chips for servers
regards
John Jones
Never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
You will never see MacOS X running on a generic x86 "beige box". Apple developed MacOS X for the sole purpose of selling hardware, that's where they make all their money, despite charging for Jaguar. (Sun are the same with Solaris). In addition, the "just works" ability touted as a major Mac selling point would cease to happen once they could not guarantee with any certainty exactly what hardware their OS was running on - this is the real problem faced by Microsoft, most Windows crashes boil down to needing to have drivers for every conceivable piece of hardware supported, and being unable to prove them all.
An x86 based Mac will have sufficient custom hardware on its motherboard that you will still only be able to run MacOS on Apple hardware.
Re:Never happen (Score:5, Interesting)
And as long as that is the case, you will never see Apple with more than a minor percentage of the Desktop market share. The vast majority of people live in a world where price matters. So, as long as people can buy PC's with Windows on them for $500 - $1,000 vs. a Mac which will cost at least 2 or 3 times as much, then Mac sales will continue to be dwarfed by PC sales. (And don't give me any of this 'But you can buy a refurb Mac for only $500 bull.' So you're telling me for a Mac to compete with a PC on price I have to buy a used out-dated Mac with no warranty? Well guess what. You can buy a refurb PC for $100.)
Re:Never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
People don't seem to realize that, just like cars, there will always be niche markets for people who want something special. The Linux guys are just like my dad & his friends who liked to rework their run-of-the-mill chevys into something special. Mac people are like the guys who buy jags, mgs and so on. Sure it will always be a small part of the market but that doesn't mean Apple can't make money doing it.
Re:Never happen (Score:5, Funny)
There's sites devoted to just this type of swap
So, if we look at the CPU as being the power plant, swapping out a Motorola for an x86 or clone makes sense.
But then again, who knows?
Regards, Tom
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Niche computers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, they're not, but that perception is part of why they sell. The reality is that there's a perception that the Porsche or Jaguar is a better car, for whatever reason, just as some people have a perception that the Mac is a better computer, for whatever reason. Because of that perception, they're willing to pay more. Apple has significantly better margins than any other PC OEM. Their sales estimates and so on are based on their actual market, not on the total PC market. Much like Alienware and other small PC OEMs do much better than Dell or HP on a per-unit basis, and manage to survive despite having a significantly smaller user base. In other words, if the company does well on it's current user base, they don't have to take extreme measures (such as changing architectures and pissing off their users and developers) to build that user base. They need growth, but not to the point of having a greater overall market share than Dell or HP.
Apple is always on the hairy edge. If there were fewer Mac titles, they'd lose market share. Then there would be fewer Macs and the incentive to develop Mac titles would be less -- which would mean even fewer titles. I think you see where this is going.
In some ways that's true, but primarily Apple has been doing very well since Jobs came back. They make a lot of money, despite their small market share, and in the end all they need to do is continue slow growth.
I wish Apple well, but the only way that I think they have a chance in the long run is to bit the bullet, change CPU families, and create Macs that perform as well as PCs at similar price points.
Changing CPU families when software is still catching up with the last major OS changes could very well lose a great deal of the developer support they already have. Otherwise, they'd have to do extensive work to limit the amount of work developers have to do on the platform change, which would probably include emulating the current platform on the x86 for existing apps, which wouldn't be pretty.
If they try to become a software house like Microsoft by selling OS-X for generic x86 PCs, they will probably be destroyed by Microsoft. If Microsoft actually viewed Apple as a competitor (rather than a faux competitor that keeps the FTC off of their backs), life would get ugly at Apple. Microsoft would likely not produce a version of Office for OS-x86 (clever name, eh?). Microsoft would discourage Windows developers from creating titles for OS-x86. Microsoft could withold support or even actively sabotage titles with "service packs" to punish software publishers who released OS-x86 titles.
The real loss, though, if Apple went to generic hardware, would be on Apple's bottom line. By far they make most of their money on hardware. This is most blatantly obvious when you look at parts they sell with a new Mac purchase which are available for the PC as well (such as the SuperDrive, and their prices for RAM and hard drives). They make a killing on the hardware, and most of their standard software is cheap relative to x86 equivalents (though their upgrade pricing on the OS is a little steep, since essentially all OS purchases are upgrades). If they're making any money on software right now, it's not much in the consumer market. Microsoft might be able to sit back and do nothing if Apple made that decision, because the increased support costs and decresed revenue (from lack of hardware sales) would kill them without intervention.
Re:Never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's the same way. They really don't care about selling to 90% of the computer market. They care about selling enough machines, at sufficient profit margins, to keep the lights on and keep the talent employed.
The analogy, posted elsewhere, to cars is flawed and wrong. A better analogy is furniture and consumer appliances. Apple is more like Herman Miller or Bang and Olufsen. Herman Miller sells an $800 office chair. An $800 office chair! Do you think market share is their goal? Do you think their business model is based on conquering the office furniture market and hitting a 90% share target? Whatever.
What I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
While old Mac users would most likely still be able to use and open their old data on x86 Macs, they would be forced to get all new versions of all their software -- a HUGE investment for most people. In my case, I'd have to buy Photoshop, Freehand, Flash, BBEdit, MS Office (if it's still around by then), Acrobat (full version), Eudora, and a zillion smaller shareware applications -- because there is just no way that these companies would just offer an x86 version "for free".
The move to OS X was expensive for me (since I had to upgrade just about everything), but I felt it was worth it to have all that UNIX goodness -- all the shell tools and Web daemons and databases plus all my graphics apps. But a move to x86 would offer me no such compelling reason to upgrade.
On the other hand, you'd have the developers forced to deliver two versions of their OS X apps for a transition period (x86 and PPC) because of all the legacy Macs. The 68K -> PPC transition was made painless because the PPC could natively emulate a 68K machine, and developers were able to deliver "fat" binaries for a while (combined PPC/68K binaries that automatically ran the right code). That would be damn near impossible to do on a PPC->x86 move.
Mac users have managed to go through two major transitions in the last ten years -- 68K to PPC and now Mac OS 9.x to OS X. In each case, Apple tried to make the transition fairly painless. If they hadn't, Mac users would have either simply refused to upgrade for as long as possible, or they would have jumped ship to Wintel.
Then there's the hypocrisy of such a move. Apple has made a great effort to praise the PPC platform, made all kinds of claims about it, and have built their whole reputation on it. To suddenly change to x86 would make them look *very* bad.
Apple is also not in the habit of telegraphing what they do in advance, which makes these kinds of rumors all the more suspicious.
Yes, Apple is in trouble with the PPC (thanks in a large part to Motorola), but the more logical move would be to Power4 or PPC64, both of which would allow for a transition similar to the one we had with 68K->PPC -- far more painless and easier to justify.
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:2)
There are commodity PPC motherboards out there, but none of them can run OS X, since there isn't the boot ROM the OS requires.
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:2, Informative)
ROFLOL
name one. and no, the 500$+ AmigaOne mobo (G3 @ 600Mhz) isn't it.
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:4, Funny)
My guess is probably not. Eventually, they may do so, but Apple's "It Just Works" requirement couldn't be acheived on a mish-mash of systems.
With the new System Controller [apple.com], Apple should go in with nVidia on a chipset for the Intel Architecture (nextForce
Of course, I could be insane.
Re:OSX on our PCs, of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
- solaris
- beos
- openstep
they all migrated to x86 from other hardware platforms... and all got crucified. bottom line: if people are willing to settle for a $500 computer, they're willing to settle for windows.Re:Pentium? (Score:3, Funny)
Divide different.
Re:I rather not have Intel. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I rather not have Intel. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I hate it when you can tell that an x86's tappets need adjusting just by listening to it.
RISC chips are so much more turquoise, too.
Tim
Re:I rather not have Intel. (Score:2)
Run smoother? What the hell does that mean?
Welcome to the new millenium (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe it's not so bad... (Score:2, Insightful)
The OS is quite different, you are correct - but the thing that gives macs their amazing stability over PCs is that they control the hardware that goes into them....
This means that they can develop their OS to run on a limited hardware set, and they don't have to design their OS to deal with shoddy 3rd party device drivers.
Your assertion that this would lead to decreased costs and increased upgradeability is just wrong too -- most of Apple's revenue stream is based on hardware sales. If they were to switch to a Pentium solution, I guarantee (as the article mentions) that they would likely have some sort of mechanism built into the OS that would make it run on only on Apple branded and approved hardware..... Need I remind you that this is the company that modified its DVD burning software to run only on Apple branded DVD-R drives?