Leopard to blame for Mac Pro delay?

[CortexRock]

Just an idea, but I wonder if Apple are waiting until they've hammered all the bugs out of Leopard before making new Mac Pros available? Maybe until 10.5.2?

It would make sense, not wanting to ship their flagship product to pros who need their machines for productivity purposes, if Leopard is still too buggy.

Once the OS is nice and stable, they can then release stonking new machines that'll blow everyone away, without having to worry about them being impaired by software issues.

Any thoughts?

[X1Lightning]

i doubt it, if they were worried about that the current mac pro's would still be shipping with tiger

[jrlcopy]

I dunno, all of these updates, I really could see new mac pros on tuesday. Everything will now work reliable on their pro machine now.

[darthraige]

Originally Posted by jrlcopy

I dunno, all of these updates, I really could see new mac pros on tuesday. Everything will now work reliable on their pro machine now.

Definitely. That's what I am thinking too. Next Tuesday would be the last day in November for a new MacPro release. Then it's on to December, which kinda doesn't look good due to Apples timeline in December.

[bigbossbmb]

Originally Posted by jrlcopy

I dunno, all of these updates, I really could see new mac pros on tuesday. Everything will now work reliable on their pro machine now.

except a bunch of adobe's apps.

Another benefit of me waiting until Jan to buy a MP (no matter when they're released) is that ALL of my software will be updated to work with 10.5. I'll just have to enjoy my new 30" LCD til then...

[CortexRock]

Originally Posted by bigbossbmb

except a bunch of adobe's apps.

My point exactly - the delay gives Adobe's developers time to get their act together too - look how long it took for CS3 to come out after the change to Intel processors! I'm sure Adobe didn't get as much time as they would have liked with Leopard before it went live.

Originally Posted by X1Lightning

i doubt it, if they were worried about that the current mac pro's would still be shipping with tiger

I guess that shipping current stock of Mac Pros with the drop-in DVD of Leopard makes sense, but they're hardly likely to waste time updating in the factory if a) there's a new model coming out and b) they aren't confident about 10.5.1 solving all the issues.

[darthraige]

Originally Posted by bigbossbmb

except a bunch of adobe's apps.

Another benefit of me waiting until Jan to buy a MP (no matter when they're released) is that ALL of my software will be updated to work with 10.5. I'll just have to enjoy my new 30" LCD til then...

In 5 minutes it'll be noon in LA. Maybe Apple has been rushing updates to announce today. lol... Doubtful, but who knows. lol

[krunk]

Since leopard was delayed because of the iPhone, does that mean Mac Pro delays are ultimately due to the iPhone?

iPhone > Mac Pro

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by krunk

Since leopard was delayed because of the iPhone, does that mean Mac Pro delays are ultimately due to the iPhone?

iPhone > Mac Pro

I doubt that moving some developers from the Leopard developement team had any effect on the time frame of when Leopard was going to be released.

I simply think Leopard wasn't ready before now and the betas seem to testify this.

[bigbossbmb]

Originally Posted by CortexRock

My point exactly - the delay gives Adobe's developers time to get their act together too - look how long it took for CS3 to come out after the change to Intel processors! I'm sure Adobe didn't get as much time as they would have liked with Leopard before it went live.

Adobe was focused on getting CS3 out the door and not necessarily Leopard compatibility. It took them so long because they were already writing CS3 from the ground up instead of piggy-backing on the old code. There wasn't time to re-write the whole suite AND convert all of the old code.

[Jade Cambell]

Originally Posted by bigbossbmb

Adobe was focused on getting CS3 out the door and not necessarily Leopard compatibility. It took them so long because they were already writing CS3 from the ground up instead of piggy-backing on the old code. There wasn't time to re-write the whole suite AND convert all of the old code.

Excuse me but, I was never really clear on how software development works. Are you saying that they've got teams of hundreds of people sitting at computers 12 hours a day punching out code? Is that what they did when they converted those 86 million lines of Mac OS X Tiger code from PPC to Intel?

Does it really take that much time?

[Macinposh]

Originally Posted by bigbossbmb

It took them so long because they were already writing CS3 from the ground up instead of piggy-backing on the old code. There wasn't time to re-write the whole suite AND convert all of the old code.

Correct me if I´m wrong,but as far as I know, the code in CS3 is just recompiled code of CS2?
Basically, some of the added stuff is just extra multi core awareness added to the previous code.
That makes the PS CS3 perform so poorly in most of the filters/actions as the old code splits very poorly to multiple threads.
So,basically they have to re-write the code completely for CS4 to make the applications,especially Photoshop to perform acceptable in the future.
Nowadays you just can sit and admire when working with photoshop how your processor speeds move in 50%-200% sector, almost never going over 200%...

Boohoo...

At least this is what I have understood.
Please correct any misinformation..

[X1Lightning]

Originally Posted by Jade Cambell

Excuse me but, I was never really clear on how software development works. Are you saying that they've got teams of hundreds of people sitting at computers 12 hours a day punching out code? Is that what they did when they converted those 86 million lines of Mac OS X Tiger code from PPC to Intel?

Does it really take that much time?

naa, most of the code should have been reusable, just change what was processor specific and recompile, most of the time would have been testing....

[fisha]

Originally Posted by Jade Cambell

Excuse me but, I was never really clear on how software development works. Are you saying that they've got teams of hundreds of people sitting at computers 12 hours a day punching out code? Is that what they did when they converted those 86 million lines of Mac OS X Tiger code from PPC to Intel?

Does it really take that much time?

Depends I suppose. Some of the core adobe stuff of old may have roots in very early versions of OS X and the PowerPC days. Over time, these core parts are probably taken, tweaked a little, added to, worked around, whatever for each new revision. It may be old core code and methods of working, but with the advancements of the speed of machines, it can still look like things are happening faster even though they may not be being processed in the most efficient manner possible. In such cases, they probably just use the bulk of the existing code knowing that it works already.

Then along comes a change to the OS ( or the machines ) such as Universal Binary which *may* mean that some of those core things no longer can be done in the way they used to. If that was the core units of the program and you cant run it anymore, then you kind of have to start from scratch from the ground up to re-write the core stuff which the program is based around.

But its not really completely from scratch. With new developer programs / languages, there is often a similar way of doing something that you did before, just that you have to write the code slightly differently.

As a very basic example ( and not meant to be any particular language ) the old way of changing a pixel colour could be:

ChangePixelColor(pixel_address, red)

and the newer way:

pixel.colour = red

Its the same effect, just a different way of writing how to do it and then compiling it into the latest style of program file.

So doing that for 86 million lines of code could take a while if you have to go right back to basics as opposed to tweaking what you already have.

[statikcat]

It does make sense to a degree. Apple is not about to make the whole first shipment (which could last months) packaged with Tiger. I think when 10.4 came out they sold 10.3 desktops with a free update to 10.4.. which that could be done with these as well. But I doubt Apple wants to sell 10.4 out of the box over the next few months. This could easily play a role in some way.

[bigbossbmb]

Originally Posted by Jade Cambell

Is that what they did when they converted those 86 million lines of Mac OS X Tiger code from PPC to Intel?

Does it really take that much time?

That would take a lot of time. However, Apple wrote Mac OS X for both PPC and Intel from the start. They never "converted" the entire OS because they already had it.


As for CS3, the Photoshop code is a complete re-write. The CS2 code was old and bulky and hadn't been re-written since the Mac OS 8 days (maybe longer). Before CS3, Adobe would just write the new features on top of the exisiting code rather than finding ways to integrate it into the older code.

[psingh01]

Apple only has 2 engineers. You can't expect them to handle iPhone, Leopard and Mac Pro all at once

[macz1]

I think they are waiting for the CPUs. Or have you already seen available Penryns anywhere? Why should Apple be the first and only company getting those chips?

[Tallest Skil]

Originally Posted by macz1

I think they are waiting for the CPUs. Or have you already seen available Penryns anywhere? Why should Apple be the first and only company getting those chips?

Again... manufacturers get the chips in bulk about a month before a consumer release date. If we're right, Apple has already has a large amount of 3.2Ghz Penryns for a while. Besides, they had a week or so's exclusivity with the original Mac Pro chips, so...

[Tracer]

The exclusive 3.0GHZ Quad-Core's that Apple had for awhile were actually designed with 150Watt TDP, not 120 Watt TDP that the other quad-core chips had.

Other manufacturers didn't want to deal with the extra power/heat, but Apple had already more than enough wiggle room after dealing with the heat of Dual-Core G5's.

Although the relationship is good. Don't think that Apple is getting stuff months before the competition.

Tracer

[Jade Cambell]

Originally Posted by bigbossbmb

That would take a lot of time. However, Apple wrote Mac OS X for both PPC and Intel from the start. They never "converted" the entire OS because they already had it.

Why would they have already had it? I don't think they did....

[bigbossbmb]

Originally Posted by Jade Cambell

Why would they have already had it? I don't think they did....

They had it because they knew switching to Intel was a possibility/inevitability. Steve Jobs explained this in the 2005 WWDC keynote when he announced the Intel switch. He even acknowledged the rumors that had floated around for a couple years about OS X on Intel machines and said they were true.

[Kosh66]

Originally Posted by jrlcopy

I dunno, all of these updates, I really could see new mac pros on tuesday. Everything will now work reliable on their pro machine now.

Apple doesn't need to release Leopard updates to the public, to release an updated Leopard on Mac Pros. Apple has in the past released a new release of MacOS on new hardware, before releasing that new release of MacOS to the general public.

[psingh01]

Originally Posted by Jade Cambell

Why would they have already had it? I don't think they did....

OS X worked with Intel before it was even called OS X. They released developer previews but then only officially supported PPC. They didn't make the Intel version public again until it was needed. I also guarantee you that there are still PPC versions being maintained. Though that is not as likely a move anytime soon.

[ErikAndre]

Originally Posted by psingh01

Apple only has 2 engineers. You can't expect them to handle iPhone, Leopard and Mac Pro all at once

Are you serious?