Apple in Talks with Intel?

[dontmatter]

yeah, they're right, apple wouldn't have to worry about their chips keeping up with the market, because they'd be guarenteed to be the market. Intel would get good PR. And then there would be no more competition, at ALL, and monopolies suck, we all know that. So NO! it's good for buisness, good for now, but terrible for the long run.

Maybe if they rigged up something where they could work on both, or have some part of their market run on some intel chips, but not a whole scale move.

I want a CELL version!

 

[840quadra]

yeah, they're right, apple wouldn't have to worry about their chips keeping up with the market, because they'd be guarenteed to be the market. Intel would get good PR. And then there would be no more competition, at ALL, and monopolies suck, we all know that. So NO! it's good for buisness, good for now, but terrible for the long run.

Maybe if they rigged up something where they could work on both, or have some part of their market run on some intel chips, but not a whole scale move.

I want a CELL version!

Well with the market share for AMD growing every year, the monoply with Intel looks less like it would be an issue.

however, I would much prefer that Apple sided with AMD as opposed to Intel, but oh well.

 

[crachoar]

Perhaps switching to Intel will help Apple get out of the dark ages of behind the curve hardware, and allow them to finally compete with PC's on hardware specification sheets, and if they can drop some of the dead weight of Mac Rumors retards, I am ALL FOR IT. Maybe you guys will get x86 Linux boxes and can migrate to Slashdot, your posting style will fit in well.

Haha. I like you.

I'll kill myself.

Can I get you to sign a legally binding document, promising me that you will?

 

[Jesus]

CAN'T THIS STOP

Look, to sum up, from 20 pages of posts, it think this will end up in one of four things, and bear in mind this is based on what Paul Thurrot said:

1) Nothing will happen.

2) Apple will use some intel chips (like it used to on the G3) for PCI-e or something along those lines (maybe new wireless technology).

3) Intel will make Apple some high-power PPC processors, and we will have the G6.

4) Intel will make Apple some groovy laptop PPC processors.

Just my summary.

Jesus

 

[jnasato]

MAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! about all this.

Also, my roommate confronted me this evening asking me, "Hey, did you know that Intel and Apple are merging?".

Yah. I'm looking forward to seeing what the hell is going on...



WORD.

 

[Don.Key]

Funny

Funny to see how some Mac zealots scream out loud.

Me, as an outsider, always saw two things which make Apple what it is: Hardware visual design and its OS / Apps.

Apple is not SGI nor is it SUN, it never had any "big iron" in its portfolio which just could not be easely replaced by X86 chips (Although with some work even big iron can be replaced, look at Altix).

Besides software migration mess, the HW Platform switch brings no disadvantages. And I can bet the Apple has Tiger running on X86 platform now.

 

[Mord]

Funny to see how some Mac zealots scream out loud.

Me, as an outsider, always saw two things which make Apple what it is: Hardware visual design and its OS / Apps.

Apple is not SGI nor is it SUN, it never had any "big iron" in its portfolio which just could not be easely replaced by X86 chips (Although with some work even big iron can be replaced, look at Altix).

Besides software migration mess, the HW Platform switch brings no disadvantages. And I can bet the Apple has Tiger running on X86 platform now.

x86 is slower and deadend.

 

[cube]

Funny to see how some Mac zealots scream out loud.

Me, as an outsider, always saw two things which make Apple what it is: Hardware visual design and its OS / Apps.

Apple is not SGI nor is it SUN, it never had any "big iron" in its portfolio which just could not be easely replaced by X86 chips (Although with some work even big iron can be replaced, look at Altix).

Besides software migration mess, the HW Platform switch brings no disadvantages. And I can bet the Apple has Tiger running on X86 platform now.

Obviously, you're an outsider. Nice hardware is also a feature of Apple systems.
Altix does not use x86, it uses Itanic, which was designed for big iron, and anyway Linux cannot compare to IRIX. I am interested in new MIPS/IRIX systems from SGI, but I will never touch their Itanic/Linux stuff.
Of course x86 brings disadvantages. More vulnerability to buffer overflow attacks and a horrible architecture to work with when you have to drop down to assembler, for example.

 

[nomore]

x86 architcture is a chaotic mess. I bet it still has to have patches to get around the 640KB memory limit.

 

[Platform]

The downside of this "news" is when ignorant computer shoppers who might have considered a Mac now get reinforcement for the idea that Macs aren't currently "real" computers... after all, even Apple "knows" they have to have Intel Inside!

Very right but...then again if apple get all the ignorent users...it will have a lot of the same problems as Windows has

 

[frodicus]

Drivers

Not much mention in this thread of how one of the factors of speed and stability of OS X is through a tightly controlled hardware driver program. Attempting to support x86 and the massively greater variety of hardware there would simply be completely unmanageable.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Not much mention in this thread of how one of the factors of speed and stability of OS X is through a tightly controlled hardware driver program. Attempting to support x86 and the massively greater variety of hardware there would simply be completely unmanageable.

Not true. You would only be able to run the OS on a PC sold by Apple Inc. And there you have the control over the hardware again.

 

[BillHarrison]

Look, to sum up, from 20 pages of posts, it think this will end up in one of four things, and bear in mind this is based on what Paul Thurrot said:

1) Nothing will happen.

2) Apple will use some intel chips (like it used to on the G3) for PCI-e or something along those lines (maybe new wireless technology).

3) Intel will make Apple some high-power PPC processors, and we will have the G6.

4) Intel will make Apple some groovy laptop PPC processors.

Just my summary.

Jesus

And Paul Thurrot Is definitely one in the know when it comes to apple making new things like the Mac Mini that he prophesized is NEVER EVER EVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

(I wonder if he still holds on to this belief?)

 

[nomore]

Not true. You would only be able to run the OS on a PC sold by Apple Inc. And there you have the control over the hardware again.

PearPC would dismantal any control Apple has with the CPU execution code now being run natively on the x86 CPU.

 

[BillHarrison]

PearPC would dismantal any control Apple has with the CPU execution code now being run natively on the x86 CPU.

Yes, it is a simple fact of life that savvy programmers will have the system installing on standard (perhaps highly unsupported drivers wise) X86 systems.

However, it may be far from useable.

And it does open many other options, IE plugging in the newest video cards, no more being behind the curve here.

 

[BenRoethig]

And Paul Thurrot Is definitely one in the know when it comes to apple making new things like the Mac Mini that he prophesized is NEVER EVER EVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

(I wonder if he still holds on to this belief?)

So did many of the Mac faithful.

 

[BenRoethig]

x86 is slower and deadend.

On paper yes. However, we don't live in a paper world. In the real world developers fully optimize the PC versions of their software for x86, but are content to just get the Mac PPC version stable and working to save money. What's the point of a better architecture if nobody is willing to take advantage of it?

 

[frodicus]

Not true. You would only be able to run the OS on a PC sold by Apple Inc. And there you have the control over the hardware again.

The only means of regulating this would be by using dedicated bios/firmware on the cards themselves. This removes any possible price advantage by requiring bespoke hardware again, rendering the whole exercise pointless. If this route isn't taken, as with some third parties already providing hardware for the Mac with their own device drivers, as we can already see, with varying results. Multiply this by a few thousand, for instant beigebox PC reliability.

 

[win_convert]

Imagine Apple at 50 % market share in less than 3 years with such a decision.
LETS GO.

Let's not forget that with market share comes little anarcho-communist- punks -who's- mother -beat- them who like to "share their feelings" by writing viruses and finding and exploiting hole in operating systems. The lack of viruses, stability etc etc are the things that draw people to the Macintosh in the first place. If the choice ends up being: status quo with ugly interface, holes and viruses or; complete change and pretty interface, holes and viruses, what do you think the choice of the masses will be?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Here are some very good points: Why Apple won't embrace intel from The Register.

 

[RichCoder]

PearPC would dismantal any control Apple has with the CPU execution code now being run natively on the x86 CPU.

This is like saying that VMWARE on Linux should make running a Windows box unessesary. It's not the case. Having an emulator that has the benifit of running on a native processor still has very far to go before it would be anything like running the real thing. Sure it can run the CPU at close to real-time speed, but what about the emulated video hardware, system hardware interfaces, etc. Running on PearPC will always pale in comparison. I would agree that PearPC would have a more viable market.

Also, on the other side of things. Wouldn't VirtualPC also be an improvement on the Mac side of things? Having an emulator that runs Windows at near-native speeds on a Mac could help justify the move from the Windows side.

-rich

 

[drison]

Not much mention in this thread of how one of the factors of speed and stability of OS X is through a tightly controlled hardware driver program. Attempting to support x86 and the massively greater variety of hardware there would simply be completely unmanageable.

I agree. And even *if* this were true that Apple is considering Intel for desktop machines, it definately would not be 'x86' in the generic sense. It would most likely be a custom 64bit cpu that Apple would incorporate into their own system architecture. The wintel fanboys always assume intel == x86 and that they would be able to install MacOSX on any walmart cheapo box. Not gonna happen.

-Dave

 

[Les Kern]

Few problems with this:

2. Why Intel? AMD has the better CPU's. Their dual-core solutions are better and more elegant, their CPU's run cooler, have more bandwidth and generally are faster than Intel's CPU's.

Maybe it's a question of sheer numbers delivered on a timely basis? Maybe Apple thinks that the Mac will see some glory years ahead, and they need a HUGE chip maker to keep up with their plans. Intel can do that, where unless IBM can guarnatee this, Apple HAS to consider moving to the chip. Common sense. And if they do move? I'm right there with them. I like the OS. Maybe dual OS's on the same box? Hmmm...
But my gut feeling?
\Rumor.

 

[Lacero]

I haven't seen anyone speculating on this yet, but what if Apple wants to come out with a Windows compatibility card similar to the one they used to offer many, many years ago? That is, a pci card with an Intel CPU that would allow them to run Windows natively inside OS X? This would free them from being so dependent on VirtualPC for Windows compatibility. They would probably have to use a cool, slow notebook processor to cope with heat issues, but even that would run many times faster than VirtualPC can.

 

[macdong]

Oh my god! A possessed Apple!
We need an exorcist!!