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Apple On Track to Ship Intel Macs by June 2006
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So will we see a new Powerbook soon?
I'm new to the whole Apple scene, especially when it comes to new products. I'm looking to get a new Powerbook, and I was hoping that Apple would release an upgrade in Paris.
Is this still possible?
I currently dont' own any mac hardware, and was seriously looking to purchase the latest and greatest powerbook. But now I'm starting to wonder if i should invest in a company who doesn't really keep up with the speed of updates of other companies. Almost a year delay between updates of their signature Pro laptop is poor in my eyes.
Anyone have any ideas or thoughts on this? When will the newest one come? Will there be one before the Mactels come out? I don't wanna wait another year for a mac upgrade!
And it seems pretty lame to me to have a world expo, but only introduce a software upgrade, not even something completely new.
I'm new to the whole Apple scene, especially when it comes to new products. I'm looking to get a new Powerbook, and I was hoping that Apple would release an upgrade in Paris.
Is this still possible?
I currently dont' own any mac hardware, and was seriously looking to purchase the latest and greatest powerbook. But now I'm starting to wonder if i should invest in a company who doesn't really keep up with the speed of updates of other companies. Almost a year delay between updates of their signature Pro laptop is poor in my eyes.
Anyone have any ideas or thoughts on this? When will the newest one come? Will there be one before the Mactels come out? I don't wanna wait another year for a mac upgrade!
And it seems pretty lame to me to have a world expo, but only introduce a software upgrade, not even something completely new.
Which is, quite frankly, rather odd. Everything about Adobe's existing MacOSX products should be a simple recompile, except for optimized machine code for their video processing routines (Gaussian blur, unsharp mask, whatever) which already exists for their Windows-native products. They aren't developing SSE2-optimized code from scratch, after all. It should be straight plug-and-play, right?digitalbiker said:
dongmin
macrumors 68000
Umm, no. Apple always introduces new technologies in its Pro lines. The reason is simple: new technologies cost more. So they're gonna put it in a computer that they can charge more, i.e. the PowerBook.lcde said:
The trick with this transition is that this is as much a software transition as it is a hardware transition. Rosetta is the big wildcard here. If it can emulate the Adobe and Microsoft apps at a reasonable speed (60%+), then, with the significant improvements in the CPU and architecture, users may actually see across-the-board speed increases in its pro apps, native or not. If Rosetta can emulate Adobe CS and Microsoft Office AND Apple has its pro apps ready for Intel, I don't see why Apple wouldn't release Intel PowerBooks. I know I'd be lining up to get one (especially if I can run AutoCAD & Rhino in a virtual machine at near full speed).
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
there's no such thing as a "simple recompile"
There are operating system dependencies that need to be separated from the processor dependencies.... (Does the code say "if windows" when it really means "if x86"? Does "if MacOSX" mean OSX or PPC?)
The "simple recompiles" are the trivial programs, or things that have been running for years on many different platforms - and all those dependencies have been sorted out through years of coding and debugging. (Darwin, OpenStep, Mathematica)
There's testing, testing, testing and testing.
There are endian issues....bigwig said:
There are operating system dependencies that need to be separated from the processor dependencies.... (Does the code say "if windows" when it really means "if x86"? Does "if MacOSX" mean OSX or PPC?)
The "simple recompiles" are the trivial programs, or things that have been running for years on many different platforms - and all those dependencies have been sorted out through years of coding and debugging. (Darwin, OpenStep, Mathematica)
There's testing, testing, testing and testing.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
graphics in a VM will probably be terrible
Virtual machines (even x86 on x86) usually emulate a pretty primitive graphics card.
Pure compute performance will be 80% or better - and even better than that when Vanderpool is supported by VPC (and when Apple starts using Vanderpool chips).
Don't expect to run things that depend on OpenGL, DirectX or other graphics acceleration.dongmin said:
Virtual machines (even x86 on x86) usually emulate a pretty primitive graphics card.
Pure compute performance will be 80% or better - and even better than that when Vanderpool is supported by VPC (and when Apple starts using Vanderpool chips).
bigwig said:
Uh, I think people at Adobe (between others) must be a little annoyed of the wind changing every other year at Apple's...
They started with the CISC 68xxx, then had to recompile for the RISC PowerPC (which could otherwise only emulate the CISC), then modify for OS X / Unix (or run under the OS 9 interface in OS X with sometimes funny results), and now have to recompile again to Intel...
I don't think there are many "straightforward" ways, I guess transporting a Wintel software to the future Mactel platform will ask many hours of debugging and adapting to the specificities of Apple choices / OS etc... ?
Did Adobe bear the same workload from the Wintel world ? I really don't know what the evolution of CPU's and OS's implied for the programmers on the Wintel side during the last 15 years, light adaptations or heavy recompilation ?
iMeowbot said:
Mmm, maybe I oversaw this side of Adobe's marketing policy...
But I'm more concerned by the delays in providing adapted versions, which can push customers to Windows instead of OSX (the usual "we thought about changing our whole computer group for OS X, but having to wait 6 months for adapted versions of the software convinced us to invest in a Windows solution; yeah, we know, it sucks, but at least we can work for 6 months").
And less customers from Apple = less rentability for Apple development in Adobe = less budget for Apple development in Adobe = more delays = less customers from Apple = (...) = the end of the world 😱
A...
iMeowbot
macrumors G3
Oh, I think it will work out rather smoothly. Abode are targeting Q4 2006 for having Macintel releases available, and their core customers aren't known for being early hardware adopters. MS won't really have a decent answer to stuff like Colorsync until then (with Vista) anyway, so jumping operating systems isn't quite that simple.
thogs_cave
macrumors regular
Arnaud said:
"Every other year?"
Let's see. The original Photoshop was developed on the Mac around 1988 (It began life as "ImagePro", and then was finally sold to Adobe (after BarneyScan used it as a bundle, which is where I first ran into it) and released in 1990.
So, Adobe has had it out for 15 years. In that time, the switch was made to PPC, then to OS X, now to Intel (using OS X). That's three major leaps in 15 years, and the last one is really trivial. It took Adobe far more time and effort to port to Wintel originally, and they now already have the SSE/SSE2/etc. optimzation code. So, I imagine the move to OS X (Intel) will be easy.
thogs_cave said:
Why are they saying it's not trivial? I'd imagine they'd really rather spend the development effort on some cool new functionalities.
SiliconAddict said:
But they are shipping millions of 3.2ghz triple core low power procs in Xbox 360's in about a two months so it's not out of the question that they could have dual core and low power 970's as well. In fact, it's quite probable.
thogs_cave
macrumors regular
sjo said:
Trust me, it *is* trivial. They already have the code for OS X, and the SIMD instructions. It's not that hard to put together - the worst is testing, which needs to be done with new features as well. Ya gotta regression test....
Actually, I'd like a bit less "creeping featurism" and a bit more performance and stability. That's the problem with this industry (and I work in it), there is this constant drive to add more and more, often at the expense of quality and efficiency.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Not if you're using CodeWarrior....thogs_cave said:
http://developer.apple.com/document...e/migration_overview/chapter_1_section_1.html
Just noticed the 'rating' for this article on the main page.
77 Positives; 72 Negatives
I guess people are split 50/50 on this being a good or bad thing 😕
77 Positives; 72 Negatives
I guess people are split 50/50 on this being a good or bad thing 😕
SiliconAddict
macrumors 603
SiliconAddict
macrumors 603
BGil said:
*pounds his head into the keyboard in frustration*
89h3e8934w2q43i8I!I*I*8IIKMUIK43I34IU,KEWR, ,. ,K K,I
God this has to be the most misunderstood "fact" ever to grace the Apple community. The chip in the XBOX is not a G5. Why do you think they can have multiple cores in the thing at such a high freq?
~Shard~
macrumors P6
SiliconAddict said:
Thank you SiliconAddict, I didn't know where to begin with this one either. It's like the people who say that Apple should put the PS3's IBM CELL processor in a Mac "cuz it's sooo fast!!!" I can only hope BGil was being sarcastic, as usually he seems to be well informed and on the ball.
