Apple's Intel Move... Early Details and Notes

[whooleytoo]

So does it mean that the app will still run on Rosetta just without the optimization of Altivec..or will it just not run at all.

My guess would be that it's ok to load an application that contains Altivec instructions, as long as those instructions are never executed (i.e. if there's code to detect the presence of an Altivec unit beforehand). Of course if those Altivec instructions were to be executed, the program would crash pretty darn quick.

So, the question is can the OS determine if a PowerPC application uses Altivec when it's launching. My guess is yes, and it'll prevent the application from launching, as the OS has no way of knowing if the app actually calls the troublesome code or not.

 

[Object-X]

And there will probably always be the desire to have Mac OS X native apps instead of running Windows apps from Mac Users since we appreciate the Apple UI and guidelines as well as the look and feel.

Like all of Apple's software...and BBedit! 😉

I'm more worried about people hacking whatever Apple puts into place to keep Mac OS X on Apple computers only and letting any Tom, Dick, and Harry install Mac OS X on their Dell machine so that Apple sees little if any money.

This is the point at which Apple will license it. And make gobbs of money I might add.

 

[Bern]

Simply we're talking about corporate greed. Do we really need faster computers? Yes because that's what they tell us.

Apple are a business. They know the trend is faster processors are good so if the company directors want to get richer they have to make a choice. For them Intel is the obvious one. Now they can satisfy all those people out there who want a dual Pentium blah blah blah so they can rocket through their web surfing, play their 3D games without a hitch and howl at the moon that they have a faster computer than Joe Bloggs next door.

No doubt Apple are doing a good thing... for their business and for their bank accounts. If all goes well Steve Jobs can retire with a fat cheque in his hand. Of course Apple executives will prosper, but the poor suckers who have believed all these years the Mhz myth that Apple have been feeding them now have their bank account backs against the wall.

PPC will eventually be old technology and Intel will be the new. At some point when you do finally upgrade your Macs it will be to an Intel one, of course you'll have to upgrade all your software to boot. If PPC were to stay you'd have a choice whether you wanted to upgrade your software or not. This way at least everybody will be happy.. perceivably the consumer as well (until his monthly credit card statements come in). The consumer really has no choice, we're just being led by the nose like lambs to the financial slaughter.

 

[Cheap-Chopstix]

Windows and Mac in one box... *salivates
Wait that sux... I'm gonna be spending half my time on the computer reformatting and clearing out the viruses, spyware, pornware, trojans and crap , might as well get 2 seperate boxes so i have a computer to use while reformatting windows.

 

[vouder17]

My guess would be that it's ok to load an application that contains Altivec instructions, as long as those instructions are never executed (i.e. if there's code to detect the presence of an Altivec unit beforehand). Of course if those Altivec instructions were to be executed, the program would crash pretty darn quick.

So, the question is can the OS determine if a PowerPC application uses Altivec when it's launching. My guess is yes, and it'll prevent the application from launching, as the OS has no way of knowing if the app actually calls the troublesome code or not.

Yeah this would seem the most logical.
But how many app's are only Altivec/G4/G5 optimized. It cant be the majority otherwise Rosseta would be pretty much useless. If it could only run G3 apps, this would mean that we would go back in software...or am i completely wrong..

I really wish that a Developer could give some insight it would make things mighty clearer..or maybe i should go read a book..hehe 😀

 

[reyesmac]

Are they going all the way with this?

Microsoft became the juggernaut it is today because it allowed the millions of IBM compatible PC's to run another OS, one that was superior to what the IBM had. And IBM clone makers could not stop them from doing it. Can Apple do now what Microsoft did then? Can they one day allow OS X to run on DRM capable PC's years from now and take over a huge part of the PC market? If all the other PC makers one day have to make their motherboards compliant with some DRM standard, I think it is possible. I think Steve still has some secrets he isn't ready to share yet. Being a Mac user has not been this exciting in years!

 

[stockscalper]

Apple, say goodby to your teeny tiny marketshare! 😀

 

[shambolic]

I wonder how long it is till there is an ISO on the net of the developer MacOS for x86.

Edit: Didn't read they got an x86 PowerMac too. I guess that developer MacOS is probably pretty crippled driver wise.

Whether or not it ships with a restricted set of hardware drivers, I'm sure the interest from the hacking community will be intense - imagine the prestige of being the first to get OSX386 running on a common PC. Plus, with the Darwin core of the OS already open source, writing additional device drivers is likely not too difficult.

With this in mind, I would have to imagine that Apple is tagging the 10.4.1 Intel DVDs in such a way that anyone who does leak it onto BitTorrent or other P2P systems will be easily traced...

 

[BeakerAndGreg]

ack. dual booting sucks

I hope that mickey-soft continues to Make VPC for OSX. I'd rather run my firewall admin utility and Novell Console one in a VPC window then reboot out of OSX just to run them. Those are the only two programs I ever use windows for anyway- and that's at work. Otherwise I never use Windows for anything.

 

[dho]

I would guess it wouldn't run at all. Programs requiring altivec won't run now on G3 computers. iDVD is a big one.

Keep in mind iDVD will be recompiled anyway. As a part of the os, they certainly wont want to have that running under roseta.

On a side note. I compiled my 4000+ line program to intel on my first try. It looks like many shared libraries in the SDK don't still don't have intel versions. I would imagine some API intensive PPC only programs would have a huge speed increase under rosetta when apple finishes their own transition. That is making the assumption that a roseta binary can coexist with a native binary. I think that is a fair assumption.

It looks to me like apple will not have to worry about the problems os/2 had. Part of what makes os x special is its unique apis, specifically cocoa. devs would be shooting themselves in the foot by creating a non-native app.

 

[O and A]

Ya, that's what they say now. It's only a matter of time until OS X ships on your new Dell or HP. They will keep it closed while in transition, but it won't be long until open source finds a way to make it work regardless. Once, all this plays out, Apple will get comfortable with selling hardware for it's design and share holders will see $$ in their eyes as OS X decimates the Windows monopoly.

Imagine all the poeple who will want to buy a Mac just so they can dual boot it with Longhorn and Leopard. 😱

You're dreaming. Supporting all the kinds of hardware that exist out there is a technical nightmare. A nightmare microsoft is in deep. I'm not saying its not possible but crappy hardware equals crappy stability I don't see apple making that compromise by selling OS X to run on any machine. I very much doubt it.

Apple will see money from people wanting to run windows on a nice machine. Just like alienware does. Heres to cheaper prices and better graphics cards and faster chips. I think we're in for a heck of a ride but if it works the pay off will be nice. I'd like to see a bake off and see what apple says about intel now.

As for benchmarks we'll be seeing benchmarks regardless. Trouble is running benchmark app that is complied for OS X on Intel.

Very curious this will be.

 

[Yebot]

Apple is offering solutions the Altivec issue that perhaps you haven't heard about yet:
http://developer.apple.com/document.../apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002217-CH208-TPXREF101

Apple and 3rd-party developers are smarter than PC folk. Panther/Tiger/Leopard on Intel will sing. They'll sing on the PPC for years to come as well.

 

[nagromme]

* AltiVec: as I understand it, Rosetta DOES allow apps to use AltiVec. They just have to do it through the OS functions, rather than bypassing them and accessing the hardware directly. Lots of AltiVec optimized apps will still run on G3--because AltiVec isn't NEEDED, merely supported. The ones I can think of that require AltiVec are from Apple, so you can count on those being properly converted anyeay--if they haven't already been. Same goes for popular commercial apps. What's left? A subgroup of shareware--apps that access the system directly--and many of those will be ported or replaced too. I'm hardy worried now... even less so in 1-2 years.

* OS/2 and emulation pitfalls: It's not the same situation. Macs won't run Windows out of the box like OS/2 did--you'll have to buy Windows AND software to host it--or else dual-boot and lose convenience. And Macs have a large and loyal existing user base, not comparable to what OS/2 had. Would you accept running Windows on your Mac and not being able to actually use OS X? Neither would I. The demand for real OS X apps will remain strong--and the market/user base for them will only grow.

* Benchmarks: Who cares? These aren't Macs that will ship, and the software has a year to evolve too.

 

[Peace]

The more I read about this Rosetta the more I think VPC is gonna become a nicely tweaked app to run Windows with little or no performance hits.If this happens watch out for a LOT of games from historically Windows based developers.
That or there isn't gonna be much of a step up in quality for games developed for PPC over the next 1-2 years..

We hit F12 and up pop widgets.Why can't we hit the new "O/S" key and pop up Windows or Linux? 😀

 

[the_mole1314]

I am willing to admit I'm not the smartest bulb on AltiVec, so here's a question: how many apps really use it?

 

[VicMacs]

It would be cool to have a triple boot Powermac P5 ....

TIGER
TIGER
LINUX

ditch windows

it sucks

maybe just to run a couple of games....

MAYBE

 

[anastasis]

All I know is that I will be all over the second revision PowerBook with a dual-core pentium M.... sign me up Apple!!

 

[cgratti]

Apple, say goodby to your teeny tiny marketshare! 😀

And say hello to antivirus software and spyware....

 

[xy14]

just thought of something..

'cuz of this change, there will no longer be an iBook G4, iMac G5, Powerbook G4, or PowerMac G5. They will all be changed (processor) and redesigned! I love when new designs come out. Except I liked the G4 iMac better than the G5.

 

[anastasis]

just thought of something..

'cuz of this change, there will no longer be an iBook G4, iMac G5, Powerbook G4, or PowerMac G5. They will all be changed (processor) and redesigned! I love when new designs come out. Except I liked the G4 iMac better than the G5.

I agree... the G5 imac looks like crap. Way to take a giant leap backwards in design!!

Apple "I have an idea!!! Now that we have given them this great moveable screen and based entire commercials off of it, let's take it away!!!!"

 

[xy14]

I agree... the G5 imac looks like crap. Way to take a giant leap backwards in design!!

Apple "I have an idea!!! Now that we have given them this great moveable screen and based entire commercials off of it, let's take it away!!!!"

In my opinion, after the iPod, the iMac (G4) was the most recognizable Apple symbol. Now it looks like a really fat (like me) lcd display.

 

[vd0t]

Long long long time reader, first time poster! 🙂 (finally realized after several tries that this forum doesn't let me register with a yahoo e-mail!)

I personally think the change is great! And by change I mean just the CPU.. because everything else is still the same (correct me if I'm wrong).

I think some people are taking this way overboard and suggesting that Apple is doomed by switching to Intel. I think people should look at it the other way. I *think* Apple would be doomed if they stuck with IBM. The G5 was going no where! From 2.0 GHz to 2.7 GHz in the span of 2 years (and most importantly the failure to delive the promised 3.0 GHz last year).
I'm just glad Steve Jobs was smart enough to keep an Intel version of OS X "just in case".

I guess the ability to run Windows is an added "feature" (probably not the best word to use.. maybe "bug"? lol). But I personally wouldn't make a second boot for Windows. If I really have to use a Windows app I prefer the VirtualPC approach or WINE (so I can keep my OS X apps running at the same time).

My 2 cents..

 

[lungaretta]

Intel Altivec replacement already done?

In his WWDC keynote he was apparently using an intel box to do his presentation. He was demo-ing his favourite widgets, I could have sworn I saw the ripple when he added widgets. I thought that is a altivec effect?

 

[xy14]

In his WWDC keynote he was apparently using an intel box to do his presentation. He was demo-ing his favourite widgets, I could have sworn I saw the ripple when he added widgets. I thought that is a altivec effect?

who would ever pay attention that much??

 

[lungaretta]

who would ever pay attention that much??

me.

😉