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Did Apple Court Other PPC Vendors Before Intel Switch?

peharri said:
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It's sad Apple went the Intel route. It ceased producing interesting hardware on the computer side (it's nice looking, but everyone who's anyone sells the same stuff, albiet sans webcam or remote)...
The last year or so has been one big "Apple: we're just as bad as Dell" fiasco, at least when it comes to computers. Only Mac OS X and Job's RDF are still holding the fort.
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"Only Mac OSX" ??!? oh, so it's only the operating system, user interface, industrial design, ease of use, etc. that are seperating us from Dell? 😕 i don't know about you, but i don't really deal w/ my chip on a day-to-day basis. sure, i was shocked when Jobs announced the switch, but once i got over my "PPC good, Intel baaaaad" bias, i'm stoked w/ the transition if it means my OS will get things done more quickly.

i don't care that Dell, HP, Sony or Bob's Budget PC's has access to the same Intel chips, i'll still use a Mac b/c of the OS.
 
I am for one am very happy that we went the Intel route. Now we have a chip manufacturer who updates their lines regularly. Besides, I use Apple for their quality hardware and OS.
 
I heard about this then, and hearing about it now, it still makes the move to intel seem stupid. I can see it at the time, but I'd still love to see Apple start putting PPC back into their computers one day. I don't care what anyone says, a PPC chip is just as capable as an intel chip any day of the week.

Now, what we need is for the macbooks to have Leapord with it's dual-core goodness on them, and use this start-up's PPC chips for an experience that's 3x faster (or 3x longer).
 
come on Daystar Technology! offer me a PowerBook upgrade to dual core PPC 2GHz and a 7200RPM for $700!

That would be great and keep my PB usable for the next 3 years.

is there any chance this is going to happen? after all a 2.0GHz G4 upgrade is only $399.
 
anastasis said:
I am for one am very happy that we went the Intel route. Now we have a chip manufacturer who updates their lines regularly. Besides, I use Apple for their quality hardware and OS.
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Yes, but now we get these little speed bumbs that come without any fanfare. 🙁
PPC was and still is the way to go, if only because saying INTEL just feels cheep.
 
Those chips sound nice in practice (7W eh?) but saying they have a design for and actualy delivering a product to match of sufficient yield for Apple are two different things.

I agree it's a shame that Apple had to go the route of using generic intel pc architecture as I quite liked the fact they were different to PCs but I'm much preferring the pace at which Apple is moving these days (aside from a few qc issues).
 
peharri said:
It's not a language barrier, we're both British. If you're serious, and not trolling, look up the word "widgets" in a dictionary, look at the context in which I used the word (specifically referring to widgets as hardware, and related to multimedia), and work out what I would be referring to that Apple sells that constitutes hardware, is something to do with multimedia, and conforms to the definition "widgets".
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Hey, 'British' isn't a language. In any case, 'Gadget' is a far more common term than 'widget' - like the poster of the original question, it's the first time I'd seen 'widget' used in this context. When they introduced the 'widget' into cans of draught beer, it was popularly considered almost a neologism.
 
lonepilgrim said:
Hey, 'British' isn't a language. In any case, 'Gadget' is a far more common term than 'widget' - like the poster of the original question, it's the first time I'd seen 'widget' used in this context. When they introduced the 'widget' into cans of draught beer, it was popularly considered almost a neologism.
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The word widget has been in use for many years. Like 'thingy'.
 
This doesn't surprise me too much. Any company like Apple would have to keep its options open. Until you announce a decision to the world, you explore alternatives, just in case the one you're thinking of doesn't turn out like you planned. So I'm not surprised that Apple was seen "courting" alternative PPC manufacturers.

But, based on the description of PA Semi's products, they only sell G4-class chips. I didn't see any mention of 64-bit capability, which would mean the PowerMac line remains stagnant (or ends up needing ever-larger power supplies to drive the newest IBM offerings.) A quad G5 today uses a 1KW power supply! This is insane, and everybody knows it.

As for IBM, they gave Apple the finger several years ago. They want Apple to directly fund their own R&D efforts, or there won't be any new G5-class chips. Call me crazy, but if I'm going to fund someone else's R&D, I'd better become an owner of that tech, not just a customer. Somehow, I don't think IBM would be willing to start giving Apple royalties for PPC chips manufactured.

As for the newer gaming chips that IBM's working on (like Cell and others), read the specs. They're not powerful enough for general purpose computing. They are relatively low-powered CPUs, with large numbers of independent vector processing units. This may be fine for games or rendering pipelines, or even GPUs, but it is terrible for other kinds of applications. How many Macs would you be able to sell if productivity apps (word processors, spreadsheets, databases, web browsers, mail clients, etc.) run at half speed? Telling them "but Motion is 5 times faster" isn't going to help.

If PA Semi had a tighter roadmap (get the newest chips out sooner), and a 64-bit products ready to go, things might've been different. But that didn't happen.
 
does anyone remember freescale?

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=DRPPCDUALCORE

hasn't freescale had better chips for a while. i remember reading this way back before the intel transition.

i know these are only g4's but they were dual core and had fast bus speeds. hell the single core was pin compatible with the g4 now.. if i am correct. i cant remember.

they may have been courting other g4 chip makers but clearly they wanted to leave moto/freescale behind. but for me i am happy with apple which ever way they go now. if they went back to ppc i would be happy. if they stay with intel i will be happy. but intergrated graphics just suck no matter what.
 
bokdol said:
they may have been courting other g4 chip makers but clearly they wanted to leave moto/freescale behind. but for me i am happy with apple which ever way they go now. if they went back to ppc i would be happy. if they stay with intel i will be happy. but intergrated graphics just suck no matter what.
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I thought whatever's Intel sucks no matter what.... 😡

Just look at those Intel Macs.... Intel chip here, Intel mainboard there, and Intel integrated graphics onto whatever s***hole there is....

Bottom line is, these stuff made Macs look a lot cheaper and "cheaper" and it doesn't justify well with Apple increasing prices on its hardwares.....
 
Eidorian said:
Wow, I really hope they offer a dual core G5 motherboard replacement for the Rev. A/B iMac G5. I'd so buy one.
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Rev C..too...yes I know it would make more work, but sill. With 7 watts they could give me a quad iMac....do it 😎
 
Apple had other competitive choices before their intel switch...

bokdol said:
does anyone remember freescale?

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=DRPPCDUALCORE

hasn't freescale had better chips for a while. i remember reading this way back before the intel transition.
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As bokdol already pointed out, there could easily have been a G5 powerbook/ibook.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121754,00.asp
The new low-power PowerPC 970FX chip will consume 13 watts of power when running at 1.4 GHz and 16 watts when running at 1.6 GHz under typical operating conditions, IBM said in a press release.
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That's better power consumption than the current core duo's and it was about halfway through last year... Other links:

http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/07/2043214
http://www.power.org/news/pr/view?item_key=fcd9c09211203606ccd22996702dd8426a826712

The G5 Powerbook rumors kind of made some sense with those facts around. I'm surprised others haven't remembered these points?
 
Platform said:
Rev C..too...yes I know it would make more work, but sill. With 7 watts they could give me a quad iMac....do it 😎
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It'll be a nightmare to open that machine. Still the have iMac G4 and PowerBook upgrades. The Rev. A/B are just wonders to work with inside.
 
Eidorian said:
It'll be a nightmare to open that machine. Still the have iMac G4 and PowerBook upgrades. The Rev. A/B are just wonders to work with inside.
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I know....but I would like a quad PPC iMac too 😱 😎
 
peharri said:
It's sad Apple went the Intel route. It ceased producing interesting hardware on the computer side (it's nice looking, but everyone who's anyone sells the same stuff, albiet sans webcam or remote), which even when it wasn't desirable was part way responsible for creating innovation in the computer space. And the arguments that Intel somehow was "price-per-watt" efficient never made much sense either. The nadir was the announcement of the Intel iMac, with attempts to suggest it was "twice as fast" as its predecessor. Why? Because the iMac G5 never got the dual core G5 that was put in the PowerMacs. They were comparing latest Intel vs year old G5s. Nice. Isn't marketing great? Cripple your last generation of machines so the replacement technology looks like some great advance.
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What makes you think they could put a dual G5 into an imac. Have you SEEN the heatsinks required in the G5 towers? There's no way they could cram that into an imac, it would have to be way bigger to be able to cool a dual G5.

Year old G5's were the only thing cool enough to run in an iMac, they weren't crippling them.

And you completely overlook the laptop situation. G5's were fine in desktop machines (although it required more cores to be competitive), but PPC had nothing competitive for laptops. (so did IBM ever release that mobile G5 chip? Someone linked to the *announcment* of the chip, but nothing about it actually shipping...and that was an announcement of dual 1.4 and 1.6...yawn) When you compare the core duos to the fastest mobile PPC chips, it's no contest. With intel, we're seeing laptops that beat the dual G5 towers on some apps!

This other PPC company is just vaporware, they haven't shipped anything yet, and by the time they do, intel will have the next gen out.

Apple made the right choice.
 
From what I've read, from the one post about IBM wanting Apple to research the R&D without recieving royalties, and the dominance of IBM in the gaming console arena, I think IBM just tossed Apple to the sidelines in favor of more profitable (translation: quantity) gaming console market, rather than serving a computer company that has a very low market share.

You can't blame them, IBM is a busniess, not a charity. Intel profits becasuse they take the busniess away from AMD, and continue their march towards total market domination. It made sense to Intel to do his, and Apple was in a tough position with IBM focusing their business on other markets. If I'm not mistaken, Apple was the first to deliver computers with the Core Duo in them, so it made sense for Apple to go from a supplier with low interest, to a chip supplier that was giving exclusive incentives (first computer maker to use the new chips)
 
w_parietti22 said:
Wouldn't it be G6? 😉
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I figure with 8 cores it may be G8 or 9 😉
EricNau said:
Apple made the right choice.
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Can't agree more, although there are teething problems with the machines, and the lack of UB's the Intel chips are making the Mac's I sell at work so much more appealing to people, they know the Intel name, they know it can run Windoze if they don't for whatever reason take to OS X. I now sell more Apple's than Windows PC's. Weird huh?
 
Going to intel unfortunately means that Apple will have less excuses for slow performance. Sure it will now be easier to Compare the actual OS without hardware differences but this could be a bad thing to some extent. OSX will have to be as fast as Windows when running same or similar applications or those Windows fan boys will go preaching that OSX is a crappy OS. The pressure for both Apple and third parties will be greater now to build software that runs as fast or faster on OSX than on Windows.

Running on Intel also will give Apple no more hardware performance advantages as we had with PowerPC. Sure Apple used alot of twist and marketing to show how PowerPC was faster than X86 but the truth is that PowerPC at times could handle certain functions much faster than X86 contemporaries. Apple can't flaunt that kind of advantages anymore when the hardware is the same. Yes we actually did have bragging rights with PowerPC from time to time, though perhaps not as great as Apple would have us believe.

Apple will also have to be more competitive with updates to it's product line and pricing now that we have switched to intel. With PowerPC Apple could drag it's feet with updates and Charge pretty much whatever they wanted. People used to accept that because we could always blame Motorola or IBM for not producing the goods and the high price was because of the more specialized hardware and development costs for such a small market. With the switch to intel it will be harder to justify the Apple premium since the hardware is pretty much the same. Sure the premium for the OSX and Apple's Hardware design is justified but that amount will have to shrink when actual hardware differences are non-existent.

Lastly with Apple in bed with Intel alone we will at certain times still have the slower performing platform. Every now and then AMD will make an advance over intel that will make Apples performance look bad. So are we better off with intel? On price maybe but now Apple's offerings are no different from any other PC manufacturer.
 
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