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Did Apple Court Other PPC Vendors Before Intel Switch?
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My Pentium mobile, along with the core duo and C2D are built off of Pentium 3 tech, so there's no reason why PA Semi couldn't build off of G4 tech.shamino said:
Hard to believe
This is somewhat difficult to swallow in light that Jobs announced that Apple engineers had been working for a while (I think he said years or what amounted to years) on a version of Mac OS running on Intel. If that's the case, why would have they tried to court other Power suppliers if Apple was going with Intel anyway? Kooky story.
This is somewhat difficult to swallow in light that Jobs announced that Apple engineers had been working for a while (I think he said years or what amounted to years) on a version of Mac OS running on Intel. If that's the case, why would have they tried to court other Power suppliers if Apple was going with Intel anyway? Kooky story.
Some of the comments re:Apple's switch to Intel surprise me in that they believe Apple just woke-up one morning and decided on the transition, like we wake up and decide what to have for breakfast.
Why should this announcement that Apple was looking at other options surpise anyone?? Apple is a multi-billion dollar business. Nothing is done instantaneously or without tons of investigation. The surprising thing is that we did not hear about all of the companies that Apple was considering prior to the announcement to use Intel.
The switch issue goes directly back to laptops. The problem was Apple's hands were tied. The G5 chip was too hot and there was nothing else to put into them. The G4s were old and slow. So what do you do? There were no other PPC chips options available at the time. And when over 50% of your computer business is in laptops something has to be done to prevent massive defection.
Am I happy that Apple's use Intel chips? Not sure yet. Do I understand why they did it? You bet.
Why should this announcement that Apple was looking at other options surpise anyone??
Apple is a multi-billion dollar business. Nothing is done instantaneously or without tons of investigation. The surprising thing is that we did not hear about all of the companies that Apple was considering prior to the announcement to use Intel.The switch issue goes directly back to laptops. The problem was Apple's hands were tied. The G5 chip was too hot and there was nothing else to put into them. The G4s were old and slow. So what do you do? There were no other PPC chips options available at the time. And when over 50% of your computer business is in laptops something has to be done to prevent massive defection.
Am I happy that Apple's use Intel chips? Not sure yet. Do I understand why they did it? You bet.
Detlev_73 said:This is somewhat difficult to swallow in light that Jobs announced that Apple engineers had been working for a while (I think he said years or what amounted to years) on a version of Mac OS running on Intel. If that's the case, why would have they tried to court other Power suppliers if Apple was going with Intel anyway? Kooky story.
Remember what Steve Jobs mentioned on stage (or was it Paul Otellini) in one of his keynotes...., that they were having "intimate relationship" outside....? That's where and why OSX lived a double life.... There was an article written about Paul persuading Steve to have Apple switched to Intel 5 years ago even before the G5 came up....
As for the rest of the "treachery", I'll leave it for you guys to speculate....
SC68Cal said:
Not that I beleive 64 bit to be that much of an advantage (apart from marketing) the Core2 chips will be along and shipping in 3 or 4 months.
Eithanius said:but it's still on an el-crappo x86 architecture....
You really need to do some reading.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/core.ars
Read that and tell me what's el crappo about it.
(edit: typo)
Detlev_73 said:This is somewhat difficult to swallow in light that Jobs announced that Apple engineers had been working for a while (I think he said years or what amounted to years) on a version of Mac OS running on Intel. If that's the case, why would have they tried to court other Power suppliers if Apple was going with Intel anyway? Kooky story.
OK - the way I understood it was that OS X had been effectively 'Universal' since day one, being the offspring of the NeXt system (which ran on x86), if so it would make perfect sense to check out suppliers of both varients of chips while knowing that you had a version of the OS that could run on either waiting in the wings. Sensible market strategy, which - if early Intel Mac sales reports are to be believed - seems to be paying off.
As for the question of removing an x86 processor and popping a PowerPC one in its sockets - I understand that the sockets used for each are different therefore not swappable as well as probable component differences beyond my comprehension.
Still undecided about the x86 move - like others have said, the stagnation of the PowerPC lines was becoming an increasing problem for Apple (esp in their portables) and the Intel Macs I've tried in the Apple Store all soundly trounce my Rev A 12" Powerbook, but still a bit irresolute - mostly due to a lack of UBs of some of my software, partly due to a desire to see what the produce with the Merom (Core2Duo) processor and only slightly due to the scattered reports of ealry hardware bugs. I'm expecting to switch (part II) early 2007 - anticipating Merom, BluRay, Leopard and iLife 07
Eithanius said:So what if they "breast-feed" you with that kinda stuff...? You actually believed in that crap....? It's a PC world by the way, of course they'll write something better to satisfy the majority....
There's nothing to "believe" here is pure hard facts from an impartial site.
If you can't handle the depth of the explanations just say.
oh, good lord, yes. i have to turn my receiver up to compensate for the noise of the small aircraft engine that is my 360.Leondunkleyc said:
oddly enough, my G5 is almost whisper quiet. of course the case is like 6 times as large, so you can cram a few more fans & a heatsink the size of a 360 controller in there.
Eithanius said:but it's still on an el-crappo x86 architecture....
Actually, AMD has some good stuff. I'm not an x86 fan by any means, but I'm quite happy with recent Opteron boxes running Solaris or Gnu/Linux. They are amazingly quick and smack the poo-poo out of the Intel boxes on FP.
However, I can understand why Apple (having chosen x86) went with Intel. Intel is more focused in the arena Apple likes: portables and consumer desktops. I'm more of a server sort (The E5000 mentioned below in in my house, so I don't really care as much about the desktop arena.
Now, an Xserve with dual-core Opterons would make me tingle all over. But I don't see it happening, as too many companies have similar systems out already, and it would be much tougher for Apple to play in that field.
Eithanius said:
We know what you are saying. Doesn't stop it from being wrong. They moved to a _different_ architecture that was more energy efficient and was available in quanitities that could fulfill demand.
Simple.
Eithanius said:Did I ever say the G5s were superior....?
I was merely saying Apple moved to an inferior architecture when they could have done better....
Inferior architecture ? If you are talking about the current crop of
CORE processors, maybe, in theory.
In practice, (read: performance) i believe they proved that they are anything
*but* inferior.
Eithanius said:
Hey, take that back! I still worship at the altars of AXP and SPARC!
Seriously, I don't believe there is a "superior" architecture out there. I mean that in the sense that the biggest distinction is still CISC .vs. RISC, and there ain't much there to distinguish any more. "This chip has a shorter pipeline!" "That chip has better branch-prediction!" And so on. It's all different shades of gray.
What I'd like to see is something truly revolutionary. Beyond even stuff like Sun's 8-core, 32-thread Niagara or the concept of async clocking, etc. Of course, I have no idea what that would be, or I'd be very rich.