Did Apple Do The Right Thing in Moving To Intel From PowerPC???

[IJ Reilly]

The point is that thw switch to Intel was definitely the right thing to do. Faster PowerPC or POWER CPUs might be missed but none of Apple's competitors have them either, which means that Apple will never be behind; and that is more important than the chance of being ahead speed-wise.

This is possibly the most important point that needs to be made. Even when Apple was arguably ahead performance-wise with the G3 processors, this was hardly a universally accepted fact, and it certainly was not resulting in armies of new customers for Apple products. For better or worse, Apple is now on parity with the rest of the PC industry. The microprocessor issue has been factored out of the Mac vs. PC equation. On a whole, this is a good thing for Apple.

 

[pianoman181]

POWER chips are NOT the same as PowerPC. Not seeing what the uproar over this is about.

 

[tristan]

There's no comparison between Intel and IBM in terms of chip design and manufacturing capabilities. Actually, there's no comparison between Intel and anyone. They're the best in the business and are investing billions of dollars every quarter to maintain and extend that lead.

 

[Henri Gaudier]

This makes no sense. PPC was always 'tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow'. Hence the endless, repetitive, and frankly annoying continual references to the PowerBook G5.

My point is valid. iMac, mini and the Mac Pro are at about 8 or 9 months old, with no reduction in price or improvement. That reminds me very much of the PPC days. I have yet to get an Intel machine. I'm desperately waiting now to replace this G5 and hopefully I'll be blown away by it ,.. but ... my position is, it's about to be upgraded surely as it's 6 months old so I'll wait. 7 month, 8 months and now it's going to be late June = 9 months. I'm not arguing for either processor I'm just saying that the experience is the same. Before, after .. it's the same thing ... you have to wait but now there's no need because the upgrades are there and yet we're still waiting.

 

[johnee]

There's no comparison between Intel and IBM in terms of chip design and manufacturing capabilities. Actually, there's no comparison between Intel and anyone. They're the best in the business and are investing billions of dollars every quarter to maintain and extend that lead.

then why is it that ibm processors are in the world fastest supercomputers?

and have you heard of a little company called AMD? they have been giving intel a hard time. At one point their processors were much better than intel's.

Intel has the lead now, but AMD will come right back, and they will spar like this over and over again.

Clearly intel is not the leader here. that's impossible. There is no leader.

 

[Rocksaurus]

Old news.

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=3664710#post3664710

 

[scrambledwonder]

I'm not proposing that only Apple stop development, but the industry as a whole. I am perfectly happy with my mini and iBook. I do internet, chatting, email, light video and audio editing, games, etc. with these machines. The pro's have thier top end Macs and PC's. Well, you don't see them struggleing with thier work with current teachnology, do you? They seem to be doing great.

If the industry were to freeze where it is, we would overrun the planet with LCD screens that contain mercury, silicon processors and circuit boards that require tons of toxic chemicals to produce. It would be an environmental disaster. Faster and better computers will help us (humanity) figure out how to make everything we need without caustic chemicals or excessive energy. They will help us find cures to horrible diseases. They will help us figure out how to grow food without destroying biodiversity and ecological health. They will make the planet better.

 

[trevorlsciact]

Apple didn't switch for the processors--it switched for the brand and ability to run windows. This was a long time come, and intel processors are fast enough.

 

[DMann]

Wwdc 2007

My point is valid. iMac, mini and the Mac Pro are at about 8 or 9 months old, with no reduction in price or improvement. That reminds me very much of the PPC days. I have yet to get an Intel machine. I'm desperately waiting now to replace this G5 and hopefully I'll be blown away by it ,.. but ... my position is, it's about to be upgraded surely as it's 6 months old so I'll wait. 7 month, 8 months and now it's going to be late June = 9 months. I'm not arguing for either processor I'm just saying that the experience is the same. Before, after .. it's the same thing ... you have to wait but now there's no need because the upgrades are there and yet we're still waiting.

iMac revision is set to be announced during WWDC or before. Santa Rosa would be great, and would justify the delay in releasing an iMac update.

 

[corywoolf]

No question Apple made the right choice. IBM can't compete with Intel on mobile chips. IBM could never match the production of Intel. I would laugh so hard if Apple tried to switch back to PowerPC chips. Intel will have something out to match this in the next 6 months anyways.

 

[JFreak]

Apple can still use PPC chips if it makes sense; the universal binaries have the support for it for years to come. It mostly depends whether IBM will scale the POWER6 down to a PPC chip, because there's no way Apple can ever use the real POWER chip in its current product lines.

And as there's very little business sense for IBM to make such thing, we can all assume that's never going to happen.

 

[tristan]

then why is it that ibm processors are in the world fastest supercomputers?

and have you heard of a little company called AMD? they have been giving intel a hard time. At one point their processors were much better than intel's.

Intel has the lead now, but AMD will come right back, and they will spar like this over and over again.

Clearly intel is not the leader here. that's impossible. There is no leader.

I understand your point of view, but its rearward looking. Intel is not the dinosaur they were five years ago that let AMD walk all over them and grab a third of the server processor market share. They're much leaner and meaner now and much more aggressive, and have a killer product line and product pipeline. They have already demoed 45nm processors and will be in mass production in just a few months.

Intel is squeezing the life out of AMD. In the past four quarters, Intel has made >$5B, while AMD has lost $1B. Intel's stock is up 25% while AMDs is down 50%. AMD also has long-term debt from the ATI purchase. The company just doesn't have too many more swings at the plate left, and even if it does come up with a good product, Intel can just drop prices. Things have never been this bad for AMD, and it has its hands full just trying to integrate ATI.

Back to IBM, the subject of this thread. It's hard to say whether IBM is in the business of mass-producing high performance high-volume CPUs for the long haul. Intel invests $1.3B a quarter to maintain their lead, but can easily pay for this with the millions of chips they ship.

And it looks like to me is that Intel is going after the high end too with their quads. I'd love to see a real world test, chip to chip, and see what the results are, and then the relative prices. I would bet a quad with a lot of cache cleans house.

 

[woolfgang]

There's no comparison between Intel and IBM in terms of chip design and manufacturing capabilities. Actually, there's no comparison between Intel and anyone. They're the best in the business and are investing billions of dollars every quarter to maintain and extend that lead.

Apple made the move they had to at the time. But even looking at The absolute high-end, the reality is that Intel is not Sun or IBM. Just look at the people who use the fastest computers in the world.

 

[DMann]

Amd

then why is it that ibm processors are in the world fastest supercomputers?

and have you heard of a little company called AMD? they have been giving intel a hard time. At one point their processors were much better than intel's.

Intel has the lead now, but AMD will come right back, and they will spar like this over and over again.

Clearly intel is not the leader here. that's impossible. There is no leader.

Without competition from AMD, Intel would innovate at a much slower pace. Competition is a good thing. From a consumers' point of view, Intel is the leader, and will probably maintain that lead. IBM may have the POWER6 to scale down into a desktop chip, but even that will run hotter than a G5. The iMac suffered from many overheating issues while it sported the G5 chips. IBM's solutions are better suited for main frames.

 

[nxent]

Wow. A G6 iMac with 4.2GHz would have been wonderful. A very serious music machine indeed.

actually wouldn't these be G7's? is it possible for apple to split their high end macs between intel and ibm? surely there are some folks out there who prefer to run their os x servers on powerpc processors without being stuck on the G5...

 

[johnee]

Without competition from AMD, Intel would innovate at a much slower pace. Competition is a good thing. From a consumers' point of view, Intel is the leader, and will probably maintain that lead. IBM may have the POWER6 to scale down into a desktop chip, but even that will run hotter than a G5. The iMac suffered from many overheating issues while it sported the G5 chips. IBM's solutions are better suited for main frames.

I totally agree amd is a thorn in intel's side.

From a performance perspective, intel and amd will go back and forth. but you are correct that from a consumer point of view, intel will lead because of their non-stop advertisement and first-to-the-scene advantage.

However I do like intel in that they offer infrastructure support for their stuff. AMD doesn't go as far as they do.

 

[DMann]

G7

actually wouldn't these be G7's? is it possible for apple to split their high end macs between intel and ibm? surely there are some folks out there who prefer to run their os x servers on powerpc processors without being stuck on the G5...

Technically, no, they would still be called G6 as far as PPC is concerned. We would need a new Freon cooling system design to run the G6 running at 4.7 Ghz

 

[Marx55]

These POWER chips from IBM consume so much electricity and get so hot that can be used to fry eggs. No, thanks!

Never an iMac with them, or a laptop or a Mac mini. Useless...

 

[steve_hill4]

It would be a G7, because G5 is the stripped down version of POWER4

I was about to say the same thing, but just checking to see if anyone else had pointed it out yet. Of course, if Apple had skipped a consumer version of POWER5, I guess POWER6 could have been referred to as G6 for marketing. After all, I couldn't see the PowerMacs moving off the dual core 970MPs. If they hadn't, they'd have got that magical 3GHz.

I'm glad they have moved to intel mainly though. The ability to run Windows and other OSes is great, if slightly novel for most, but laptops are faster, updates make more sense and Apple are forced to keep with their competitors updates meaning better models sooner. The naming convention isn't good these days though. Perhaps they ought to start adding extra ports and/or designs to give them identifiers. "iMac iBlack", "MacBook Expresscard" and "MacBook Pro Twin Battery Bay" would sound nice.

 

[DMann]

Intel

No question Apple made the right choice. IBM can't compete with Intel on mobile chips. IBM could never match the production of Intel. I would laugh so hard if Apple tried to switch back to PowerPC chips. Intel will have something out to match this in the next 6 months anyways.

Right you are, and without the need of a Freon cooling system to keep the G6 chip from overheating in sleep mode

 

[MacsRgr8]

How about Apple using this POWER-6 CPU in some kind of Xserve Pro..?

I'm pretty sure getting the UB of Leopard Server on this baby will be peanuts, and Apple will suddenly, but finally enter the mid-high range Server market.

This will also ensure Apple staying UNIVERSAL with Mac OS X (and not x86 only in furture realses), keeping all options open.

 

[tristan]

I read up a bit more on the Power6. IBM has released benchmarks where its bashed Oracle and HP in database transaction tests, but the hardware and software that the benchmarks run on won't ship until November.

I dunno... there's always a lot of FUD marketing in the high-end IT services space. It's all about getting some clueless exec to pay you $2.2m for a database server.

 

[gmanrique]

completely agree with your comment

I am even surprised at MacRumors article's title, and even a poll on the "issue". It looks, at least to me, as spreading missinformation for a clearly already missinformed audiende.

POWER chips are NOT the same as PowerPC. Not seeing what the uproar over this is about.

 

[neildmitchell]

I remember "Price per Watt" being a decision on the switch to Intel, along with the fact that IBM hit the speed ceiling at the time with the G5 chips.
Motorola hit the speed ceiling with the G4.

Apple needed a manufacturer of chips for all of their products that was able to meet supply/demand, to keep releasing higher speed CPU for functional reasons, and as a way to keep consumers interested in the line of Apple products.

The switch to Intel was also very smart, it has beefed up the Mac OS technology, Universal, BootCamp, Parallels....

my future forecast...
I can see Apple keeping Intel DualCore in the majority of their products, for price per watt, speed, temperature, and branding....
(iMac, Macbook, Powerbook, AppleTV, and low end lines of Mac Pro)

I can see Apple using the IBM POWER-6 CPU in Xserve, and high end Mac Pro.

Ok, sorry for the choppy sloppy post, I gotta get back to work......

 

[Stella]

People should look forward, not backwards.

Intel have now, and will release very good processors that are more suited to consumers and pros, at a good price. Those POWER processors are not aimed towards Apple's target market, except for the XServes.

Apple + x86 ( Intel ) = Good future.

If AMD start producing better processors once again, Apple have a fall back.

Options are good.