Metatron said:
I don't understand why people keep saying that Apple will never release a G5 in the Powerbook and iBook and the same time. Why Not?
The Damn G4 is old as hell, and no one is considering the fact that tiger....unless some one knows for sure the opposite, will be the last 32 OS from apple. They have slowly changed the OS in each .X upgrade to be more 64 bit efficenent.
... but they haven't removed any 32-bit capability either. There's nothing magical about 64-bitness. Your average day-to-day use of the Mac will gain absolutely nothing from 64-bit code. A certain subset of applications will benefit greatly, and the OS certainly needs to be 64-bit to provide full services to those apps that need it. But by and large, the OS gains nothing from removing 32-bit capability.
Do not be confused by the PC universe's switch from 16- to 32-bit. It just so happened that that jump brought with it a whole host of technologies -- pre-emptive multitasking, virtual addressing, and virtualisation of a bunch of other stuff that let PCs shed their late-1970's heritage. The Mac's already done that when it moved away from the 68000-series processors.
My personal beleif is that they will release a very low clocked G5 in the ibook so that people who get can upgrade to OS XI in 2006.
A very low-clocked G5 would be slower than today's G4's. It would still perform better overall due to architecture improvements, but that's got little to do with the core of the CPU design. I believe the G4's are getting improved supporting systems -- better bus designs, higer bandwith, etc.
Apple can not afford to be writting apps for 32 and 64 bit chips. When it makes the switch to true 64bit OS, you will get about 6 more months of support for 32bit apps. And then they are done.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. A 'true 64bit OS' (or rather, 64-bit *exclusive* OS) will not arrive any time even vaguely soon. Withdrawing support for 32-bit apps would instantly break every single application already in existence. It would also negate one of the G5's key benefits -- it runs 32-bit code without any performance loss compared to 64-bit code.
Think of it this way: take a game that only uses 2D graphics. It does not need hardware that can do 3D acceleration. You go out and buy a graphics card with 3D acceleration. But your game doesn't need 3D. However, this new card also has excellent 2D support, so it'll still run your game quicker.
But what if the driver software would only support 3D? Sure, programs that need it would run fantastically quick. But your current game, which would work so well with that card, won't run because some developer decided 2D wasn't worth supporting.
January of 06, there will not be any 32bit chips being built into any Apple products.
You may be correct. But EVERY SINGLE G5 is capable of running 32-bit code, and very quickly too. We'll see an increase in software that will utilize the 64-bit features of the CPU, and probably even a handful of 64-bit only versions of software. But 32-bit is not dead, and will not die for a while.
