Fuel for the Intel Fire

[Mr. Anderson]

I know I shouldn't really ask this, but morbid curiosity requires it.

Say Apple goes to Intel, but like the rumors say we're talking 2 years from now.

What's going to happen in those 2 years? Would anyone put off buying a new computer until then or would they want the last of the PowerPCs?

Either way, I can't really see this being a good thing for Apple. My hunch is that if they're announcing a move, then its going to be sooner than later.

Any thoughts?

D

 

[vouder17]

I know I shouldn't really ask this, but morbid curiosity requires it.

Say Apple goes to Intel, but like the rumors say we're talking 2 years from now.

What's going to happen in those 2 years? Would anyone put off buying a new computer until then or would they want the last of the PowerPCs?

Either way, I can't really see this being a good thing for Apple. My hunch is that if they're announcing a move, then its going to be sooner than later.

Any thoughts?

D

Yeah i agree with you...if the transition does take that long. It will completely kill apple's sales until then. So i guess that apple is going to need to survive off iPod sales for the next few years...Who knows...with in 3 hours we will know the truth...

 

[Veldek]

I know I shouldn't really ask this, but morbid curiosity requires it.

Say Apple goes to Intel, but like the rumors say we're talking 2 years from now.

What's going to happen in those 2 years? Would anyone put off buying a new computer until then or would they want the last of the PowerPCs?

Either way, I can't really see this being a good thing for Apple. My hunch is that if they're announcing a move, then its going to be sooner than later.

Any thoughts?

D

Well, I thought about my PM, which is only about half a year old. I'm a little scared, that when Apple switches to Intel, there won't be software anymore for it. So I'd imagine, that this kind of angst would make potential buyers wait.

 

[zelmo]

I don't think Apple can afford to do this slowly. If this conversion drags on over 12-24 months time, sales will dry up as people will be afraid to buy a PPC Mac for fear of software drying up after the conversion is completed. Apple can't afford to lose much market share, unless they are dropping the word Computer from their name and becoming Apple Shiny Gadget Company.

If this is really happening, my guess is that Apple already has Tiger running on x86, as well as all of their core apps, and that they also have tools to make converting 3rd party apps easy (well, as easy as possible, anyway). Also, I'd expect the first laptops to ship this calendar year.

 

[xli_ne]

Also, I'd expect the first laptops to ship this calendar year.

ibook's running on a celeron processor YA

 

[emw]

Well, it will be interesting to see if there are any announcements today. I can't imagine Apple simply saying "You know all these years we were promoting the PPC chip as better than the x86 architecture? Turns out we were wrong and we've been hosing you on performance. Sucks, doesn't it? But don't worry, we're going to completely revamp our line and obsolete all of your current software to make up for the oversight. You can thank us later with your checkbooks."

I'm more likely to believe Apple would partner with Intel to build the next generation PPC chip than they will move to the x86 architecture - it seems too much like a step backward to convert to x86. Sure, OS X was a big change and Apple took a huge risk that paid off, but OS X had more backward compatibility than I think a move to x86 would provide.

Ah well, not long till we'll hear something, perhaps.

 

[shadowmoses]

If apple announce anything with intel it would be that new ibooks and mac mini's and possibly powerbook's will ship with Intel processors, This is because if the intel rumor is true apple would have already been dealing in secret with intel for months even years meaning they would be ready to give us the intel mac processor as soon as this week.....well thats what i hope anyway,

Shadow

 

[Sun Baked]

Funny thing is besides all the press the MS and Sony game machines had, Power5UL and Power6UL are still possibilities in that time frame.

There is always a good chance Apple is "giving up" on the PPC970 -- since it seems to have failed in anything but the PowerMac and iMac.

Then there is the technical challenge, these chips are a PIA techically.

Not many companies have the time to spend 6 months learning how to wire the darn things up and design their own prototyping board.

Many will actually need IBMs design studio to help them out (not cheap).

Because of the technical challenges and the power/size requirements, the G3/G4 weren't too worried about being replaced inside their little black boxes.

So Apple was really in their own world with this chip since it only caught on with IBM and Motorola in their blades and/or telecom equipment.

 

[stubeeef]

I will go to a full halt until things shake out, and wait till the new ones prove themselves.

I am not against the move, but I am a home user, it provides me zero income, and only drains the house funds. I can not afford a bad move.

 

[atszyman]

The change would have to be swift. If they announce a long term shift there will be a short burst of the PPC die hards picking up the systems (I wouldn't expect many upgrades as the Intel shift took priority), then there will be a lengthy lull that would hang out until the apps were re-compiled for x86. A swift change would still have the short burst and minimize the lull since developers could start re-working sooner rather than later.

On a side note, my company writes small applications for our hardware that runs on x86 and PPC. We don't have to do a lot of re-working unless we have hardware that does Dynamic Memory Access (DMA) transactions. The compiler takes care of all other endian issues that we would otherwise have. Given this I think it could be possible that developers could, for a transition period, release their apps at an intermediate point in the compilation (source code not available but not so far along that the processor architecture matters yet) so that the final bit of compilation could be done on the system where it would be run via an installer type application and take care of the endian issues. Since all Macs ship with development tools I don't see why this couldn't be done.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I'm just pitching in on the "It have to be really swift"-consensus... When Apple announced the PPC Macs ~10 years ago, they had them for sale just a few weeks later (not like the Power Mac G5 or iMac G5 fiascos, which I suspect - in part at least - has contributed to this alleged architectural switch). They'll have to do the same now, with a similar emulation scheme for PPC executables...

2006 and even 2007, give me a break, sales would plummet in the waiting period. Of course some would still buy a "old new world" Mac ( ), but many of those with some sort of usable system (i.e. Tiger capable G3 4-500 with Firewire and DVD and newer), including my girlfriend with her Pismo and me with my iBook G4 would wait, to see if there's really an advantage.