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'Intel Based Mac' Rumor Roundup...
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Well I sat back and took a breath and realized one positive thing...
My computers should still run on Tuesday as good as they did on Monday no matter what Steve has to say...
I just dread the resale going from over $1,000 to about $100 within a few mins. Life will go on, it is not the first time I have lost big on a purchase.
My computers should still run on Tuesday as good as they did on Monday no matter what Steve has to say...
I just dread the resale going from over $1,000 to about $100 within a few mins. Life will go on, it is not the first time I have lost big on a purchase.
Many posts have alluded to a reduction in chip price. How much of a reduction could be seen from the chip?
Doesn't seem like much to me but I wouldn't ask if I knew.
I am betting that if they do this, it will be immediate and the gradual 2 year thing is the phase out. Kinda like Classic and OS X.
Doesn't seem like much to me but I wouldn't ask if I knew.
I am betting that if they do this, it will be immediate and the gradual 2 year thing is the phase out. Kinda like Classic and OS X.
"Switching to Intel's x86 chips would force Apple's programmers to rewrite its software in order to adapt to the new processor. "
I'm really starting to get depressed here.
I'm really starting to get depressed here.
Porchland said:
I
This is so exciting. I think we should all just embrace this change happily!
Not Me! Sick of those G.D slow G4s and 5s that get their behinds Kicked by single Athlon 64s. Apple stands for class and it aint class running on 3rd and 4th place cpu's. folks. This could be so cool.iGary said:"Switching to Intel's x86 chips would force Apple's programmers to rewrite its software in order to adapt to the new processor. "
I'm really starting to get depressed here.
Downloading freeware and shareware plus updates is going to be confusing now...you will really have to read the fine print on what version of OSX it will run and on what processor you need, etc.
Abercrombieboy said:
This makes no sense - why would developers stop making software for PPC Macs, which will greatly outnumber Intel macs for some time to come?
Im sure they will be sold side by side for a long time. Thats how Apple will do it. Ill take the AMD Mac thank you.infobhan said:
I'm sorry, but after reading the story on the NY Times, I got the same sickly
feeling that you get when you have done somthing really bad, and there is
noway out. I don't think this will have any change on whats going to happen,
but I'm going to say a small prayer tonight in hopes that Apple doesn't
change.
feeling that you get when you have done somthing really bad, and there is
noway out. I don't think this will have any change on whats going to happen,
but I'm going to say a small prayer tonight in hopes that Apple doesn't
change.
I can just see Jobs give his keynote on tiger, with demos, and no clues to switching. At the end of the speech the usual line:
"and one more thing... all the demos were run on a intel version of Tiger..."
This would be really jobs' way of doing it...
"and one more thing... all the demos were run on a intel version of Tiger..."
This would be really jobs' way of doing it...
Link to New NY Times Story
For ease of reference for folks, a link to the new NY Times Story. This did help me understand what was going on. Apple being only 2 % of NY plant production, not that big a deal to IBM, no power to negotiate discounts, etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/t...&en=3e3b854a03598d26&ei=5094&partner=homepage
For ease of reference for folks, a link to the new NY Times Story. This did help me understand what was going on. Apple being only 2 % of NY plant production, not that big a deal to IBM, no power to negotiate discounts, etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/t...&en=3e3b854a03598d26&ei=5094&partner=homepage
whw5 said:I'm sorry, but after reading the story on the NY Times, I got the same sickly
feeling that you get when you have done somthing really bad, and there is
noway out. I don't think this will have any change on whats going to happen,
but I'm going to say a small prayer tonight in hopes that Apple doesn't
change.
This NY Times thing, its by prescription only... Can anyone copy/paste here?
NYT article
Thinking different also means being willing to switch tracks to something unexpected.
What is troubling is that this means both Freescale and IBM couldn't deliver on notebook chips. Freescale most of all is pathetic. The eWeek article said they won't be able to deliver the G4 with 667 Mhz bus until 2006. They are still on .13 micron for crying out loud.
Thinking different also means being willing to switch tracks to something unexpected.
What is troubling is that this means both Freescale and IBM couldn't deliver on notebook chips. Freescale most of all is pathetic. The eWeek article said they won't be able to deliver the G4 with 667 Mhz bus until 2006. They are still on .13 micron for crying out loud.
infobhan said:
They stopped making 68K Mac software very shortly after the line was switched over to PowerPC. Developers will not make lines for both processors, what you have today and maybe tomorrow will be fine on your PowerPC, but over the time of a year or two all software will be written to run on the new systems. What you have of the old PPC software will probably run fine on the x86 through emulation.
Basically if you like Tiger, iLife '05, and Office 2004, Photoshop, etc, you can stay with the PPC as long as it performs ok for you. When Steve announces the next biggest thing in software you won't be able to run it. Not bad for Apple because it will force you to buy a computer when a new feature comes out in the OS or iLife.
All of these companies are not going to "dual develop" What happened to OS9 development when OSX came out? By 10.2, Steve was showing a headstone with OS9 R.I.P. on it. Enjoy what you have for a couple more years, it will be fine, then just know you will need a new system if you want the latest and greatest from Apple. Brace yourselves, especially people who just put thousands into a Dual 2.7, that computer won't be worth much in a very short time. Just how it works.
I don't care if I haven't read the other 35+ pages of the thread
My 2 cents worth is that if Apple ditches PPC for Intel outright I will honestly never feel the same about Apple again, and may have owned my last Mac. I don't even use Intel in my windows box let alone want them in my Mac.
If Apple does this, and I'm leaning 51% to 49% that they do right now, they will be putting themselves right into M$'s crosshairs and be annihilated. Don't beleive me? Check out how Windows Advanced Server outsold all *nix server boxes lately on Ars.
My 2 cents worth is that if Apple ditches PPC for Intel outright I will honestly never feel the same about Apple again, and may have owned my last Mac. I don't even use Intel in my windows box let alone want them in my Mac.
If Apple does this, and I'm leaning 51% to 49% that they do right now, they will be putting themselves right into M$'s crosshairs and be annihilated. Don't beleive me? Check out how Windows Advanced Server outsold all *nix server boxes lately on Ars.
Tobix here you it goes... Oh and if this is against the form rules remove it right away or tell me to remove it cuz i don't want to get banned
SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 - Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer's 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday.
The move is a chesslike gambit in a broader industry turf war that pits the traditional personal computer industry against an emerging world of consumer electronics focused on the digital home.
"This is a seismic shift in the world of personal computing and consumer electronics," said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering Group, a Seaford, N.Y., computer and consumer electronics industry consulting firm. "It is bound to rock the industry, but it will also be a phenomenal engineering challenge for Apple."
Mr. Jobs is expected to announce the transition to Intel chips at Apple's annual developer conference, which will begin here Monday. Apple's intention to shift to Intel chips beginning in 2006 was reported Friday by CNET News.com, a technology news service. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that Apple and I.B.M. were negotiating.
Apple, according to analysts, has become increasingly alarmed by I.B.M.'s failure to deliver a new version of its Power PC chip, called the G5, that does not generate much heat - a crucial feature for notebook computers, which do not have as much room for fans and ventilation as desktop machines.
Apple's notebooks now use the older G4 chips, made by Freescale Semiconductor, which was spun off from Motorola last year.
"That's a huge looming problem for Apple, if it can't keep up with Intel notebooks in performance," said Charles Wolf, an analyst for Needham & Company. "And that's been an I.B.M. problem. I.B.M. hasn't delivered a cool-running G5."
Apple, I.B.M. and Intel spokesmen all refused to comment this weekend on the possible shift in alliances.
The first move in the complex industry realignment now taking place was made more than a year ago when Microsoft broke with Intel and said that it would use an I.B.M. processor chip, similar to the one used by Apple for its Macintoshes, in the second version of its Xbox video game machine.
What Microsoft has made clear recently is that the new Xbox, to be called the 360, will be much more than a video game player when it reaches store shelves this fall. It will perform a range of home entertainment functions, like connecting to the Internet, playing DVD movies and displaying high-definition television shows as well as serving as a wireless data hub for the home.
Microsoft's decision to build its own computer hardware, with help from I.B.M., was a direct assault on a market that Intel was counting on for future growth. It is likely that Intel forged the alliance with Apple in an effort to counter the powerful home entertainment and game systems coming from Microsoft and Sony.
While the new partnership is a clear and long-coveted win for Intel, the world's largest chip maker, it portends a potentially troublesome shift for Apple, the iconoclastic maker of sleek personal computers and consumer electronics gadgets.
Apple was the largest maker of personal computers in the early and mid-1980's, but its share of the worldwide computer market fell steadily during the past two decades as the Windows-Intel alliance emerged as an overwhelming personal computing standard.
That decline came despite Apple's earlier shift from Motorola microprocessor chips to the PowerPC processor, the fruit of a grand alliance that Apple entered into in 1991 with Motorola and I.B.M.
Originally intended to counter Microsoft and Intel, the alliance was never able to stop the erosion of Apple's market share, as Apple customers were forced to upgrade their hardware and software to take advantage of the newer processor chip.
Mr. Jobs, who left Apple in 1985 to found Next Inc., went through a similar transition when he moved his NextStep operating system from Motorola chips to Intel's x86 processors. When Mr. Jobs sold Next to Apple in 1997 and then returned to the company to lead its resurgence, he moved the operating system to the PowerPC. But it has been widely reported that the company has kept alive a small development project called Marklar that has developed an Intel-compatible version of the Macintosh operating system.
For I.B.M., the end of the Apple partnership means the loss of a prestigious customer, but not one that is any longer very important to I.B.M.'s sales or profits. It further underlines how much I.B.M. and its strategy in recent years have moved away from the personal computer industry that it helped create. Last month, I.B.M. completed the sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo of China.
Even as a chip maker, I.B.M. has moved aggressively beyond the PC industry, focusing on making the processors for video game consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, and specialized chips for other uses, like the Internet router computers made by Cisco Systems and cellphone technology by Qualcomm. I.B.M. also uses its Power microprocessors in many of its own server computers, which run corporate networks.
By contrast, the chips I.B.M. makes for Apple represent less than 2 percent of chip production at its largest factory in East Fishkill, N.Y. And while the microelectronics business as a whole is strategically important for I.B.M., it is a small part of the revenue of a company that increasingly focuses on services and software. A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, estimates that the company's technology group - mostly microelectronics - will account for less than 3 percent of I.B.M.'s revenues and 2 percent of its pretax income this year.
I.B.M. supplies about 50 percent of the microprocessors used by Apple, providing them for desktop and server computers. Freescale makes the processors used in Apple's notebook and new Mac mini computers.
For years, according to industry analysts, the work for Apple has been barely a break-even business for I.B.M. When the two companies were negotiating a new contract recently, Mr. Jobs pushed for price discounts that I.B.M. refused to offer. For I.B.M., "the economics just didn't work," said one industry executive who was briefed on the negotiations. "And Apple is not so important a customer that you would take the financial hit to hold onto the relationship."
The attitude was very different in 1991, when I.B.M., Apple and Motorola contributed a total of 300 engineers to a project in Austin, Tex., code-named Somerset. Company executives hailed the project as a make-or-break effort to design PowerPC chips intended to be, among other things, a crucial weapon to wrest technological control of the PC industry from Intel and Microsoft.
Mr. Jobs is scheduled to take the stage on Monday to face his software developers, an important constituency he must convince of the wisdom of the shift. It is the software developers who will need to do the hard work of making their programs run on Intel chips if Mr. Jobs's strategy is to succeed.
Apple must be able to persuade software developers who make business and graphics programs for the Macintosh - Microsoft, Adobe, Quark and others - to overhaul their code.
"That's a huge challenge for Apple, to win the software developers over and drag them along," said Mr. Wolf, the Needham analyst.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 - Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer's 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday.
The move is a chesslike gambit in a broader industry turf war that pits the traditional personal computer industry against an emerging world of consumer electronics focused on the digital home.
"This is a seismic shift in the world of personal computing and consumer electronics," said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering Group, a Seaford, N.Y., computer and consumer electronics industry consulting firm. "It is bound to rock the industry, but it will also be a phenomenal engineering challenge for Apple."
Mr. Jobs is expected to announce the transition to Intel chips at Apple's annual developer conference, which will begin here Monday. Apple's intention to shift to Intel chips beginning in 2006 was reported Friday by CNET News.com, a technology news service. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that Apple and I.B.M. were negotiating.
Apple, according to analysts, has become increasingly alarmed by I.B.M.'s failure to deliver a new version of its Power PC chip, called the G5, that does not generate much heat - a crucial feature for notebook computers, which do not have as much room for fans and ventilation as desktop machines.
Apple's notebooks now use the older G4 chips, made by Freescale Semiconductor, which was spun off from Motorola last year.
"That's a huge looming problem for Apple, if it can't keep up with Intel notebooks in performance," said Charles Wolf, an analyst for Needham & Company. "And that's been an I.B.M. problem. I.B.M. hasn't delivered a cool-running G5."
Apple, I.B.M. and Intel spokesmen all refused to comment this weekend on the possible shift in alliances.
The first move in the complex industry realignment now taking place was made more than a year ago when Microsoft broke with Intel and said that it would use an I.B.M. processor chip, similar to the one used by Apple for its Macintoshes, in the second version of its Xbox video game machine.
What Microsoft has made clear recently is that the new Xbox, to be called the 360, will be much more than a video game player when it reaches store shelves this fall. It will perform a range of home entertainment functions, like connecting to the Internet, playing DVD movies and displaying high-definition television shows as well as serving as a wireless data hub for the home.
Microsoft's decision to build its own computer hardware, with help from I.B.M., was a direct assault on a market that Intel was counting on for future growth. It is likely that Intel forged the alliance with Apple in an effort to counter the powerful home entertainment and game systems coming from Microsoft and Sony.
While the new partnership is a clear and long-coveted win for Intel, the world's largest chip maker, it portends a potentially troublesome shift for Apple, the iconoclastic maker of sleek personal computers and consumer electronics gadgets.
Apple was the largest maker of personal computers in the early and mid-1980's, but its share of the worldwide computer market fell steadily during the past two decades as the Windows-Intel alliance emerged as an overwhelming personal computing standard.
That decline came despite Apple's earlier shift from Motorola microprocessor chips to the PowerPC processor, the fruit of a grand alliance that Apple entered into in 1991 with Motorola and I.B.M.
Originally intended to counter Microsoft and Intel, the alliance was never able to stop the erosion of Apple's market share, as Apple customers were forced to upgrade their hardware and software to take advantage of the newer processor chip.
Mr. Jobs, who left Apple in 1985 to found Next Inc., went through a similar transition when he moved his NextStep operating system from Motorola chips to Intel's x86 processors. When Mr. Jobs sold Next to Apple in 1997 and then returned to the company to lead its resurgence, he moved the operating system to the PowerPC. But it has been widely reported that the company has kept alive a small development project called Marklar that has developed an Intel-compatible version of the Macintosh operating system.
For I.B.M., the end of the Apple partnership means the loss of a prestigious customer, but not one that is any longer very important to I.B.M.'s sales or profits. It further underlines how much I.B.M. and its strategy in recent years have moved away from the personal computer industry that it helped create. Last month, I.B.M. completed the sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo of China.
Even as a chip maker, I.B.M. has moved aggressively beyond the PC industry, focusing on making the processors for video game consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, and specialized chips for other uses, like the Internet router computers made by Cisco Systems and cellphone technology by Qualcomm. I.B.M. also uses its Power microprocessors in many of its own server computers, which run corporate networks.
By contrast, the chips I.B.M. makes for Apple represent less than 2 percent of chip production at its largest factory in East Fishkill, N.Y. And while the microelectronics business as a whole is strategically important for I.B.M., it is a small part of the revenue of a company that increasingly focuses on services and software. A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, estimates that the company's technology group - mostly microelectronics - will account for less than 3 percent of I.B.M.'s revenues and 2 percent of its pretax income this year.
I.B.M. supplies about 50 percent of the microprocessors used by Apple, providing them for desktop and server computers. Freescale makes the processors used in Apple's notebook and new Mac mini computers.
For years, according to industry analysts, the work for Apple has been barely a break-even business for I.B.M. When the two companies were negotiating a new contract recently, Mr. Jobs pushed for price discounts that I.B.M. refused to offer. For I.B.M., "the economics just didn't work," said one industry executive who was briefed on the negotiations. "And Apple is not so important a customer that you would take the financial hit to hold onto the relationship."
The attitude was very different in 1991, when I.B.M., Apple and Motorola contributed a total of 300 engineers to a project in Austin, Tex., code-named Somerset. Company executives hailed the project as a make-or-break effort to design PowerPC chips intended to be, among other things, a crucial weapon to wrest technological control of the PC industry from Intel and Microsoft.
Mr. Jobs is scheduled to take the stage on Monday to face his software developers, an important constituency he must convince of the wisdom of the shift. It is the software developers who will need to do the hard work of making their programs run on Intel chips if Mr. Jobs's strategy is to succeed.
Apple must be able to persuade software developers who make business and graphics programs for the Macintosh - Microsoft, Adobe, Quark and others - to overhaul their code.
"That's a huge challenge for Apple, to win the software developers over and drag them along," said Mr. Wolf, the Needham analyst.
Hiroshige said:
But there are pros and cons just looking at the buses - the flip side is the desktop chips - only 667 MHz FSB on the 64 Bit 3.6 Xeon MP (800 on single)..
We're really, really not sure how true that really is. Even three years ago, Transitive were showing off some unbelievable demonstrations, and they considered their code beta quality at the time. We may be pleasantly surprised.iGary said:
We survived the loss of the happy Mac at boot, we can survive this too!I'm really starting to get depressed here.