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'Intel Based Mac' Rumor Roundup...

Spanky Deluxe said:
Come on, it wouldn't be *that* hard for Intel to build 'PowerPC' chips. The legal stuff can easily get round all of that. Remember, they wouldn't have to make G5 chips that are identical to IBM's, all they have to do is make G5 Compatible]/b] chips and call them something else. Athlon 64s are compatible with nearly all of the code that is written for P4s yet AMD and Intel split chip designs way back when the first Pentium was introduced. Intel's dothans are compatible with Intel's P4s too. Making a Intel PowerPC compatible chip wouldn't be 'that hard' relatively speaking.
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Aside from the Itellectual Property issues - patents would require license fees to IBM or Freescale, if they were willing to license at all - you'd lose the economy of scale. New Pentium chips for $250.00 in wholesale quantities of 1,000 must have something to do with this. Recall from the NYT article that Apple is only 2% of the IBM NY production - it's cheaper if they're benefitting from the research that everyone is paying for through their massive PC maker orders for the processors.
 
IDGNS: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Intel has been trying to get Apple to use its processors. Has Intel been talking with Apple?

Chandrasekher: We always talk to Apple. Apple is a design win that we’ve coveted for 20 years and we continue to covet them as a design win. We will never give up on Apple.
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Sounds like the 2 are getting very cosey ...Aptel..better yet Mactel.......anyone.

Not to mention Intel CEO Paul Otellini saying a few weeks ago if people want a secure PC , to buy a mac after he spent an hour ridding his daughter's PC of spyware.
 
Jschultz said:
So what are we really losing here? "Pride"?
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In reality, that's about it: years of Apple snail ads and Velocity Engine hype come home to roost, then life goes on as normal.
 
Yvan256 said:
The way I read it, QuickTransit seems to be a hardware chip solution, which would allow Apple to remain "PowerPC inside" (as far as the software is concerned) while still allowing them to use whatever processor they want and still lock out wanna-be-hackers who want to run OS X on a generic x86 box (unless QuickTransit comes out with a PCI card for PCs, but that'd still be slower than putting that chip on the motherboard directly connected to the CPU).
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QuickTransit is pure software. It is actually conceptually like a really fast version of a Java JVM. You may have read how long-running JIT Java servers can actually perform similar or better than native C/C++, because the optimizer has run-time information and the natively compiled code is cached.

From what I've read of QuickTransit this weekend, they use a similar approach. The native code gets translated into an intermediate bytecode, which then gets translated into native code on the new platform. However, they seem to have chosen a much lower-level bytecode than Java, and have really made some breakthroughs on the optimizer. Because the optimizer has runtime information, and is essentially a "recompiler", it's actually not impossible for the "emulated" code to run faster than the original.

All in all, it could make the transition very easy. Add that to the fact that most Intel chips outperform their PowerPC counterparts in most market segments, and you may have the fastest "PowerPC" running machine being an Intel machine.
 
law guy said:
Aside from the Itellectual Property issues - patents would require license fees to IBM or Freescale, if they were willing to license at all - you'd lose the economy of scale. New Pentium chips for $250.00 in wholesale quantities of 1,000 must have something to do with this. Recall from the NYT article that Apple is only 2% of the IBM NY production - it's cheaper if they're benefitting from the research that everyone is paying for through their massive PC maker orders for the processors.
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Intellectual property yeah but I don't think its such an issue to get around. The latest AMD chips have SSE, SSE2 and SSE3. They are completely compatible with the SSE techonolgies designed by Intel and put on Intel chips. However, they use a different design and even a different number of transistors to get the job down - less I think. If they can do that, surely Intel could do the same for PowerPC compatible chips.

I could be barking up the wrong tree but I'm just trying to make the point that this isn't an unrealistic avenue.
 
iMeowbot said:
In reality, that's about it: years of Apple snail ads and Velocity Engine hype come home to roost, then life goes on as normal.
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In which case, bring it on. a $1100 powerbook wouldn't sound TOO bad!
 
What if...

I'm not sure if any of you have thought of this ( I haven't read all the post ) But...

What if IBM is forcing this decision on Apple? What if IBM is pretty much saying to Apple "We're dropping you. Find someone else." It's just as likely as Apple choosing to go to Intel on their own.

Who knows. Maybe this will be the biggest hoax ever. Maybe it's true.

But if it is, maybe also Apple and Intel will come up with a good, fast, reliable processor that has a very similar chip architecture to the PowerPC, in so that there will be no need for a major software frinzzy.


But hey, this is just me. I'm just as concerned as everyone. But if things do go for the worse, I'm gonna buy a brand new iBook with the last of the PowerPCs, then I may never buy a Mac again. Jeez, I hope it doesn't come to that...
 
I don't really care if Macs come with an AMD or Intel CPU so much... but I do not believe this rumor.

I guess we'll see very soon, but my thought is that something with Intel will be announced-- just not CPU's. And I think it would be *very* interesting to see the dual core 970mp's come out instead.

Funny side note: An Apple employee on th Slashdot boards said he knows the next revision of the PowerMac *will* use 970's. He didn't say mp, gx, or fx, though.

So even *if* the transition came about, it seems it won't be in the high end machines for a while.
 
runninmac said:
I think I would puke over all dells and other crap, and anything that's not Apple. Everyone would be missing the whole Mac "feel". That would never happen as long as Steve is in charge. No offense or anything I realize I sound like I'm in a pissy mood but I don't mean to.
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Sorry but the "whole Mac feel" doesn't exists anymore. Not since january.

You see, aside from a little aliminium box on the top of my crappy 15" CRT (and what I see on the screen) there's nothing "Apple" about my computer...

Apple Mac mini, Magnavox 15" CRT monitor, 7-port IOGear USB Hub, no-name made-in-china external FireWire Hard Disk, USB 3-buttons+scrollwheel ergonomic Logitech mouse, HP printer, PS/2 black IBM keyboard with Windows key connected via a PS/2-to-USB adapter, SanDisk USB 2.0 12-in-1 flash media reader, Belkin Nostromo n50 keypad.

Where's the "whole Mac feel" in my setup? It's a cable mess! (thanks to the Mac mini and its 2 ports). The only thing left is the software "feeling".

Same thing would happen if you ran OS X on a Dell (taking for granted that OS X would have support for all the hardware, peripherals, chipsets, etc - so that OS X would be stable). It's more about software than hardware (as far as feeling goes).
 
Gil Amelio

I feel like I am inclined to trust Good ole Steve, I mean look, we do remember where we were years back when Gil Amelio was in charge right? Even though I am skeptical and somewhat suprised about the "potential" move, I don't think its in Jobs' plans to tank Apple, and leave all its users stranded lamenting ever owning a Mac.....not to mention the thousands of creative prefessionals who rely on Macs for their livelyhood....
 
My prediction ...

After all of his usual low-level, minimal interest stuff for 40 minutes or so, Steve pauses on stage tomorrow ...

"Oh ... and one more thing!! ....

The Apple logo comes up behind him ...

The Intel logo comes up next to it ...

Steve says ... "There has been a lot of talk the past couple of months, and more specifically the past couple of days, concerning Apple and a switch to Intel processors."

"GOTCHA!!!!!!"

Then he will introduce whatever really new, really special stuff Apple has in store ... G5 laptop (not likely) or dual core G4 laptop. Towers equalling or eclipsing 3 GHz. Or something more fun (not sure what that might be).

Just a dream perhaps, but I like it. :p
 
admanimal said:
How lame the new 2-button mouse is...and why for some reason it needs an Intel CPU in it.
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Somehow, that 2nd button requires an x86 CPU. ;)

Yeah, yeah, I know that OS X already runs with more-than-one-button mouses (I got a 3 buttons+scrollwheel Logitech).
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
Well it'd be Mac but made by a bigger company... Big Mac!!

Hmmm... now where have I heard that name before???
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Be careful. Another big company has that one trademarked. Don't want to wake up and find the Hamburglar on your front doorstep. :D
 
iMeowbot said:
In reality, that's about it: years of Apple snail ads and Velocity Engine hype come home to roost, then life goes on as normal.
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What on earth do you mean?
 

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griz said:
[...] If it's true, I just have to say I am glad I took my original investment in Apple and banked it and am now sitting on profit shares. If it was my own cash that was being played with on this news, I would be first in line to SELL SELL SELL tomorrow morning.
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Actually, when the Intel rumors started surfacing again about a week ago, Apple shares went up by more than 2$US in a few hours. With rumors.

Can't wait for the shares to get past 44.60$US so I can finally cash them back (profit or not).
 
Well, it's rather pointless to ponder all over again about intel rumours
in any form, we'll know the truth in a few hours.

However, I noticed a thing or two about a year ago when 10.3.4
came out. Since then, nVidia's resource manager kernel extension
has had some interesting references to a hardware in development.

Open up Terminal.app, and type:
strings /System/Library/Extensions/NVDAResman.kext/Contents/MacOS/NVDAResman | grep -E " - |NOT"

GeForce2MX 32MB (P40) - NV11
GeForce2MX 64MB (P66) - NV11
Quadro2MXR 32MB - NV11 **NOT A RELEASED PRODUCT**
GeForce3 64MB (P51) - NV20
iMac Flat Panel 32MB (P80) - NV11
GeForce3-500 64MB - NV20 **NOT A RELEASED PRODUCT**
NV11 PCI board with 32MB **NOT A RELEASED PRODUCT**
(A74) - NV17
iMac CRT 32MB (P62) - NV11
(A84) - NV25 64MB
(E93) - NV17 MAP 32/64MB
(A114) - NV18
(E121) - NV30 eval board **NOT A RELEASED PRODUCT**
iMac Flat Panel (P79) - NV17
17" PowerBook (P84) - NV17
12" PowerBook (P99) - NV17
iMac Flat Panel (Q26) - NV18
x86 proto work **NOT A RELEASED PRODUCT**
iMac FlatPanel (Q26B) - NV34 (was original Q27)
(A146) - NV34
iBook (Q54) - NV34
15" iMac Flat Panel (Q59A) - NV18
17" iMac Flat Panel (Q59B) - NV34
20" iMac Flat Panel (Q59C) - NV34 w/ ext. TMDS

It's obvious that Apple has had a somewhat working x86 proto since the
Rhapsody days, personally I think that even core Darwin for x86 requires
a lot of work before it works efficiently. But who knows if ...

Anyone familiar with the Apple internal codenumbers for products listed
above? I guess most of them did not materialize to end-users.
 
Yvan256 said:
Actually, when the Intel rumors started surfacing again about a week ago, Apple shares went up by more than 2$US in a few hours. With rumors.

Can't wait for the shares to get past 44.60$US so I can finally cash them back (profit or not).
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Didn't the share then turn around and lose 5% just on rumors that iPod sales were slowing down? http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/O...tock-Price-Falls-on-iPod-Sales-Reports.xhtml Perhaps that profit taking train hasn't sailed - after the announcement, if there is one, you might see it rebound b/c the street loves the idea OR we could see it tank b/c who's going to buy hardware or software, blah, blah, etc. Looks like it's currently priced above $38.00 going into Monday.
 
errrrm.......as far as the mouse goes, they have most likely stayed with one button because apple doesnt like copying the pc world. THey are always going on about people copying them, so it wouldnt really be fair to copy the pc's.

Same goes for the mouse wheel, i guess they are waiting to make their own solution to it.

Anyone out there know any other things they have on the pc that macs dont?
 
Has anyone here read Wired's article? Sorry if its already been discussed but...I think this extremely frightening. DRMed Intel chips running Macs? No thanks. If they do decide to do that I'm jumping ship.
 
hcorf said:
errrrm.......as far as the mouse goes, they have most likely stayed with one button because apple doesnt like copying the pc world. THey are always going on about people copying them, so it wouldnt really be fair to copy the pc's.

Same goes for the mouse wheel, i guess they are waiting to make their own solution to it.

Anyone out there know any other things they have on the pc that macs dont?
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Intel processors - no, hang on.... :rolleyes:
 
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