Not to go off topic, but sushi is probably the most calm and levelheaded member here. I think you may be confusing him with another member with a similar name...
They're referring to firewire TDM. Though I'm not sure if USB drives work in that made.
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Intel switch. 4 years later.
- Thread starter hugodrax
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If PPC has it wrong, so does SPARC, ARM, and the 68k. And pretty much every network protocol uses big-endian.
I recall reading a article written by one of the designers of the 8008 (I think?)-- he used little-endian as an efficiency move, unaware that it'd be something that would be a 'feature' of the dominate processor today, and essentially apologized for all the endian-checking code that people had to write to this day.
Wish I kept that paper around...
If PPC has it wrong, so does SPARC, ARM, and the 68k. And pretty much every network protocol uses big-endian.
I recall reading a article written by one of the designers of the 8008 (I think?)-- he used little-endian as an efficiency move, unaware that it'd be something that would be a 'feature' of the dominate processor today, and essentially apologized for all the endian-checking code that people had to write to this day.
Wish I kept that paper around...
No no no! I am not talking endianess! I am talking BITS! In PPC, the high order bit is bit 0. In other words, when they went from 32-bit to 64-bit, bit 0 moved left!
I am pretty sure that moving to Intel was one of the most important decisions they have done.
The performance difference between the PowerPC and PC world were getting ridiculous.
Other than switchers now have the option to run Windows if need be. It should comfort them somehow.
The performance difference between the PowerPC and PC world were getting ridiculous.
Other than switchers now have the option to run Windows if need be. It should comfort them somehow.
I had G4 Powerbook. It ran for several years but aside from nostalgia I dont miss it.
Without switching to Intel, Apple wouldn't be doing as well as they are now. The switch providing them recognizable comparable processors (convincing people that PPC performance was equivalent with lower clock speeds was a marketing nightmare) and the ability to boot windows.
Without switching to Intel, Apple wouldn't be doing as well as they are now. The switch providing them recognizable comparable processors (convincing people that PPC performance was equivalent with lower clock speeds was a marketing nightmare) and the ability to boot windows.
PPC user since the Mac LC. I just switch to intel with a quad 2.93... As expected, it's really faster than my first gen G5 2x2ghz.
Weird...
Weird...
I had an iBook G4 back in 2005, switched to a Macbook C2D last April. The iBook was a great machine (final rev. so all kinks ironed out) and to be honest in terms of performance, for what I use it for, there isn't a huge difference. The Macbook is a lot thinner, that was key for me, althought I miss the iBook cute little form factor.
Not when Apple announced their move. I am sure that Steve Jobs had been shown about Intel's future plans, and engineers at Apple had agreed that Intel could pull it off, but at the time when Apple announced moving to Intel, Intel was quite a bit behind AMD everywhere. Then they pulled out the Core Duo chip which beat AMD in the mobile space, where AMD was weakest, and was good enough to be usable for desktops, and a bit later they pulled out Core 2 Duo, which did actually beat AMD.
So Apple may have known that Intel was ahead, the public didn't.
When intel borrowed AMD64 their first attempts were pretty horrible
At least it had the instruction set. Guess memory sizes were probably too small for 64 bit code.
I don't know if it is very common to have an universal binary with both 32bit and 64 bit. As well as ppc and intel.
Dunno where people get the idea from.. but anyone placing the blame on to Intel for the existence of computer viruses in a OS really doesn't understand how a computer works.
Never thought intel was a bad idea, they make great chips. But, I've been a mac user since the 68xxx days.
I suspect at the time, Intel was Apple's best option. The join platform known as PowerPC was stuck in a loop, both IBM and Motorola had serious issues making chips faster without enclosing heatsinks of daft sizes... Can you seriously imagine the size of a Mac Pro's heatsink if it was still powered by PowerPC?? Can you really?
I find that with my MBP15 running Tiger, that many times changing secure WiFi networks as I change locations (usually 3-4 per day), running multiple VMs, connecting and disconnection external displays and monitors, running CCC and Carbonite, iDisk, and some other activities cause it to lock up. Where as my PB15 running Tiger just keeps going and going.
Granted that this is a subjective observation.
After I began shutting down and starting up every couple of days, many issues disappeared.
To me, this is a minor inconvenience.
There was a concern that when running in Bootcamp, a Windows Virus could pass something such as a Trojan over to the Mac side.
Those early "EM64T" intels were barely 64-bit. Remember, Intel was still trying to foist itanium on the world. At AMD we came out with something simpler, cheaper, and backwards-compatible. Intel rushed out something to compete (much like they rushed out "dual core" by gluing chips together) and it performed worse in 64-bit mode than 32-bit mode (it would do things like run things twice through a 32-bit adder to get a 64-bit result, if i recall correctly).
My point being only that for the Apple community to accept the switch to Intel, it was helpful that performance actually improved by going to Intel. If 64-bit PPC users had switched to 64-bit Intel (as opposed to 64-bit AMD, which kicked butt, and as opposed to 64-bit Itanium, which at least decently ran 64-bit code) at that time, I'm pretty sure they would have seen a tremendous drop in performance and raised a ruckus.
Actually I believe the worry was that people running Windows would contract Windows viruses on a Mac and that would tarnish the Apple brand as being relatively virus free.
Passing a Windows virus to a Mac is not possible. Passing a Mac virus from Windows bootcamp is possible, but very very unlikely as Mac OS X doesn't touch the bootcamp partition and without NTFS-3G you can't even read the NTFS partition which is the default partition scheme used by Windows XP and newer OSes.
I would not be surprised if snow leopard is the last 32 bit update for intel unless apple surprises us with an Atom based netbook. Unless they keep support because of the iPhone.
I recall years back had assumed dropping of 16bit is support by microsoft, so some instruction were no longer efficiently supported. Then win 95 came out. The pentium ii had improved 16 bit support.
I recall years back had assumed dropping of 16bit is support by microsoft, so some instruction were no longer efficiently supported. Then win 95 came out. The pentium ii had improved 16 bit support.
I seriously doubt that could happen but then again back then no-body really knew how Boot-camp worked. And thinking about it now, untill the day Viruses and Trojan's become platform independent, we won't have any risks, will we? or will we?
Agreed. I was kind of shocked at first when Apple announced the switch to Intel, but I accepted it. My biggest thing at the time was with the notebooks. G4s were really starting to get long in the tooth with no foreseeable future (no G5s) and $800 PC notebooks were handily outperforming them.
I'm still holding onto my 12" Powerbook G4 1.5GHz for nostalgia more than anything else. That machine and the 15" TiBook were my favorite Apple notebook designs.
I have a close friend that is still very resistant to the Intel change. He still lives in a fantasy world where PPC is far superior to any of the "junk" that Intel makes. I suppose he'll boycott Apple entirely when PPC support is officially dropped with Snow Leopard.