Intel switch. 4 years later.

[cmaier]

The switch over to x86 did it for me also, my last Mac prior to my Mac Pro was a SE30 so it sure has been a long wait for me and totally worth the wait

Bootcamp did it for me. Though, ironically, after about a month after my switch, I never used bootcamp again. Though I do use fusion on occasion...

 

[gotzero]

I had a Powermac G5 used (unhappily) for music only when Apple bought Emagic and Logic. I picked up a MBP after the intel switch and the arrival of C2D. I found myself using Windows less and less.

Currently, I have a pile of Macs that I use happily along with Windows and Linux on the same systems.

Whether or not it made sense for the company, it made me a much more frequent and happy customer.

 

[Tesselator]

Bootcamp did it for me. Though, ironically, after about a month after my switch, I never used bootcamp again. Though I do use fusion on occasion...

That's one that I sorely miss too!

 

[sushi]

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?

Technically, it would be possible to write a program (malware) that runs under Windows in the BootCamp partition which can access the Mac HD partition and pass (save) some type of malware that then will run under the Mac OS such as a Trojan.

This would not be a simple malware application as it would need to contain code to access the Mac partition, contain, pass and install the malware. The size of this Windows malware would be larger than most for obvious reasons. But it could be done.

This would take a dedicated effort and time. It would not be a simple task like the script kiddies usually do. I doubt anybody with the technical knowledge to do this would be bothered as they could put their knowledge and services to much better use. Then again, someone may try this someday.

 

[GoKyu]

I never had any interest in Macs until well after it was announced that they would be moving to Intel chips - by this time (mid-2007) I was starting to get annoyed that my PC was acting up, and then after switching to Vista, I started thinking of my alternatives...

I could always go back to Linux (I've used it on and off since '93), or I could at least check out what OS X was all about. Well once I found out that it was *based* on UNIX and had that as its core, I started getting *really* interested.

This is when the Intel switch started to have meaning for me - if I got a Mac and decided that it wasn't really what I was looking for, I could always go back and run Windows (or even Linux) on it, so I did more and more research, and got more and more fed up with Vista's incompatibilities and its "all or nothing" anal-retentive security system, and finally in early 2008, I bought my first Mac that you see in my .sig

So yes, without the Intel switch, I honestly never would've considered Macs at the time, and now I am *so* happy that I switched - it's changed everything about the way I use the computer and has made me much more productive in the process .

 

[bruinsrme]

AMD still ruled in performance vs. cost.

yes they did and it scared intel to no end.

What killed AMD is they just could not make enough of their chips to meet the demans for the different supply chains. They promised and promised but their yields were said to be less than 85% and some processors less than 70%where intel was in the low to mid 90's.
AMD caught intel right in the middle of the transition of 858 to 860 process. FA17 in massachusetts was completely tooled with brand new tools to run 858. We ran less than a 1000 production wafers and started to rip everything out to tool for the 860 process. That fab made over 90% of the Northwoods and banias chips for 16 months.

Intel used to tell their customers what they wanted, now they listen.
AMD just can't seem to grow.

 

[pilotError]

Another Intel Switcher here...

I was interested in OS X, but I would have never made the leap without the switch to Intel. I bought parallels, but ended up never using it.

On another note, it was kind of sad to see HP give up the Alpha chip in favor of the Itanium. They had some innovative folks in their pocket and just let it go. I fear the same for Sparc if IBM ever completes the deal. We are getting down to a handful of CPU's these days.

 

[Boneoh]

I was interested in Macs, but was hesitant. My daughter got a Mac, and I loved it. Once I found out that the MacBook Pro was Intel, I took the plunge. I bought a 17 inch MBP in June of 06, after it was clear there were no issues. I got a beta of Parallels, and did all of my Windows in a VM.

I switched to VMware when I got my new MP last month. IMO if you gotta run Windows, run it in a vm. It's way too easy to save the vm images for when the Windows registry corrupts or something bad happens. Seems to be about once a year for me.

 

[kevink2]

And I can see why people thought that the transition to the Intel architecture would open the Mac to virus's. And it isn't even due to boot camp and virtualization. Less knowledgeable people (about computers) don't think about details like that.

Windows is on Intel. Wintel. Apple now is on Intel. Commonality

 

[sushi]

IMO if you gotta run Windows, run it in a vm. It's way too easy to save the vm images for when the Windows registry corrupts or something bad happens.

Isn't that the truth.

I like being able to test new software or installation processes.

Simply use my clean WinXP image. Duplicate it. Then test on the duplicate. Delete the image. Try again. Repeat as necessary. Sweet.

I have images for WinXP, Vista, Win 2003 Server, Unbuntu, and others. So dang convenient.

 

[surflordca]

Intel

If it was not for the Intel chip I would of never bought a Mac. I am only one user but add up all the others and see how much money made doing this. It was a win, win situation for and the end user. I don't use Windows much but it's nice to have for a few things. Love my Mac Pro.

 

[hugodrax]

I never had any interest in Macs until well after it was announced that they would be moving to Intel chips - by this time (mid-2007) I was starting to get annoyed that my PC was acting up, and then after switching to Vista, I started thinking of my alternatives...

I could always go back to Linux (I've used it on and off since '93), or I could at least check out what OS X was all about. Well once I found out that it was *based* on UNIX and had that as its core, I started getting *really* interested.

This is when the Intel switch started to have meaning for me - if I got a Mac and decided that it wasn't really what I was looking for, I could always go back and run Windows (or even Linux) on it, so I did more and more research, and got more and more fed up with Vista's incompatibilities and its "all or nothing" anal-retentive security system, and finally in early 2008, I bought my first Mac that you see in my .sig

So yes, without the Intel switch, I honestly never would've considered Macs at the time, and now I am *so* happy that I switched - it's changed everything about the way I use the computer and has made me much more productive in the process .

Same here, I think knowing that at a worst case scenario you can just wipe and make it a windows desktop added security.

Although I never ended going that route, OS X is so much nicer. Although my wife will not switch so when she switches to her account it is a full screen XP running under parallels. She is happy with her Office 2003 and XP + ie6

To her the Mac is just a fancy PC

 

[Macpropro80]

I never used a ppc mac when they were new, but I can say my mac pro is way faster then my g5!

 

[German]

--

 

[snouter]

First Mac I bought was a 7100/66.

I sold my dual G5/2GHz when they announced the Intel switch. Mostly because of how long it was going to take for software to catch up.

I got back into Mac when I bought an Intel MBP.

I was ok with the switch, especially after watching the G4 just stall out Apple's laptop lineup.

All good since then. I wish Apple used more Core 2 Duo desktop parts and i7 desktop parts, but whatever... Intel has been ftw lately...

 

[Sirobin]

I still haven't switched...I'm still using the Powerbook in my sig. I must say, I was pretty annoyed when the first Intel computers were announced...a month after I bought my Powerbook. I'm happy they did it though, it really was the best decision. And hopefully I'll be getting a new computer with in the next few months

 

[grue]

I've been using Macs since they came out, and buying my own since the MC68030 processor series. Moving to Intel was the best thing Apple has done in a looong time.

However, I hate almost the entire product range these days.

 

[MrRage]

I think architecture should be transparent to the users and the developers. So if Apple wants to go use an Arm, Intel or Spark processor - we shouldn't care or even notice the difference in our day to day tasks.

And for the most part they have done just that. Intel processors are cost efficient so that makes me happy.

 

[gugucom]

I only switched to Apple eight month ago but had five different machines so far which I all bought used. This is my second MBP and I could not resist the unibody. It is sexy like hell.

My first Power Mac was a DP 1,8 GHz Powermac7,3 which I bought defect from Ebay. It had a blown V3 PPC790FX processor. I never found a replacement and upgraded the machine to two 2,0 V 2.2 processors.

I sold that for a DC 2,3 GHz Powermac 11,3. It turned out to have a very slow grafic card for modern purposes and Apple never cared to upgrade the 3 year old machines.

So I ditched that for a MacPro1,1 with 12 GB RAM and two 2,66 dual core Xeon 5150 processors. I plan to upgrade that for two quad core 3,0 Xeon 5365 processors as soon as I can lay my hand on some chips for under 400€. My grafics card was an original x1900XT on that machine which sucked terribly and was noisy. I replaced that with a flashed HIS X1900XT IceQ3 which is absolutely silent. Today I replaced that again with a flashed XFX HD4870 which is still giving some birthing pains but seems like a very decent choice.

OS X is probably the strongest feature of the Macs and I love it for the ease of operation. It transfers very nicely between machines and has no copy protection that causes nothing but problems with Windows. Stability of the OS is awesome.

The Apple hardware is nothing special except for some design features that mainly apply to case and mobo design. Having said that the Mac Pro hardware is very competitively priced when you go for minimum spec and buy upgrades on the market.

I had a failed I/O board on my first MBP after 5 months and got away with an I/O board replacement. I'm glad it wasn't the unibody because that has an integrated I/O / logic board. My girl friend's white MB had a case failure with the hair cracks that Apple repaired under fair dealing. So reliability wise I do not expect Apple to do better than Shuttle which I had before. I would say that Shuttle was probably the more reliable design.

The switch to Intel has done it for me because I could run Windows on the machines to ease myself into OS X without concerns. I also reckon the Mac Pro is more reliable than the Power Mac G5 which is experiencing a lot of CPU, logic board and power supply failures here in Germany, at least from the amount of defect machines on Ebay.

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

I think architecture should be transparent to the users and the developers. So if Apple wants to go use an Arm, Intel or Spark processor - we shouldn't care or even notice the difference in our day to day tasks.

And for the most part they have done just that. Intel processors are cost efficient so that makes me happy.

Well, the biggest issue there is that software would have to be recompiled and relinked to operate on the different architecture. They munged it to work with "universal binaries" so they'd work on both intel + PPC, but to do so means you have much larger binaries. Now try to do that with N different architectures - becomes a nightmare.... The only alternative is to do it the way you do on most Unix systems - distribute the source code and have the end users compile it for whatever their architecture is... ICK (although it COULD be done in a way that would be transparent to end users..)

 

[snouter]

I think architecture should be transparent to the users and the developers. So if Apple wants to go use an Arm, Intel or Spark processor - we shouldn't care or even notice the difference in our day to day tasks.

I can't say enough about what Apple has done. They switched from OS9 to OSX and then from PPC to x86. They did a really great job with that from the consumer side anyhow. The first OS X machines ran OS 9 in Classic and the first Intel machines ran PPC apps in Rosetta. Amazing.

That said, I still sold my dual G5 when Apple announced the switch to Intel, and I did not buy another Mac until Adobe released Intel native apps.

 

[Sehnsucht]

PowerPC, Intel and AMD suck! Apple should have stuck with THESE forever and ever and ever and ever.....

The Intel switch occurred 2 years before I got my first Mac, so I didn't really pay much attention. I am to understand, however, before the switch there were many raging PPC fanboys who would constantly hate on Intel every chance they got. Intel's CPUs are slow, they're retarded, they suck, they run too hot, etc. Must have been quite a party but I wasn't there yet.

 

[Hrududu]

I am mainly disappointed in the cost of Macs today. When Apple announced the switch to Intel, I really did expect the prices to drop since they were no longer using a "specialty" processor and to compete with similarly spec'd PC's. Unfortunately, the prices seem to have either stayed the same or gone up (Mac Pro) since then. I still love all my PPC Macs and many still see regular use. I think it will be a shame if 10.6 has zero PPC support. There are lots of PPC of VERY usable PPC Macs out there with plenty of power to continue on in use. I would like to see how a modern G5 would stack up against these new Mac Pro processors.

 

[Sehnsucht]

I think it will be a shame if 10.6 has zero PPC support. There are lots of VERY usable PPC Macs out there with plenty of power to continue on in use. I would like to see how a modern G5 would stack up against these new Mac Pro processors.

It's my understanding that even the lowly Mac Mini can now spank the G5s [citation needed]. Of course, the G5s can use much more RAM, but as far as processor speed, the modern Intel Core 2 Duos are a definite win over the dual core PPCs.

 

[snouter]

I am to understand, however, before the switch there were many raging PPC fanboys who would constantly hate on Intel every chance they got. Intel's CPUs are slow, they're retarded, they suck, they run too hot, etc. Must have been quite a party but I wasn't there yet.

The Pentium 4 actually was a crappy CPU. Core Duo and Core 2 Duo changed everything, esp on the laptops.

At the end, the Apple laptops were just going without CPU speed bumps. The PPC G4 was just stalled out at 1.67 and there was not G5 laptop part coming.

Look at it this way, the entire Apple computer lineup is laptops or laptop parts (iMac and mini). The Mac Pro is the only true desktop and it's a small player due to its price.

The G5 was not a bad CPU, but laptops are where it's at for the most part.