Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
magi.sys said:
When Apple makes the switch to Intel chips, I hope they use the sockets and not solder the CPU directly onto the PCB. I wanna be able to upgrade CPUs just like with peecees.

YES! This would be grand. More modular technology, please. I would buy computers just as regularly with that as an option, replacing my CPU halfway between purchases.

Steve...oh Steve...should you hear our wishes, please make them come true.
 
Tristan_X said:
YES! This would be grand. More modular technology, please. I would buy computers just as regularly with that as an option, replacing my CPU halfway between purchases.

Steve...oh Steve...should you hear our wishes, please make them come true.
I would like to be able to upgrade my video card without having to use a "Mac Edition" version of the card. Being able to use the equivalent ones for the other folks would save me a bunch (well somewhat) of money....
 
Steve will announce a mac mini and a powerbook, then a new iPod shuffle, go through the features, etc, press the wrong button, talk to madonna through iChat and then summarise. He will then say "one more thing..." whilst pointing to a member of the audience in the middle. "John, I'm wearing your underwear". :p
 
AidenShaw said:
I'm sure that you're right.

If Yonah shows up in a Powerbook, most professionals will say "No thanks - I'll stick with my G4 until Rev B - unless Adobe waits until Rev c for the Photoshop port to MacIntel"

Non every "professional" uses Photoshop, not every "professional" does graphics.
I want a Intel PowerBook to run eclipse FAST! :p
 
treblah said:
I fully agree with you on Apple using pretty basic Intel reference designs.

There's one valid point that makes me disagree: The Clone Wars. IF indeed Apple wants OSX to only exist in Apple-branded hardware (at this point anyway), then the easiest would be to build a custom memory controller and code OSX to require its presence. Hardware lock, that is. Therefore... I think that Apple builds custom motherboards as long as they want to keep OSX for themselves.

Once they go 100% standard parts, then OSX can be installed to a standard Dell. Open competition against Windows. Do they want it right away? I don't think so. They'll probably open OSX once Microsoft releases their Longshot(tm).
 
AidenShaw said:
I don't think "sometime in February" will fly if people in the audience already have their Windows Yonahs.

This is the type of thing I have been saying all along with regards to the switch to Intel. Apple will need to step up and keep pace with the rest of the Intel world now - marginal upgrades every few months is not going to cut it. If PC users have the latest and greatest technology in their PCs, the Mac community isn't going to find it acceptable to have to wait for months to realize the same benefits. It will be interesting to see how Apple handles this and adjusts.
 
greenstork said:
And I don't have proof but I know that Apple isn't stupid enough to release a pro machine without the favorite pro apps ready to go and up to speed.

They've done it before. see Quark.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Yes, I bet they don't ship that day. It will be a Keynote slide and they will ship later just like the G5 did.

I respectfully disagree. Intel doesn't work like Motorola/Freescale. Generally, the same day Intel chips are "released" you can order a Dell with one built in, and they ship the same week. When Intel says "released," they really mean it.
 
starnox said:
Will be interesting to see if Apple releases a Mac Mini with this in since that's what Aopen is planning to do: http://news.techwhack.com/2604/061205-aopen-to-use-intel-yonah-processor-in-their-mac-mini-replica/

The problem will be price...

Yonah pricing is allegedly...

At 667MHz FSB we have:

X50 at 2.16GHz $639 (dual core)
X40 at 2GHz $422 (dual core)
X30 at 1.83GHz $295 (dual core)
X20 at 1.66GHz $241 (dual core)
756 at 1.66GHz $209 (single core)

At 667MHz FSB low voltage we have:

X48 at 1.66GHz $315 (dual core)
X38 at 1.5GHz $285 (dual core)

At 533MHz FSB ultra low voltage we have:

1.2GHz $260 (single core)
1.06GHz $240 (single core)


So which of those fits in a $499 Mac Mini? or for that matter a $999 (or less) iBook.

G4 processors are much, much cheaper than Intel. For instance OWC sell a Dual 1.6Ghz 7447 upgrade including sinks and fans for £249.
 
AidenShaw said:
If Apple comes out with a $700 dual-core Yonah - you'll see lots of people buying their new XP system from Apple!!

You might see this anyway. I could see Apple biting into some of the marketshare held by Alienware and companies like that. Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of windows users that would pay for good engineering and style. Now don't get me wrong, Apple is not targetting Alienware (nor should they!), nonetheless, a side effect of this transition is that people will by Apple machines and install XP on them. And many of those people are the same people who wouldn't be caught dead with a Dell or HP.
 
Tristan_X said:
YES! This would be grand. More modular technology, please. I would buy computers just as regularly with that as an option, replacing my CPU halfway between purchases.

Steve...oh Steve...should you hear our wishes, please make them come true.


Agreed. Apple has a chance to really differentiate themselves here, and they should do all the little things that can make that happen. It would be just a little ironic if the first Intel Macs were also the most "hackable" and "upgradable" PCs on the planet.

Apple needs to embrace the people who like to tinker with their computers. Get in good with us, and you'll get all the good free publicity you can shake a stick at!
 
dernhelm said:
Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of windows users that would pay for good engineering and style.

...and yet still run Windows on it. Oh the irony... :eek:
 
ffakr said:
As for Adobe, I'd be shocked if they have a fat binary any time soon. Far as I know, CS2 is still full of Carbon code because Adobe (and Microsoft) never bothered to re-write all their big apps. It was too much work when you could simply release another minor revision of the same 10 year old product.

Huh? Carbon code is just as easy to compile for x86 as Cocoa code. Just hit the magic button and it's done. Now Adobe does have some challenges - likely porting from CodeWarrior to XCode (2 developers for 2 weeks tops), porting all of the custom altivec code (probably not too hard because they already have the intel optimized code for the Windows builds).

This is - for some reason - a fallacy that I've heard over and over about the x86 transition. Carbon code will recompile and run on x86. New apps can be written for x86 using the Carbon APIs.

Matthew
 
aegisdesign said:
The problem will be price...

Yonah pricing is allegedly...

At 667MHz FSB we have:

X50 at 2.16GHz $639 (dual core)
X40 at 2GHz $422 (dual core)
X30 at 1.83GHz $295 (dual core)
X20 at 1.66GHz $241 (dual core)
756 at 1.66GHz $209 (single core)

At 667MHz FSB low voltage we have:

X48 at 1.66GHz $315 (dual core)
X38 at 1.5GHz $285 (dual core)

At 533MHz FSB ultra low voltage we have:

1.2GHz $260 (single core)
1.06GHz $240 (single core)


So which of those fits in a $499 Mac Mini? or for that matter a $999 (or less) iBook.

G4 processors are much, much cheaper than Intel. For instance OWC sell a Dual 1.6Ghz 7447 upgrade including sinks and fans for £249.

They will fit in the 699 mini ;) .......do it :D

Why a G4 is cheaper is because it is outdated comparing
 
AidenShaw said:
I'm sure that you're right.

If Yonah shows up in a Powerbook, most professionals will say "No thanks - I'll stick with my G4 until Rev B - unless Adobe waits until Rev c for the Photoshop port to MacIntel".

I'm sure that the first MacIntel will see an incredible spike in demand when it's introduced - but that spike won't be sustained by the professional crowd. Only the tech-geeks will want a MacIntel before the apps are ready.

And "ready" means "debugged, tested and optimized for SSE". Not merely "xxx is fat binary now".

Whatever. Most of that is handed through XCode for a good majority of apps out there. Why do you think Apple has been pushing the move to XCode for this transition.

As for the hardware itself. Considering the current state of PowerBooks if benchmarks show that native PPC apps run as fast on a dual core Yonah as on the latest G4 PowerBooks you might see more pros moving. I'm not claiming that its 100% certain but the simple fact is current Pentium M laptops kick the PowerBook around the block and that is without having a second core onboard, a faster FSB, possibly SATA drive, PCI-E graphics, etc. There is a possibility, albeit slim, that even in emulation it could be as fast as a G4 1.67Ghz PowerBook. I can't wait to see XBench marks being run in emulation on final PowerBook hardware.
 
mstecker said:
Huh? Carbon code is just as easy to compile for x86 as Cocoa code. Just hit the magic button and it's done. Now Adobe does have some challenges - likely porting from CodeWarrior to XCode (2 developers for 2 weeks tops), porting all of the custom altivec code (probably not too hard because they already have the intel optimized code for the Windows builds).

This is - for some reason - a fallacy that I've heard over and over about the x86 transition. Carbon code will recompile and run on x86. New apps can be written for x86 using the Carbon APIs.

Matthew


It's a question of Management Style...
If they've started the CS3 development, as previously stated, will they put that on hold for the 2-4 weeks you think is necessary, and do this special build. Or, do they wait till CS3 is finished, and then switch...

Big, slow companies tend to finish what they've started and put future requirements in the future.
 
Tristan_X said:
YES! This would be grand. More modular technology, please. I would buy computers just as regularly with that as an option, replacing my CPU halfway between purchases.

Steve...oh Steve...should you hear our wishes, please make them come true.

No chance in hell. The chips are going to be soldered in and prob have the BIOS check to makes sure its running X CPU. When something as simple as that can lead to a new PowerBook sale.
 
-hh said:
I'd expect that Steve's pitch will be something along the lines of "Coming This Spring", which means that they can be delivered "on time" anytime up to the day before the summer solstice (June 20th, 2006).
-hh

When Apple announces Intel based hardware with a firm date, that is when people will stop buying PowerPC hardware. I expect Steve to come up one day saying "Intel based hardware is shipping _now_".
 
applekid said:
What's the point of releasing Intel machines this early?

As far as I can tell, the dev release of Tiger only has iTunes as a universal binary. Everything else is emulated through Rosetta! Please correct me if I'm wrong!

You are wrong.

The first dev release had everything _except_ iTunes as a universal binary. The latest dev release had _only_ iTunes changed from PowerPC only to universal binary, which means that now _all_ Apple applications run native on Intel machines.
 
MacQuest said:
Nah. Intel would hate winning over a whole new customer base from competitors like IBM and Motorola and having them switch to their own architecture. I'm sure there's no hurry on Intels part to win over the "hearts and minds" of the Mac community.
:rolleyes:

One statistics that I would like to see: Percentage of Intel engineers using a computer with Intel processor at home before Intel Macs, and percentage of Intel engineers using a computer with Intel processor at home after Intel Macs.
 
Platform said:
Why a G4 is cheaper is because it is outdated comparing


Nope. It's cheaper because it has a fraction of the transistors and is made using a cheaper process than the Intel CPU.

I know it's the Intel-fanboy way now on MacRumors to describe the Yonah architecture as the next generation but such revisionism is ridiculous. The Pentium-M is a revised P6 core dating from before even the G4. Tacking on a 2MB cache and a fast front side bus doesn't change the fact it's still a dinosaur in comparison to the PowerPC architecture.

It's just a pity the implementations of each architecture haven't kept up with the marketting hype.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.