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nsjoker said:
hmm cool, thanks. which one will apple use?? the core duo or centrino duo 'cos wouldn't they want their AE card in there rather than the intel one??
Your guess is as good as mine as to which Apple will use. They both have their advantages. It all depends on what Apple wants to do. They both will have the same amount of processing power, so I'm not too worried about it. 😎
 
Randall said:
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. 😕 One hour of top performance and a heat blower? You do realize that the powerbook G4 has a FSB of 167MHz, and the Core Duo will have a FSB of 667MHz right? So exactly how is that gonna be slow?

Have you maybe heard of Intel SpeedStep Technology ?
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/mobile/pentiumiii/sb/CS-007509.htm

You will have 667Mhz Fsb(full cpu speed) but only in performance mode but in batery performance it goes down (Fsb and CPU spped) to save battery.Are you really thinking that you can have 4x times higher FSB and CPU speed with same or less power consumtion. And higher FSB doesn´t automaticly means faster computer, there is lot of other important components that must be also fast and all this componets are consuming with increasing speed , more power.
 
My Dev Kit runs better than the G4..
So I'm guessing Mac users are in for a really good surprise😉

[disclaimer] This post in no way means anything specific.It is meant purely as an opinion and does not break the NDA [/disclaimer]
 
Sol said:
'Smaller, cheaper, cooler' sounds like a great direction for Apple's computers. They allready lead the rest of the PC industry in design but if they can make improvements then why not? Ultimately I would like to see fans disappear from computers so that Cube-like silence could be achieved again.

smaller- sure why not? could be an issue with the imac and 'books (ie who really wants a smaller screen?) does the mac mini need to be smaller? not to me. now the g5 tower. there's a piece that can be downsized.

cheaper- who doesn't want this?

cooler- laptops need this the most. but we've been screaming that for years.
could intel be the answer?
 
Maestro64 said:
I believe you are correct, I could not remember which of the 6xx series was not actually used by Apple, I was pulling from memory.

I also know at one point there was suppose to be a 050 chip but it was canned when the deal was struck for the PPC. Also, there was a road map for a 605, 606, 607, but those must have been canned when the G series came along. I Personally think the G series is actually the 6xx series they just renamed them for ease of marketing the new chips.

Info for you:

Apple never used the 602...it used the 601, 603, 603e, 603ev, 604 and 604e...there were plans for a 620, but it turned out more or less as the G3.

There was never a 050, but rather a 060, which showed in some prototypes for accel. boards from Daystar and some later Amiga models...and that's all.
 
Maestro64 said:
What we all have to be concerned about here is what will happen to the quality and reliability of the systems. No one can argue that Apple has the highest quality of all systems manufacturers out there with a few except of lemons that Apple has made I the past.

This is by no means an accident on Apple's part. Part of the reason we all pay so much more for an Apple is becuase of the amount of testing, qualification and attention to details Apple puts in to every product. Intel does not have the same reputation. I concerned that these lower end products being mentioned here will fall well short of a standard apple products.

Plus with the rumors of the pending new Intel product to be announce with the help of Intel's design center I am afraid we will all get the same crap the PC world has been getting. I do not believe Apple had the bandwith or the time to fully test and qualify an Intel design, plus it so hard to transfer lessons learned from previous designs to a new design group. One of the reasons Apple designs are so good is their design teams have been together so long and they learn from the past.

I think it will be prudent before we all buy to find out who actually did the design, Apple or Intel, personally I stay way from anything that has an intel PCB in it, remember intel is a Chip company not a systems company go with what you do best and stayway from everything else.

I've never had an intel motherboard go south on me...drivers, that's another story, but I expect apple will fix that no sweat.
 
J@ffa said:
Well, i'm not an acoustic engineer or anything but if it was making a low enough amount of noise, a bit of trickery could probably dissipate it enough to make it sound as if it was silent, even if it wasn't, right?

Sound cancelling, such as that of the Bose QuietComfort headphones, is not possible without the cancelling device being very near to a person's ears. If you have a speaker near the hard drive putting out the cancelling sound waves, depending on where you and your computer are, the sound may actually be louder than without any cancelling noises.
 
People who say Macs are more expensive than comparable PCs are dreaming. Try pricing a Dell laptop with comparable specs & software and you'll see the price literally balloon before your eyes.
 
maya said:
I would buy both.

Remember Microsoft still hold the corporate server market. 😉

It will take a while for Apple to make headway in that market. 🙁

If MS loses a big part of the consumer market to Apple that stock is going to tank more than it should, last few years MS stock has not moved much because the new markets didn't catch on moneywise. If the x-box starts making money then maybe but i don't see that devision out of the red very soon or ever. 😎

Last 5 years MSFT stayed between 25-30, its a dead end stock and Microsoft has gotten so big it can only go down. Especially now that they can't abuse there desktop dominance to force themselves into other markets.
 
Maestro64 said:
Plus with the rumors of the pending new Intel product to be announce with the help of Intel's design center I am afraid we will all get the same crap the PC world has been getting. I do not believe Apple had the bandwith or the time to fully test and qualify an Intel design, plus it so hard to transfer lessons learned from previous designs to a new design group.

hmm.., I think if apple are ready to launch new macs in January, they have probably been testing them for quite a while. I have no doubt that we're going to see some solid systems. I wonder however where all this will take apple. I read the article about Intel strategy and it makes perfect sense to me. I sense that what drives the 'platform' strategy is an increasing dissatisfaction with microsoft. I mean, intel feel strong enough to market themselves as innovators, but this simply cannot fly with microsoft. So think intel probably sees more in the partnership with apple than `intel inside'. The question is, how apple think they fit in all this in the long term. Steve hasn't told us enough yet.
 
Apple using stickers

Abercrombieboy said:
It seems to me that the PowerPC logo appeared on Apple computers for several years after the switch from 68K processors. I think the last Macs to have a PowerPC logo were the beige G3's.

The Performa line had stickers on them. I remember the Performa 600 having all kind of stickers on the bottom of it near the CD-ROM (so did some Mac IIvx and Mac IIvi).

Some new Macs that used the PowerPC did have a PowerPC logo on them.

-Hugh
 
Bonte said:
Last 5 years MSFT stayed between 25-30, its a dead end stock and Microsoft has gotten so big it can only go down. Especially now that they can't abuse there desktop dominance to force themselves into other markets.

Perhaps this is part of the agenda of the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation"; establish a healthcare monopoly in overseas developing countries, integrate Microsoft as part of the healthcare/medical industry and not just computer software.

It doesn't have to be limited to healthcare of course, but the idea came to my mind when I read the article in Time concerning their visits to other countries that didn't have a highly developed system of healthcare.

Maybe I'm going overboard? Too much conspiracy theory? I don't know, sounds like an idea to me.
 
Hugh said:
The Performa line had stickers on them. I remember the Performa 600 having all kind of stickers on the bottom of it near the CD-ROM (so did some Mac IIvx and Mac IIvi).

Some new Macs that used the PowerPC did have a PowerPC logo on them.

-Hugh
Those macs are waaaay before the beige G3 so what's your point. And no, no new macs have the powerpc logo since the beige boxes. iMac? No. Tower? (G3,4,5) no. Powerbook, ibook? No. All designed under SJ.
 
Seasought said:
Maybe I'm going overboard? Too much conspiracy theory? I don't know, sounds like an idea to me.

Hey, I hate the Gateopoly as much as anyone, but using generosity as a pretense for gaining control and power? That's quite a conspiracy. I think too many would call him on it if he bagan to shove MS down their throats.🙂
 
Stonecoldcleric said:
Hey, I hate the Gateopoly as much as anyone, but using generosity as a pretense for gaining control and power? That's quite a conspiracy. I think too many would call him on it if he bagan to shove MS down their throats.🙂
Really?
Correct me if my memory is failing, but I seem to recall an impasse between the Indian government and Microsoft over copyright and standardisation on Windows (& other Microsoft products) by the public sector. The impasse disappeared soon after MS established a "research and/or development and/or support centre" in 2002 at a claimed cost of USD400m.
Both parties claimed - at the time - that the "generous investment" was not related to subsequent easing of the Indian posture towards MS.

Other companies and countries do the same thing all the time. Aid to 3rd world countries is quite often tied to purchasing or funding contracts with the donor companies or countries.

This is not to say that the Gates Foundation's altruism is in any way similar. Merely that conditional aid is a well established practice, Microsoft (as against the Gates Foundation) has done this before, and the Gates and Microsoft names are inextricably linked.

edit: and there was a recent announcement of a USD1.7Bn investment in India by Microsoft. Explicitly to produce a version of Windows for India, available in nine languages, to compete with open source software. All couched in altruistic terms. Read about it here. Now I would like to see India and Indians get all the benefits, but wonder about the perpetual "tax" they will pay for the privilege.
 
the whole "switch" is about dropping the Apple-developed hardware

nsjoker said:
...'cos wouldn't they want their AE card in there rather than the intel one??
But if the Intel one is cheaper, uses less power, and has zero R&D cost ????

"Centrino" is a much stronger brand that AE ...

Since this story is about "image" - it looks like Apple will be dropping the "Think Different" mindset and will be embracing "Think Same".
 
Peace said:
My Dev Kit runs better than the G4..
So I'm guessing Mac users are in for a really good surprise😉

[disclaimer] This post in no way means anything specific.It is meant purely as an opinion and does not break the NDA [/disclaimer]

Speaking of which, don't you have to send those bad babies back in a day? 😉 😛
 
Maestro64 said:
I am very familiar with TSMC and they are a true foundary and that is all they do and they make chips for all the fabless companies and then some. Company like Intel and IBM have both the Foundry and Packaging side and as it stand right not IBM the largest at both. Like I said most all the chips they make go into thier own products. They still make mainframes believe it or not, they are call larger servers today. These things come with 8 terrabits of systems memory and IBM is the largest Memory manufacture in the world, they just do not share their product.

Because they do not sell their chips they are not seen on the competitive market as the largest.


Hate to break it to you. Selling a mainframe with a handful of Power processors is a small drop in the bucket compared to :
Intel Processors
Intel Embedded Processors
Intel Network Controllers
Intel Chipsets
Intel Flash
Intel etc

Intel produces many more chips than IBM. IBM now has all 3 console markets, that helps them. But the console market is still very small compared to network hardware, computers, automobiles, IP phones, set top boxes, etc.

Before you jump in and say PPC runs in embedded systems like automobiles and networking gear; its not from IBM, its from Freescale. IBM's share of the embedded market is quite low; most of IBM's PPC cores on the market today are in embedded devices they fab for others, like Xilinx FPGAs; which for the embedded CPU versions are quite often low-volume as well.

IBM is a great Fab.......but they are in no way #1.

Intel still produces 8059 and 8088 microcontrollers; as well as some versions of the 486 for embedded platforms. They just don't shut down their old fabs, you'd be surprised how many chips Intel pumps out.
 
Soulivar said:
This is what i'm very skeptical about. Intel manufactures CISC (complex instruction set computing) processors, whereas the current mac PowerPC processors are RISC based (reduced instruction set computing). This means a 3 ghz Intel based system will not run any faster than a 1.5 ghz PowerPC based system (it could run slower). Also, the current RISC processors have a superior floating point. Doesn't anybody else think the Intel element is a big scam that could possibly ruin a good thing apple's got going right now? Am i off base here or is there some magic processor being made by Intel that will do the same job as efficiently as the power pc's? Those CISC processors, even if they go with a 64 bit version will be inferior to the power pc RISC ones currently utilized by apple!! BUY YOUR MACs now if you are in the market for a new one!! more info on risc vs. cisc:
http://cse.stanford.edu/class/sophomore-college/projects-00/risc/risccisc/


That used to be important. But as the powerpc has been evolving, it now has nearly as many instructions as an x86 processor. Plus, an x86 processor no longer executes x86 code, it converts it into microcode and executes that code instead; combining / reducing the real number of instructions executed.

The fact is, with the last G5s apple was falling way behind on performance; they couldn't hit the MHz required to compete against Intel machines which keep improving. At the same time, these new Intel processors do even more instructions per cycle, allowing the clock speed to be reduced resulting in less power and head consumption. The new upcoming Intel processors beat the living day out of the G5s in overall performance and in performance per watt.

They may not have good 64 bit support; but 64-bit support is a true waste for all but 1% of the computing market at most. Floating point and vector math is where it matters for science and games; and 32-bit integer is what matters for office/internet applications. 64-bits is used for programs with HUGE amounts of ram.
 
dguisinger said:
That used to be important. But as the powerpc has been evolving, it now has nearly as many instructions as an x86 processor.
RISC vs CISC is about instruction complexity, not instruction count. Plus many x86 instructions aren't merely complex, they're stupid. SIMD instructions that destroy their inputs, for example, so you're forced to execute extraneous load instructions.
dguisinger said:
Plus, an x86 processor no longer executes x86 code, it converts it into microcode and executes that code instead; combining / reducing the real number of instructions executed.
A CPU with built-in Rosetta isn't my idea of heaven. I'd bet that translation layer is a significant performance hit. The x86 is extremely register-starved, which doesn't help.
 
Soulivar said:
I'm not yet convinced about the intel chips. I say, if you're in the market for a new mac, but it now. Tried, tested and true...the last generation of "pure" mac.
Last "pure" Mac? Good lord.

I know Jobs has banged the marketing drum pretty heavily over the years but what makes Intel more of a devil than IBM or Motorola? The latter of the three pretty much stifled Mac development for years.

If Intel can keep up with their timetable and enthusiasm of having Apple as an innovation partner this vitriole for Intel should be short lived. They certainly can't be any worse. It's easy to understand the skepticism but the other stuff is just a little over the top.
 
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