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Macintosh Moving to Intel Processors [Updated]

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MacTruck said:
* OK Lets look at them? *



* Are you on crack? You have no way of knowing any of this. 5 yrs of service? Hardly. Show me a mac besides the ones that get upgrade cards that get 5 yrs of service *

OK then, you get less than 5 years out of them, then it's even less of a problem, you'll need new machines right about the time the second version of the intel macs come out. There are many pros that use 5 year old machines, especially in the graphic arts and prepress world.



* Seemlessly hugh, again you have no way of knowing any of this. Just because jobs says its true does not make it so. Again, blind following.*

Steve's track record is far better than Bill's, so I'll trust Steve until proven otherwise.



* Flat out lie. I am sure your 233mhz machine runs well. I use a 400mhz G3 for testing and its the biggest dog. Lets see, idvd not supported, needs G4 cpu, Quartz extreme not supported, Core image not supported, list goes on.

My point is that my old machine runs faster than it did with the older operating systems. No, it doesn't support the fancier HARDWARE BASED eye candy, but it runs better than it used to. Oh, BTW I really appreciate being called a liar, *******.

Longhorn needs new machines? Maybe but XP Pro runs fine on my IBM thinkpad I bought in 2000 and its a 750mhz PIII with 384mb ram.*

Maybe? You just blinked, the whole point was how long you can use the machines you buy today. It's nice that your laptop runs XP, will you still be running that and bitching when Billy makes your laptop obsolete? Switching to windows machines is no solution for long term stability.



* maybe you should leave fanboy. Just another jobs can do no wrong follower.*
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Like I said before, he's got a damn good track record. If you're so smart, what would you have him do? Stick with IBM and freescale and most assuredly go down the drain with them? Or maybe AMD with their limited fabrication so that we could lag behind again? Fact is that he didn't have a choice. All that we can ask is that he make sure the transition goes as smoothly as possible. It looks like he has so far. Once again, if you don't have anything to add spare us your bile and stop posting.

Isaac
 
Spazmodius said:
Doesn't Photoshop depend on Altivec pretty heavily? And doesn't a crapload of OSX depend on it?
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Performance-wise OS X does rely on it heavily. There are some things that depend on it completely, like compressing in mpeg-2.
 
admanimal said:
NO! It won't run on any Intel/AMD because THERE ARE NO DRIVERS FOR 99% OF THE HARDWARE!!!! I don't understand why people keep missing this.
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Right, it won't have drivers to work on any arbitrary wintel box, but what about ordering a Dell that specifically uses the same video cards, etc as an Apple x86 box?
 
GregA said:
Photoshop (emulated/Rosetta) was slow.... Yeah it was. I was pleased he actually demonstrated something that wasn't instant. Really that's a program you'd want to run natively, but at least it works eh?Not really. Code written for Altivec and code written for G4 and G5 won't run on Rosetta - but most apps have a mode for G3s. It makes sense since Intel doesn't have Altivec.
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No kidding, I suspect a lot of developers will either release patches, or just allow you to download the new binaries. Remember only a small portion of a lot of apps are actually hardware specific.
 
Spazmodius said:
Doesn't Photoshop depend on Altivec pretty heavily? And doesn't a crapload of OSX depend on it?
Click to expand...

I won't put money on it but I'm willing to bet that Photoshop will be updated to work on the new chipsets before the new machines even arrive.

Adobe came out this morning in support of this move.

i_b_joshua
 
Religious Wars

Reading this thread, I realized that the platform-as-religion analogy has never worked so well. Let's see. We have

1) the Fundamentalists: These are the people who believe that everything was explained perfectly and completely in the Keynote. ("Just read the Keynote. It's all there. Don't you get it. No interpretation is necessary. In the beginning was the Keynote...")

2) the Idolaters: These (according the Fundamentalists) are the people who forsake the Truth (OS X) for idols (such as the PPC architecture).

And then there are:

3) the Missionaries, who think that this is a great opportunity to evangelize (convert) the masses.

4) the Chosen People (or the "Tribe of Mac"), who believe that true believers will always be a minority and that the faith is contaminated by the masses.

5) the Apocalyptic Cultists, who believe the world will end tomorrow (or in 2006/2007).

6) the rival sect of Apocalyptic Cultists, who believe that the charistmatic leader Steve will lead his chosen people to paradise.

And so on...
 
Chryx said:
In the timeframe they're actually going to be doing the switch, Smithfield, Pressler and Prescott will be ancient history.

look at Pentium M for hints as to where Intel are going... that sucker uses LESS power than the Athlon64 and is very performance competitive.

The development kits are Prescotts for a very obvious reason, SSE3 and x86-64 support, nothing else in Intels lineup has them right now (the newest A64s do, but that wouldn't make much sense for Intel to supply Apple with those for Dev kits :p)
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The Pentium M is only competitive with Athlon64 in the notebook sector (and kicks AMD's butt too) and only because it is fast AND power efficient. But compare a Pentium M desktop system with an AMD system and the AMD system just kills. Besides, Intel already said that their dual core Pentium M won't have 64-bit extensions. What the heck??? Put 64-bit extensions in your current desktop line but ignore the up-and-comer dual core Pentium M???
 
admanimal said:
THERE WILL BE NO CUSTOM CHIP!!! I think I have posted about 10 times now how the APPLE UNIVERSAL BINARY DEVELOPER GUIDE specifically states that Universal Binary will be compatible with the IA-32 architecture, which IS X86!
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obviously this is just a interim step...do you REALLY think they are
going to cut out 64 bit support...???
 
Originally Posted by daustin
Here's a quote I liked, “Apple has seriously undermined years of credibility by announcing the adoption of Intel processors,” said Technology Business Research analyst, Tim Deal. “The company has long touted the architectural advantages of the Power PC processor over that of Intel, particularly when running the kind of graphic-intensive applications the customers in its key vertical markets run. Now, Apple will need to prove itself again as it abandons one of its significant points of differentiation.”
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Very good point.

I'm not saying that Apple has made an error here -- in fact, I suspect Jobs & Co. truly felt their backs were to the wall for the many reasons already stated here. In five years nobody (posters on this board excepted!) will remember what the PowerPC was. It's getting there from here that's going to be a monumental task, and it will be one of marketing as well as engineering for reasons such as the one quoted above.
 
GregA said:
What about Q1 next year? Steve said this time next year they would ALREADY be selling. He also referred to 2006-2007 as 2 years. That makes Q1 possible (and matches with the next PentiumM release?)
Click to expand...

Pfffff....Steve also said that we would have 3.0ghz G5s by last year....and where are we now? Creeping slowly along at 200mhz increments. I would not take Steve's words as the gospel...thinking entirely realistically I doubt we could see Mactels by next year...I think Q1 (maybe 2+) of 2007....
 
jar said:
So a couple of key questions have been answered:

1) Apple WILL allow users to run Windows on Apple hardware;
2) Apple will NOT allow OS X to run on any hardware but their own.


So it's conceivable that you could have a dual-boot system with both OS X and Windows... As long as it's Apple's hardware. It will be interesting to see how they plan to keep OS X off of non-Apple hardware; I guess it depends partly on how badly they really want to do so.
Click to expand...

You would need motherboard drivers, new bootloader, and maybe a new HAL do deal with open firmware.
 
MarkCollette said:
Right, it won't have drivers to work on any arbitrary wintel box, but what about ordering a Dell that specifically uses the same video cards, etc as an Apple x86 box?
Click to expand...

Well it will probably require hacking the OS a bit to get around whatever protection Apple puts in place, but in that case it might be possible.
 
ObsidianIce said:
It wouldn't run most likely, I don't think the OS will even install, since a requirement was built in usb, and no beige MAC had built in usb....but also i believe macTruck said "started as a 233"
Click to expand...


Xpostfacto is a wonderful thing....
 
MarkCollette said:
Right, it won't have drivers to work on any arbitrary wintel box, but what about ordering a Dell that specifically uses the same video cards, etc as an Apple x86 box?
Click to expand...

My guess is there will be a few chips that prevent that, one will probably be the BIOS or open firmware or whatever they decide for that. Two will be perhaps a dedicated chipset which is much more likely than a dedicated processor.
 
Gosh, now I have to hope that we at least get a decent Powerbook update, since there seems to be no chance for a G5, by the end of the summer so I can buy a good one. This sucks. :(
 
guez said:
Reading this thread, I realized that the platform-as-religion analogy has never worked so well. Let's see. We have

1) the Fundamentalists: These are the people who believe that everything was explained perfectly and completely in the Keynote. ("Just read the Keynote. It's all there. Don't you get it. No interpretation is necessary. In the beginning was the Keynote...")

2) the Idolaters: These (according the Fundamentalists) are the people who forsake the Truth (OS X) for idols (such as the PPC architecture).

And then there are:

3) the Missionaries, who think that this is a great opportunity to evangelize (convert) the masses.

4) the Chosen People (or the "Tribe of Mac"), who believe that true believers will always be a minority and that the faith is contaminated by the masses.

5) the Apocalyptic Cultists, who believe the world will end tomorrow (or in 2006/2007).

6) the rival sect of Apocalyptic Cultists, who believe that the charistmatic leader Steve will lead his chosen people to paradise.

And so on...
Click to expand...
Newbie, clearly you just haven't had time to absorb the dogma...

EDIT: And isn't it a great honor to be quoted by someone with a picture?
 
isaacc7 said:
Like I said before, he's got a damn good track record. If you're so smart, what would you have him do? Stick with IBM and freescale and most assuredly go down the drain with them? Or maybe AMD with their limited fabrication so that we could lag behind again? Fact is that he didn't have a choice. All that we can ask is that he make sure the transition goes as smoothly as possible. It looks like he has so far. Once again, if you don't have anything to add spare us your bile and stop posting.

Isaac
Click to expand...


Can someone tell me how IBM is going down the drain? I would like to hear this. What I have heard is the Dual Core G4s from freescale on the horizon, Dual core G5s on the horizon. Hell I would much rather wait for them to come up to speed than to go to Intel x86 and change the whole software hardware platform. I would have been fine waiting with a dual 2.7. Intel is not going to strengthen Apple, it will destroy it.

It has been said before, the x86 architecture is dated and slowing down. Look at this, the 2ghz Dothan pentium M has a 2mb cache. Mabye if they had stuck a 2mb cache in the 970 or the 1.67ghz G4 it would be faster also. Pulling cache from a processor is a money saving tactic for apple. It did not benefit us at all in either dollars or speed.

But hey save this and shove it in my face in 3 yrs ok. I will apoligize if apples stock is through the roof and the userbase increases.

Now if you don't have anything to add stop posting your loyalty, write Jobs a love letter and don't come back.
:p
 
admanimal said:
Apple has stated in documentation that there will be no open firmware on Intel Macs.
Click to expand...

The question here is: are they going to use some ****** ass BIOS that crashes and breaks the motherboard (seen it happen many a time), or are they going to do away with a configurable boot system like that?
 
oskar said:
Performance-wise OS X does rely on it heavily. There are some things that depend on it completely, like compressing in mpeg-2.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I meant. I've got a 667MHz G4 Ti Book, and my wife's got a 800MHz G3 iBook. Now, her machine is faster for Office, but mine still blows hers away for some of the iLife apps and many Photoshop operations. Loss of AltiVec for apps that take advantage of it will be a major performance hit. Just because Rosetta can emulate a blazingly-fast G3 doesn't mean it will allow software to run just like it's on a G5, if AltiVec is out. And, apparently, it is.
 
guez said:
Reading this thread, I realized that the platform-as-religion analogy has never worked so well. Let's see. We have

1) the Fundamentalists: These are the people who believe that everything was explained perfectly and completely in the Keynote. ("Just read the Keynote. It's all there. Don't you get it. No interpretation is necessary. In the beginning was the Keynote...")

2) the Idolaters: These (according the Fundamentalists) are the people who forsake the Truth (OS X) for idols (such as the PPC architecture).

And then there are:

3) the Missionaries, who think that this is a great opportunity to evangelize (convert) the masses.

4) the Chosen People (or the "Tribe of Mac"), who believe that true believers will always be a minority and that the faith is contaminated by the masses.

5) the Apocalyptic Cultists, who believe the world will end tomorrow (or in 2006/2007).

6) the rival sect of Apocalyptic Cultists, who believe that the charistmatic leader Steve will lead his chosen people to paradise.

And so on...
Click to expand...

Oh now that is fantastic! :D :D :D
 
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