Macintosh Moving to Intel Processors [Updated]

[tokevino]

What the hell is a Marketing Number, oh I know its called a LIE.

Marketing number = you can always design a test in a specific way to favor a particular platform ...

 

[ImAlwaysRight]

Well, I've been a Mac user since day one. I've owned many macs new, and collected many more (I have over 100 in my collection now). I stuck with Apple through the dark years, and even the killing off of my beloved Newton. But, as I wrote Mr. Jobs, I think that when my lovely dual G5 (1st-gen dual 2.0 that I spent every spare penny on) goes off AppleCare, so do I. Had they done Opteron, I would've stuck it out, as that is at least an innovative (and fast!) chip. But, this is not a transition, it's a capitulation. Intel's technology is sometimes brilliant, but more often than not it's less than stellar. Not to mention the x86 designs still carry baggage from the 1970's.

It's not really about x86 one way or another for me. It's about taking steps backwards. I hope for the industry's sake that Apple pulls it off, but I no longer care. The $SUITS are running the show, and it's no longer about building the best product.

Good-bye, and don't let the door hit you on the way out!

 

[thogs_cave]

WOAH! You have a HUNDRED macs?? All stuff you bought for yourself or did you purchase them on the side? do they all work? Where do you keep them man? Do you have a pic?

Some are mine that I bought new, some I bought used, and some were gifts from people who know I collect them. I actually have a working Lisa, and a few other rare goodies. I keep them all at our house (my wife likes my hobby, how lucky can you get?) and someday I will finish the web site. All of them work (and yes, I have spare parts), and I often dig out old favorite software to play with.

I'm part of a group of people (with no central organization to speak of) that tries to preserve old hardware and software. It's also neat to own stuff that you could never afford new, like a IIfx. (I was just married when it came out, and I still wouldn't spend $10K on a computer....) I have other interests as well, and I really like having my 12-CPU/8G Sun E5000 next to my desk....

 

[abluesky]

I am not a long time mac user (a couple weeks only actually). I purchased a Mac Mini because of the operating system and the applications - and a lot of curiosity. I like it and will probably be purchasing a laptop when the new Pentium M units become available.

Overall, I see this as a big positive for Intel and Apple. Yes, today it doesn't mean much for Intel with regard to dollars, however it does validate their roadmap. They must be going in the right direction to have inspired this big of a change with Apple. Like many have pointed out, AMD was another option and is arguably faster today - but it isn't about today.

On the other hand, I don't think this says anything negative about todays Mac. All it says is that IBM is not going in the right direction and that Apple thinks Intel is the way to go for the future.

Ultimately, if it wasn't good for the Mac user, it wouldn't be good for Apple as a whole.

Just another opinion for a long time PC user.

Enjoy the ride!

 

[leekohler]

Very true. He also nearly ran it into the ground, too. But, I think now that he's older and more experienced, he's a lot more wiser.


Yes, it's very possible there will be more announcements to follow that will begin to clear up all the questions out there. Who knows, maybe the new Intel chips can be dropped right onto existing Mac motherboards and actually work! You just never know what they'll pull off.

Well, who knows? I just think there's more to this than meets the eye.

 

[MikeBike]

What the hell is a Marketing Number, oh I know its called a LIE.

You can have your opinion, but, I have a Powerbook g4 1.5 ghz, my sister has an Intel P4 3.0 ghz, 1 gig of ram and faster hard drives. The Powerbook beats it all the time. She's not so happy to see that comparison. Benchmarks don't really measure the real user experience.

Notice, Steve used a P4 3.6 ghz with 2 gig of ram.
You'll need it.

 

[rareflares]

Notice, Steve used a P4 3.6 ghz with 2 gig of ram.
You'll need it.

hopefully, in two years, that will at least be standard.

 

[jimbobb24]

Just the name "intel" seems to strike terror into the hearts of mac users.
But is it really any different than switching from G3's to G4's, or G4's to G5's?
Not everybody quit buying G4 macs because G5's were scheduled to come out.
....
The reason for switching from PowerPCs to Intel chips is the same as when the switch was made from 680xx chips to PowerPC's: it's a change for the better! Macs are reaching a bottleneck. Time to break the bottleneck. Change is painful. But Steve's not afraid of change. For Steve, change is good. Believe in Steve. It will all be good.

Yes, this is very different from G4->G4->G5. The entire architecture is likely changing, from the memory controller to the chipsets.

This change is not being made on technical merits as the previous transitions. It is being made because Apple is too small a piece of IBMs sales for IBM to care about shafting them. They shafted them, Apple is fleeing to Intel where they are not the only customer. PPC has not reached a bottleneck, it is increasing in speed relatively FASTER than Intel. IBM must have just decided not to devote resources to making the portable or future desktop chips.

I hope it all works out, but this is not a best case scenario, this is a worst case scenario being made as best as it can by good back up plans.

 

[tokevino]

You can have your opinion, but, I have a Powerbook g4 1.5 ghz, my sister has an Intel P4 3.0 ghz, 1 gig of ram and faster hard drives. The Powerbook beats it all the time. She's not so happy to see that comparison. Benchmarks don't really measure the real user experience.

Notice, Steve used a P4 3.6 ghz with 2 gig of ram.
You'll need it.

Your G4 did not really beat your sister's P4; it's your OS X beats her crapy XP.

 

[thogs_cave]

I think you may be wrong here. Since Mr. Jobs came back, Apple has become a better company. Let's not forget that he also started Pixar. I don't think he would let anyone ruin Apple for him now-he's too much of a control freak. Given his penchant for secrecy, I wouldn't be surprised if he has something else up his sleeve.

Well, as a coworker and I have been discussing for a year or so, Steve is overdue to do one of his classic mistakes. I have a NeXTstation to remind me of this. (It wasn't a mistake in and of itself...)

 

[eVolcre]

Sidestepping the issue of lying vs creative marketing, I was much more interested in Anandtech's performance analysis of the Macintosh here.

Quoting from their conclusion (boldface added):

You know, I didn't understand a singlel line of that quote. Seriously.

 

[MacTruck]

You can have your opinion, but, I have a Powerbook g4 1.5 ghz, my sister has an Intel P4 3.0 ghz, 1 gig of ram and faster hard drives. The Powerbook beats it all the time. She's not so happy to see that comparison. Benchmarks don't really measure the real user experience.

Notice, Steve used a P4 3.6 ghz with 2 gig of ram.
You'll need it.

So you say the G4 is faster than a 3ghz P4? So then the G5 must be a hellofalot faster than a P4 right. Boy, I am so glad we are switching to those crappy processors.

Back to what I said earlier. In 2 yrs the intel mac will be at the same speed as the G5 today.

Everyone wants it both ways. They want to say the G5 is way faster than the fastest Intel offerings then they want to say the fastest intel offerings will be faster than the G5.

-(dizzy from all the tech spin)

 

[leekohler]

Well, as a coworker and I have been discussing for a year or so, Steve is overdue to do one of his classic mistakes. I have a NeXTstation to remind me of this. (It wasn't a mistake in and of itself...)

I don't know. He's much wiser now. I think he's one person who's actually learned from his mistakes.

 

[MontyZ]

Which company makes Apple mice? Maybe we should lobby Steve to leave them as well and find a company willing to make a 2-button Apple mouse with scrollwheel! Does Intel make mice?

 

[tokevino]

Back to what I said earlier. In 2 yrs the intel mac will be at the same speed as the G5 today.

Not 'in 2 years", it is right now...unfortunately! (Or fortunately, I should say...)

 

[MikeBike]

Sidestepping the issue of lying vs creative marketing, I was much more interested in Anandtech's performance analysis of the Macintosh here.

Quoting from their conclusion (boldface added):

In FACT, MySQL and the hardware vendor DO get together and Optimize MySql threading for the specific Hardware platform. Apple, however, has not currently done so. Testing with MySql, and being aware, of Who Has Optimized, you can Guess what the results will be with out doing the test.

If APPLE feels MySql is Important to the server line, then it too will have to optimize mysql threading like: Sun, Linux and Oracle.



oops, not Oracle.
Who else, was it HP?
Too tired, must sleep...

 

[MacTruck]

I don't know. He's much wiser now. I think he's one person who's actually learned from his mistakes.

What is this based on? Older=wiser? I know plenty of old farts that don't know jack squat. They are all over the road. How do you know he has learned from his mistakes? Guy has been wearing the same clothes for 20 yrs.

 

[tokevino]

Which company makes Apple mice? Maybe we should lobby Steve to leave them as well and find a company willing to make a 2-button Apple mouse with scrollwheel! Does Intel make mice?

Need a mouse upgrade; it's over over due...

 

[MontyZ]

I'm part of a group of people (with no central organization to speak of) that tries to preserve old hardware and software. I

That's neat! It would be so cool to play around with some of the early apps just for a giggle.

 

[jimbobb24]

....Aaaaaand!

The ABI is strict IA32, not AMD64.

So, all those companies that paid big bucks to port their applications to 64-bit Mac OS (Oracle, Wolfram, IBM) just bought into a platform that's going to be dead in 2 years with no backwards-compatibility.

Something is seriously rotten here.
-----

...and this is why I didn't hear the words "64 bit" at all today.

Apple, the next SGI.

Agreed. This will be DOA in many scientific arena. No more Apple supercomputers. No more Apple gene scanning. Science will move entirely to AMD64 Linux. Apple has messed over those guys. No idea how they will sell the non-64 intel machines after the 64 hype (mostly hype for normal users).

 

[thogs_cave]

Good-bye, and don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Niiiiice. Thanks.

You would think that it might be useful to ruminate a bit on my comments before delivering judgement like that. I'm not a Mac newbie, and I've been in the industry for a long time now. I remember DEC, Cray, and others quite well still.

I've also been loyal to Apple longer than some of my coworkers have been alive. I don't say stuff like this lightly. I'm very disturbed at what I see as a trend in the wrong direction. If it were just me, I'd chalk it up to my own weirdness. But too many people I know with similar backgrounds are also disturbed. Some of them have already cancelled Mac purchases....

 

[MacTruck]

Nothing said here matters. Apple will never get more than 5% market share no matter what hardware they are running on until you can put SQL server and Oracle on the mac AND... you can run exchange and Outlook on it. Until this happens (which is never) no large corporation will ever fully use the mac whether its on a pentium, titanium or alpha.

Oh its a FACT.

 

[Godwin]

Key word here is THERMAL performance.. Performance /Watt as Steve puts it. AMD has been lacking behind Intel in that department much like Power has been.

I think lack of portability POWER processor was the tipping point.. remember all the IBM's new customers going for cell aren't using them for portability purposes.

Since you know so much about AMD processors, tell me which ones you've used and which motherboards...

From Athlon64 on, they've been killing Intel on performance and have excellent stability. Even during the old Athlon days, they were outperforming Intel until they released the P4's which past them up.

Too often people have opinions that are based on old facts. I used to use Macs up to and including OS9. But I don't use that knowledge to judge OSX (which is a UNIX core).

 

[Timemist]

Ha, ha, ha....

I bloddy know that. The point, though, is that nobody in their right mind will develop for OSX-PPC now. So that means zero new apps ... oh what fun. Not to mention that rosetta only seems to do PPC->x86 and not the reverse.

Apple has handled the communications on this very poorly. First, they should not have just done the recent speed bump on the G5's one month before WWDC since they knew the PPC was on the way out. The new PPC release led people to believe that the product line was viable. But now even the local news is saying don't but a current Mac, wait and buy an Intel Mac. That kind of dumb manuver has all the makings of class action lawsuit written all over it.

But even worse, they are deleting these types of posts on the Apple Discussions board on the Apple site. That's only going to infuriate the G5 owners even more. Apple better get out in front of this and address it in a major way, or there's going to be a huge negative backlash. If Rosetta can do x86 -> PPC, then Apple better let current owners know what the plan is and how they can acquire Rosetta. If it can't, then Apple has no business selling the current G4/5 models as state-of-the-art machines.

 

[leekohler]

What is this based on? Older=wiser? I know plenty of old farts that don't know jack squat. They are all over the road. How do you know he has learned from his mistakes? Guy has been wearing the same clothes for 20 yrs.

Uh gee- I don't know. Maybe I think so because he made everyone actually want an MP3 player (even me), even though they'd been around for a long time before the iPod. Or maybe because under his leadership computers actually appoached works of art in form and function. Maybe the fact that I love my computers a lot more than I'd ever love a PC. What else would you like to hear? And guess what? I'm 38 and have watched this guy from day one. Does that make me an old fart too?