Macintosh Moving to Intel Processors [Updated]

[BillHarrison]

Afterall,I m so glad that my configured 1 GHz PB 15'' is arriving on Thursday , which means i still have a choice to send it back, and wait for the intel based powerbook or whatever they are going to name it next year. 'coz i have no need for a new laptop, and I always want to have a laptop which can run both pc and mac programs at the same speed.

*keey our finger croosed that Apple will not disappoint us again with its Roadmap schedule*

So your sending back / cancelling a new laptop that you just ordered, but have "No" need for?

You keep your finger croosed, and i think apple will deliver, however, don't play games with a company ordering things just to return them.

 

[BillHarrison]

From your mouth to Steves ear. Still, i wished he would have been a bit more specific since he should have known that this announcement would hurt sales. I am cynic which makes me worried when steve don't explictly say that the PPC platform will be supported X years. My question is whether x86 Mac programs will run on PPC... Just that

Nope, they wont.

An X86 SPECIFIC PROGRAM WILL NOT RUN ON A PPC.

Duh. However, the key is that binaries for the forseeable future will BE FOR BOTH. 1 program, both architectures. Click run, noone knows the difference.

Wow, its amazing how many people are so "uneducated" to feel that a transition like this will be instantaneous, with a clear and pronounced cutoff in the future where the old stuff ceases to work, and its the new stuff only. These things just don't work out that way.

Does anyone use OS 9 today?

Guess not according to your thinking.

 

[shompa]

Will Apple release overclocked Intels?

They are overclocking the G5 to 2.7 with liquid cooling.

A liquid cooled Intel should beat anyting that Dell and the other brownboxes sells?

Apple is the expert on Liquid cooling. The only main manufacture that massproduces these kind of boxes?

 

[shompa]

Could the advent of DRM specific chips to Apple allow Apple to use x86 without the worry of OS X being installed on any old windoows box?

In other words OSX is locked to specific chips (supplied to Apple only)

I think you are right in the money.

Intel will produce Palladium compatible chips by 2006.
It could be that Apple is waiting for.

 

[BillHarrison]

I did read it. I get the idea. It just seems like there are moving pieces and although you feel they have been all answered by Steve I don't feel that way. It seems down the road there could be some issues. Maybe you are all right and no one will ever notice anything, I guess we will see.

Steve has been known to lie as well. About 3 weeks ago he was asked about a possible switch to Intel and he said "NO." He also stated today they will continue to release improved PowerPC products (I think that is a lie as well.) I just hope he is telling us the truth on how easy this is all going to be. Steve can be quite a politician sometimes. ;o)

He never said no. Either A: your making it up (most likely) or B: you are twisting the words from the actual interview.

I have read the actual interview, and I know that he did not say that.

 

[BillHarrison]

...and yet none seems to answer...?? 😕

More like, noone seems to listen, its been answered several times.

 

[maverick13]

no open firmware in intel macs

<QUOTE>Open Firmware
Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors do not use Open Firmware. Although many parts
of the IO registry are present and work as expected, information that is provided by Open Firmware
on a Macintosh using a PowerPC microprocessor (such as a complete device tree) is not available in
the IO registry on a Macintosh using an Intel microprocessor. You can obtain some of the information
from IODeviceTree by using the sysctlbyname or sysctl commands.
</QUOTE>
From the new pdf in developer.apple.com about universal binaries.
Not good.

 

[Black Badger]

Nope, they wont.

An X86 SPECIFIC PROGRAM WILL NOT RUN ON A PPC.

Err, not quite true, at the moment a PPC app will not run in Intel on its own as you say. Though Rosetta (PPC to x86 translator) it will. If Rosetta is an implementation of Quicktransit then there is another flavour that translates x86 to PPC, see Transitives' site.

 

[BillHarrison]

look, i like the idea of fast, cheap intels in macs as long as os x stays exclusive, but i have 2 negative points about intels:

1. they can't multitask for sh**

2. the pipelines are too long, so pentiums for example are marketing chips (i.e. they are designed to have a high ghz so intel can go 'look at us with are warp-speed chips') and long piplines are a serious bottle-neck in a system.

3. arn't the 32 bit, not 64 bit like the G5

just my opinion

of course, intel could be fabbing some new x86 chips for apple that have shorter pipelines and 64 bit.


Jesus

First of all, thats 3 points, not 2.

Point 1, a chip does not multitask, an OS does. When is the last time you ran a computer without an OS for multitasking? What exactly is this supposed to mean?

Point 2, its a design tradeoff. It is not "inherently" a design flaw, just a "different" way to do things. Yes, per clock, its slower. However, you get more clocks, so you make up for it. Is it the "elegant" solution? Who knows. Its like this:

A viper gets to 60 damn quick, around 4.0 seconds flat. It uses brute force, a huge V10 engine, 500+ horsepower.

A new Lotus gets to 60 in about the same time using a 4 cylinder toyota engine. Its much lighter, and uses finesse and gearing to get the same performance.

Is one better than the other ? if your goal is to get to 60, for all intensive purposes, they are the same. However, some will argue for either side.

 

[Dr.Gargoyle]

Could the advent of DRM specific chips to Apple allow Apple to use x86 without the worry of OS X being installed on any old windoows box?

In other words OSX is locked to specific chips (supplied to Apple only)

OSX wont run on generic x86 boxes... OSX wont run on a generic PPC box either. The box needs the Apple ROM to run OSX.
I don't think Apple will allow clones (they have tried it before with disasterous results) especially since 47% of the profit comes/came from Mac sales.

 

[Devie]

****ING HELL! I just ordered a iMac... ****!

Now how long is my iMac going to last till its obsolete? 😡

 

[Maxiseller]

BillHarrison:

Are you trying to annoy everyone?

We all have very specific rights to be a little annoyed about this. Whether you like it or not, this move renders all our hardware currently void. Of course there will be support, but it will phase out, we will have no resale value, and frankly, we will all be forced to update sooner than many of us would.

Steve said it's nice to have options, and yet he ia actually removing them from the current user base. Still, I appreciate why he's done the move, and see it as a good thing - but don't blunder on and insult everyone on this thread for having an opinion that is entirely understandable.

 

[Dr.Gargoyle]

More like, noone seems to listen, its been answered several times.

...and I answered 500 posts ago... But I stand corrected, it should be that noone reads... 🙄

 

[Black Badger]

A viper gets to 60 damn quick, around 4.0 seconds flat. It uses brute force, a huge V10 engine, 500+ horsepower.

A new Lotus gets to 60 in about the same time using a 4 cylinder toyota engine. Its much lighter, and uses finesse and gearing to get the same performance.

I'd rather have a Lotus 🙂

 

[Dr.Gargoyle]

Nope, they wont.

An X86 SPECIFIC PROGRAM WILL NOT RUN ON A PPC.

Duh. However, the key is that binaries for the forseeable future will BE FOR BOTH. 1 program, both architectures. Click run, noone knows the difference.

Wow, its amazing how many people are so "uneducated" to feel that a transition like this will be instantaneous, with a clear and pronounced cutoff in the future where the old stuff ceases to work, and its the new stuff only. These things just don't work out that way.

Does anyone use OS 9 today?

Guess not according to your thinking.

ok, mr know-it-all... there are a lot of people,, see science dept, that use programs that ONLY runs on OS 9...
Please, do some reading before you post.
🙄

 

[BillHarrison]

Uh- no. I CAN read and I'm NOT here to irritate you. I just simply don't believe that this will be the case with all software written after the Mactels come out. Remember when Apple said they would continue to develop OS 9 after OS X? That little statement proved to be false real quick.

So you expect all software from here on out to be dual platform until ? The end of time?

Give me a break. Use the cells man, use em!

 

[The Phantom]

I have another question: now that macs are going Intel Inside, could it be theoretically possible to install mac os x or linux for power architecture on a game console as Xbox, PS3 or Nintendo revolution?

It could be ironic to run mac os x both on a pentium and on a machine built by Microsoft...

P.S. is there really no link to download the wwdc2005 keynote? 🙁

 

[BillHarrison]

Men, I just bought a Dual 1.8 I thought that's gonna last me at least 3 years. Now what?

Throw it away, its completely useless now. Nearest dumpster works best. Be sure to stomp the life out of it first, because its still very alive and definitely far from dead yet 😉

 

[Dr.Gargoyle]

So you expect all software from here on out to be dual platform until ? The end of time?

Give me a break. Use the cells man, use em!

ok, I know this is asking much, but please try to act civil... There is absolutely no reason for you to behave like that.
Judging from your posts so far, I doubt that you now much more than other people here, so please try to mellow down.

 

[BillHarrison]

BillHarrison:

Are you trying to annoy everyone?

We all have very specific rights to be a little annoyed about this. Whether you like it or not, this move renders all our hardware currently void. Of course there will be support, but it will phase out, we will have no resale value, and frankly, we will all be forced to update sooner than many of us would.

Steve said it's nice to have options, and yet he ia actually removing them from the current user base. Still, I appreciate why he's done the move, and see it as a good thing - but don't blunder on and insult everyone on this thread for having an opinion that is entirely understandable.

I don't have to try, everyone already is. And its statements like "Renders all our hardware currently void" that I have a problem with. You have a right to be annoyed, I have a right to annoy you 😉

 

[sedek]

SQL on Mac

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.

I am not sure what you talk about but I run MySQL and PostgreSQL on my Mac as well as on the server version of OS X. OS X has Apache built in, which is a huge advantage for any web developer (in contrast to Windows, where you have to startup Apache first, which is a pain in the neck)

 

[BillHarrison]

ok, mr know-it-all... there are a lot of people,, see science dept, that use programs that ONLY runs on OS 9...
Please, do some reading before you post.
🙄

And do these people realize that macs that run their precious os were discontinued years ago? How exactly does this change anything concerning OS 9?

 

[osustudent]

BillHarrison:

Are you trying to annoy everyone?

We all have very specific rights to be a little annoyed about this. Whether you like it or not, this move renders all our hardware currently void. Of course there will be support, but it will phase out, we will have no resale value, and frankly, we will all be forced to update sooner than many of us would.

Steve said it's nice to have options, and yet he ia actually removing them from the current user base. Still, I appreciate why he's done the move, and see it as a good thing - but don't blunder on and insult everyone on this thread for having an opinion that is entirely understandable.

I don't know ... A lot of the points BillHarrison has been making seem to make sense, as does yours. Although, there is no way that this move renders all of your hardware void, or else they would not even attempt to sell any new equipment in the next year.

Yes, there will be support - hopefully for longer than we'd expect. The last thing Steve and Apple want to do is alieninate its user base, so I'm sure support for the PPC will last for some time.

Resale value? Perhaps I'm too new, but if you buy a computer for resale value, then your buying it for the wrong reasons. We all know technology becomes obelete over time, and this time its no different. What if Steve announced a major upgrade in the PPC line? Wouldn't your hardware still be declining in value? Yes, I know a chip change is slightly different, but still.

Yes, yours and everyone else on your side's opinions are understandable. While falling more on the negative side, I can see why you'd be concerned. I'd just try not to be.

 

[Stella]

THAT is totally INCORRECT, and you should damned well know it ( or your just plain retarded and dumb - quite frankly i'm getting sick of people saying their PPC machines are obsolete today or 2 years time).

Apple are still supporting G3s.. years after they have stopped been selling - evidence of your current machine will be supported for plenty of time.

Current Apple owners need not worry As long as there are plentiful PPC based Macs out there, software will be targeted towards this platform - and this trend will be true for some years yet.

Nope, precisely 2 years from yesterday EVERY program will be updated, and recompiled ONLY for X86. Your G5 will be nothing more than a paper weight.

(Sounds stupid, doesnt it.... Guess what, it is stupid!)

Its not gonna happen like that. You know it, common sense dictates it. Were all programs OS X on the day it was released? Did everyone move to OS X within 1 year and drop any and all support for OS 9?

 

[BillHarrison]

ok, I know this is asking much, but please try to act civil... There is absolutely no reason for you to behave like that.
Judging from your posts so far, I doubt that you now much more than other people here, so please try to mellow down.

I am being civil. I have a much broader vocabulary for when I chose not to be. However, if I can be expected to be "civil", one would expect everyone to be "sensible" as well.

And not many people are being sensible about this change.