Omniweb head says: new chips for Apple

[drastik]

ITs a rather watered down way of saying i, but the head of Omni is quoted in Macworld as saying Apple will move to new chip arcitecture when the time is right.

Omni Group CEO Ken Case believes Apple will change it's chip architechture "when the time is right".


Speaking with OS News yesterday, former NeXT developer Case added: "I'm sure Apple is keeping its options open, and will introduce support for another CPU architecture."


His comments fuel speculation that Apple is considering adopting processors from manufacturers other than Motorola.


Motorola's G4 development has slowed, meaning Apple is at a disadvantage in terms of processor speeds. Motorola is working on a new processor architecture - G5, but no active news on this has appeared.


Alternative suppliers include IBM with its PowerPC 970 chip, while others suggest Mac OS X has the ability to exist on Intel processors.

While there is no definite news here, its interesting to see someoneoutside of apple and the rumor world talk about this.

 

[idkew]

sounds like pure specualtion to me. why would apple tell some little developer about its business plans? the only reason i would see that is that apple is SOON going to switch and the apps need to be recompiled... but i don't see a switch soon except for 970's.

 

[markomarko]

idkew

Can't see them going to Intel, especially the year following the "switch" campaign.

 

[iconrad]

Re: idkew

Originally posted by markomarko
Can't see them going to Intel, especially the year following the "switch" campaign.

Apple's new campaign... you've switched now so are we... introducing the worlds first PIV Mac

I hope not.

 

[rice_web]

Well, if we could offer the same stability with a P4 Mac as a G4 Mac, we'd be sitting great. Imagine if Apple even had a dependable emulator that they could embed into Darwin x86. Heck, even with emulation, a P4 Mac could probably run faster than a G4 Mac.

Whatever the case, speed isn't the reason I'm putting an order in for a new iMac. It's iDVD, iMovie (school projects kick *** with iMovie), iPhoto, iTunes, and iCal. Even more important, the iMac screen. I use an iMac at work, and the screen is the best part of it. Adjusting it to different levels on varying tasks (i.e. lower and titled for reading) is simply amazing.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Originally posted by rice_web
Well, if we could offer the same stability with a P4 Mac as a G4 Mac, we'd be sitting great. Imagine if Apple even had a dependable emulator that they could embed into Darwin x86. Heck, even with emulation, a P4 Mac could probably run faster than a G4 Mac.

Whatever the case, speed isn't the reason I'm putting an order in for a new iMac. It's iDVD, iMovie (school projects kick *** with iMovie), iPhoto, iTunes, and iCal. Even more important, the iMac screen. I use an iMac at work, and the screen is the best part of it. Adjusting it to different levels on varying tasks (i.e. lower and titled for reading) is simply amazing.

Emulators equal crap and no it wouldnt be faster. What all this is refering to in my opionion will be new 7457 that can use ddr and new 970 which will use ddr also . But this will require a different architecture then what we have now with the g4 unable to utilize it to its full advantage hence everything off the system controler to the ddr. Hope you ordered the high end one because thats the ticket but any new imac will be nice.

 

[vniow]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
Emulators equal crap and no it wouldnt be faster.

If you were talking about software emulation, you'd be correct, but if you were referring to hardware emutation it's a different story.

For example: AMD's Athlon chips aren't x86 at all, they're an origional and unique design that can run x86 code through a built in hardware emulator.
In theory, the x86 emulator could be replaced with a PPC emulator which could run OSX natively and we'd have one sweet ass chip but I predict that the 970 arrives in a Mac long before (if) anything by AMD or Intel.