OS 9, G5's in 2003, and Apple Engineers

[DharvaBinky]

Why we might never see advanced PPCs

Once upon a time there was a computer company which had built their entire OS around a single CPU instruction set. The CPU was fine and fancy at the time and continued to advance at a reasonable rate beginning with 16-bit 8MHz and trundling *all* the way up to 32-bit 110MHz w/ a built in FPU!! However, the generation of CPUs in this line were running out of growing room and their best and brightest incarnation couldn't stand up to the "other guys"... What to do what to do?!

This computer company had a *very* clever plan. They would move to a whole new CPU that was totally different than everything they had ever done before, one that would be fast and efficient! But... what about all the software that was written for the old crusty CPUs? Ahhh... this company was clever indeed. They wrote a micro-emulator that ran in the L1 cache of the new CPU that emulated the instruction set of the old one! Sure, it hurt initial performance for the new CPU, but it allowed everyone to run all of their software with few problems and all was well. As the new CPUs took hold, more and more vendors rewrote their apps to use the new CPU's instruction set and when they did, they when vroom! And gradually, support for the old crusty instruction set was dropped.

The company, obviously, is Apple. The crusty old CPU? 680X0. The new CPU? PPC.

In my opinion, given that all modern CPUs have large full-speed L2 caches, there's no reason Apple couldn't do this again. It seems to me that it would be totally do-able for them to build a machine around *any* modern CPU and load a PPC emulator into the L2 cache at boot time. All our apps would run, and we'd get the raw speed associated with strapping a rocket engine onto a slug bug. As apps would be ported to the new CPU's instruction set, the true speed advantages would come to light, and Apple would be saved from Mot's inneptitude.

maybe no? maybe yes? Whatcha think?

Binky

 

[porovaara]

Any deal with Transmeta?

Does anyone know if Apple has any deals with Transmeta, perhaps licensing some of their code-morphing technology?

 

[eric_n_dfw]

Re: Re: Great

Originally posted by mymemory (monster font removed)
Apple is trying so hard to push every body to the new OSX that offer less than half the options of OS9.

...

OSX is the equivalent of running 8.1 today.

B.S.

Does OS 9 have things OS X doesn't? Yes.
Does OS X have things OS 9 doesn't? Yes.

But to say that OSX offers "less than half" the options of OS9 is just spreading FUD and makes you sound like an uniformed, whiner.

What does OS X not offer that OS 9 does besides some 3rd party drivers (scanners for instance) and the that window roll-up thing? (Oh, wait, OS 9 allows the user to specify how much memory an app can have - that's something that I miss... NOT!)

In fact, I'll give you one - tabbed finder windows. I loved that on OS 9 - but I can get similar functionality with docked folders which is arguably better in some ways. (What would really rock is if you could have multiple docks - i.e.: one on the bottom with app's and another on the right for folders)

IMO, the only real, arguable problems OS X has today are:
1. GUI speed (the OS itself is actually pretty snappy; Quartz/Aqua, however, is not)
2. Getting developers to write OS X code (including drivers)

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: OS 9, G5's in 2003, and Apple Engineers

Originally posted by arn
The announcements at Apple Expo Paris brought to light previously-rumored information about future motherboards not being allowed to boot Mac OS 9.

The first of this rumor, however, came from an unlikely source... a reader report of an discussion by an Apple engineer back in June:

the new models of motherboards do not support os 9, it is thus finished definitively on the next machines. (French Translation)

This was before Mac World Expo NY and the opening of the Soho store - where readers reported that Jobs hinted at the same (OS X-only next year). This rumor was later repeated in August by eWeek.

The original rumor, however, could be of some interest, if it contains other truths. Unfortunately, the remainder is a bit disjointed and inconsistent. The most notable is the following about the G5, which pegs it at late 2003.


G5 will not even be available until the end of 2003, on the other hand it really exists and runs reliably. The manufacturing is, however, not very reliable in terms of loss and is too expensive for the moment.

actually, it all sounds plausible to me, but that would be sad if it will take that long to get g5 on the shelves

would that slow the time it takes to get g4 in the ibook and would ibook only get g4 when tibook gets g5?

i do remember when powerbook and ibook both had g3s in them so i hope to expect a g4 in ibook sometime in 2003...plus, that would be my next machine so i definitely have a personal stake in it

 

[steveh]

Originally posted by Choppaface

but really, if they're already a proto now, how do they intend to update the proto as the year progresses?

What do you think that the development process mostly is? You design and build prototypes, test them, make changes, test them,...

I've worked on projects that took the better part of five years to ship a product, with prototypes being built/revised for most of the last three years of the project.

 

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by steveh


What do you think that the development process mostly is? You design and build prototypes, test them, make changes, test them,...

I've worked on projects that took the better part of five years to ship a product, with prototypes being built/revised for most of the last three years of the project.

a teacher of mine mentioned a prototype supercomputer which is desktop size which can hold several terabytes on its hd and supports many GBs of ram, but i have no idea if something like that would come to OUR desktops or if it was something used only for industry/govt

 

[Thirteenva]

Re: Re: OS 9, G5's in 2003, and Apple Engineers

Originally posted by jefhatfield


actually, it all sounds plausible to me, but that would be sad if it will take that long to get g5 on the shelves

would that slow the time it takes to get g4 in the ibook and would ibook only get g4 when tibook gets g5?

i do remember when powerbook and ibook both had g3s in them so i hope to expect a g4 in ibook sometime in 2003...plus, that would be my next machine so i definitely have a personal stake in it

If the G5 came out in late '03 it would be a few months before they stuck it in the Tibook. I can't imagine how they'd even do it. If the rumor is true that the new Powermac case is designed for the yet to come chip, and the air holes and huge heatsinks will be needed for it, well then how would you stick such a hot chip in a lap top? That will be interesting to see.

I remember one rumor i think it was actually on this site, where an apple representitive said not to expect a g4 in the Ibook for quite some time. I believe he said "the G3 has a lot of life left in it and we don't plan on using a G4 in the ibook anytime soon" or somethign similar. I'm pretty sure i saw that on macrumors

 

[dethl]

G5- The phantom processor

The G5 has been flaunted for over 2 years and yet we have not even seen the chip, only rumors and "reports". If Motorola was smart, they would get their rear in gear and get the friggen chip finalized. I was kinda hoping I could buy a G5 before I graduate thiscoming May......but I guess I'm gonna get a G4 instead. *sigh*

OS X rocks. I'm running 10.2 on a iBook special edition 466mhz G3, and it runs much faster than OS 9, or even 10.1

 

[Thirteenva]

Re: G5- The phantom processor

Originally posted by dethl
OS X rocks. I'm running 10.2 on a iBook special edition 466mhz G3, and it runs much faster than OS 9, or even 10.1

I have a 500mhz tibook 512mb ram, its not faster than 9 on my machine but its plenty usable. I still get the spinnng beach ball from time to time in flash and photoshop though. Plus i have a knack for having PS, flash, dreamweaver and <insert any browser name here> open all at the same time, i live for multitasking. At that point it seems a little slow.

10.2 is plenty faster than 10.1 which was way more usable than 10.0.4(thats when i had made it my main OS).

I recently erased the OS partition i had and installed 10.2 WITHOUT OS 9 and it actually seems a little snappier. I don't have classic support but it seems ok, i didn't use many classic applications or use them that often, and i'm weaning myself off the ones i did use(ie: quark). All thats left is to update to illustrator 10(i have freehand 10 but don't like it as much as i did Illustrator 9) and Indesign 2.

 

[phillymjs]

The timing of all this is terrible [RANT]

My love affair with Macs began 11 years ago when I got my first one, an LC. I've had a few others over the years, and since 1996 I've been running a 7600 as my primary machine at home. I've added in a couple G3 upgrades as faster chips were released, and USB, and IDE, and a better video card, but the last couple years I've really been nursing it along, holding out as long as I could for a new Mac that would have equal longevity.

My intent was to buy the killer G5 (with goodies like FireWire 2, USB 2, BlueTooth, etc built in) that everyone expected to be released at MWNY2002. I've been working like a slave this year to rack up a nice bonus to blow on a whole new setup. So what happens? They don't release it at MacWorld, and then after addtional waiting announce lackluster G4 machines, without any of the aforementioned goodies. To add insult to injury, they've trotted out the "all dual processors" business again because Motorola is too inept to keep up in the CPU race with Intel/AMD, and Apple had to do something to save face (which we had seen once before a couple years back). At least now we have Jaguar which can take full advantage of dualies, but still... The improvements over the previous generation Power Macs are really not there. The adoption of newer standards like USB 2, faster FireWire, and BlueTooth hasn't come to pass, and I don't want to lay out big bucks on a machine and then have to buy a PCI card or USB dongle to add stuff that should've been there in the first place.

The terrible timing comes in because for the last 10 years I've made a career out of supporting Macs, and my clients are starting to get antsy about upgrading to OS X. I've maintained that the best way for them to go about it is to stick with OS 9.x until all their must-have apps are X-native or at least carbonized, so they won't have to deal with the kludge that is Classic. This was also supposed to buy me time to acquire a new Mac that would replace that 7600 and run OS X as Apple intended-- and time to learn by immersion all the stuff that I'd need to know to effectively support OS X at client sites. So now I'm in a jam because I need to buy a new whiz-bang machine, but what Apple's offering isn't whiz-bang enough. I know that if I bite the bullet and buy one of the dual G4s, the machine I wanted will be announced in January. And if I keep holding out, my ability to serve my clients will suffer.

I've got an iBook 500 that runs Jaguar pretty well, but I need that 'immersion' factor... I need the machine I sit in front of from 6pm until bedtime to run OS X, and not by using some hack like XPostFacto. One of my clients chose to ignore my 'wait as long as you can' advice, made me roll out 10.1.x, and they've paid the price in lost productivity. To make matters worse, they are still using older versions of apps that have carbonized/native versions, and those older versions don't always play nice in Classic. They're seeing all kinds of problems, looking to me to fix them, and all I can do most times is shrug and start combing Google or The Missing Manual in search of an answer, because I'm not up to speed yet. If I absolutely have to, I'll try to find a used Quicksilver or slightly older G4 on eBay to tide me over, but that is not an optimum solution.

So come on, Apple-- get on the damned stick and put out a machine worthy of the money I'm dying to give you for it. Tell Motorola to kiss off, and find a company who can provide good, competitive CPUs in a timely manner-- and do it fast, because those inept morons are costing you mindshare with the MHz/GHz-obsessed majority, and even starting to erode staunch Apple loyalists. My career is riding on you, Apple. I don't want to be an MCSE and spend my life repairing virus damage and fixing 0wn3d IIS boxes. Please, please save me from that!

~MJS

 

[Thirteenva]

Re: The timing of all this is terrible [RANT]

phillymjs - I hear ya, you want a new machine but one that will be upgradeable and don't want to spend money on a computer that will be a possible stopgap solution till the G5 hits.

My advice, forget the hype of the G5. This is after all is said and done, just a rumor. Don't base purchases on rumors. The G5 has been a rumor for a long long time, so why belive this one that says end of 2003.

If you need a new computer to run your business, and you obviously do, then get one. Its business related so you'll get a tax break. Plus you have a few options.

1) Find a very cheap refurbished/used g4 and run os x so your up to speed with it and save money till end of next year when you can buy your complete setup.

or

2) buy the new low end dualie 867, its a great buy at $1,600(in my opinion) and it will last you at least 3 years in which time you can save up for an outrageous setup.

Either way its business related and you should be able to write off a portion of the computer on your taxes.

 

[chubakka]

Lookee! the Xserve Raid in Paris!

http://www.cube-zone.com/AExpo/6/DCP_0696.JPG

Did I miss something? Were they demoing prototypes?

 

[Pants]

Re: Re: behind

Originally posted by iGAV


Something tells me you're a 'the glass is half empty kind of guy'.....

& something tells me you believe the the advertising buzz....

 

[Pants]

Re: Re: The timing of all this is terrible [RANT]

Originally posted by Thirteenva
phillymjs - I hear ya, you want a new machine but one that will be upgradeable and don't want to spend money on a computer that will be a possible stopgap solution till the G5 hits.

My advice, forget the hype of the G5. This is after all is said and done, just a rumor. Don't base purchases on rumors. The G5 has been a rumor for a long long time, so why belive this one that says end of 2003.

thing is - hes right - its not just the g5 issue, its all the other bits - the usb2/firewire2/bluetooth/the real DDR - not the marketing fudge and hype we have now. These current machines just don't offer enough value for money when stacked up against a similar priced pc. OS wise its great, but Im desperate, and I can't justify the cost - I dont want indesign bundles or other 'incentives' - i want a good machine that once Ive borrowed cash for will last without more cash thrown at in 6 months time.

I'm desperate, and hammers on the horizon.

 

[dongmin]

If this rumor is to be belived, then it's the same old problem of Motorola not being able to get high enough yields to make the chip cost-effective.

To me this makes sense. They already have the chip. They've had it for a while now to build a new Mac around it. That's why the motherboard of the new Powermacs is so radically different. But, they have to hold off introducing the G5 until Moto can get their act together and get their manufacturing in gear.

So the new PowerMac G5 is ready to go. Just waiting for Moto to deliver the quantities. Kind of a broken record, don't you think?

And this leads me to think the G5 is definitely coming from Moto and NOT IBM.

 

[Arcady]

Re: Why we might never see advanced PPCs

Originally posted by DharvaBinky
Once upon a time there was a computer company which had built their entire OS around a single CPU instruction set. The CPU was fine and fancy at the time and continued to advance at a reasonable rate beginning with 16-bit 8MHz and trundling *all* the way up to 32-bit 110MHz w/ a built in FPU!! ...

The 680x0 CPU never went up to 110MHz. The fastest 68k Mac was the Quadra 840av, running at 40MHz. The Power Macintosh 8100 was available at 110MHz, but that used a 601+, not a 68k.

It takes a 604e running at 150MHz to emulate 68k at the same speed as a Quadra 840av. That Mac didn't come out until 3 years after the 840av, so for a few years most software actually ran slower, until software developers switched over to PPC code. By the time we see G5's, maybe OS X will feel as zippy as OS 9 did on a G4.

However, I think OS X 10.2 runs just fine on my G3 (a 533 overclocked to 583.)

 

[kenohki]

Re: Re: Why we might never see advanced PPCs

Originally posted by Arcady


The 680x0 CPU never went up to 110MHz. The fastest 68k Mac was the Quadra 840av, running at 40MHz. The Power Macintosh 8100 was available at 110MHz, but that used a 601+, not a 68k.

The 680x0 line also included the 68060 around the time of the PowerPC transition. Although not used by Apple, it was used by others (Amiga) and did scale to faster than 40MHz. The 68060 would run at both 50MHz and 60MHz and at 50MHz, 66MHz and 75 MHz in the EC and LC versions. It also cranked out over 110 MIPS at 75MHz due to the fact that it was a superscalar processor. (The 40MHz 68040 did 44.)

 

[ddtlm]

dongmin:

Why in the world have you (and others) chosen to believe this rumor? Here you are thinking the G5 is from Moto and not IBM based on an old and nonsensical rumor... it's almost too much for me to believe. Why does every damn rumor have to be correct (until the next one that says something totally different, anyway)?

Anyone who chooses to believe that Moto or IBM is stupid enough to design a chip that they cannot build in sufficient quantities is plainly out of touch with how those companies operate. They have a LOT of things figured out and planned a LONG time ahead of time, and there is no way in heck that Moto would create a G5 months, no about a year according to this rumor, before they could actually produce them.

People, Moto may not be perfect, but they are a heck of a lot smarter than that.

Additionally, the time-honored cure for low yields is to produce lower-clocked chips. If Moto was having problems making this mythical G5, why couldn't they just release versions at low clock speeds such as where the G4 is found now? That's right, Moto would have released them at a lower clock, started getting paid for their work, and Apple would be happy.

The only reasonable conclusion is that this rumor is wrong. There is no Moto G5 that they just can't produce enough of. And we know IBM can make much bigger chips (Power4) so we also know that there is no IBM "G5" out there that they just can't fab.

This rumor is crap. Please stop believing it.

 

[Jeffx342]

Why is everybody making such a big deal switching to 0sx
OsX is the best OS out there even BETTER THAN WINDOWS XP
and i made the switch!

 

[scem0]

Well at least we have a date for the g5s, but the fact that they are to expensive to produce scares me. Apple needs to work on lowering prices. At least there is a g5.

 

[Johnny7896]

Moto is most likely getting the g5 to 500 Mhz with decent yeilds. Sounds about right for them. If the g4 goes to 1.25 then then g5 shouldn't be lower in Mhz. remember that Moto used to keep up with the MHz on intel chips until the came out g4. Then they sunk. Ironic that the g3 hit 1 Ghz before the G4. Hmmmmmm. Also it didn't help that Intel took most of the PowerPc designer/engineers away from Moto with big offers. I hope apple moves to IBM. If we get a fast Moto g5 great. But long term it may prove problems with increased speeds. Again.......

 

[nixd2001]

Re: Re: Re: Great

Originally posted by dhdave


What utter crap. OS X is a fantastic OS. It is THE most valuable asset that apple is bringing to the table right now. If you love OS 9 so much then by all means USE IT FOREVER and just shut the f*** up. The machines that exist today are plenty fast running OS 9. Enjoy!

Commenting from the perspective of a switcher (triple user, maybe) from NT and Linux:
a) Jaguar is very nice to use (and just plain looks better than OS 9 and earlier)
b) I never used OS 9 and earlier, but have to say that I'd never want to use a cooperatively multi-tasking OS again (since using one in the early '90s)
c) Whatever you think of OS X versus OS 9, Apple's future is with OS X and it is in their (and hence ultimately our) intersted to achieve a transistion as quickly as possibly. This may take you through a painful period in the short term (possibly 10.0 and 10.1 from discussions?), but it will be less painful long term than not transisting to OS X long term.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am SO sick of hearing about the G5. How many years has it been since we first heard about it? Two? Three? Haven't we been hearing about test yields of G5 chips for at least 24 months? This has got to be one of the slowest processor development cycles ever. I don't care that somebody says "it does exist". As long as it's not in production it's just vaporware. Late 2003 is far, far too long to wait. I'm buying my PowerMac now, so I'll be set for years. But I'm one of the faithful. What Apple needs is windows users to switch and they'll never, ever get them if they can't close this gap. Like now. Within 6 months.

dh

I can sympathise with this sentiment quite a lot. Whether announced or not, there are some wonderful research and pre-commercial projects around the World. Great. But I can't have one. So I've got a DP 1GHz. Every time I've bought a new computer for the last decade, I've always done it in the recognition that it might well be out of date not long after buying it. This is reality. Get used to it or don't buy. The future will be better, but you can't control it and there are often more relevant factors that you don't know about than you do know about.

Somewhere, and perhaps a little elusive here, there is a balance between reality and unbounded rumor. G5 may or may not exist - that we don't know precisely what it is means it quite possibly simultaneously exists and doesn't exist according to the various definitions. Rumors are great - especially when there's a little bit of substance (this guy from IBM, my friend in Moto, a rumor from an Apple engineer, etc), but it is possible to discuss to the point where there is no point because there is insufficient substance to back any individual opinion up.

As has been pointed out by a few other posters, this board is about rumors, so don't expect 100% fact. On the other hand, a rumor isn't the same as a day dream that's just happened.

(Another rant over)

 

[ncbill]

Re: G5- The phantom processor

You must be kidding...the overhead of OS X is painful on my iBook 600, and Mail is a joke.

Maybe if you like being in terminal mode all day long OS X is for you, but it's agony on G3 systems.

Originally posted by dethl
OS X rocks. I'm running 10.2 on a iBook special edition 466mhz G3, and it runs much faster than OS 9, or even 10.1

 

[dongmin]

Originally posted by ddtlm
dongmin:

Why in the world have you (and others) chosen to believe this rumor?

First of all, I began my post with "If this rumor is to be believed"...

Secondly, the only reason we're even talking about this rumor is that, as Arn pointed out, this was the first source to correctly report that future systems would not be OS 9 compatible. So we're taking the rest of what this source said more seriously.

Anyone who chooses to believe that Moto or IBM is stupid enough to design a chip that they cannot build in sufficient quantities is plainly out of touch with how those companies operate.

You give Moto way too much credit (and you shouldn't be lumping IBM with them). This is the company that's been hemorrhaging money in their semiconductors division for years. This is the company that released the G4s at 500 mhz but then had to clock it down because of some "errata" (that's plural for "oops, we fu**ed up"). This is the company that's given us only a 900 mhz increase in THREE years (the 350mhz G4s came out in 10/99). Frankly, I don't think Moto has a clue what they're doing. Either that or they don't give a rat's a$$ about Apple (in which case it's Apple's fault for sticking with them).

Additionally, the time-honored cure for low yields is to produce lower-clocked chips.

As someone mentioned, they're not gonna release these chips unless the mhz is at or above the G4 levels. They may have a plenty of G5s at 800 mhz but no way in hell is Apple gonna use those.

The only reasonable conclusion is that this rumor is wrong.

You want reasons, I just gave you a bunch...

 

[nickgold]

pure entertainment

I never fail to get a kick out of the pure entertainment that is macrumors.com.

Here are some facts, for the folks on this board who apparently have no clue:

1) OS X kicks the crap out of any other Mac OS ever released, and *gasp* even runs pretty decently on G3s.

2) Windows users are switching to Macs BECAUSE of OS X, and because they hate Microsoft and its crap products. Macs are also very nice to look at, and frankly, people dig that.

3) Consumers don't give TWO ****S about Megahertz speed. All of the dorks on the net who say otherwise are just that -- dorks. I talk to computer users all day long, most of them general consumers. You know how many of them even KNOW how fast their computer is, in megahertz? Maybe 2%-5%. Tops. That's being VERY generous. In fact, most of the more advanced users don't even seem to be aware of megahertz AT ALL. It is totally irrelevant to people who are actually USING computers, as opposed to the dweebs who just fawn over them. WHat matters? Workflow, productivity, and their ENJOYMENT of using the machine. People enjoy Macs, in general. As opposed to Windows, which they simply tolerate, or more likely, actively dislike.

Of course this one post is not going to stop any debates. But many, MANY of the people on this BBS, and others, have absolutely no idea how the REAL world works, and how real, non-computer-dork people think about the computers they use on a daily basis.

Do you know what the VAST majority of computer users are using their computers for?

- web browsing
- word processing
- and... oh wait, sorry, that's it.

How much does MHz affect the above two kinds of apps, in this day and age? Please.

I am using my G4 450 Sawtooth, purchased as soon as they were available. You know what? It is just as fast as the day I bought it. Oh wait, faster -- now it has 1.37 GB RAM installed, and Jaguar sails like a dream. I was considering an 800 or 1 GHz upgrade, but you know what? I don't need one AT ALL. And I do video, audio, etc.

REALITY-CHECK, people. OS X is by far slickest OS available today, in many regards. The future of the Mac platform is brighter than it's probably EVER been.

I truly wonder how many of the 1-post trolls on this board are actually desperate Microsoft marketting execs, who hang out on boards like this and troll FOR FUN when they get home at night. Pathetic.

For the rest of the folks around here, who seem to have some semblance of a clue -- continue to keep it real, people.