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What if apple never abandoned power pc...
- Thread starter theRAMman
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not sure that is true, in 2005 ibm developed a 3.2ghz tri core cpu for the xbox 360. that beats my mbp by miles, the xbox chip dose run hot though...
G4's don't run hot and if you use altivec they are faster and anyway they probably would be on par if not faster than intel now since they use risc and there's also virtual pc for windows.
It's an interesting thing to think about, where would apple be if they had stayed with ppc? In 2006, the G5's where starting to surpass the 2.ghz margin so by now would that be in the 3ghz levels? You thoughts please
We would be ****ed up the ass. IBM and Motorola just couldn't keep up with Intel/AMD.
Im glad Macs are Intel based, they run cooler, they're much faster. And they can run windows via bootcamp, for great compatibility.
didnt have boot camp in 2005 no one cared about it then didnt even think it was possible
You didn't have bootcamp because there was no intel chip. And even though you didn't think about running Windows on a Mac, it doesn't mean that other people haven't bought Macs for the first time because they were able to run Windows for applications they need for things such as work. Therefore if there is no Intel, Apple doesn't have these types of customers, or even any enterprise customers.
whys everyone so down on ppc? especially surprising in the PPC section of this forum. the modern ancestors of the PPC can be quite powerful (e.g the PPC chips used in games consoles, and the POWER chips used in some IBM Servers)
Ok correction, no windows compatibility to the extent or with the smoothness we have now... sounds better?
I reckon there would be little progress, I mean sure it's nice to think IBM could have developed a more power efficient processor with some insane speeds but the move to intel meant compatibility!
Without that compatibility there would have been less attraction to the Mac for both your average user & software developers new to the Mac platform. Had they not switched to Intel I have a feeling the mac might would have never taken off like it did or it would have died out after the success with the iPhone and iPad and Apple would be a mobile device company and not a computer company anymore.
Some may argue that they would have kept OS X alive by letting it be used on any hardware (i.e Intel computers) but I doubt that would of happened, At least not when Steve was around.
As much as I LOVE my PPC macs and I was sad every good thing has to come to an end and the Intel switch was one of the best moves Apple could have made.
But what do I know! I'm a 21 year old sitting up on his beloved G5 bashing keys on his desk
Without that compatibility there would have been less attraction to the Mac for both your average user & software developers new to the Mac platform. Had they not switched to Intel I have a feeling the mac might would have never taken off like it did or it would have died out after the success with the iPhone and iPad and Apple would be a mobile device company and not a computer company anymore.
Some may argue that they would have kept OS X alive by letting it be used on any hardware (i.e Intel computers) but I doubt that would of happened, At least not when Steve was around.
As much as I LOVE my PPC macs and I was sad every good thing has to come to an end and the Intel switch was one of the best moves Apple could have made.
But what do I know! I'm a 21 year old sitting up on his beloved G5 bashing keys on his desk
it defeats the purpose if u need to run windows on ur mac to just windows applications there there no point in having a mac just like if u run WIndows apps on linux just use windows. same principal.
Yep
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I love PowerPC macs
(Well the G4's anyway - The perfect combination of Power and reliability).same hereI love PowerPC macs
about to set up my G4 QS as one of my main comps again
If they switched to IBM Power since PowerPC is derived off it and they are highly compatible. It should have been possible. Then the iMac and Powermac would utterly dominate i7 and Xeon with the Power7.
Current top i7 ~120Gflops
Current top Xeon ~160Gflops
Current top Power7 ~265Gflops
They also use a lot of power so the laptops would suck. I also have no idea how much Power7 costs. It would probably come down a lot as production could have really ramped up. Part of why PowerPC lagged was because Apple was the only customer and IBM had to modify the Power CPU it wasn't worth it to them to try very hard. The G5 was based off the Power4 and the Power5 had already been out for quite a while when the G5 was discontinued.
In all Macs would be much less relevant to consumers and iOS would be much more important to Apple. Although Apple would probably have much more of an inroad with media professionals, scientists and others in need of high end workstations and entry level mainframes. Perhaps have made OS X a variant of Z/OS instead of UNIX.
Current top i7 ~120Gflops
Current top Xeon ~160Gflops
Current top Power7 ~265Gflops
They also use a lot of power so the laptops would suck. I also have no idea how much Power7 costs. It would probably come down a lot as production could have really ramped up. Part of why PowerPC lagged was because Apple was the only customer and IBM had to modify the Power CPU it wasn't worth it to them to try very hard. The G5 was based off the Power4 and the Power5 had already been out for quite a while when the G5 was discontinued.
In all Macs would be much less relevant to consumers and iOS would be much more important to Apple. Although Apple would probably have much more of an inroad with media professionals, scientists and others in need of high end workstations and entry level mainframes. Perhaps have made OS X a variant of Z/OS instead of UNIX.
same here
I'd love one of them (and a 20'' iMac G4 1.25GHz and a 15'' Powerbook G4 Hi - Res) but they only except 1.5GB of RAM.
It very much so matters. People aren't going to buy multiple laptops if they don't have to. So if people want to use OSX most of the time but need a Windows program once in awhile, or they need Windows for work but want to use OSX personally, they could after the inclusion of bootcamp and parallels/fusion. I know a few of my friends are in this situation as am I. I need Windows for a few programs but prefer using OSX.
It's an interesting thing to think about, where would apple be if they had stayed with ppc? In 2006, the G5's where starting to surpass the 2.ghz margin so by now would that be in the 3ghz levels? You thoughts please
We'd have slow ass notebooks with no Windows compatibility.
I was at WWDC 2006. The Pentium 4's were so much faster than the G5s it was shocking. The sense was that Apple had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes when it came to PowerPC vs. Intel. It was hard not to feel like Apple had been lying about PowerPC vs. Intel for the few years before.
Also stop comparing the Power7. They're not at all PowerPCs. They require giant, giant boxes and huge power supplies. It's like comparing a dump truck to a F-150. Yeah, you can haul more, but it's not something you'd actually ever regularly drive. The Power series also existed alongside the PowerPC and they were always significantly faster than the PowerPCs, so it's not and accurate comparison.
(Power7s are also $10,000. So you're talking about a Power Mac that would be $10,000. You could easily buy several Xeons for that price.)
A flop is a floating point operation per second. It essentially is an instruction per second.
A gigaflop is 10^9 flops.
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Yeah, I felt like Macs had more soul when Apple used PPC, but the move to Intel was smart. Due to the sheer size of Intel, Apple was able to equip the next generation of computers with cheaper, more efficient processors. The biggest issues were power consumption, and heat dissipation methods. My G5 dual heats up my room like crazy, and the quad sitting my my closet could probably heat the whole house if I were to multitask using intensive applications...