Post #208,300
5/23/05 5:51:53 PM
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Intel Apples?
[link|http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7951114/|P4 Tiger Anyone]
A
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Post #208,303
5/23/05 6:06:42 PM
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doubtful
[link|http://www.techsmec.com/index.php/2005/05/23/apple_denies_intel_rumour|Apple Denies Intel Rumour]
Intel makes a lot of things besides x86 CPUs, perhaps Apple is checking those out.
Darrell Spice, Jr. [link|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass|Artistic Overpass]\n[link|http://www.spiceware.org/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #208,333
5/23/05 10:47:19 PM
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I agree
This rumor comes up about once every 18-24 months.
But, then again a rumor about IBM selling the PC/Latop division came up as frequently for 20+ years... then lookey what happened!
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #209,831
6/4/05 12:08:52 PM
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Cnet says announcement expected Monday 6/6/2005.
[link|http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nefd.lede|Here]: Apple has used IBM's PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel's chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech. The conference would be an appropriate venue: Changing the chips would require programmers to rewrite their software to take full advantage of the new processor. Still sounds dubious to me. Intel's lagging behind AMD now, and IBM's just starting to seed the world with Cell processors. Plus, Mac software makers would be quite upset if they have any sense (after all, they could already write Intel software if they wanted). Intel makes lots more than processors. Perhaps it'll be something else, or perhaps Cnet is simply a month behind the rest of the press. We'll see. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #209,832
6/4/05 1:18:06 PM
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Re: "write Intel software".
Unless it's the kernel, one writes to an environment, e.g. Win32. I suspect if MAC OS X was officially ported to Intel, that MAC applications could be ported as well w/o much difficulty. Think of Linux distributions that run on different hardware architectures.
The most immediate problem is that is that the application developer has doubled the number of products w/o necessarily increasing the volume of sales.
On the plus side, Apple will have a shot at replacing Windows as the OS on PCs.
Alex
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #209,833
6/4/05 1:23:57 PM
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Good and bad
The good is the possibility of running on commodity hardware (but I find it hard to believe that Jobs would go for this). Additionally, there won't be any customer confusion (or at least less) with respect to "is this faster than my 2.5Ghz Pentium?".
The bad is that they're leaving behind the Cell chips, which could have lead to a wholesale tromping upon of Wintel from a performance standpoint.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #209,834
6/4/05 1:34:26 PM
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Apple aren't a software company, though.
Even if a Pentium of some stripe did appear in an Apple box, you can bet your gonads that OS X will never run on commodity PCs.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
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Post #209,862
6/4/05 10:43:07 PM
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Yeah, we wouldn't want it to become popular or something.
--
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[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #209,874
6/5/05 2:54:42 AM
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Selling desktop OSes for PCs is not a business model...
...if you're not Microsoft.
Apple have survived this long because they're a hardware company.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
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Post #209,886
6/5/05 8:35:58 AM
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Then... umm
Why did Bill Gates have to prop it up a few years ago? When he could have easily gone for the KILL! They were vulnerable *big time*, yet he *chose* to "invest" in Apple.
Of course, the same thing could be said about Chrysler, in the 70's GM could have thrown a hand grenade in the coffin, then quickly nailed it shut. we'd no longer hear about'em.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #209,898
6/5/05 9:53:37 AM
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Antitrust, I expect.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
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Post #209,905
6/5/05 10:59:13 AM
8/21/07 6:05:07 AM
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Where else would MS get ideas for new features?
Most advances on the PC platform are pioneered by Apple. They don't necessarily invent the stuff - but they definitely get it popularized and adopted sooner. For one example - wireless networking. Yes you could get it from Lucent - but virtually nobody knew about 802.11b until Jobs demo'd the Airport in a MacWorld keynote.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #209,975
6/5/05 11:20:24 PM
8/21/07 6:06:22 AM
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I agree
Windows is popular and look what a cesspool that is.
I have a couple concerns right off the bat.
Registers - PPC has a boatload of registers. x86 as I understand it (not particularly well) doesn't seem to have enough and pays for it.
Endianism - I don't want to deal with swapping bytes around going in and out of sockets. I've got a boatload of old code that assumes that the machine and the wire match and I have no interest in fucking around with byteswapping.
Altivec - there's an awful lot of audio code that relies on this stuff. What will be the equivalent? How long will we have to fondle ourselves waiting for efficient ports of pro-apps (audio, video, etc)?
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #209,836
6/4/05 2:00:34 PM
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True, but let me elaborate.
I was trying to use too much shorthand. Unless it's the kernel, one writes to an environment, e.g. Win32. I suspect if MAC OS X was officially ported to Intel, that MAC applications could be ported as well w/o much difficulty. Think of Linux distributions that run on different hardware architectures. Yes, one writes apps for the OS. But, Apple presumably would want their OS running on x86, not to be a Wintel vendor. Yes, Darwin runs on x86 and there are rumors that Apple has a version of MacOS running on x86 already. But there are issues like device drivers (some *BSD drivers can be used, but they don't cover everything important), testing, etc. And there's the important issue of an emulator for existing MacOS X applications - I don't know of a reasonable speed one that exists for MacOS X on Intel (there are a couple that go the other way). They can probably argue that Classic won't be needed any more by that time, but existing customers aren't going to want to give up their software while they wait for Adobe, etc., to port their applications - and as you say existing x86 software vendors may say "just run the Windows verson". Apple's been through 2 CPU transitions already. In each case they did well, but it wasn't an immediate process and wasn't without pain for existing users. On the plus side, Apple will have a shot at replacing Windows as the OS on PCs. Man, that's funny. You aren't remembering OS/2 are you. :-) <wistful sigh> MS will still have preloads (except for the ~ 1-few million boxes that Apple will ship each year), and Apple doesn't have the resources to develop all the drivers and cajole all of the hardware and software vendors to support their platform. As Peter says, an x86 MacOS box will be unique if Steve Jobs has anything to say about it. I still don't think it'll happen - at least not like this (1-2 years in advance). I'm sure that Steve remembers [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Osborne|Adam Osborne] at least as well as Ashton does.... ;-) Cheers, Scott.
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Post #209,861
6/4/05 10:24:27 PM
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Apple running Intel on their new tablet computer
Which will be called a Newton II.
And then they'll get bought by Disney.
Or Sony.
And launch the Apple Phone as well.
Any rumours I forgot to cover? :)
Two out of three people wonder where the other one is.
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Post #210,481
6/8/05 1:03:02 PM
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Andrew Orlowski on the Osborne Effect.
[link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/08/apple_osborne_effect/|The Register].
Not a lot of meat, but some interesting tidbits.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #211,794
6/20/05 6:18:03 PM
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The Osborne Effect didn't kill Osborne Computer.
How about that?
[link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/20/no_osborne_effect_at_osborne/|The Reg].
Another illustration that one needs to beware of conventional wisdom...
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #211,835
6/20/05 9:40:41 PM
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Reading that reminds me of IMSAI.
Didn't they die because they kept pre-announcing hardware that wasn't even prototyped? Or something?
Wade.
Save Fintlewoodlewix
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Post #209,954
6/5/05 8:47:50 PM
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NY Times has the story now, with more details.
It still has the air of rumor about it, but there does seem to be some substance behind it. [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/technology/06apple.html?hp&ex=1118030400&en=3e3b854a03598d26&ei=5094&partner=homepage|Here]: SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 - Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer's 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday.
The move is a chesslike gambit in a broader industry turf war that pits the traditional personal computer industry against an emerging world of consumer electronics focused on the digital home.
[...]
Mr. Jobs is scheduled to take the stage on Monday to face his software developers, an important constituency he must convince of the wisdom of the shift. It is the software developers who will need to do the hard work of making their programs run on Intel chips if Mr. Jobs's strategy is to succeed.
Apple must be able to persuade software developers who make business and graphics programs for the Macintosh - Microsoft, Adobe, Quark and others - to overhaul their code.
"That's a huge challenge for Apple, to win the software developers over and drag them along," said Mr. Wolf, the Needham analyst. (Assuming this is correct:) Unless Steve has something spectacular up his sleeve that he can deliver soon, I think he's just killed the Macintosh as a general computing platform. Why would anyone write software for a (n assumed proprietary to Apple) niche Intel platform when the Windows market is so much larger? How are Mac ISVs going to make money? Monday should be interesting... Cheers, Scott.
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Post #209,963
6/5/05 9:41:56 PM
6/5/05 9:47:55 PM
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Why do they write for it now?
Of course getting the existing 3rd party devs to come along will still be the big issue. Perhaps this will help ease the pain during the transition:
[link|http://transitive.com/|http://transitive.com/]
"Business Issue If you are a computer OEM, you may be considering or may already have decided to change the microprocessor at the heart of your platform. The availability of ISV and customer-written applications on these new platforms is an important business issue in these circumstances."
-- [link|http://transitive.com/computer_oem.htm|http://transitive.com/computer_oem.htm]
"QuickTransit allows software that has been compiled for one processor/operating system to be run on another processor/operating system without any source code or binary changes. "
-- [link|http://transitive.com/technology.htm|http://transitive.com/technology.htm]
"Transitive expects to announce that a second computer OEM will deploy products enabled by its technology during the 1st half of 2005 and that others will deploy QuickTransit before the end of the year. Unfortunately, strict confidentiality obligations prevent us from discussing these relationships in any detail."
-- [link|http://transitive.com/customers.htm|http://transitive.com/customers.htm]
--
Chris Altmann
Edited by altmann
June 5, 2005, 09:47:55 PM EDT
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Post #209,969
6/5/05 11:00:54 PM
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Various reasons.
Some people just like Macs better. Some people have Mac customers going back a long time. Some people like the idea of being a medium-size fish in a little pond much better than that of being an amoeba in an ocean. There are lots of reasons why ISVs write Mac software. The fact that they do so seems to indicate that they're not interested in competing with Windows software on a PC.
But we'll see. Maybe Steve's [link|http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date|RDF] will be cranked up to 11 and it won't be an issue on Monday. ;-)
QuickTransit sounds similar to [link|http://www.newplanetsoftware.com/jx/galaxy.php|Galaxy] from Visix. They didn't survive.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #209,985
6/5/05 11:47:44 PM
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Galaxy not the same thing
Galaxy was, from what I could gather, a cross platform toolkit that one would have to explicity program to. QuickTransit translates binaries compiled for one CPU instruction set to another instruction set at runtime. If it works as advertised, 3rd party devs wouldn't have to recompile and redistribute their apps initially (they could do so later if/when they are ready.
Trolltech makes a cross platform toolkit. They seem to be doing ok.
I too am wondering how the RDF will hold up when the audience starts flinging 'reality' at Steve on-stage.
--
Chris Altmann
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Post #210,002
6/6/05 4:27:28 AM
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One more thing
From the bottom of [link|http://pview.findlaw.com/view/3340942_1?&channel=CCC|http://pview.findlaw...42_1?&channel=CCC]
"Transitive Technologies: Represented Transitive Technologies in a co-development and licensing agreement with Apple Computer"
We shall see.
--
Chris Altmann
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Post #210,020
6/6/05 9:48:15 AM
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Thanks.
Lots of companies are working on virtualization. E.g. AMD and Intel are adding extensions to their newest chips to allow multiple OSes to run "simultaneously". There's overhead with such approaches, obviously, and even more so if the program assumes a different instruction set.
It also introduces the "Win-OS/2" problem again. If the virtualization is good enough, there will be little incentive for ISVs to write to the native CPU. Then Windows x86 wins by default. If it's not good enough, then the migration to the new CPU or OS is too painful for customers with existing vital software. Then Windows x86 wins by default.
It's tough for translation/virtualization to win unless the underlying CPU is ~ 10 times faster than the incumbent. The Cell might have a chance, but it's hard to see that virtualization of existing MacOS X software on x86 variants being a compelling solution.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #209,880
6/5/05 3:55:23 AM
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Intel PowerPC CPUs?
This is a theory I've been seeing bandied about. Intel would make PowerPCs for Apple.
--
Chris Altmann
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Post #209,882
6/5/05 6:42:47 AM
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Entirely more feasible than the alternatives. imho
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Post #209,991
6/6/05 12:56:38 AM
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makes more sense than Mac on x86
Intel makes chips. What does it matter if they arey x86 or PPC or something else?
or maybe Apple is interested in some of Intel's wireless chips?
Have fun,
Carl Forde
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Post #210,008
6/6/05 7:01:28 AM
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There is a good reason.
IBM makes'em.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #210,007
6/6/05 5:57:52 AM
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Interesting theory on why Apple is switching
[link|http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2|Hollywood Orders: Apple Wed Intel
]
"...But it's really about Hollywood: Apple's looking to transform the movie industry the same way the iPod and iTunes changed the music business
...
But why would Apple do this? Because Apple wants Intel's new Pentium D chips.
Released just few days ago, the dual-core chips include a hardware copy protection scheme that prevents "unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard," according to PC World.
Apple -- or rather, Hollywood -- wants the Pentium D to secure an online movie store (iFlicks if you will), that will allow consumers to buy or rent new movies on demand, over the internet.
...
In the PC industry, Apple lost the productivity/office era to Microsoft, but it's trying to get the jump on the next big thing: the entertainment/creativity era, and it's going to drag it users, even if they're kicking and screaming, with it.
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Post #210,053
6/6/05 1:55:43 PM
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It's true. They're switching to x86 (new thread)
Created as new thread #210052 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=210052|It's true. They're switching to x86]
--
Chris Altmann
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