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
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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.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[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
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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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