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Mon, 06 Jun 2005
Mac on Intel - It's true.
[11:11] |
[computers/operating_systems/macosx] |
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5 Comments |
Ok, it's official (press release), Apple is switching to Intel. Stuff that stuck out in the coverage that I saw:
CPU power per watt was cited as a significant factor - the laptop angle.
Jobs did his entire keynote on a OS X Intel box. They've been compiling OS X on Intel for the last 5 years.
Mathematica did their port in 2 hours days hours with one person. There is an emulator for 68k, er PPC binaries on Intel, which can run MS Office and Photoshop, at least. MS and Adobe are on board.
Here was the best coverage that I found:
MacRumorsLive
MacMarc
MacNN
#wwdc on irc.arstechnica.com (transcript)
#apple-x on irc.apple-x.net (transcript)
Ok, back to work now. Commentary tonight.
And yes, I *am* happy.
Soooo strange. So long as the battery life on my next Powerbook is as good/better, I won't complain.
And they're definitely going to have to work really hard to keep OS X off the whiteboxes.
Posted by David Warde-Farley at Mon Jun 6 12:42:07 2005
And they're definitely going to have to work really hard to keep OS X off the whiteboxes.
Posted by David Warde-Farley at Mon Jun 6 12:42:07 2005
having had time to digest this over the weekend softened me up a little, still its a shock. MS using PPC chips in the new XBox and now Apple switching to x86. The Darwin code has of course been portable - you can find the #ifdef's in the code, but the rest of the system as well? What about all the codecs that made use of AltiVec or that required G5's (HD-DVD)? What about all those PPC registers? Are we back to brute force rather than parallelism?
Looking through the developer guidelines doc, I notice something else: no Open Firmware. Doesn't this mean BIOS-based systems will work? Am I missing something? That would undercut the hardware business - they're left selling beautiful but expensive machines, essentially competing against MS for the desktop market. There must be something else going on...
Posted by rick at Mon Jun 6 15:39:37 2005
Looking through the developer guidelines doc, I notice something else: no Open Firmware. Doesn't this mean BIOS-based systems will work? Am I missing something? That would undercut the hardware business - they're left selling beautiful but expensive machines, essentially competing against MS for the desktop market. There must be something else going on...
Posted by rick at Mon Jun 6 15:39:37 2005
Not me. Eighteen months ago, I wrote that such a deal wouldn't occur because it would potentially allow clone makers to produce cheap Macs and make price comparisons easier between Macs and Windows-based PCs. (I also predicted that IBM services would begin to teeter, so I wasn't a complete bonehead.)
When news of deals began to surface last month, I wrote another article quoting several analysts downplaying any budding relationship. They say animals can sense things early, but I completely ignored the fact that two weeks ago my cat started drinking coffee and fiddling with the band saw.
Still, the predictions weren't that bad. It won't be an easy transition. Sales will likely decline between now and June 2006 when the first Intel-based Macs come out, because few will want to buy a computer out of a product line heading for the tar pits. Clever PC makers and software developers, particularly in emerging markets, will be able to figure out how to put the Mac OS on white-box PCs.
Nonetheless, many decisions are fraught with risk and difficulty. The Austro-Hungarian empire originally didn't enforce its will on the Serbs in 1914 because of the all-consuming importance of the sheep-cheese trade in the Balkans. But fear of losing prestige, worries about Russia and pressure from the Kaiser in Germany all pushed them toward a precarious course of action.
from cnet- who moved my cheese?
With PowerPC chips, Apple found itself grappling with an ever-widening performance gap. Although PowerPC was somewhat comparable to Intel/Advanced Micro Devices processors in the first part of the decade, those chips began to pull away. Intel and AMD also came out with new, faster, cheaper versions at a faster clip.
The troubles began to come to a head with the G5, the IBM processor that debuted in 2003. Benchmarks from Apple touting the superiority of the G5 were widely questioned.
Posted by shep husted at Mon Jun 6 17:26:52 2005
When news of deals began to surface last month, I wrote another article quoting several analysts downplaying any budding relationship. They say animals can sense things early, but I completely ignored the fact that two weeks ago my cat started drinking coffee and fiddling with the band saw.
Still, the predictions weren't that bad. It won't be an easy transition. Sales will likely decline between now and June 2006 when the first Intel-based Macs come out, because few will want to buy a computer out of a product line heading for the tar pits. Clever PC makers and software developers, particularly in emerging markets, will be able to figure out how to put the Mac OS on white-box PCs.
Nonetheless, many decisions are fraught with risk and difficulty. The Austro-Hungarian empire originally didn't enforce its will on the Serbs in 1914 because of the all-consuming importance of the sheep-cheese trade in the Balkans. But fear of losing prestige, worries about Russia and pressure from the Kaiser in Germany all pushed them toward a precarious course of action.
from cnet- who moved my cheese?
With PowerPC chips, Apple found itself grappling with an ever-widening performance gap. Although PowerPC was somewhat comparable to Intel/Advanced Micro Devices processors in the first part of the decade, those chips began to pull away. Intel and AMD also came out with new, faster, cheaper versions at a faster clip.
The troubles began to come to a head with the G5, the IBM processor that debuted in 2003. Benchmarks from Apple touting the superiority of the G5 were widely questioned.
Posted by shep husted at Mon Jun 6 17:26:52 2005
My friends didn't believe it :-P
I wonder if the new gaming consoles (Xbox 360, etc.) are making the supply of IBM PowerPC processors even more limited than before.
Posted by Elliot at Mon Jun 6 18:09:55 2005
I wonder if the new gaming consoles (Xbox 360, etc.) are making the supply of IBM PowerPC processors even more limited than before.
Posted by Elliot at Mon Jun 6 18:09:55 2005
So everyone is making a big deal about Apple switching their CPU supplier. Out in the regular world people are concerned about wars and genocide and mishandling holy books and who really is Deep Throat. But here in the Net all anyone wants to talk about is Jobs walking out on longtime partner Motorola/IBM to do the two-time-tango with Microsoft on Intel.
I'll admit that it just seems wrong. But honestly I think this is the right move for Apple. You see this might be the first indication that Apple finally wised up and realized that they aren't a hardware company.
Posted by Trackback from Antigravitas at Mon Jun 6 23:56:45 2005
Posted by Trackback from Antigravitas at Mon Jun 6 23:56:45 2005
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