In your opinion, how has the Intel transition gone?

[Thank The Cheese]

It's been around a year and a half since Apple announced they would be switching to Intel processors. In the beginning there was a lot of apprehension, but as time has gone more have found this an exciting new era of the Macintosh.

How do you think it has gone?

I believe it has been a smooth transition -- rosetta has worked far better than I though it would -- and apart from a couple stubborn applications not making the switch, developers and consumers alike have embraced the change.

Having said that, I think Apple has huge issues with quality control; a direct result of the success of their Intel macs. My MacBook Pro has not suffered swollen batteries or random shut downs, but I hear the whine every day, and my optical drive has failed for the second time in 3 months and will need replacement.

I am glad they switched to Intel because of the new possibilities it has opened up, but I have to admit, as much as I love my MBP, it has to be the most negative Mac experience I've had since my Mac Classic. (EDIT: not suggesting my Mac Classic was a bad experience. Actually, it's still going strong, even after being dropped down the stairs in the mid 90s!)

 

[jpb5151]

I've seen Apple reluctantly discard their proprietary hardware piece by piece, to the point where Apples were pretty much just PCs with a different processor and OS. It's good to see that they've finally made it. Also funny to see how all of a sudden the benchmarks sort of point the other direction...

wrt their transition they've done very well, and clearly thought about many things. With this MacBook 1.83 I can use (hate to but need to) ms office X through LaTeX, and the Rosetta slowdowns with PPC apps aren't bad at all. No hardware problems, no heat problems since I told Energy Saver to be stingy, and the entire system seems to be very coherent. If I didn't know that an Intel chip were inside, I probably would have just thought that it was somehow a dual-chip PPC system. Very nicely done by Apple.

 

[Mikuro]

Well, it's gone better than I had imagined, but there are still downsides. Even today, the Power Mac G5 does not have a hands-down superior replacement. And that's not likely to change for another year or so when more apps are native.

As a desktop user, I'm still thinking "WHY???" Even with native apps, the speed of the Mac Pro is not much better than you would expect from a year's evolution of the G5.

You have to ask yourself, where would the PPC be now if Apple had not switched? We can assume we would have had faster G5s (possibly faster than the current Core 2 Duos). We probably also would have had dual-core G4s suitable for notebooks (the last roadmap I saw said they would be ready early this year, but I assume the project was stopped or at least slowed after Apple's switch announcement). Compare the Intel machines now to the PPC machines we probably would have had, and...I'm still not sure it was worth it. Of course, Apple knew what was in store for the PPC better than I ever will, I'll grant that.

I do expect the switch to have "paid for itself" in the next year or so. In the meantime, for laptop and Mini users, I'm pretty sure the Intel offerings beat what PPC systems we might have had by enough to justify it, even though they don't run PPC apps as well.

And I agree with the quality control statement. Something is seriously wrong there, and it's hurting Apple reputation.

 

[Lt Major Burns]

people have seemed to forgotten that the iBooks were some of the worst for things going inherently wrong.

iBook owners, hands up if you're still on your first logic board? or your first battery for that matter?

 

[fryke]

I don't think this has anything to do with this thread, Lt.? ... Back to topic: I'm _very_ content with how this transition is going. If I think back to the older transitions (68K -> PowerPC, classic Mac OS -> Mac OS X), it's certainly been the smoothest yet. In some aspects, it's very similar to the former, the main difference being that when Macs got PPCs, the OS wasn't PPC clean for a long time (AFAIK Mac OS 9.2.2 _still_ isn't completely), whereas the operating system _here_ was quite intel-clean from the beginning in January 2006, when Apple released the first intel Mac.

I agree that the highest end PowerMac G5 probably still is the better machine than the highest end Mac Pro for certain tasks (involving non-universal applications, of course), but if we look at how things were going, it just didn't make sense for Apple to stay PPC. (Besides: Why not just wait things out 'til the software's universal? Your "old" quad G5 certainly still works quite fine?) Where PPC would be now? We'd probably have quad G5s running at 2.7 or 2.8 GHz, whereas the mobile Macs would use something like 1.83 GHz PowerPC G4+ processors, which would be slow as molasses compared to the current crop of mobile Macs.

Apple has done a seriously good job marketing the new machines and the transition in my opinion. They also managed _not_ to have every kiddie illegally installing Tiger on their vanilla PCs. Yes there were hacks that made one or the other build run - and maybe there _will_ be a day where this is going to be easy, but looking back: I expected this to happen very quickly when I first saw a PC boot the developer build(s). Good job as well, Apple.

Rosetta has really wowed me, so far. I remember running applications in Classic. Wow: *THAT* was ugly. It made me switch to a text-only application for all my HTML-coding (which has been a good thing, I've learned quite a bit then), because Golive was slow as molasses. Sure, Rosetta sometimes chokes a little and get slow as well, but nothing like how ugly and slow Classic was! The apps look and feel fine - apart from some performance issues that could only be expected. Very good job: And it keeps getting better. According to tests, Rosetta performance for some applications like Office and Adobe apps have increased up to 25% in the 10.4.8 update that was just released! Wow!

Of course there are still open questions. And we can always say "but PPC was the better architecture" or something like that. It just doesn't matter anymore. I personally wish that Apple would open up some more, add AMD processors to the game and let the _customer_ decide which exact processor(s) should go into his system. I'd also want Apple to be ready with new machines when new processors are available. Or that they'd update the old ones with the new processors as soon as those are available where possible. (We know that you can upgrade the oldest Mac mini with a Core solo processor to a Core 2 Duo processor with not much effort, so this is _not_ a technical issue, but rather Apple's stubbornness and unwillingness to let us have what we want at _our_ timing.)

Sorry for the very long post, but there's even more, of course. Windows. Yeah, we don't need it etc., but even for testing webpages in IE 5.5/6/7 and some other browsers on Windows, Parallels+WinXP is a *MUCH* nicer solution than VirtualPC ever was. Having such things run at native speeds sure is a good thing. Some might say that BootCamp's even better, but I don't really need that - and I'm glad that I don't.

So overall: Yes, this transition has been the best yet - compared to the two older ones I very clearly recall. And I'm not sure how they could have been much better. (Well, Adobe CS 3 would have been nice.)

 

[Lt Major Burns]

what major apps are left? the only ones i can think of are the Adobe suite of stuff. that and office, but office is fine under rosetta...

 

[Viro]

I think it's a real shame. The switch was announced over a year ago, and yet there are many non-Universal applications exist. These aren't your small time programs either, but ones put out by the large companies.

Of the software I use daily, I'm highly pissed off that Matlab and Office still aren't universal binaries. Matlab has no excuse, as guys like Mathematica took 5+ hours to do the port. MS Office is rather unbearable to use on a Intel Macbook. Sure, it works for small documents, but once you start getting to 20+ pages, you'll notice lag.

All in all, while the commercial software has taken time to become Universal, I've been forced to check out the alternatives! As a result, I've ditched Matlab (we'll release a universal binary in 2006. No wait, 2nd half of 2006. Scratch that, early 2007) and gone to R which is not only free, but is universal, and has a nice environment to boot. For my word processing needs, I've checked out Mellel, Nisus Writer Express and Mariner. Suffice to say, I'm quite satisfied with the shareware apps produced by small software houses.

Over all, the intel switch was a hard one for me. Most of my apps aren't universal yet, and that's made me look at alternatives. This can only be a good thing for the Mac shareware writers.

 

[bluedevils]

Only to hijack this momentarily, but how does open office stack up as an office replacement?

I'm relatively new to mac so I can't comment on the transition.

 

[fryke]

i guess this really _is_ the wrong thread for it. short answers would lead to long discussions. why not use a thread _about_ office replacements? you'd find them in Mac OS X System & Software.

 

[ebykm]

PPC, Intel, AMD or SPARC I wish apple paid attention to the build quality of hardware and OS like they did in those beige era. I had more hardware problems with el cheapo new world hardware than old word.

Also the frequent software/security updates are annoying.

 

[Lt Major Burns]

Old World had far more problems than new world (a 15-year old OS more than just prone to crashing, and a business model inspired by Hari-Kiri), and on the whole, new macs are just about the best-made computers in the world. put a mac tower, crafted out of precision metals, next to a dell and it's immediately clear which one is made better. same goes for the notebooks.

frequent software updates are one of the reasons i love macs - 10.4.8 made everything noticably faster, and also tweaked the fans on my g5 to run more quietly, while also adding support for my new printer and the mobile phone i'm getting next month.

 

[ebykm]

a 15-year old OS more than just prone to crashing,

i'm not talking about old OS, but build quality of hardware esp the SCSI based Mac's, we still have several of em running well without hardware problems. All i want is super hardware without issues.

as for new world macs we had logicboard, storage drive even display card problems.

put a mac tower, crafted out of precision metals, next to a dell and it's immediately clear which one is made better.

You consider Dell's build quality state of the art ?

frequent software updates are one of the reasons i love macs - 10.4.8

well adding new features, support for new devices and performance tweeks are always welcome as loong as it won't break certain functions. But frequent Security patches indicate not so secure OS, much like winduus. Just my personal opinion.

 

[fryke]

First: Please don't actively misunderstand people. You know well he meant that Apple's hardware was state of the art, not Dell's. I agree, though, we're far from the build quality of a PowerMac 7600 today. On the other hand, it's much easier to get at things on a Mac Pro than on a PowerMac 8100/8200/8500 etc. Times have changed. A PowerMac 8500 set you back about three times the price of a Mac Pro. SCSI was expensive. And yes it _was_ better quality, but on first glance, it just didn't make much sense anymore, because people out there didn't _know_ it was far better. IDE worked "as well" and was fast enough, too.

Second: If you think frequent security updates point to a not-so-secure OS, then stay with beige Macs and OS 8.6.1. It's the best. (Unimplemented trap.) Times change, though. To think that your software is inherently safe would be a wrong assumption, simpy put. All software has bugs. I'm glad Apple's not afraid of things like this Month Of Apple Bugs and rather invites people to tell them about the bugs. And then Apple fixes them. I'd say that's what I want.

 

[chevy]

The transition was just perfect.

 

[ebykm]

I agree, though, we're far from the build quality of a PowerMac 7600 today. ........ SCSI was expensive. And yes it _was_ better quality, but on first glance, it just didn't make much sense anymore, because people out there didn't _know_ it was far better.

They better put all those superior things, when you charge twice the price. In US, mac's are cheaper, elsewhere they cost twice the price of kick ass system. And elseware people often ask why mac's are expensive, those beige days we could answer, SCSI, PPC processor, state of the art hardware, multiple displays, etc..... also when you put SCSI cards and drives, PC's would cost more than a mac.

But now ?, OS X, sexy looking design and nothing more........ well some folks reply they're running it on their $400 PC. ::evil::

then stay with beige Macs and OS 8.6.1. It's the best.

no System 7.5.5

 

[fryke]

"twice the price of kick ass system" ...? I wouldn't know about that. While I think the Mac Pro is not exactly the cheapest on the block, I _also_ think that that hardware is actually nice. Easily upgradable, perfectly done. And the cheaper stuff _is_ less expensive as well. I haven't seen a better AIO than the iMac for a similar price, the MacBooks are doing great (although _there_ Apple _should_ put quality checks first...) and the Mac mini could do with a 100 dollar rebate, but still isn't that expensive for a nicely done, rather mini, computer.

 

[ebykm]

"twice the price of kick ass system" ...?

one could custom build @ half the price of an imac (£800 - 2.0 ghz 17") with top quality components( but no legal os x).

While I think the Mac Pro is not exactly the cheapest on the block

when u custom build (using tyan or supermicro mobo) or buy a dell, the table turns upside down, mac pro being the cheapest .

I haven't seen a better AIO than the iMac for a similar price

True, there isn't any.

MacBooks are doing great (although _there_ Apple _should_ put quality checks first...)

ya, macbook prices could have been more competitive(sub $800).

 

[ebykm]

well, i think apple have done better than last time (68k->PPC)...... and who knows they might even switch to a better processor (AMD or even another RISC chip) without even announcing. hint: Universal Binary...... who knows what it is capable of.

 

[Lt Major Burns]

there are no RISC chips in development, or even for future development that are at all competitive as a platform at the moment, or even in the future fr apple 'switch back'. it would also be very bad business, as it would indicate no thought or direction from above.

and i really can't see amd being competetive with intel for a few years yet, AMD were only the best because intel had become complacent, as many market leading companies do become. fortunately, they got scared and started to think properly again.

 

[chevy]

...
But now ?, OS X, sexy looking design and nothing more........ well some folks reply they're running it on their $400 PC. ::evil::
...

So you're speaking about desktop. True, Apple doesn't have a low cost desktop solution. The Mac mini is nice but not lowest cost... and it's becoming older. The lowest end iMac is nice too but is not lowest cost neither. And for that type of young boy machines, flexibility is an asset.

Now is this a market where one can really make money ?

Apple is very strong in the portable market, and has the best integrated desktop solution (my iMac 24" is very competitive in price and performance).