How would a move to x86 would effect current users?

Chibi15

Chibi15

Official ai tenshi
If apple is really moving to x86 - what would that mean to the current customers?

Will all applications need to be rewritten? Will there be two versions of all applications for some time?

I've buyed my iMac just 2 months ago - will it become useless (most new applications for x86 Mac only) in 2 years?

I understand that we maybe need newer processors - it would also be ok if we would get our chips from IBM - or from AMD if all applications and everything else is just the same and OSX would not run on PCs :(
 
1. Your current Mac won't be useless, as a transition - if it's ever going to happen - will be made as seamless as possible. It's more like with 68K Macs. They're not supported since I don't know exactly, but as long as it made sense, they worked just fine, and some are still working fine, albeit with older software and system.

2. If such a step takes place, it won't start until sometime next year, and then the new hardware will be based on it. And Mac OS X will be available for both platforms for a while.

3. Application software will have to be recompiled either as FAT-Software, containing resources for both architectures (already was possible with Rhapsody DR's for PPC & Intel) or as binaries for each architecture. This won't be a huge step - at all - for software developers. But yes, Photoshop 7 as of today just wouldn't run on a PowerMac with X86 processor, unless with emulation, which would be bad.

4. My guess is that Steve Jobs says they will evaluate that later, because he a) wants to tell the shareholders that he *knows* that Mot/IBM is lacking speed and b) to put some fire under Mot/IBM's combined a... And I think this is a good step. I also think that Steve doesn't focus his options too much on X86, as there are other options around, and it wouldn't be the worst move to keep some machines on PPC, while other machines would be, say, Power5 based. (Yes, Power5, Power4 will be yesterday's technology by the time any such switch would happen.)
 
not only would the apps have to be recompiled (and then everyone would have to upgrade *again*) but any performance-optimizations that were gained by using the Velocity Engine would be lost as that doesn't exist outside of the G4.

also, it's not as if by simply being on the other processor the whole world would get shiny and happy. PC apps wouldn't work on it as they're compiled to work on Windows not Mac OS.

lastly, multiple processors on the wintel side is rapidly falling into obscurity. so if the OS/App was multithreaded it might have to be rewritten to yank that functionality back out of the program.

sure, we'd gain MHz... but would it be enough?

Personally, what I would like to see is someone (apple? another developer) create an app that competes directly with MS Exchange. That thing is everywhere.

Think Enterprise.
 
How would a move to x86 affect current customers? Well, I, for one would dump the Mac if that happened... Why, you ask?

Well, I've been with Apple a long time, and over the course of that relationship, I've endured many transitions. First, the transition to 040 to PPC. For about 18 months we were told, "It's RISC, so it's faster", but the reality was all the programs were still compilied for 040, so they ran in emulation - SLOWER. Once PPC apps started to appear, the move made sense.

Then there was the transition to OS X. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy with where we are today. But the last year hasn't been perfect. First, the transition to OS was dogged by 10.0's speed. It was also dogged by the lack of native apps. Both speed and native apps were rectified for the most part after 10.1 came out. By June of 2002, I had 99% of the apps that I use (still waiting for ProTools for OS X!), and speed was quite good on new Macs (10.2 really does improve things - can't wait for the 24th!). But the 15 months between 10.0's release and June of 2002 was a difficult transition. Also, I've invested a lot of money in upgrading all my apps to OS X native apps - look at the list below.

Lightwave 7.0 - $400 upgrade
Freehand 10 - $149 upgrade
Adobe Illustrator - $149 upgrade
Adobe Photoshop - $149 upgrade
Adobe GoLive - $99 upgrade
Bryce 5 - $99 upgrade
Extensis Suitcase 10 - $99 upgrade
MS Office v. X - $199 upgrade
Stuffit Deluxe 6.5 - $29 upgrade
Toast Titanium 5 - $89 upgrade

And I still have Adobe After Effects, and Macromedia Studio to upgrade (another $500).

So I've invested quite a lot in this OS X path. If Apple comes along and moves to x86 processors, every single one of those applications will require an upgrade to work on the new platform. Yeah, Apple might have some sort of emulation trick up their sleeve to bridge the old with the new (they always do), but it would negate any speed advantage.

Bottom line - if I have to make one more grand transition to a new x86 platform for Macs - then I may as well migrate to Windows. It would cost less in the long run versus another Apple transition...

But I doubt it will ever come to that. As I've said earlier, if Apple does use AMD or Intel for chips, it would probably be to manufacture their own chip designs. Apple would lose more going to x86 than they would gain in the speed department....
 
This abou tit for a minute. If Apple ran a direct x86 (Let's just call it a Pentium 5, because I'm sure Intel hasn't thought of that yet), would it be that hard to run Windows on a Mac? Nope. People would buy the iMac because of its looks, and then run Windows on it.
 
The last comment, people buying iMacs for the looks and running Windows on them: That'd be GREAT for Apple, wouldn't it? They'd also sell a lot of TiBooks and iBooks! Let Apple have its money, I say. :)

Also: Virtual PC has a version for Windows, which lets you run Linux inside, or another version of Windows, for example. Don't you think there'd be VPC 6 for Mac OS X/AMD&Intel running Windows? Great, I say. People'd buy more Macs.
 
I concur with Macko. x86 is ancient. All the smart people I know who use x86 (for unix, not windows. I said they were smart, remember?) say that it's outdated and on the way out. One of them is actually thinking about making his next computer 68k and he praises it constantly. Iff Apple decides to dump Moterola, it will be to buy out the G4 and license it to someone else to make their chips; switch to something like Power4 or ride the new and innovative technology like they have in the past.
 
Originally posted by themacko
It's never going to happen so I don't even think about it.
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Thanks! Finally some light into the subject!

It won't happen people... if Steve had to go somewhere, It would be IBM because their chips are much more faster than Moto's but they stick with Moto since they are the ones with Altivec (the Velocity Engine)

My theory... Apple buys out Altivec from Moto, gives it to IBM, we get those nice 1.5GHz G3's that IBM is making and those super powerful G4's!

:)
 
My theory:
Apple buys the Velocity engine from Motorola, and gives it to IBM. IBM uses it on the new POWER4 and/or 5 and turns them into consumer chips, and we get extremely fast and powerful macs that are still compatible with PPC
 
Even though I tend to agree with this guy ( http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/07/MacWorldRumors.shtml ) I really don't think it's going to happen. People have made a big fuss about Jobs saying he has options. Here's the actual quote:

Steve Jobs talking to an analyst:

"The roadmap on the PowerPC actually looks pretty good and there are some advantages to it. As an example, the PowerPC has something in it called AltiVec, we call the Velocity Engine -- it's a vector engine -- it dramatically accelerates media, much better than, as an example, the Intel processors or the AMD processors... so we actually eek out a fair amount of performance from these things when all is said and done. And the roadmap looks pretty good. Now, as you point out, once our transition to Mac OS 10 is complete, which I expect will be around the end of this year or sometime early next year and we get the top 20% of our installed base running 10, and I think the next 20 will come very rapidly after that. Then we'll have options, then we'll have options and we like to have options. But right now, between Motorola and IBM, the roadmap looks pretty decent. "
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Nothing exciting here. Apple's hardware gives me no reason to get excited. However, if we're going to talk about the impact on mac users here's my take.

They would support the older stuff through emulation. The x86 cpus are so much faster that even under emulation it would be faster than what you're used to. Over the course of years, apps would be ported to run directly on x86 and they would become even faster. It would cost mac users money to upgrade but it wouldn't be all bad. It's not as if you never planned on upgrading anyway.

Vanguard
 
Sorry vanguard and others, but it's not going to happen.

Just having to retool applications for use on another processor is going to make Mac developers balk. Plus, we would lose things like the Altivec engine, the great Cocoa development tools (not to mention Cocoa altogether), and the speed of applications not running in emulation.

While I agree that Apple needs to dump Motorola as soon as possible, it's ludicrous to think that Apple will change to the x86 processor anytime soon. If anything, koelling and several other people are right: Apple will transition to the Power4 or Power5 chip that IBM uses, and perhaps buy the Altivec/PowerPC assets from Motorola and use it in conjunction with IBM. This will save the things I mentioned above, and will retain the superior architecture of a RISC processor.
 
Originally posted by simX
Plus, we would lose things like the Altivec engine, the great Cocoa development tools (not to mention Cocoa altogether), and the speed of applications not running in emulation.
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Nope, SimX. While you're right that we'd lose the AltiVec engine, there are other Multimedia Instruction Sets available on those processors. And I was also not talking about the current crop of processors but their next generations. I'm sure if Apple told AMD it would switch to them, AMD would work together with Apple for the next generation of 64bit processors, too.

And about Cocoa: It was running on X86 even BEFORE it was ported to the PowerPC platform. Cocoa was YellowBox was OpenStep's Objective C APIs was NeXT-Step's Objective C APIs. And - as we all know, there was NeXT-Step 486 and later OpenStep for the PC platform. And, of course, Rhaspody DR 1 and DR 2 were available for PC, too.

It's Carbon that would need to be transported, but I'm sure Apple didn't stop all porting efforts and would be able to spend some time on that even now.

Apple is in this business to sell a) computers and b) software for those computers. And if Motorola and IBM can't deliver (and effectively they could not for the last two years), Apple *has* to check its options, which is just what Steve Jobs said they would do, once the transition to OS X was done (which it is not, as of yet).

I'm sure Steve Jobs will do the right thing. This _might_ be the G5 sometime next year, this might _also_ be a step into a completely different direction. Keep in mind that Mac OS X itself is highly portable stuff.
 
Originally posted by fryke


Nope, SimX. While you're right that we'd lose the AltiVec engine, there are other Multimedia Instruction Sets available on those processors. And I was also not talking about the current crop of processors but their next generations. I'm sure if Apple told AMD it would switch to them, AMD would work together with Apple for the next generation of 64bit processors, too.

And about Cocoa: It was running on X86 even BEFORE it was ported to the PowerPC platform. Cocoa was YellowBox was OpenStep's Objective C APIs was NeXT-Step's Objective C APIs. And - as we all know, there was NeXT-Step 486 and later OpenStep for the PC platform. And, of course, Rhaspody DR 1 and DR 2 were available for PC, too.

It's Carbon that would need to be transported, but I'm sure Apple didn't stop all porting efforts and would be able to spend some time on that even now.

Apple is in this business to sell a) computers and b) software for those computers. And if Motorola and IBM can't deliver (and effectively they could not for the last two years), Apple *has* to check its options, which is just what Steve Jobs said they would do, once the transition to OS X was done (which it is not, as of yet).

I'm sure Steve Jobs will do the right thing. This _might_ be the G5 sometime next year, this might _also_ be a step into a completely different direction. Keep in mind that Mac OS X itself is highly portable stuff.
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True, I forgot that Cocoa was originally on X86.

But it's not that IBM and Motorola can't deliver: it's that Motorola can't deliver. Motorola is the only one producing G4s (because it won't allow IBM to produce processors with the Altivec engine, which Motorola developed). So, like I said before, Apple needs to ditch MOTOROLA. IBM is perfectly capable of producing G4 chips in large quantities... or whatever the chip will be. If Apple brought chip R&D in-house, and then allowed IBM to produce it, we would be in business!
 
That sounds nice, though. But I don't really see any plans of IBM to produce a G5, and Apple doesn't excel in processor design, so they'd either have to buy such a department or rely on IBM. IBM wants to sell G3s, though. It's all gonna take some time, anyway. But maybe, just maybe, it's wrong to try out another 'second player' in the chip market. Maybe 2003 is the year it's finally time for Apple to join them where they can't beat them.
 
Originally posted by fryke
Apple doesn't excel in processor design, so they'd either have to buy such a department or rely on IBM.
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This may be true but think about the processors that Apple would design. I imagine that it would be white with rounded edges. Say goodbye to the days of ugly grey and square CPUs. Also, Apple could design a heatsink with a glowing backlight that would really highlight the beauty of their CPU.

Yeah, it would be slow but it would be the best looking CPU ever built.

:D

Vanguard
 
From what I understand, if the G5 ever does come out, it will kill OS 9 and Classic completely. How would moving to Power4 or 5 or even x86 be any different? Obviously Apple is going to have to reengineer OS X to run on any of these platforms and has chosen to kill OS 9 completely in the process.

The beautiful thing about UNIX is it's portability. It a lot of cases, a quick recompile is all it takes to move an app to another platform. Since OS 9 is not UNIX, I can see their reason to drop it completely for their next platform.

Today's x86 isn't the 486 DX2 66MHz x86 platform that started the PC revolution. It's completely different now and contains both CISC and RISC technology and a whole lot more. It's evolved so much it can hardly be considered ancient. If you want to talk ancient, look at the 30 year old technology OS X is based off of.

I don't think IBM is going to produce G4s either. IBM thinks the G4 is a joke and loves to tout the benefits of the G3 over it. AltiVec aside, the G3 performs equally as well as the G4 in most cases but at a lot lower cost and power consumption. Todays programmers are lazy. Other than Photoshop and a few other programs, very little is optimized for AltiVec. The P4 has the same problem. It's SSE instruction set is hardly ever used. This is why the raw power and brute force of the Athlon make it a great all around processor.

It's not likely Apple will be using Power4 or 5 unless they want their PowerMacs to cost around $10,000. These processors are being designed for servers and highend workstations much like SPARC and MIPS processors.

Moving to x86, especially Athlon technology would be a brilliant move. Unfortunately, it's probably not going to happen. It would be the cheapest solution for Apple and put them on an even playing ground with the competition. It could very well put them in front of the competition as well much like they were in the early 80s and early 90s. It's all about the MHz baby! MHz were Apple's original weapon against x86.

Steve Jobs is just a stubborn man who has to "Think Different", even at the cost of his users and company. We'll wait years longer for the G5 to come out. It'll probably debut at a lower clock speed than the G4. Technology wise it'll probably be behind that Intel and AMD's current offerings and market wise, Apple will continue to slip into oblivion because Steve has yet to realize that MHz have won!

The average consumer doesn't know about AltiVec and optimization. All they know is faster is better. This is what they've been taught, just the same as with cars.
 
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