Mac to use Intel Chips!

My theory is that they will release a "board" that will allow you to run Windows. I doubt Apple would switch chips. That just seems odd.
 
This is just a wash-up of the week-old "Apple talks to intel" rumour, right? And although it's news.com... I dunno. Would it actually be a _good_ choice to take intel as the sole processor supplier? Couldn't they also use AMD's processors? I really hope they _wouldn't_ strike an exclusive deal with intel.
 
This makes no sense, what-so-ever. Apple felt a pain when it migrated to PowerPC. It felt pain when it migrated from OS 9 to OS X. I can't imagine Apple just switching chips again. It just seems crazy. What does NOT seem crazy is to provide people with the ability to "move" to a Mac and still have descent Windows functionality without using a slow Virtual PC. People could have the "best" of both world.. a great peice of hardware, a great operating system and something they can use to connect to work with. That makes sense... but a 100% migration move? No sense, what-so-ever.

All these "gaming" machines, Play Station 3, XBox 360, all use PowerPC. If anything, PowerPC is becoming HIP And COOL, and so is Apple w/ the iPod. Now is not the time to produce more "change", but to produce switchers and take advantage of that. That is WHY I believe that any Intel talks are purely base don a compatibility board and nothing more.
 
Switching to an X86 based architecture would be the death of Apple as a hardware manufacturer. Some of us still remember what happened the last time they switched architectures...if they do it again chances are the sub-3% market share they have will become much, much less. Let's not forget about the programmers and software manufacturers who'll throw a royal conniption fit over the whole ordeal.

I could see Apple utilizing Intel's manufacturing capabilities to handle the building the G5 (or possibly a G6) chip for them. AMD did that for a while, so it's not that unreasonable. It could even work to IBM's advantage...they could get a small royalty off each chip produced yet not have to worry about the small market share ($$$) or other issues.
 
If apple goes x86 i hope they choose AMD or some sort of mix, the high end AMD chips seem to be better than the Intels. Either way I still don't think they will switch. The G5 is a badass chip, there are a few problems but I think it is something that can be fixed in further revisions.

http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436
 
"If they actually do that, I will be surprised, amazed and concerned", that exactly what i think, apple is onto something good right now and i find the story hard to beleive.
Why would they do this?
 
Apple is a
- hardware manufacturer
- OS provider
- software provider
- MP3 player manufacturer

Where would the new architecture fit ?

They could provide iLife, iWork and other software for Windows (?)
They could create a x86 version of MacOS to compete against Linux (???)
They could provide a Linux-x86 version of iLife, iWork and other software, this makes sense.
 
the title of the threads reads

Mac to use Intel Chips!

no they're not - even the first line of the article says -

'Apple Computer plans to announce Monday...'

so its not fact - indeed (as of now) they are not about to 'use Intel Chips'

its just baseless speculation as per. why would they switch? so that OSX can run on more computers? never - why? becaue apple need to have total control over the hardware that runs their software - thats why our macs are so robust and fast.

apple couple the exact hardware to run with their OS right out of the box. so why open it up to windows box makers to totally mess up the build on a machine without total control over what goes into the box?

and why would a windows box builder ever say 'go ahead apple - we'll use your OS and you tell us what components to use to build our boxes...' - er... hello... why wouldnt people just buy a powermac?!?! with apple calling the shots on components the cost would be pretty similar in the end.

i'm not discounting a switch - if they do make a switch the chip will still only run in macs with OS X - all built by apple.

and in all honesty - that would result in a total non story. it would go something like this...

'apple switch chips.. and..erm... everything is still pretty much the same as it was... erm... but the chip is different... erm... shall we speculate on the satellite / video / super duper all things to all men ipod instead then?...that always makes a good story...'
 
My guess is that Intel will produce the PPC's. Seems like IBM would have to agree to that but maybe they have.
 
I think Job's is very mad that IBM still hasn't hit the 3 GHz mark. I also think there's probably no way MacOS X will run on all x86 hardware -- Apple and Intel will probably make a propietary PPC chip. Maybe OS X would be faster on an Intel chip (not simply because of a higher clock speed)?
 
Apple is too stupid to not move to Cell... (bastards.. think!!!)

NOTE: Cell is PowerPC based and has crossed 3ghz

*sigh* this is sooo disappointing
 
Is Cell made for general purpose computers ?

Does anybordy still think that MHz is the only measure for a CPU ? AMD is often faster for less MHz. Pentium-M is also quite fast with low MHz. Aren't there other problems for the G5 software efficiency ?

What about low cost graphic cards ? Wouldn't it help more than faster CPU ?
 
Well, what _about_ low cost graphics cards? You still need OS X drivers for them, even if Macs would use intel CPUs. The story about graphics cards would be the same after such a change, i.e. it'd be up to graphics card makers to provide drivers.
 
I agree with you wiz, cell preocessor is the future, they are fast, high performance, and they will change all what we know about processor, but i think that mr jobs already knows this, so ill better wait till monday... but, if they really put intel chips in macs, i dont think i would buy an apple ever again until they take out intel chips and put some descent ones...
 
From what I've read, the Cell processor isn't good for day in and day out computational tasks. It's best with multimedia stuff like graphics and audio...

Why would switching to Intel be such a bad thing? That is, if they switched to x86. IBM can't get Apple what they want, and since IBM now has Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo licensing their PowerPC's, Apple is more of a nobody to them. Apple teaming up with Intel would give Intel a big boost, since they probably feel left behind with all the consoles using PPC.

Intel has a great mobile processor, IBM doesn't. Intel already has dual-core, IBM doesn't (at least publically). It makes perfect sense.

This is just all based from what I've read... we'll just all have to wait until Monday to know the truth.
 
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