Mac to use Intel Chips!

fryke said:
Nope, since Apple will create their own boards - and probably won't let us just buy cheapo intel chips to upgrade our computers, since they want us to keep buying new Apple hardware.
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True, though it's hard to image with Darwin already running on Intel x86 and etc. that Apple will be able to truly lock OS X up into their own hardware. They will make it very difficult and unsupported no doubt, and perhaps inaccessible to the non-geek, but I can't believe we'll have to wait too long before someone has hacked the system to run on non-Apple branded hardware.
 
brianleahy said:
Thanks for the links. As for 'rosetta' - that's what I meant by emulation; as I understand it Motion pushes a loaded G4 nearly to it's limit, and even gives a G5 a serious workout. If this is true, I just can't see emulators doing the job. In fact, I wonder if a Pentium-based version with comparable performance is even possible.

I sincerely hope that they'll have low-cost software upgrades, but I'm not betting the farm on it.
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I wouldn't bet the farm on it either, but I'd be pretty confident in it. Given that Apple almost definitely uses Xcode for its software and given that Apple is going to be trying very hard not to make current customers mad, _and_ given that Apple has known about its transition plans much longer than we have, I wouldn't doubt that they already have Motion running on x86 natively. There's no need for them to release an update until consumer Intel Mac's start shipping, so they have quite a bit of time to make sure everything works. Maybe it won't run quite as fast, but they seem to think it will.

Rosetta is for all that other Mac software you already own and were worrying about losing. You won't lose it.
 
The links say Jobs ran OSX on a Pentium at the conference, but that the box was not revealed. Either he's got it running on a (barf) PC, or it's some kind of custom-built prototype.

Any thoughts on this, anyone?

Another thing: On some level it will really, REALLY annoy me if someday people with wintel machines can just install OS X. I think I'd feel like I imagine owners of original Hummers felt: At $120k, it was an exclusive club for a long time.... until the $50k H2 came out. Now you see em everywhere. Now, there's even a $30k H3.

Similarly, if OS X will run on a (groan) Dell PC, then it's (literally) severely cheapened.
 
hahaah ... macs have lost my respect, since they have lost their uniqueness.
Death to the x86 arch! Like we have a damn choice. Watch as all developers now create more x86 apps vs. ppc apps. haa... Brilliant move apple. You just killed ppc.

At the least they could have moved to Cell.
 
brianleahy: You forgot the Mac mini. So what you fear has already happened. But really: Do we _fear_ that Mac OS X might become too successful? I sure hope not.
 
Tsk, why do people always react so negatively to news when the facts haven't even been released yet?

Obviously, I'm interested to see how this all goes, but if Apple have been working on this for 5 years you can bet that the majority of their Apps already work on Intel, and the fact that Adobe and Mircosoft were there probably means they were informed a while back too, maybe with development a fair way in.

This obviously hasn't been announced on a whim, and has been well researched and thought out.

I do see this having an impact on sales though. I won't be buying a new computer until the new models are released.
 
I am excited about this.

Although i fear the resale value of my Titanium PowerBook just dropped like an anvil out of a plane, i am excited to see how fast Tiger and Leopard feel on a Pentium chip.

I'm also excited to see the day when then MacOS is more available to other users. I do NOT fear it being too successful. How can that be thought of as a bad thing?!
 
At least there's this

"Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple."

Which means that the compiler could be built into XCode. It's well known that the Intel compiler is really good at making fast code.

This has made me pretty angry but I'll have to hold my anger to see how these machines perform once they're out.

I just hope that in a few years of x86 CPUs we aren't going to be stuck again while Intel works out some problems and IBM powers forward past them.
 
fryke said:
Nope, since Apple will create their own boards - and probably won't let us just buy cheapo intel chips to upgrade our computers, since they want us to keep buying new Apple hardware.
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We don't know.

After the change of today, it may be a really large evolution with a new business model.

We simply do not know yet.
 
MBHockey said:
I'm also excited to see the day when then MacOS is more available to other users. I do NOT fear it being too successful. How can that be thought of as a bad thing?!
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Apple hardware sales plummet. Then OS X is dead because Apple has no revenue stream.
 
Captain Code said:
At least there's this

"Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple."

Which means that the compiler could be built into XCode. It's well known that the Intel compiler is really good at making fast code.

This has made me pretty angry but I'll have to hold my anger to see how these machines perform once they're out.

I just hope that in a few years of x86 CPUs we aren't going to be stuck again while Intel works out some problems and IBM powers forward past them.
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We'll be stuck if Apple choses another "exotic" chipset or component to go with the P4 (or other) and is locked with this "exotic" component.
 
jonparadise said:
Tsk, why do people always react so negatively to news when the facts haven't even been released yet?

Obviously, I'm interested to see how this all goes, but if Apple have been working on this for 5 years you can bet that the majority of their Apps already work on Intel, and the fact that Adobe and Mircosoft were there probably means they were informed a while back too, maybe with development a fair way in.

This obviously hasn't been announced on a whim, and has been well researched and thought out.

I do see this having an impact on sales though. I won't be buying a new computer until the new models are released.
Click to expand...

Its the truth, i want to see how this comes out too...i'm kinda upset, but i do want to see a G5 Powerbook. I'm thinking Intel is going to be making the next Gen Power5 processor's, and OS X will not be based on x86. Jobs was very vague on how this whole transition works out.

I was kinda hoping for a Newton II but oh well.
 
April quarterly report:
1M Mac sold 45% growth
5M iPod sold 500% growth
total revenue 3.24 B

The stop of hardware sales can currently be compensated by the iPod sales ! This will not always be the case, but right now, it is feasible ! So that's exactly the right time for the switch.
 
There's nothing that says that we're going to be using P4 processors either. OS X was demoed on one but what if Intel slapps on a better vector unit to more match Altivec? SSE2 is junk so I hope Apple doesn't think that we're going to use it instead of Altivec.

I assume this chip that Apple will use is a dual core 64 bit chip? They haven't said but with OS X already moving to 64 bits it doesn't make sense to go backwards.
 
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