OSNews

OMFG I still can't believe it. O_O

It's over.

IBM just got *clowned*

Let me be the first to say, I told you so.

"'This has been going on for the last five years.' Every release of OS X has been compiled and run on Intel processors."

Steve! you were my brother! you were the chosen one! you were supposed to destroy the X86 not join them!"-IBM-wan kenobi
"I hate you!"-Steve Jobs

To me it still seems unclear, is OS X ported to x86 or is it a custom Intel processor?

I always knew that they had internal versions of software that could run on Intel chips. However, I always thought IBM would be the one to break the relationship and trigger the switch to Intel. Go figure.

*cries* why oh why!??!

Bye bye NexT, bye bye BeOS, bye bye SGI, bye bye Sun and now bye bye Apple. Let's go back to RISC OS

Time for Win32 on OS/X via Wine =)

But when are we gonna get an Apple OS you can install on any whitebox, just like windows? That's the significant thing for me. Its no use taking an open architecture and building around it like it was closed.

OSX runs on Intel P4 ...

He still has said nothing as to what type of Intel processor. x86? 64? That's what I want to hear.

I don't think it'll affect IBM's bottom line. All three game consoles coming out are powerpc based and they'll have more units sold within the first month of release than apple has in the same time frame.

So yes, Steve Jobs was miffed about the 3.0 GHz G5 being vapor and a dream. But I think the people who will be crying isn't IBM but rather Apple fanboys. Personally, this just turned me off the Mac. I liked the fact that their systems ran on a different architecture.

It still remains to be seen if OS X/x86 will run on generic PCs.

Intersting and, IMHO, a stupid move. Chiplevel DRM on Intel processors means I will go through many contortions to avoid getting one.

Flash will finally run at decent speed on OSX

From the feed, on how long it took to port the huge Mathematica software:

"Jobs asked a long time developer (Theo Grey of Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica) to come out to Apple and work on Intel."

"Mr. Gray is joking about getting "the most crazy calls from Apple," where Steve asked him on Wednesday night to come out to Apple and port Mathematica, one of the most complex apps on the planet to Intel by Monday."

"According to Mr. Gray, it took two hours to do this port. "We're talking about 20 lines of code out of millions from a dead cold start where he didn't even know why he was going.""

We're getting a demonstaration of Mathematica at work. It's quite impressive, of course, and it's working on an Intel Mac

From Macworld..

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/06/06/liveupdate/index.php

"Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple's Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system."



still any doubts???

IT'S OVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW,

MAJOR news! .... and I thought nothing could top the OS 9 to OS X transition .....

Console processors are well served by Power, since consoles don't compete on speed increases (except for new generations of consoles). Xbox 360 processors will probably be the same speed when it's first released as it is 2 years after it's released.

Apple kept getting bit in the ass by Power's inability to get performance boosts like the hyper-competitive, hyper-consumer-sensitive (at least by comparison) x86 market. They probably got tired of begging IBM to make faster chips.

Develpoer Kit includes 3.6GHz Pentium 4. OS X 10.4.1 for Intel (preview release). Order today; available in two weeks. [10:48 am]

Being that an x86 mac is at least 1 year away, who is going to buy a mac in the interim ?

I remember fat binaries from the NeXT days. We'd have binaries for the 4 platforms that NeXTSTEP ran on (HP-RISC, SPARC, x86, and of course, NeXTSTATION/680x0)

"Jobs demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4-processor equipped system, running a build of Mac OS X v10.4.1. He showed Dashboard widgets, Spotlight, iCal, Apple's Mail, Safari and iPhoto all working on the Intel-based system."

Will make a lot of people happy.

I take it this means the final end to Classic - no more of being able to run your old apps eh? or will rosetta take care of this ?

Transition using emulation layer Rosetta...binaries are not truly compiled for x86 they are using an emulation layer, that would surly affect performance IMHO

Roz Ho, the MBU General Manager at Microsoft is on stage talking about this transition

Just a few months ago good ol' Steve was encouraging G5 CPU's and the pipelines and how clock speed has very little to do with performance and bs and more bs.
What happend to that, how can a man with such two faces be trusted?

I will finally make the plunge now and buy an apple i have been waiting for a reason to for a long time and if i can run OSX on a system i built that would be fantistic

He keep saying "compiled for Intel" - does he mean x86? He's completely skirting the issue of whether this lets us install OS X on any PC...

Roz also said that Microsoft has been working with Apple on Xcode, and plans on having universal binaries of its products to support the fractured user base transparently.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,477662,00.jpg

how is that a big deal. it will still be an apple, not a commodity built Dell system.

And the article ddidnt say anything abotu being X86, but rather intel processor (they do make more than just x86s


this is not gonna change much, it will be the same thing as before, just a faster processors


this was a total nonanouncement because honestly, it wont change things much. apple delivers the total package and it is basically immaterial what one individual component happens to be

For all the unbelievers out there, this rumour has been finally put to rest.
Whats amazing is how they kept this secret and hidden from any public eyes for so long...

Jobs can't be trusted. It should be an official wikipedia entry.

Job's 10:33am PDT - “As a matter of fact, this system I’ve been using here…” the keynote’s been running on a P4 3.6GHz all morning

3 button mouse ???

aint gonna happen

Looks like no new Mac for me til late 2006 early 2007. This is going to kill their hardware sales.

Read the reports. It wasn't a matter of Apple calling it quits. IBM no longer felt a need to coddle a whiny baby like Jobs after getting the Microsoft deal. IBM will be selling to MS each week what Apple was buying in year.

do you beleive apple will allow that ? nope

those chips will be customized so OSX will not run on a standard P4

you want OSX? you will still have to buy a mac, not a spare parts machine.

Why not support Intel, AMD, and PowerPC? You could then have Intel for your consumer systems (iMacs, iBooks), AMD for your killer gaming rigs, and PowerPC for your workstations.

I was seriously considering getting a PowerMac. But with this news there's no point.

Watch Apple's hardware sales tank until 2007.

Once again, Steve's ego go the better of him (pissed at IBM for his 3.0Ghz promise)

You could have at least gone x86-64 exclusive, for the real performance benefits.

Now Apple is just another Alienware or Falcon Northwest-style boutique PC builder. Both produce nice products, but only for people who give a crap. People WILL hack OS X to run on non Apple PCs. Even if it means emulating OpenFirmware. Heck, it might become a feature of the next VMWare. Other enterprising devs will implement a complement to WINE to allow Mac OS X apps to run on Windows and other *nixes. They could call it COGNAC, as that's what I'll need lots of to deal with this news. Either way, it will be pointless to buy a Mac. Some others will just make their Macs dual-boot Windows.

I was seriously hoping that the real Intel news was iPods using XScale processors, as that would be interesting to me.

Finally, you'd think IBM was in the know about this early and would have done SOMETHING to stop this Steve tantrum. Aren't they promising >3 GHz chips for Microsoft AND Sony? Don't they ALREADY fab chips in excess of these speeds for AMD?

Dammit, this just ruined my day.
--JM
COGNAC expands to COGNAC Operates Great on New Apple Chips or some silliness.

I felt a great disturbance in the mac world, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. ...

This news still really makes me laugh

Steve said by way of introduction said that when they talked to Intel, they found that Intel was just as passionate about making great products as Apple

Interesting. This could be a killer move by Apple. Everyone knows that Mac OS X is a much better operating system than Microsoft Windows in nearly every way. And this should help destroy Linux's ambition on the desktop markets I think. People wanting a easy to use Unix variant that can run on the Intel PC will be as happy as Larry. Why have to buy a Mac now? Why have to download and install Linux or BSD (both notoriously difficult to use/administrate operating systems)?

I'll still be sticking with GNU/Linux but a lot of others will 'make the switch' I suspect. It will be very interesting how much negative effect this imposes on GNU Linux and open source software in general as users move across in droves. Business? They'll by OS X for x86 because of *support*, something that is really lacking in both BSD & Linux.

This is a killer move by Steve Jobs from a business point of view, but I fear what it will potentially do to Open Source software, most of which has helped power OS X.

Dave

Hey Steve!

Let's talk sales goals for the interim between today's bombshell announcement and the arrival of those first Intel Macs.

Can you say, "deeply discounted," Mr. Jobs?

I guess in the long run it was really NeXT that took over apple then.

Is a dual boot system, XP for games and OSX for everything else.

my thoughts. i see apple turning into a software company becuz of this desizion. on top of that possibly loosing some of there fan base. (now i would never buy6 an apple) if they was going to use AMD it would not be a bad desicion. it could hav helped 2 small companys grow. the choice to use intel is a bad choice for everyone... i do hav some proof and rational thoughts for all of these but dont feel like typing it here. maybe i will do a writeup on it.

Jeez every rumor about this this has turned out to be true, fat binaries, dynamic translation of code, intel chips.

What's really amazing is they've got everyone on board : Intel, MS, Adobe, Wolfram Research. You've got to admit it perfectly planned and expertly executed. (Let's hope the real job goes as smooth)

Mmm. Barbecued crow marinated in garlic and wine.

I was so sure this was bulls**t, too. You were right, Eugenia.

I too am very disappointed with this. Sure, the x86 is a much crappier architecture than PowerPC, but on top of that they are using the thermally-challenged P4 with an architecture (NetBurst) built around marketing clock speed!

They could have at least signed with AMD and used Opterons/Athlon64's.

Does anyone know if the "fat binaries" throw out all the code it can't execute to conserve disk space (not that it's really an issue these days)?

BUMMER!!!

-Eric

How can IBM deliver a triple core 3gzh+ chip in mass volume to MS when they can't get a single core chip to apple greater than 2.7 ghz?

Because the XBox chips are much simpler.

The PPC chips Mac used were quite complicated.

The development machines are P4's.. That doesn't mean that they are going to use P4's next year.

>How can IBM deliver a triple core 3gzh+ chip in mass volume to MS when they can't get a single core chip to apple greater than 2.7 ghz?

Most likely because the proc for MS is "custom", maybe a version light / other which allows to have a higher speed.
Don't forget that the console will cost about 300$, microsoft will sell at a lose for certain but if it was a "G5 quality" proc in it, they will lose surely more than 1000$ for each console...

Ah well, maybe we'll finally be able to purchase some PowerPC Macs at 'normal' PC prices....
This will kill their bottom line.

Good 'ole snake-oil Steve

I don't like this news one bit! Now I really don't care if they move over to the x86, but just picking Intel. Might as well sign the company over to the devil.

I've hated Intel chips in the past, and still hate them today.

Why couldn't Apple go with AMD!? AMD is by far the better player, plus they already have 64-bit procs on the desktop. Wasn't that the whole G5 thing, bringing 64-bit power to the desktop?

Intel is still nothing moving foward with that. Sure they have the chips but they are going about it all wrong. Forcing people to upgrade their motherboard just so they can have a 64-bit proc.

If Apple wanted to go x86 then choose AMD, not Intel.

Ok let's move on to the next flamewar : will they support generic pc's or custom hardware only ? I say there's no way Jobs' test system had a custom bios/firmware whatever already. So why should the actual systems ?
ALso Slashdot (I know) claims "You will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today."

This will run on regular x86 hardware. Apple will make money with the powerbooks on Pentium M. Laptops is where they are good at.

Welcome back to 32-bit land, Mac users! You'll never be asked to buy more than 4GB of RAM ever again. A giant step backwards...

15 years as a Mac user, today marks the end of my happiness and support of Apple.

Intel processors provide more performance per watt than PowerPC processors do, said Jobs. "When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of perfomance per watt, but Intel's roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do," he explained.

Personally, I am going to sell my iBook. Apple is just an example of how unstable companys can be.
It is just sad.

If anyone is interested in 1 Ghz 12" iBook with 512 RAM/Wireless/Bluetooth let me know.

"AMD is by far the better player, plus they already have 64-bit procs on the desktop. Wasn't that the whole G5 thing, bringing 64-bit power to the desktop?"

Intel has already released thier 64bit desktop processors. They are available for your buying pleasure.

And the pentium M destroys anything that AMD has in terms of heat and power consumption. And you can even use the thing on a desktop.

As much as I do not like this decision to switch processors, I dont think it will be the doom of apple. If is it, I see myself being like an Amiga fan:
buying a top of the line Mac, maxing it out, and then buying processor upgrade cards lol :p

"Personally, I am going to sell my iBook. Apple is just an example of how unstable companys can be.
It is just sad. "


What the? did your ibook stop working?

Why did you get one? you can't do anything on it now?

These attitudes really puzzle me.
It's a machine and it will still work for a long time. Weird.

I use an Apple Mac (366mhz iBook)

I like it. But my liking is for the design and the OS (X 10.3.9)

I really wouldn't care if it was running a SPARC processor, a P2, or even a RISCchip instead of the G3 as long as it continues to look good and work well

All the software I use is opensource anyway, consolidating on x86 will be very good for those projects (especially OpenOffice) and I have no doubt that development will continue to support x86 OSX binaries for Firefox, thunderbird and various other apps dear to me. I was planning to buy a G4 or G5 iBook in a year or two to replace this, depending on what was available.

So yes. So what if it has a different interior, I'll buy an x86 iBook when they come out. Various people in this thread are being very patthetic by claiming some sort of allegiance to a processor which they never even see.. as long as the system works, so what?

So, price of used Macs will go way, way down?

Do you really care about the instruction set of your processor ?

Or you really care about the hole OS X experience ?

1) Why oppose this? This is great for Apple? For the better part of the last decade, Apple has had this CPU thing hung around its neck. Even when they were the fastest (pre-G3 and early G5), they still had to worry about what would happen six months down the line. Switching to x86 fixes all of this.

2) People are seriously deluded if they think Intel made a custom chip for Apple. This thing will be a bog-standard P4. Setting up product for another core is expensive and requires dedicating a whole line at a fab. If Apple couldn't get IBM to keep the PPC970 up to date, they certainly can't get Intel to make custom processors for them.

3) I found this quote humerous: it will still be an apple, not a commodity built Dell system.
It'll use an Intel CPU, (likely) an Intel motherboard, a NVIDIA or ATI graphics card, a WD or Maxtor SATA hard drive, and a case design at Apple, but manufactured in Taiwan just like Dell's cases. It will be a commodity-built Dell, just using a different case and OS.

really who cares what chips apple uses in their products? it's the user experience that is important and that's hardly likely to change now is it? okay, so some apple zealots may see this as an enormous betrayal but i would imagine that the majority of users aren't that bothered about the processor manufacturer. it's the design, aesthetics and usability that's important.

The NetBurst architecture (Pentium 4) is on its last few breathes... then again it dual cores would play much better in OSX anyhow.

it's today a mac is just a pc beside the proc and the motherboard. Big fucking deal, they changed their proc~

i own an amd64 and seems fine with me. what's so bad about x86?

Probably not. I always thought Intel chips cost more than the PPC chips made by IBM.

> Sure, the x86 is a much crappier architecture than PowerPC


In what way?. Do you write code in x86 assembly? Are you forced to do memory management in x86 using the old DOS extenders?

PPC didn't make any innovations for bus interconnects or memory - all the innovation - DDR2, PCI-x, SATA and SLI were due to x86!.

Just a few months ago good ol' Steve was encouraging G5 CPU's and the pipelines and how clock speed has very little to do with performance and bs and more bs.

Actually it's a couple of _years_ ago..don't be so dramatic

At the end of the day, Apple is about the "experience", as long as it looks like a Mac, runs smoothly like a Mac, is cute like a Mac, is priced like a Mac, who cares what's the chip inside?

Give it somedays so the news "sink", and you'll see it's not _that_ bad.

of armchair CEO's chime in...

After my wife's G3 iMac crapped out (6 years of service) I bought her a shiny new powerbook. I should've just bought her a Dell instead.

we will be having a sale today on imacs...free with a purchase of our 100 gal pickle jar..right next to the $50.00 walmart desktops

3:

it will not use a standard p4. it will use something custom so that OSX will only work on that.

apple is a hardware company, that is their mission, they dont want to be an operating system software company.

this will not be a standard dell, it will be a customized system that will run OSX. it is really immaterial what chip the system is running, it is an Apple System, not a dell computer

Will the recently announced1 DRM infecting Pentium 4 chips affect us Apple/Mac OS X users now?

1. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23708

That resolves a dilemma for me ! No Mac purchase until this is out, that's for sure !

Very exciting. However, it'd be more exiting if any compliant PC could run OSX. Nothing has been said on that or did I miss something ?

And don't flame me for that. There's been so many flames to dismiss a switch to Intel has utter nonsense than I think now we can talk can't we ?

"What the? did your ibook stop working?"

Nop it is working fine. I just dont like keeping legacy hardware.
I would rather keep a 486 laptop than this G4 iBook.
Wait few years and no OS will support it. Just like the previous hardware.

All this seems like Intel big PR campaign to me (besides Apple/IBM CPU supply problems of course). Interesting, will this new OSX run on my home-brewed AMD system?

I'm pretty sure that Jobs will require a custom chip from intel and not the standard x86 chip. Reason? So OSX won't have to support every friggin piece of hardware out there like M$ is doing with their OS. More hardware support = less stable + more resources going towards supporting hardware instead of making the software better.

Besides, if Apple were planning on releasing a version of OSX that will run on any x86 platform, why not just release it now? Why are they waiting until 2006 to release an intel based mac? I'm guessing it's to prevent OSX from running on ugly machines. I hope the intel chip will be specialized and the mac platform will remain somewhat unique.

I would like to see AMD based macs down the road though, that would be sweeet.

LoL You stole my line. Damn!!

This is the day I've been waiting for scince Darwin was released for x86! I knew this day would come. Yay!

"Does this mean i soon can run OS on my PC?, and what types of intel CPU's are they using, still wish that they would go for AMD when they moved to x86."

OSX has been running on x86 for years as confirmed by Steve. Just because they offically use intel chips in thier new computers I see no reason why AMD chips won't work. Hell, Dell just uses Intel as well.

i doubt flash speed will be on par with XP.

The slowness of X and the resulting slowness of flash lies in the software/architecture, the hardware has plenty of power but is not used in an effective way.

if X is ported to x86 the slowness should still be there, although it would be a bit faster due to the faster intel-chips.

i'm a mac-user, a ppc-mac user, a os9 ppc mac user.. :.)

That's the key question. Will I be able to buy Mac OS X from CompUSA to run on generic Intel hardware, or will it only be runnable on a Mac? How long until "OS X on generic PC" site shows up?

How will this hurt their current Mac sales? Anyone on the fence is doing a long, thoughtful "hmmm" right now.

Next 4 years will be very expensive for Apple I think.

AFAIK they did not specify either way if they would allow OS X to run on non-mac machines. I could forsee them allowing it but, not officially supporting it and not having any OEM licensing for the operating system.

Yeah, it'll be a custom system......made here in Taiwan by Asus, Hon Hai and Quanta.

I was glad that I'd finally be able to justify buying a Mac and being able to play with the simply beautiful OS X, but now I've heard it is definately Intel and not AMD, I've gone off the idea very quickly.. I build all my boxes with AMD, all the computers I've ever had over the last 5 years have been AMD, I don't want to ever pay my money to Intel.. this leaves me in a pickle.

I guess Intel is closer to AMD than PPC was though.. maybe they'll work out something with AMD down the line..

Well thats took the wind out of a few people!..... us eternal clunky mac fiddlers getting old things running os x (with xpostfacto etc) the thought of more hardware variations just boggles my brain, maybe i give up! I'm going of to live the woods as a hermit and design stuff with home made charcoal.

For the moment I'm of to the attic to bash the 9500 up there with a hammer and stay away from the mac web for a few days (weeks! years!) it's going to be unbearably tedious!

>>He still has said nothing as to what type of Intel processor. x86? 64? That's what I want to hear.

Pentium 4 as some articles have said. A developers kit is available for sale already featuring a 3GHz Pentium 4 and OS X

Mac will keep this proprietary - there will be no MacOSX for the mass generic PCs.

What's keeping them from adding just a USB key or a PCI-E card that's required for MACs running on OSX?

Unless you can make hardware regular PC hardware will be locked-out

Is there any indication as to what will happen with product warranties? I don't doubt that Apple will not cover my brand new system. Its just that I bought an iMac G5 last week (hasn't shipped yet) with an Apple Care 3 year warranty.

This is the biggest announcement the computing world has seen in YEARS. This topic is bound to become one of the most speculated upon at OSNews. Years from now our grandchildren will ask, "Grandaddy, where were you when Apple switched to Intel?" And I will be able to tell them, "I was at OSNews."

From what it seems, APPL is going to deplete their supply of PPC chips. Also they are prob waiting till the next version of the OS comes out and tie the two together. That is why they are waiting.

I don't know why they're using Intel. AMD are the best x86, and especially 64-bit, chips out there. Bang goes any aspirations of maintaining current quality for Apple then. But, I suppose if IBM couldn't put the G5 in a laptop then that's a bit of a problem for Apple. Then you've got the Cell processor around the corner.

I can't help feeling that there's more to this than meets the eye though.

"Intersting and, IMHO, a stupid move. Chiplevel DRM on Intel processors means I will go through many contortions to avoid getting one."

I totally agree with you. If Apple gets scraped it will be totally Steve's fault. Other than that I don't know _what_ to say. I am in the same condition I will be in the next few days ... in loss of words. A very dark day for computing.

Just a couple of things I'm pondering: Will it be x86-64, and will I be able to build my own (using AMD processors and a third party motherboard)?

Slashdot crashed and burned :

503 Service Unavailable

The service is not available. Please try again later.

Strategically, everything lines up for IBM to screw up the PPC970 family... so that Apple is forced to Intel. Which creates more competition for the Evil Empire and allows for a greater level of Mac/BSD/Linux cross-pollination.

My bet is that IBM is secretly laughing... no more low-volume G5 and a present for Billy G all in one.

No

It's not 'over' for Apple, this is a new start...one that will allow them to thrive in the future.

There is NO WAY I'd ever buy a Mac, too much of a premium for hardware I do not want and have little control over. Although I've always admired OSX, I could never use it.

There is no doubt in my mind now, I will switch over to using OSX in the near future - the only other OS I've used on a consistent basis is BeOS. I know many many people who feel the way I do.

The hardcore Mac base will not stop using them, regardless of their hollow threats...but the admirers from afar like me WILL switch and try it out, where they would not have otherwise. Good move.

1. The development machine is a 32-bit machine - you can't test 64-bit programs on it.
2. Who is going to buy a new G4/G5 based machine now? They are dead technologies now!
3. Why don't they realese OS X 10.4.1 for x86 right now? If it's not finished yet how can I belive their statements and demonstrations.
4. Why apple bothers with building x86 based Macs If evreybody will be able to buy better systems for less money for sure.

From reading some complaints above, it seems that finally all of us who cannot spend more than a hundred bucks on used computers at ebay we will be able to buy dual G5s. Right on!!
Still using NeXTstep 3.3 on Motorola and PA-RISC :-)

I am still in shock but i'll be really happy if i can buy a $999 power MAC from apple next year which retains the advantages of apple (aka: fewer hardware headaches).

Are they going to be using firmware updates in the hardware like they currently in the PPC. That could prevent alot of clones from coming out and keep MS happy. If done, MS will probably still make Office for the MAC.

So what does osnews crowd think about the limiting of said hardware. Yes, tons of folks are tasting crow about now; say the switch would never happen.

Opinions?

If you may have noticed not one major hardware company sells AMD on a full product line, only here and there? Why? Because AMD has a problem with quality and supply.

With Intel you know no matter what you will get what you want, when you need it! They have the plants, they have the money and they will get you straight. If you have a problem with AMD then you have to hope they can fix it in a timely manner. (Which has not always been the case)

I just saw the update. I have to buy a mac and its hardware in order to run OSX still. I guess they don't value the sales they could get by allowing it, whether they support me or not. Shame

Steve should have kept this a secret from everyone until the transition ACTUALLY HAPPENED. That way, a few months after we all bought new PowerBook "G5"s he could have said "Oh, and by the way, you've crossed over to the dark side! MWA HA HA!"

Seriously, I don't think this is going to ruin Apple. They've been through a lot. At least now they have the revenue from iPod/iTunes and a damn sexy UNIX based OS to keep them afloat. When their new shiny white Macs come out in '06/07, you'll all be in line to buy them just like you have up until now. At least they'll be faster.

Get a life, folks. It's a processor. Steve didn't ask you to get a divorce and give him the kids. He's asking you to use the platform that the rest of them are using so that they can keep up with technology for a change. And a good change at that.

The sad part about the whole thing is that a 8bit arch that should or never been allowed to be 16bit( let alone 64bit), is being pushed as the way forward.

Power was the way forward. A chip that can, and will progress. Pentiums are a dead horse being floged. I had hoped that for once the technologically advance solution would prevail.

Let the market decide, I pray that mac x86 saga will be like the clone mac saga and will die a swift quick death.

Or maybe Apple-vador will only see the light when Luke beats the crap out of him.

I hate to keep laughing but there were so many people insisting this would never happen, just like the predictions prior to the mini that Apple would never release a headless, cheap mac.

I'm sure this will run on standard processors. It would cost *way* too much to have Intel fab specific chips for Apple. However, I could see a modified motherboard or some specialized hardware to keep OS X on Apple hardware. However, if Apple is serious about going after Microsoft, they may allow the OS to run on standard equipment. The mac is more about the OS than the hardware anyway, so I don't think the chip ever amounted to much (except in the eyes of the PPC fanboys who won't admit they're falling behind).

Having just purchased a mini I'll be quick to purchase the Intel offering and pass the mini along to someone else in the family. With XCode delivering binaries for both systems there's no reason that the mini won't be able to run software for a long time.

This isn't the deathknell for Apple, folks. It's an aggressive move and it'll be interesting to see where they go from here. Ain't competition grand?

According to the CNet article they will not be allowing Mac OS X on non-Mac hardware. This will help keep Microsoft off their back too much. Who knows, maybe once they get settled in and finish the x86 transition they will shift to releasing it for other machines. Especially if the hardware business starts to decline.

So Apple want me to use a more power-hungry chip, that needs more cooling, and they want me to go back to 32 bit computing?

I hope they're kidding or they just forgot to mention that they'll be running on 64-bit as well.

Apple post the webcast somewhere as they typically do? Nothing on the event site or Quicktime section.

That's too bad.
Keep playing Games IBM.
I can't wait for Microsoft to start to squeese them on price.
Fools.

They don't need a custom chip, all they need is their own firmware. Remember several years SGI decided to get into x86 market, they released machines with standard Pentium III's however they ported their firmware (PROM) from their IRIX/MIPS machines to replace what would be standard BIOS in PC's.

OSX_x86 will no doubt only run on the new x86 macs. They won't support install on standard PC's cause of the firmware.

As for people talking bout Netburst. It's a development platform for god sake. Basically it's fine giving people P4 Mac's at moment to get through most of the porting issues with ppc->x86. I reckon the production mac_x86's will use the dual core Pentium M that will be released in 2006 (Yonah)

Also the P4 is currently available in 64bit form (iAMD64 as theinquirer likes to call it)

Who'd go out and buy a Mac TODAY. I was planning to get one in a month or two-- now I don't know.

This COULD be the end of AAPL.

It WILL be a much bigger blow to IBM than they realize. The XBox chip may have volume, but they won't have the margins the 970 had.

IF AAPL manages to not fold in the next 12 months, Red Hat is toast.

Effect on MSFT? Well, people have had OS's superior to Windows in every way EXCEPT number of apps. (I am talking about LINUX, obviously) for several years. Yet few have deleted XP and made the move up. Why? In part because IN GENERAL, it's not so easy to get a box with LINUX pre-installed, and OS installation on the PC side is traditionally something worrisome. AAPL's entry, clearly, would change that.

My best guess: in five years (to quote Highlander) "there can be only one. I hope that one is AAPL; at least I could live out my life with a good OS, if not a good CPU.

Welp, looks like MSFT has signed up to continue to make Office, supporting PPC and x86 w/ "fat" or "universal" binaries. That was the only point that I really cared about.

Also, Jobs said they are going to continue to release new PPC systems and continue to support them. I expect that I'll be able to run Office 12 for Mac and Leopard (10.5) on PPC, so when the powerbooks get another speed bump, I'll probably pick up a new PPC model.

- Kelson

http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch,+aligns+with+Intel/2100...

"""
After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that."

However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."
"""

Two important things:

President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that."

However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."


Does this mean Linux will never run on a Mac/Intel machine?

MS and Sun will pay for the rights to run Windows or Solaris x86 on a Mac/Intel but I don't think IBM will be given the rights to run Linux

Even if Apple doesn't allow OS X on home-built PC's, Dell's, etc. they're still at an advantage. I'm assuming they wont shut out running Windows on the hardware, but this way if you're nervous about switching you can try OS X without worying about having dead-end hardware if you don't like it.

I doubt anyone would want to switch from OS X to Windows but at least now you should be able to buy a mac without the wories of it becoming a possible paperweight if you don't like it.

Again, good move from Apple. Between this and the mini I'm wondering if they aren't after Microsoft in the long run.

1) Get a virus free Mac today?
2) Wait and get a machine that can run: OS X, Windows and Linux on x86-64?

Oh, and Screw You IBM.

I'm sorry, but how come the X-Box 360 is going to be runnig "tweaked" PPC 3.+ Ghz proccessors while Apple computers got stuck with PPCs running at 2.+ Ghz. Did they know that Apple was going to do this and thats why they just didn't deliver these speeds to Apple? maybe they knew that just the consoles were going to given them enough profit that they didn't need a partnership with Apple anymore?

You all really think everyone is going to run out and buy an x86 computer, because they DON'T WANT TO BUY AN x86 computer...

thats what you are essentially saying, when you talk about buying a dell because appled dropped powerpc....it makes no sense.

You will buy a windows machine, if you were going to buy a windows machine anyway...and you'll buy a mac if you want os X, and os X hasn't changed at all today.

The big impact this has today, is on Linux...Mac OS X will gain linux binary compatibility very shortly...and will overnight be the unix-variant that runs linux apps, that also runs Microsoft Office, Adobe CS, and other business apps...I cannot see anyone adopting a variant of linux...when Mac OS X runs linux binaries too...and I'm not surprised Microsoft supports this...apple co-opting linux, at least means that they get to deal with a competitor that plays by the same rules.

With Darwin available for x86 it's only a matter of time before someone hacks it up. Also with no difference in processor it will emulate quite nicely in vmware (or bochs whatever).

Remember at this time Yellow dog Linux is supported by apple on Macs. (They give you the same warrenty if you buy a mac from Yellow dog with YDL on it)

I doubt this will change.

There are reports at GameFAQs that this is the biggest world-wide historic event since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mind you I find that a bit extreme, it is a very significant event in the history of computing. Things will never be the same.

But on to DRM. How will the recently announced DRM capabilities of the Intel Pentium 4 CPU affect Mac OS X? Will Mac users, typically independent of such restrictions, but affected by the DRM-infested processors from Intel? Will our media be compromised?

Someone at arstechnica reported rumors that apple was concerned that IBM was deliberately keeping the power pcs slow to avoid competition between apple and its servers/workstations.

"how is that a big deal. it will still be an apple, not a commodity built Dell system.

And the article ddidnt say anything abotu being X86, but rather intel processor (they do make more than just x86s


this is not gonna change much, it will be the same thing as before, just a faster processors


this was a total nonanouncement because honestly, it wont change things much. apple delivers the total package and it is basically immaterial what one individual component happens to be"


What are you saying dude? `x86 processors are faster than a G5 processor' since when? x86-processors are *scrap* when compared to `G' processors. The same scrap that any apple computer became today: G processors just got their death sentence. In two years or so, no new applications - not anything. A friend of mine just bought a dual G5 ... what is he supposed to do with it? He invested 3,000$+ in buying it. In a best-case case scenario his mac will make it for a couple of years. A couple of years for a computer that (if apple kept on the G-line) would provide enough computational power for _at_least_ another 7 years. Think about it: It's over. Apple, with a fantastic move lost _too_ many customers today. I wish it good luck with the ones it got - even though I don't think it will have any.

IBM didn't go after marketshare.
So, they lost. Simple.

The interesting thing about this is the rumored(?) dual core laptop chip from Intel. Sweet to run, OS X, and using Virtual PC( Windows, Linux ). That's the ONLY up side.
Have to say goodbye to PowerPC.
That's the downer.

Apple Sales guy: yeah this costs more because, it uses better hardware than dell:::o^%&%!^$#$!^&((::: sorry better operating system than dell.

Customer: But I heard Bill's Horn, I mean longhorn is pretty stable and usable, and there are thousands of apps ready to be loaded on to it,,,,,

Apple Sales guy: but you get the exclusivity of having paid a few hundred dollars more than your neighbour who uses a crappy dell

Customer: %#(^$%*#(&)

I think a lot of people assume this means running Mac OS X on a PC. It doesn't. What this amounts to is an Intel x86 powered machine, probably still with the Open Firmware they have now and all the usual hardware restrictions.

Personally, I think that if they don't allow normal PC hardware out there to run fine on a Mac then they'll be blowing both their legs away because it's a fantastic opportunity to grow their market through the huge supply available. It wouldn't mean not being able to restrict their Macs either.

They're also in the happy position that if Intel mucks them about and pisses them off in the future then they can really easily make a line of Macs that use AMD without affecting anyone adversely in any way. I'm actually pretty confident we'll see that as Apple seem to be learning their lessons. Considering their recent run-ins with IBM I'm sure that situation makes Apple feel much more comfortable. Let's face it, IBM have a monopoly on producing PPC processors because they're the only company large enough to produce them.

Won't happen, the price of Macs will not go down by much and it will still be much cheeper to run Linux on Intel then Mac on Intel. The only people that are helped by this anouncement is Apple because they will keep up on the tech spec side.

What next, M$ licencing OS X, a PPC windows version, a four button Apple mouse, aplications that run on both os x and windows, OS X IBM compatible...

Must be interesting times at the Apple marketing department, after claiming that the G5 was so much faster and more advanced than anything Intel had produced. How they're gonna sell this?

Maybe apple wants to become a new Microsoft, producing a OS, some small entertainment devices and peripherals and online services, and this is just a step towards phasing out pc and server manufacturing. The iPod is already their main cash cow.

Would be interesting to see Longhorn and OS X.x running on the same machine though. Then we'll finally have some good benchmarks.

If apple made OS X run on any x86 pc, they could easily have a 50% market share, but with Longhorn having many of the same features there isn't much reason for a pc user to switch to apple now.

for the people here who just said apple commited suicide you are crazy this is a major even in the computer industry that is going to turn things upside down. my prediction because a shift to intel chips macs will finally be speed competive with pc's and second because of the shift to intel they will be able to market machines at a lower cost. apple is not stupid they know that there is a huge market dieing for apple computers and the apple mindset at a reasonable price point.

my prediction apple is having a rebirth here and along with linux in 10 years they will surpass gates and company for os market share for consumer level computers. microsoft needs to really take this as a wakeup call and get there act together because consumers are tired of there products and want something fresh that works and they see it in apples some of this might be a missconception on there part but apple is going to come out on top here.

Apple will release their boxes with Intel chips and their Mac Roms and Openfirmware.
Someone soon, will manage to create a hack that will load the roms and firmware in memory for the OS X to think they are running in an Apple created Intel mobo.

but that is the beauty in this. Apple can now retain its margins and charge lower prices. Apple may only cost a little more than a dell and it will actually be because of the better OS and probably higher quality parts/box.

FTA:
"However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac.""

I still believe that there will be issues via BIOS that will prevent people from running OS X on standard White Box hardware.

See the post entitled "FIRMWARE".

For some strange irony, head over to http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/

What happens if Microsoft releases a "Windows Platform Runtime" package for these new macs to run Windows software?

There would be no business case for writing native OSX apps.

It looks like PowerPC has left the PC world and now its destiny is in the world of the GC (game console).

I think custom x86 motherboards will be the key piece of hardware that will make it a mac. MB's are easier and cheaper to customize than the cpu. An Intel MB with a little bit of extra code in the bios for the OS to check would all that is needed to keep Apple x86 OS running only on Apple hardware. They might use stock MB's and the only difference between Apple and non-Apple is the bios. That would be the simplest and cheapest method of hardware lockdown.

Other, non-Apple motherboards wouldn't have the special bios and so could be blocked at the OS level. This is speculation of course, and we will all have to wait and see what happens.

1) I really don't understand the mac-loyalists rants like "oh apple is doomed, oh crazy Steve". Macs have used common CPUs before the powerPC transitions and they'll use common CPUs in the future. What's the problem with that? Do they feel less Macintoshes?
2) What is really unique to the Mac today is the overall design. Hardware AND (mostly) software. OsX IS far better work-friendly and productive than windows.
3) OSX runs on P4 hardware today. Maybe it will run on unmodified PCs in the future, just like it did on Atari STs and Amigas in the past. Would it be officially supported by Apple or through VMWare, I really don't care. All I know is that I'll probably be able to run OsX on boxes I've built. And that's not great, that's outstanding.
4) Apple will have to worry less about making CPUs and more about designing the units, refining the OS etc. They'll innovate using existing tecnologies (like they did with the iPod) without having to reinvent them.
5) To those saying that Apple is not a serious company, and that this is the beginning of the end, I might remind that that we're talking about a company able to produce constant upgrades of its OS year after year while mantaining two versions of the same os for different platforms in-house. Think about the OS industry as a whole and the competition attitude. Think about Microsoft inability to push innovation and fast-paced, featuyre rich upgrades. My XPs are years old and while perfectly updated still lacks features found in other Oses.

In the end, a bold, incredible move by Apple. A move for the good.

> We're getting a demonstaration of Mathematica at work. It's
> quite impressive, of course, and it's working on an Intel
> Mac. - posted by Dave

Far more impressive than the other two major x86 Mathematica installs, I'm sure. (Sarcasm)

What I find most-interesting here is Apple again dragging out Wolfram's flagship CAS for parading a new processor. When they switched to the PPC970, they had them trumpet how much better the Mac port was than the x86 port performance-wise. Now they're using them to show how simple it will be for developers to port their software to the new Mac/x86. I don't understand why Apple keeps using Wolfram for their propaganda. What percentage of Mac users even own a license for Mathematica?

I should mention that Mathematica's kernel where the platform-specific computational code resides is both highly-optimized for the x86 already and GUI-agnostic. There should be preciously little in the GUI that would require any modification--especially because they have their very-own multiplatform toolkit that they use for constructing Mathematica. Any of the changes necessary would be very-localized. I wouldn't be surprised if their modifications were largely conditional compilation changes.

In other words, programs designed to be multiplatform are much easier to port. That really doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, I'm sure. It unfortunately doesn't mean that people with performance-critical code for the PPC (say a lot of Altivec) are going to have equally-painless transitions if they don't already have a deep investment in an x86-optimized backend.

On the other hand, companies that have deep-investments in x86-optimized codepaths will probably be intrigued by the prospect of a Mac/x86 market. Porting suddenly becomes much less expensive.

Cedega might have a customer base that isn't averse to paying actual money to them if they can offer a wide-range of DirectX titles painlessly to Mac/x86, too.

I'm interested in the performance figures of Rosetta. While I suspect that I'll buy a Mac/x86 and not have very much concern about existing software, I'm interested in its performance and design from an academic perspective.

Now all Linux apps will work on Mac OSX-86 with little, if any work. The Mac just opened itself up to a whole world of apps. Hopefully, Java developers will benefit as well. Sun should now be able to release the latest Java for the Mac as easily as it now does for Windows and Linux.

Not with Apple's consent, but this will make emulators easier, make whitebox hacks easy etc.

According to the industry, I shouldn't be able to rip DVDs with free software either, yet I can. I can assure you people will get this working on whiteboxes. Steve just removed 99% of the roadblock to get OSX available on Dell computers, the last 1% can be done by the community.

PearPC and its ilk just became viable.

Please don't tell me "wrong", because you were likely one of the people swearing up and down a week ago that OSX would never run on x86, or when you heard the Intel rumours, went nuts stating over and over again that Intel != x86, because you just couldn't stand the idea of eating crow. Face it, a lot of people were wrong on this.

Is it just me or does anyone else find it really weird that they'd announce that x86 Mac's would be around in one year? Who the hell would buy a Mac now knowing that they're moving in another direction in a year? Mind you Apple will no doubt support G4/G5's for some time to come, it's just strikes me as odd.

Doubly, I finally "get" the Linux on PPC thing. I just hope Apple isn't too serious about locking us onto specific boxes with some sort of chip-level trick (See "Linux on PPC thing..." -- I've learned my lesson). Instead I hope they're implying some sort of custom Intel chip.

Lastly, P4? I thought everyone and their mother knew AMD makes a better x86 chip?

"What happens if Microsoft releases a "Windows Platform Runtime" package for these new macs to run Windows software?

There would be no business case for writing native OSX apps. "

Somebody answer THIS.

"Lastly, P4? I thought everyone and their mother knew AMD makes a better x86 chip?"

AMD has supply and quality problems that is why no major vender uses them as their main processer line. Plus Intel can offer better prices.

this means that Mac users will no longer have to wait for compatible versions of graphics cards to be produced 6 months after their release for PCs.

Virtual PC for Mac should be quite fast now once they are running on the same processor architectures.

..even deeper in Apple's labs, a side project has been operating with every version of OS8,9 and X running on a 68060 box.

"What happens if Microsoft releases a "Windows Platform Runtime" package for these new macs to run Windows software?

There would be no business case for writing native OSX apps. "

Somebody answer THIS.

I doubt that. There's a lot of OS X specific features that are rather enticing for developers, e.g. CoreData.

I predict that by this Christmas Apple will be ahead of schedual and release a cool new "Intel based" Apple Macintosh running all the iApps, Final Cut, Motion, Shake and Photoshop.

What the heck took them so long to switch anyways! IBM, Moto have been dogs.....slow!

In fact this is the greatest move Apple could do, think of it:


- They are not going to prevent people from running windows on their hardware, and they would be foolish to do so ! Every mac-x86 buyer will be able to run windows especially games, something mac PPC could always dream of. You get best of both world
- being able to run windows on mac hardware will be good for microsoft (more users) and very bad for linux (less potential users)

I think in the very long term they are after microsoft. It is very likely at some point that macos x86 will be hacked to run on some non-mac hardware but that will be totally illegal anyway...

Interesting also that all this was announced on D-Day? Have the beaches finally been breached? Is this Steves way of saying "let the battle begin"?

Intel processors provide more performance per watt than PowerPC processors do, said Jobs. "When we look at future roadmaps, mid-2006 and beyond, we see PoweRPC gives us 15 units of perfomance per watt, but Intel's roadmap gives us 70. And so this tells us what we have to do," he explained.

IBM, What Have You Done?!?

I'd like Apple to offer Macs with AMD X2 or Opteron inside - Quote from Anandtech :

"The most ironic part of it all? Apple's biggest reason for moving happens to be performance per watt, where according to Apple, Intel will significantly outperform the PowerPC starting in 2006 and moving forward:

Why is that ironic? Because all AnandTech readers know that presently AMD provides far better performance per watt than Intel. During the keynote, Steve never mentioned whether or not you'd be able to run non-Intel x86 processors on the new port of OS X. We'd guess that AMD CPUs would have no problem running, but driver support for AMD platforms may not necessarily be there. "

Give me AMD x86-64's any day for the desktop.

Anon

The processors IBM is producing for Microsoft are not identical to the processors used by Apple. The PPC is a diverse line of processors with varying-degrees of compatible ISAs. Just because IBM is delivering what Microsoft requires for the next three years for the XBox 360 doesn't mean that it is going to deliver what Apple needs to be performance-competitive for years to come.

This is a pretty good long-term decision, and Mac users should really be pleased that they'll be moving to a platform that regularly meets performance improvement deadlines, instead of risking being stuck in the position they were in with the G4, or even the current iBook/Powerbook. I'm still not certain why they opted for Intel over AMD, when AMD could easily fab Apple's current requirements and their processor architecture has been shining.

"AMD has supply and quality problems that is why no major vender uses them as their main processer line. Plus Intel can offer better prices."

Simply not true. AMD has no more problems than Intel.

They're bravely going where they need to go.

Instead of hanging onto IBM's vaporware tentacles, they're foraging forward into an oblique future. This move could kill them, but I think not... Good things will come of this in the end.

Even if someone does hack the Intel version of OX X to run on generic hardware, who is going to write the drivers for, say, wireless cards, the chipsets on AMD (and non-Intel Intel systems, like VIA, nVidia, ATI, etc.). Just getting OS X to agree to install itself on a given system is pointless ... how could OS X for Intel install onto my AMD64 laptop? No hardware companies would bother to write drivers for an OS that doens't officially exist (OS X on commodity hardware).

If Apple doesn't want OS X on generic hardware, it won't work on generic hardware. At least, it won't work well enough to be usable.

..to debut with some of the BeOS/Zeta userland.

Well, I might have BeOS run on a Mac, after all. Live is a fascinating and warped thing.

""What happens if Microsoft releases a "Windows Platform Runtime" package for these new macs to run Windows software?

There would be no business case for writing native OSX apps. "

Somebody answer THIS."

Well, because of "Cocoa", it is allegedly MUCH easier to write for OS X than Windoze-- anyone out there who has done it and can comment?

I agree they maybe after MS and windows.

"I just hope Apple isn't too serious about locking us onto specific boxes with some sort of chip-level trick (See "Linux on PPC thing..." -- I've learned my lesson). Instead I hope they're implying some sort of custo.."

I think they will "LOCK" it tight and continue locking it in different ways.

"Windows Platform Runtime".

1) They Could. But, it wouldn't look or work native. They'd lose sales.
2) Which would allow an Office Suite on Mac to gain sufficient market share and praise to attack the Windows base.

Difference is that Intel has three times as many plants and can get over their problems much quicker. Also hey have much more money to make sure they do.

If AMD was so good then why do Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway and now APPL still use Intel?

x86 is more open than PPC. PPC is mostly open for the most part but not as open as SPARC. x86 is open for everyone since intel holds an almost monopoly on it.

AMD has had a bad reputation for their previous x86 CPUs. The Athlon XP and Duron Lines sucked, they had a high failure rate and had no heat protection like intel's did.

Now, Athlon 64 FX & Opteron are VERY VERY good processors, they just cost too much in my opinion. They are rock solid and are excellent in a server environment.

I think Apple should use Opterons and Athlon 64 FX's because they are so awsome but they probably did not because they are too expensive and amd has a bad reputaiton

intel was probably a better choice, since most non-computer nerd people think amd is "generic" which they kinda are.

So what if the instruction set is different. Who cares?? This means that the Mac will have a solid future and not live in a world with just a few CPUs

you all were VERY wrong. for a long time. I don't think I've ever seen so many wrong people. It's like watching folks get tossed out of the matrix. You should see the looks on your faces!


meh - this only affects the fanboys, really.

>AMD has supply and quality problems that is why no major vender uses them as their main processer line. Plus Intel can offer better prices.

And intel chipset just owns...Via or nvidia ( barely better ) chipset for an apple? Let me laugh~
Finally less company for making the motherboard the better it is.

and i was going ot switch over to apple too. not anymore. now i cant wait for longhorn. it's almost like steve wantst o kill apple

AMD is not all that profitable compared to intel.

Intel is on SOLID financial ground.

Oh yeah, Intel was an early investor in Apple too which probably helped. They are coming together again.. aww how sweeet

Even if someone does hack the Intel version of OX X to run on generic hardware, who is going to write the drivers for, say, wireless cards, the chipsets on AMD (and non-Intel Intel systems, like VIA, nVidia, ATI, etc.).

Couldn't OSS enthusiasts write these using Darwin x86?

""Even if someone does hack the Intel version of OX X to run on generic hardware, who is going to write the drivers for, say, wireless cards, the chipsets on AMD (and non-Intel Intel systems, like VIA, nVidia, ATI, etc.)."

Couldn't OSS enthusiasts write these using Darwin x86?""

Just a guess, but I believe the DRM on new Intel chips will work nicely when locking down MOSX on Apple hardware.

and then the platform issue is largely irrelevant. it runs where it runs best. let's be pragmatic about it, folks.

Personally if at some point there will be Apply Laptop runing OS X *and* the same laptop can run Windows (whatever flavor is available at that point) with no problems, I would be delighted have a dual boot of Windows and OS X on the same machine. Now I have windows and RH Linux on my laptop, and Linux simply can't take advantage of all hardware options I have on my laptop.

>If AMD was so good then why do Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway and
>now APPL still use Intel?

because Intel is a much more famous brand name and that sells better to computer illiterates?

Often when Apple make a big announcement it immediately appears on apple.com. Not so with this.
This was announced at a Developer conference, Apple knows it core market doesn't care. Apple makes its x millions a year selling to non-techie customers, people who barely comprehend what a processor is, far less who makes it. Sure, some people may not buy a Mac now because its "intel", but they will be a small fraction Apples customers. The people who buy the products who pay the wages at Apple aren't going to care in twelve months when the new 4 Ghz Mac Mini retailing at $375 appears in the local mall, and it also comes with all the software they need to do the things they want with their new computer ("iLife").
As for the professional crowd, pre-press: Adobe/Macromedia are on board, microsoft are on board, AFAIK most of the important video stuff is made by Apple anyway, so they are all happy. I think this is a non-event. The biggest news is that, if you want, you can buy an Apple computer and dual boot Windows with it.

"Personally if at some point there will be Apply Laptop runing OS X *and* the same laptop can run Windows (whatever flavor is available at that point) with no problems"

If anything, VPC will run at near system speed. You can literally run your Windows within MOSX.

I will mark the Mac off my shopping list until 2006 because why would I want to buy a mac that uses PPC when they are about to switch to PPC?

This will hurt apple's sales greatly!

>They might use stock MB's and the only difference between Apple and non-Apple is the bios.

I certainly hope so, but since it takes only a few minutes to reflash the bios I really don't think so.

Couldn't OSS enthusiasts write these using Darwin x86?

You're talking about an entire underground movement to port drivers to an illegal platform. Given how sue-happy Apple has been in the past, I don't think it'd work. Every time some website went up with info about OS X on generic hardware Apple would just start screaming "DMCA!" and quash it.

Maybe hacked OS X on commodity hardware with homegrown drivers stolen from Linux will become the OS of choice for the warez and script kiddies in the future. Who knows.

> The NetBurst architecture (Pentium 4) is on its last few
> breathes... then again it dual cores would play much better
> in OSX anyhow.

There's nothing about OS X that makes it superior for multithreaded development than NT or Linux. Consumer Power Macs simply shipped with two processors, whereas most PC manufacturers didn't opt for the more-expensive workstation/server processors and chipsets from AMD and Intel because there was little performance reason for the program typically used by their customers to justify the cost. Intel also didn't exactly make it friendly to do so chipset-wise, either.

Apple is most-likely going to be deploying on the future of Pentium-M line in the long-term, since that's where Intel is moving.

"Difference is that Intel has three times as many plants and can get over their problems much quicker. Also hey have much more money to make sure they do.

If AMD was so good then why do Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway and now APPL still use Intel?"

If Mac OS X is so good why do Windows have more than 90% of the market?

Dell, HP/Compaq and Gateway probably have binding contracts with Intel (correct me if I'm wrong but they also don't sell computers without windows).

Why not have AMD in your servers (which has a smaller volume of sales), Intel in your consumer systems, and PowerPC in your high end workstations?

It's only because of Steve's ego that he's making the switch wholesale - to get back at IBM for making him look like a fool for his '3.0Ghz' promise.

PowerPC on floating point operations SLAUGHTER Intel chips....can you really believe they are going to start selling their XServe's with a P4 inside? Even Dell/HP sell their servers with Xeon's in them.

.. it's great. In the end it will. I guess all our PPCs boxes are SETI@Home candidates in about 4/5 years. In the mean time, the tiger eat their youngs

If it works -tiger- why selling your box. In two or three years, you'd be using another box anyways. So don't be fool. Do not sell your PPC today Keep it forever.

I was excited about this until I read this update..
Poor decision Apple!!

The hardware may be moving to Intel but OSX will still be propritary to Apple hardware. The G5 is the fastest processor on the planet. What's the point?

yeah right! Pay prwmium prices for x86 ultracommoditized crapitecture?!

6/6/2005 R.I.P. Apple

Anyone know of any decent UltraSPARC, ppc970, ARM, or other RISC arch based desktop machines/boards?

i dont know why people are so upset and saying things like "its over". its still a mac, still running os x, still running the same apps. if you didnt open it up and actually look inside you would never know anything changed. plus there may be the added bonus of being able to run windows off a partition(once someone comes up with a hack to do it) so i see this as added value, nothing lost.

I have no trouble with Apple switching to x86. They've switched before, and assuming they don't go out of business, they'll switch to something else in the future.

The _BIG_ problem is how they timed this switch... namely, it won't occur for another year and won't be finished for another year after that. Who's the idiot who thought that would work? Someone who's never worked with computers obviously.

Apple's last switch to PowerPC worked because the machines and OS were available at the instant the switch was announced. One day it was 68K, and the next everything is PPC. No waiting a year or two.

See, most people who were thinking of moving to Apple will now wait for the new machines. Who in their right mind will buy a machine with only two or three years of life in it? Windows people scratch their head at that since Windows forces them to upgrade every other year anyway.

The problem is Mac people DON'T upgrade every other year. Most Mac people keep their Macs from five to eight years. No Mac user will buy a current G5 as it no longer has five to eight years of life.

Apple WILL lose vast amounts of money in the next two years. Fortunately for Apple, they have billions in the bank. They will eat through most of it as G5 sales tank and people wait for the new machines.

On the plus side, looks like collectors will be able to pick up some good bargains for their collection of obsolete computers.

You're talking about an entire underground movement to port drivers to an illegal platform.

Darwin/x86 is an entirely legal platform. It just so happens it's the core for Mac OS X, and drivers written for the former will work on the latter. Plus, there is nothing Apple can do to stop you from writing whatever drivers you want for their OS, just like they can't stop you from writing whatever programs you want.

Indeed, its not even clear that Apple can stop you from running OS X on whatever PC you want. If you clean-room reimplement the Apple BIOS, you can run it on whatever you want and Apple has no legal standing to stop you. Remember: copyright law gives authors no control over how you can use a work, just over how you can copy the work. If I want to take a book that some guy spent 20 years painstakingly crafting and using its pages for toilet paper, there is nothing he can do to stop me.

Apple the perennial losers, if they could only pull their heads out just far enough they'd have partnered with AMD instead.

How many other processor companies can they jump ship to? AMD, I guess.

I'm torn, I wanted to buy a new machine in the next few months. I may have to wait the year or so while the new Intel-based machines come into play. i will get one though. I like the Apple Experience and the processor speed gains will be better now. I don't condemn Apple for this, though it was startling news. They're doing the switch the smart way. The transition has already been happening behind the scenes so all major software vendors are on board. That is truly the important thing.

The bigger issue with companies like SGI is that high end hardware was moving closer towards what you could get out of a standard desktop. Moving x86 for them just proved to people that truth. That, and poor management.

Can't comment on Be too much, but my guess is the apps weren't there (MS, Adobe) to where they had any leverage. That, and poor management (I'm sensing a trend).

This is a different situation for Apple. They truly are just going for new chips. Not white-boxing their cash cow. They are a healthy company as of late. This will be a good decision.

quote:
If I want to take a book that some guy spent 20 years painstakingly crafting and using its pages for toilet paper, there is nothing he can do to stop me.

>all he has to do is spread a rumor that the book was printed on hemp paper, then you'll probably smoke it instead

It will be a run-of-the-mill P4 with a custom chipset and BIOS. OS X will only come with support for these, and will crap on startup if it's run on something else. This will be hacked, and some people will be running OS X with ported drivers on their PCs and no one will care. The number of people that would buy a Mac that would put up with that process has to hover somewhere around insignificant.
In other good news Linux users might care to develop a GNUStep-derived WINE-line program to run proprietary Mac programs.

I am starting to feel a little bittersweet about this. I think the biggest reason why I was bummed was because I was saving up to buy a PowerMac G5 this summer. Because of this announcement, I won't be buying a Mac until they release their Intel PowerMacs. I still feel that x86 sucks (I know these reasons are intangible to end users...I'm an idealistic bastard), but right now they are faster than any PPC out there apparently.

Well, here's to next year where I can get a Mac with PCI-Express and DDR2. I would say BTX, but Apple will probably have their own propriatery formfactor.

Anyone get their hands on Rosetta? Looks like PearPC is now doomed to being an acedemic tool to study RISC architecture.

-Eric

as they intend to only allow MacOS-X (by lisence or by technology) to run on Apple hardware this is quite irrelevant.

The only thing that will happen is that Mac users will get pissed when they no longer can use their old software for new hardware. Cheaper processors may make the price of a new mac to drop somewhat, but that doesn't matter much as the important factor in platform choise is the availability of software. In this field Microsoft rules. Just look at Linux. Today the usability of Linux is better than that of Windows XP still we don't see any massive deployments of Linux desktop even if the price is much lower.

If they had allowed it to run on generic intel boxes, it could have been a great competitor to MS Longhorn, but as it is I doubt it will change the balance of the market.

I think apple cannot shock the world with a sudden transition to intel TODAY.

so they have this lovely two year plan...guess what, plans change.

They'll be selling systems by Christmas.

Yes, I saw VPC in action and in fact was absolutly blown away with the fact how quickly Windows came up on fairly low end Apple laptop. Something one must see to believe.

And yet I would guess the program which takes say, a couple of minutes to run on native platform (computationally extensive staff, typesetting of very large document) probably will take at least 3 minutes (or more? are there any benchmarks of that kind?) to run under VPC. Unless of course VPC has smarts to keep some of the converted code in a cache or something like that, don't know. In any case, emulators are nice given you have no other choice. Runing things natively is better --- if you can.

Intel killed your mother?

Perhaps now, IBM can focus their resources on getting Linux to run efficiently and without qualms on PPC. I wonder if this will make Linux the de facto software platform for the PPC arch in the future.

I hope he means source code. A binaries only core would not be acceptable nowadays. Open source is standard.

I wonder if red box is still lurking somewhere in the the deepest corners of Cupertino.

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4"... ...

It isn't so bad, that Xeon is a 64Bits processor.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/xeon/index.htm

This could very well be the end of Apple.

We've been Punked!!!

This will give current x86 and windows a better choice in Apple Computers because they will be able to dual boot, hopefully without restarting into Windows or Linux.

I predict a Intel Based Mac by Apple by Christmas. I personally want to run 3d Studio Max in OS X someday!

This is the end of Linux on power.
There isn't any popular platform now running Power.
Get your Mini's while they last.
Linus can go back to x86.

PowerPC on floating point operations SLAUGHTER Intel chips....

Except they don't, unless you're talking about POWER4/5 anyway. An Opteron 248 (2.2GHz) with the Pathscale compiler gets 1691 on specfp. The top Opteron (2.6GHz) breaks 2000 without the Pathscale compiler. The 2.2GHz PPC970 (presumably using IBM's XLC compiler, since IBM submitted that result), get's 1241. A 3.6GHz Xeon gets 1701. Of course, the Power5 at 1.9GHz get's close to 2800! These last four results are all from IBM (the 970, the Opteron, and the Xeon are all from IBM's L/H/J20 BladeServer line), so they should be pretty comparable.

Yeah right. What are you going to buy instead?

LOL some Mac-Zealots are so overly reacting to this.....this is a step forward.

Well this is a sad day. It seems that x86 has once again won the day in the consumer PC market with little to no chance of anything more modern taking over.

I wonder if Cell could be made to run cool and if it had good integer performance Apple might do an about turn and change their minds before the release in 2006. I doubt it.

But now we will all have to run old cruddy x86. Steve can't even lie to us anymore about PPC being more powerful.

Using DeCSS to watch a movie (i do that all the time for linux) is a bit different than using it to copy one you just rented at blockbuster.

people will maybe get OSX to run (unless its dependant on a firmware, or chipset. but even if they do, they will know they are breaking the law, and making copies of software when they shouldnt be.


and second of all, whogives a shit about those people. no one. they dotn count cause they are not paying for the product to begin with.

I have been reading this article on a Dell X1. Its really a samsung. It's fanless 2.7 lbs subnotebook Pentium M 1.1 ULV. I think the reason why apple ditched IBM is because of notebooks. With laptops outpacing desktops, Apple knows the PPC sucks for notebooks. And since Intel (thanks in part to isreal design team) is the only company making viable laptop processors in any volume. They really had no choice.

I'll be buying one of the last PowerPC based PowerMacs when they come out and putting them alongside my other museum pieces:

Grayscale SE/30, running at 50Mhz
NeXT Dimension Turbo Cube

Each one the pinnacle of computer engineering for it's time.

RIP PowerPC....

"So Apple want me to use a more power-hungry chip, that needs more cooling, and they want me to go back to 32 bit computing?"

I believe the G5 PPC's use more power and are watercooled?

So does this mean that iMac doppleganger that Intel was showing to the press a week ago really is the x86 version of the iMac?

This is BS. It'll already be running on x86 and they're still going to be difficult about it. If their hardware is a superior as they say then they shouldn't be worried about people running OS X on white boxes and such.

Price, you don't think straight. It is impossible to support correctly white boxes and RANDOM hardware. Apple can NOT write drivers for thousands of peripherals, not even if they had the full hardware specs -- which they don't. Opening OSX to white boxes means the DEATH of the Mac EXPERIENCE.

So, no, PRAY that OSX won't do the same mistake BeOS did. OSX should only run on Apple PCs.

http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+th...ml?tag=nefd.top

"After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that."

So the new Intel Macs are just standard PC's capable of running Windows.

"However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said."

So then the new Intel Macs must have a chip of some sort that OSX will search for on bootup to verify it's an Apple/Intel Mac. But standard enough for Windows to run on it.
I'm sure we'll be seeing a patch to allow OSX to run on any PC even before it's release next June.

DDR2, PCI-x, SATA and SLI were due to x86!

Umn....not really DUE to x86. These were due to companies wanting generally higher performance to solve (various) bandwidth bottlenecks. They are ALL processor agnostic. I'd say server companies pushed for these more. Oh, and SLI isn't even properly standardized. ATI and nVidia both do it completely differently. The ONLY thing x86 provided was an acid test platform so that companies could say "it works with this, so it's ready for primetime".

If these technologies weren't around, Apple would have invented something and submitted it as a standard (see Firewire).

--JM

Earlier...before I heard the news, I did a websearch for live coverage of WWDC. I ended up finding someone's notes from the 2003 event, and--lo and behold--there was Poppa Steve proclaiming the G5 to be the best processor on the planet.

Ha ha ha....way to go Poppa Steve.

This doesn't change anything for me...my 6 month old eMac is still slow and Tiger is still buggy.

I really really really love watching the Mac faithful squirm.

I don't think I agree. Apple doesn't have to support OS X on whitebox machines to allow it to run. Apple's core market won't use OS X on whitebox's anyway (if its unsupported and unadvertised), but they would be able to build up their geek niche a bit, a contingent that's always been good for evangelism. Plus, with OS X releases $129 apiece and people seeming happy to buy a new one every year, it'd help their software sales a bit too.

Also, I don't think the hardware support thing is as easy as its made out to be. These days, most of the "incompatible" hardware is USB or Firewire peripherals. Even if you keep people from putting in new PCI cards, they'll still have the support issues of people wondering why their Logitech USB Camera won't work.

"We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."

I think Apple is too used to the "I just point, click and print" crowd they've always had. I give it a month after the release before their work is reverse engineered.

As an original Mac user for more than 12 years now, I am really sorry for all the fans. :-((((((

I really didn't expect this!!

:-(((((((((((

"I felt a great disturbance in the mac world, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. ..."

Couldn't you be a little more creative? This comment was posted on Slashdot as well.

Hmmm, any ressemblance anyone?

I think it is a good move for Apple. Now I just hope they will also use AMD processors WHICH are the only speed-king!

Rayiner, you are wrong here. It is all about PERCEPTION. When BeOS was not able to run well on all PPCs and all x86s and the reply from Be was "buy a BeBox instead", these people HATED BeOS. They thought that it was "a bad OS, it just doesn't work". No matter if it was running perfectly on the hardware it was supposed to: the BeBox.

Apple will NOT want to risk people get a bad Mac experience whatsoever. Locking-in Mac OS X to Apple PCs is the right solution.

Why would Apple intentionally cut out 100% of the currently running x86 systems from running OSX. Seems like a bizzare move on the part of Apple! I guess they have to keep their secret cult motif?

I'm not a big Mac person.. I mean I love Mac OS X but, I've only owned 1 Mac and that's the G3 B/W I'm using right now(Running Tiger).. I got it off ebay a while back. I love it because of how simple everything is. Considering, old apps will run on the new boxes, we'll see faster machines, especially for the laptops, and potentially lower prices(especially for Video Card upgrades?). What's the problem? It sounds good to me, as long as they get the developers working to release the native stuff.

>Couldn't you be a little more creative? This comment was posted on Slashdot as well.

Not really, I posted it here first, then on slashdot prior anyone else, you can look at the time frame.

BFG: "I guess they have to keep their secret cult motif?"

They also don't want to have to support all the people buying $300 PCs and expecting them to just work with OS X.

What in the hell are you babbling about?

honestly, you had a premade tirade already and just needed an excuse to let loose, but you didnt even address what i said, rather just got out knocking x86 even though i am fairly certain you havent written anything that it would matter which architecture you are on.


next time, respond to what people wrote, not what you think they should have said so you can say what you origianlyl wanted to

... to run osx un my xbox

"They also don't want to have to support all the people buying $300 PCs and expecting them to just work with OS X."

What's there to support? Printers work, digital cameras, scanners, Nvidia and ATI video cards all work. It's up to the hardware manufacturers to release drivers with thier products. Not every piece of hardware I own works out of the box with Windows and it isn't an issue.

That is a good point, but I see no reason for there to be a technical lockout keeping OS X on Apple machines. Apple's party line can easily be "OS X only works on Apple x86", it doesn't actually have to be technically true.

At the end of the day, OS X will run on whitebox PCs. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of how long. Apple can do it the easy way, and get them some points from a small but important market niche, or they can do it the hard way.

And to be completely honest, it is reasonable that OS X should work on any PC. Ford doesn't tell you where you can drive your car, and Apple shouldn't be able to tell you where you can use your OS. Once money has changed hands, the relationship is over --- I've got my one copy license, and I'm going to do whatever I want with it, save copy it further. Now, Apple is entirely within their rights to put up barriers to uses it doesn't want, but similarly, I'm entirely within my rights to circumvent those barriers.

I ain't wainting for the bug ridden conversion process to end.
I'll be buying 1 last Apple now, and wait it out for the dust to settle.

We'll see if all this software runs flawlessly.
Oh, and one last time: Screw you IBM.

Sorry for the angry sounding title, but I wanted the chance to try OS X without having to buy antother system, oh well I have AMD anyway/

What are you smoking ?

Where are the "thousands" of peripherals that Apple will have to support ? The most important ones (videocards, soundcards, printers etc) are already supported. As long as there exist opensource drivers (from freebsd, linux, whatever) support for OSX will be trivial.

No matter what you say, there is no way in hell that OsX
will *not* run on commodity hardware. At first it will
probably be through firmware bypassing hacks etc (trivial)
but sooner rather than later it will be painless for someone
to install it on any "standard pc" of his choice.
Nextstep and Openstep were both operating systems "tailored"
for a specific "x86". This didnt stop anyone developing
extra drivers. The result: Nextstep and Openstep run on
pretty much anything these days. This proves that
the ridiculus facts that some ppl in here love to proclaim
(custom chipsets and the whole lot) are trivial to
circumvent.

The real point is that since OsX will run on x86, Steve
would be stupid not to take on Microsoft. I believe that
this is exactly his long term plan. Slowly shift focus
to x86 and then "open the gates" and officially allow OsX
to run on everything. There is no way in hell that Jobs
being the ambitious man that he is, will feel satisfied
with the tiny market share that a locked-down Mac solution
would offer. With the announcement today, he is working
towards that goal.

It is time to forget all you ever knew about the power pc!
Wow that didnt take long.

So finally, at last, we will be able to own cool looking computers with a safe virus free OS without having to run our software at one third the speed of the neighbours windows infested three hundred pound dell.

One of the big reasons I have been a Mac user is they are different. PowerPC not Intel or AMD! The PowerPC has been the chip since I was studying computer architecture in college in the early 90's. It was superior in design then and still is. Stevo you have been trumpeting the greatness of PowerPC over Intel for years with numerous commercials, presentations, etc. and now you go to the dark side. I am wondering how anyone could possibly believe you anymore. I have to say I am pretty disgusted and wondering if I should even stick with Apple systems in the future. OS X just blows Windows away and that may be strong enough to keep me going but man I am not a happy camper right now and Apple you are going to have to do something incredible to dig yourselves out of this hole you just dug for yourselves.

"We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."

phew, one more virus Windows users don't have to worry about.

Seriously, I see no reason anymore to ever buy a mac. Linux has everything the Mac does, and it's completely free. And the above quote means that Mac will always be relegated to last place, below even Linux, since Windows users cannot simply "switch" to the Mac OS without buying Apple's expensive hardware.

You are really wrong. You are the one who is smoking stuff and have no idea about the hardware compatibility nightmares. Ever stumbled onto freaked up BIOS and buggy chipsets on x86? Probably not. But most of us have. They are impossible to get the work right. Apple will kill itself if they open OSX.

>Steve would be stupid not to take on Microsoft.

Steve would be stupid if he actually will.

I had TWO companies dying before my eyes for taking on MS. One was the one I was working for and one my husband was (Be). I have enough industry knowledge and experience competing with MS in the OS dpt. It's stupid to even think about it.

>Why would Apple intentionally cut out 100% of the currently running x86 systems from running OSX. Seems like a bizzare move on the part of Apple! I guess they have to keep their secret cult motif?

Because it allows them to move forward, but without changing the companies existing strategies. Apple sells a computing experience. The user should not care about what is in the box, just what is on the screen. That is what Apple does now, this is what they want to do in the future. Maybe somewhere down the road they may decide to open things up, but for now, this is just another step down the same road.

Why do you think Red Hat does not care about Linux on the *common* desktop? Because they realize the impossibility -- their engineers have said that MANY times in their blogs.

Apple has a better chance, but DIRECT competition is NOT in favor of Apple or anyone else's for that matter.

Please do not take the above comment out of context. It was meant to be part of my earlier reply to Mexican. Reading it "alone" it won't give the correct picture of what I am trying to illustrate.

The real question is, will I be able to dual boot Mac OSX on Mac hardware with Windows or Linux?

I believe the G5 PPC's use more power and are watercooled?

No, G5's use FAR less power than P4's. The problem was that the G5's Apple was getting were not rated at the speed they wanted, so they overclocked then. The more you cool a chip, the more you can overclock it. The watercooling of the G5 has nothing to do with power and everything to do with increasing the clockrate.

Things change. IBM was blowing smoke up Steve's ass about what he could expect in the future. Steve went and repeated the lies, thinking they were truth. It doesn't matter a bit if PPC is "superior" in some way to X86 if the PPC can't keep up with X86 in the real world.

Should Apple just keep using obsolete G4s in the Powerbook line forever? Or should they just throw out the sleek Powerbook design and kludge together a big ugly monster that can dissipate the heat from a G5? Then it wouldn't be a Powerbook anymore, would it?

What should Jobs do? Just keep spouting the IBM propaganda, now that it's been PROVEN false, and hope that if he ignores the problem then maybe it'll all just go away or the design fairy will leave a 3Ghz G5 under his pillow?

Only an idiot stays the course no matter what just because "that's what I said and I'm sticking to it." Things changed, Jobs adapted. Why that's so horrifying to so many people is a real mystery to me.

This is a sad day! - To think that only 4months ago I bought a brand new top of the range Powerbook only to find it will be obsolete within the next year. It will probably have very litte resale value and will end up as a collector's item. I can understand why they had to do it, it's just disappointed me.

I made a switch from Microsoft to Apple over a year ago and so far have been trouble free, but this has angered me and for once I am grateful I still have my AMD64 Windows PC - which will we fast enough to run Windows Longhorn. It will also run the 64bit version of Windows XP and Longhorn and is backward compatible right through to Windows 95. It sounds likely that Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 will not be compiled for PowerPC and therefore my powerbook will never see any improvements beyond Tiger.

I can't understand, why a P4? surely this means no more 64bit support, forget adding extra RAM, forget all about the advantages of Altivec. Surely they should of used x86_64, this seems like a very large step backwards for Apple in a time when the wintel world is slowly moving to 64bit.

Mac OS X will be cracked in no time to run on a standard PC, this is obvious. As for Windows, why would anyone buy a more expensive Macintosh just to run Windows.

That really is an excellent point. Apple exists at the pleasure of Microsoft. They cannot survive competing with them. However, can they really survive without competing with them? Apple can never get "too good", or else Microsoft will take them out. It's like being a lawyer for the mob. It's a cushy job, but as soon as you outlive your usefulness you're gone. with Tiger shaping up to be everything Longhorn wanted to be, but won't be, how long will Apple stay on Microsoft's good side?

Yes, the chip WAS fastest (in many benchmarks) when Steve said it was fastest.

Yes, PPC is a better design.

But, if no one can make PPC go any faster in enough quantity without requiring a watercooler then it doesn't matter. If IBM couldn't (or wouldn't) then it isn't going to happen.

Steve and Co. didn't switch out of spite, they made a business and technical decision based on the track records and roadmaps of PPC and x86 chips. Right now, PPC looks like it is almost at a dead end. Would you rather not have OSX at all?

Actually, the evidence points to Apple increasing the voltage in the process of overclocking the chip. That increases the power a lot. Indications are that the 2.7GHz G5s do run quite hot, suggesting that their power usage really isn't all that much better than x86 chips running at similar voltages/clock-rates. Might be better than the Prescott P4s, but I doubt its better than the new San Diego core Athlon FX.

Does todays announcement really change anything? Mac OS X will still only run on Apple hardware. The user experience will stay on the same course. Most if not all applications will not see a difference. Apple will probably keep the price high although it will now be easier to compare what you are getting vs. what you are paying for.

For me, the only thing I am excited about is emulating Windows will be much faster.

Why don't you wake up? The point is, is that people who have just invested in a new Mac have now found out that there machines will be obsolete in only a year and will more than likely never see a major OS upgrade.

Does anyone know if the GOD DAMNED Steve Jobs plans to support AMDs too or not? Shit! They were advertising for years that OSX is a 64-bit OS and now they're running it on 32-bit P4s! God damn you Steve! Now they've decided to switch because PowerPCs are not as expected, no problem; but why the hell they chose Intel over AMD? God damned decision makers...

There are plenty of EM64T P4's around, and have been for a good while now. The P4 is as 64-bit as the G5 and the AMD64 (which it's 100% compatible with). Intel and AMD have very broad patent sharing, which is why Intel gets AMD's 64 bit extensions and AMD gets Intel's SIMD stuff (SSE, etc.).

Tiger currently runs on everything from the humble G3 to the G5 and is 64-bit when it can be and 32-bit otherwise. All Intel CPUs in the future will be 64-bit, and no Intel Macs will exist until that future is here anyway. So what exactly are you complaining about?

I don't understand how this apps build for 64bit could be run (even with Rosetta) on a 32bit P4 processor.

Can somebody explain this ?

I mean, if Apple has chosen x86 instead of ia64 or x64, that means a backward step!! isn't it ?

The P4's AMD64 implementation blows. It's not nearly as good as AMD's x86-64 and certainly not as good as the G5's implementation. On the P4, 64-bit code often gets slower, while on the AMD chips, 64-bit code is almost always faster.

I am uncertain as of whether they are using the EM64T P4 or a standard P4. Maybe we will know more when the first developer macs are shipped.

I am only complaining because I've spent alot of money on a piece of hardware that will not be phased out.

I don't care what chip Apple uses as long as I have OS X. It wasn't like I was going to Switch to Windows of they moved Windows to a G5. OS X is the reason I like Apple computers. I could care less what CPU they use.

As for white, brown, pink, whatever boxes. Unless it is an Apple box you won't be able to run OS X.

Why are they changing from IBM Gx CPUs to Intel? Because IBM isn't able to or is unwilling to deliver them at increased speeds soon enough (RE: no promised 3ghz CPUs last year or even yet).

Exactly!
And it might even be possible to run Windows natively on a Mac, not just emulate it faster.

Other than that, nothing much has really changed.

Why does everyone seem to think the P4 is 32-bit only? The new P4s are 100% compatible with AMD64.

As to your question, it looks like Apple is pulling a Dell and only intends to create Intel Macs, not Generic X86_64 Macs. However, when the community hacks OS X so that it will run on commodity hardware whether Apple wants it to or not, it should run on AMD machines as happily as on Intel ones.

Intel has been known to have quantity & availability problems in the past, though. Who knows, maybe the first time Apple doesn't get a shipment of Intel processors on time Steve might pitch a fit and call AMD. The OS would run fine on either from a technical standpoint.

But you can bet Intel has sweetened the pot for Jobs -- so long as Macs are exclusively "Intel Inside" machines.

This has got to be one of the bigger IBM blunders out there.
Where are they going to grow programmers for thier PowerPC line? They aren't selling any cheap PowerPC servers last time I looked. Did they lose the WILL to WIN?

should of said phased out not will not be phased out

heh.. the mac se/30 was *not* the pinnacle of anything.

the Turbo cube was though. killer systems I own a NeXT Station Turbo.. loves it!

> Why don't you wake up? The point is, is that people who have just invested in a new Mac have now found out that there machines will be obsolete in only a year and will more than likely never see a major OS upgrade.

For the record, I am one of the people who just bought a new Mac 2 months ago. My Mac would have been obsolete in 2 years whether they made this announcement or not. Also, when the Intel Macs come out, software and any new OS will still work on the PPC machines. That was the whole reason for the binaries that work on both x86 and PPC.

Your machine would have been phased out anyway, even if only by a faster, newer version of the same architecture. Jobs made it clear that Apple isn't going to drop support for the PPC line anytime soon.

Watch and see. When the next iteration of OS X appears it'll install just as happily on your PPC machine as it will on a new X86 machine, just as the next version of MS Office will be suitable for either archtecture, just as the next version of Adobe-Macromedia's stuff will be.

Apple might be many things, but they are rarely stupid and/or self-destructive.

> It is all about PERCEPTION. When BeOS was not able to run
> well on all PPCs and all x86s and the reply from Be was "buy
> a BeBox instead", these people HATED BeOS. They thought
> that it was "a bad OS, it just doesn't work". No matter if
> it was running perfectly on the hardware it was supposed to:
> the BeBox.

By the time BeOS/x86 existed, the BeBox was dead. The reason BeOS failed on the x86 was that it just wasn't really good for anything. It supported a handful of mediocre devices and had no large industry partners to provide software or drivers for things people actually wanted. Be could have built x86 computers that used what little hardware it supported on the x86 side, and tried to sell them as "BeBoxes" and no one would have bought them. The BeBox failed, BeOS/PPC failed, and BeOS/x86 failed and none of it was because BeOS tried to salvage itself by selling on generic x86 machines. Be was already dead when they moved to IA32.

Apple on the other hand has a product that people actually want to buy, and industry support from IHVs and ISVs. They are completely incompatible scenarios.

"We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac." I don't know - this sounds like the worst of both worlds. Now you have proprietary HW plus weirdo CPU.

> Does anyone know if the GOD DAMNED Steve Jobs plans to support AMDs too or not? Shit!

No. Intel provides a complete solution (motherboard and cpu). AMD only can supply the CPU.

> They were advertising for years that OSX is a 64-bit OS and now they're running it on 32-bit P4s! God damn you Steve! Now they've decided to switch because PowerPCs are not as expected, no problem; but why the hell they chose Intel over AMD? God damned decision makers...

Umm... Intel CPU's are 64 bit as well. Pretty much the exact same as the AMD ones.

I think that by releasing OS X for commodity X86 boxes Apple could do what Linux has long failed at: knock a serious dent in Microsoft's desktop dominance.

But I can't see why they would want to do that ... it's not what they are about.

"We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."

Ha, I would like to see them try. Good move in the long run, going x86 that is.

not 2000


Thomas Howell. He's a young kid

Think about it this way: Apple releasing OS X for commodity hardware would be like an exclusive clothing designer in Paris deciding to make his work available on the bargain rack at K-Mart. What would be his motivation?

I think I may develop a FireFox plugin that allows one to filter out posts by trolls, idiots, fanboys, and any other type of freak.

Some of the post here are informative and/or insightful, but most are a waste of bandwidth [including this one].

Most of the P4's being sold at places like Best Buy are already 64bit (all P4 6xx are 64bit). They just don't advertise the fact since they ship with XP Home which is not 64bit capable. Supposedly before the end of the year even the Celerons will all be 64bit.

"We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."

As an aside to this, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple decided to make and sell a PC virtualization environment for windows that supports MacOSX along with a bundled macosx that has been customized to work in the virtualized environment ala xen or colinux. It would not work as a stand alone os outside of the virtualization environment. Apple wouldn't have to worry about supporting every piece of hardware under the sun, and would still retain control over the platform. Brand it a "VirtualMac" or a "vMac" and sell it for $250. I don't know if I would buy it, but I'm sure many would....

Just one random thought. Yes, Apple will probably lose some sales between now and 6/06 as potential customers defer their purchases. On the other hand, had Apple instead decided to stay with PPC, it would have surely lost a fair bit of the laptop market: even if one believes that currently there is parity between the G4 Powerbooks and comparable WinTel laptops (which is probably too generous an assessment), there is little on the horizon to suggest that Apple could have regained the lead over the next year or so.

Just my $.000002....

it wont be long after the initial release before some hackers get a hold of OS X/x86 and we will all be able to running it on white box PCs. It will happen. Yeah, Apple will _probably_ put some custom chips on their motherboards to lock the OS into their PCs, but, we all know custom chips _can_ be emulated in software and there are plenty of people out there samrt enough to write the code.

I'm afraid that whether or not there's any incentive for Apple to actually target OS X to generic PCs has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Eugenia's insistance that Be's failings have any relevance to Apple's future makes any sense.

"Mac users" aren't going to buy generic PCs to run OS X, because they exist in another plane of existence where Apple sells them an "experience" that is more valuable to them than price-performance efficiency. Apple could license OS X to Dell and they would still buy Apple's computers--modern Macs differ from "PCs" in custom motherboards and a different processor architecture, neither of which are inherently superior. They have no intrinsic custom quality that surpasses what's available elsewhere, but they have a very dedicated market just the same.

Other people aren't going to spend $1.5-3k on a desktop that doesn't really offer them any real advantages, and that's why they go and buy all of those "crappy" PCs that "Mac users" chastise so regularly in their comparisons between their computers as BMWs. They might shell out $130 for the "OS X experience" if it means most spyware isn't yet going to affect them and they might not, but they aren't going to shell out $1.5-3k for a Mac that uses Intel processors, either. So there might be some advantage to Apple not making OS X completely impossible to run on generic PCs, and there might not; it depends largely on what the fickle public decides that it wants in the long run.

But whether or not it makes sense has basically nothing to do with Be's failings. Apple, much unlike Be, can actually get companies to write their own drivers for their platform. ISVs, too.

"The fact remains: Apple has removed the biggest obstacle
to running Osx on commodity pc's. My guess is, shortly
after Osx/x86 is released, everyone will be able to run it
(no support of course) on any pc of his choice. Then,
Apple will seriously have to reconsider its "official"
Osx-lockdown policy. And no "custom chipset" or firmware
or similar ingenuity is going to prevent that. The future
looks bright. "

Despite what you think, Apple isn't stupid. And no you aren't going to be to easily, if at all, run Mac OS X on commodity pcs. There is no chance of this.

VMWare could make $$$ by providing virtual layer for MacOSX.

Your machine would have been phased out anyway, even if only by a faster, newer version of the same architecture. Jobs made it clear that Apple isn't going to drop support for the PPC line anytime soon.

Watch and see. When the next iteration of OS X appears it'll install just as happily on your PPC machine as it will on a new X86 machine, just as the next version of MS Office will be suitable for either archtecture, just as the next version of Adobe-Macromedia's stuff will be.

Do you remember how long fat binaries supporting the 68K and PPC were around? About one revision of all major packages. PPC owners can now expect most PPC software not already finished to be left unfinished, and no more than one or two more upgrades to existing packages.

No matter what Jobs says in his speech, third-party vendors will realize the money is in the new machines. By not releasing an update (which makes little money) you force people into buying an all new package (for a lot more money). That is what happened during the switch from 68K to PPC, and there's no reason to believe it won't be the same now.

Even Apple only supported three revisions to the OS after the switch to PPC - 7.6, 8.0 and 8.1. It will be no different now. PPC owners will get two or three OS updates, and then dropped completely, even by Apple.

Despite what you think, Apple isn't stupid. And no you aren't going to be to easily, if at all, run Mac OS X on commodity pcs. There is no chance of this.

It's not a matter of Apple being stupid or not. It's just not possible to make something unbreakable. Heck, if Apple came up with technology that would prevent you from running OS X on whitebox machines, they could apply the same technology to making unpiratable software. They could then get out of the OS business entirely, because they'd make so much money selling that technology. But it ain't going to happen. Hollywood with its billions of dollars couldn't make CSS unbreakable. Microsoft hasn't been able to keep people from running custom code on their XBox. The PSP has already been hacked. To paraphrase Ian Malcom: "[geeks] will find a way..."

"Yeah right. What are you going to buy instead?"

Well that's _exactly_ the question. It's a lose-lose situation. Really. Macs where the best choice out there. Now (architecture-wise) they are down the road to become the least bad one. I can't believe what happened.

I'm still pissed at IBM.
Where am I going to get my dual-core PowerPC?

But, a dual-core Apple/Intel PowerBook would be really nice.

IBM screwed up because?
1) Apples xServe took sales away from the Power line?
2) Microsoft added a Poison clause to the game contract.
( Kill Apple with high priced power chips and slow speeds. )
( Bill at his old tricks? )

It's not a matter of Apple being stupid or not. It's just not possible to make something unbreakable.

It certainly isn't, and I just wonder what Apple have released here. Their threats, EULAs and their frequent running for lawsuits isn't going to help them. If one thing from the last umpteen years of development on x86 has taught us, you can't prevent anyone from doing anything. Whether they like it or not, Apple has joined the white-box club.

Intel is also the worst possible choice they could have made if they wanted to differentiate themselves in the x86 world. They should have picked AMD, supply or no supply problems. Hell, even Sun recognised that one.

If they don't allow commodity x86-based hardware to run on their new Macs then this little escapade will have been for nothing. They need to grow their market desperately, and they can now do that through the large supply of the x86 market. If they do then it's possible they may be able to navigate the waters carefully, but given Apple's past record for heavy-handedness and throwing lawsuits around I'd say we've seen the beginning of the death of Apple. I hope for his sake that Steve realises this isn't just a chip change because they need a strategy for handling this.

Despite what you think, Apple isn't stupid. And no you aren't going to be to easily, if at all, run Mac OS X on commodity pcs. There is no chance of this.

Wasn't it a couple of days ago when people said that Mac
and x86 were simply *not* going to happen ? The Mac minions
have for a long time been deluding themselves sprouting
out the same crap over and over again. A couple of
"open-sores" guys managed to implement a powerpc emulator
and run Osx on x86 when everyone thought it was impossible.

And NOW, NOW that Osx will run natively on x86 you want me
to believe your bullshit that Apple somehow is going to make
it impossible for it to run on every pc in existence ?

In a few years i will be laughing at all you minions and
your religious bigotry.

Why are you angry with IBM? Apple was a small market, what did you expect them to do, waste a lot of money fighting against technical barriers that have been affecting all of the major players for Apple? Why? Why does there have to be a big conspiracy, when IBM just rightly devotes its energies to projects that will make it money?

The webcast will be here, if no one has posted the url yet:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/

Oh noes! A different cpu! What will we do....
Hang on, it doesnt ACTUALLY matter.

Apple has always been about quality computers and a unique OS. How has/will that change/d?

I couldnt care less if they were running on wind-up hamsters as long as they do what they are supposed to do.

Many of you seem so up in arms about the choice of Intel over AMD. I understand that the top of the line opterons pretty much blow away most of the top of the line intel chips.... however,.. a lot can happen in a year or 2 and I don't think these machines will be necesseraly running on p4's and xeon's... I'm going to speculate they will in fact be running on dual core 64bit Pentium M cpu's....(yes i know they do not exist yet) the new pentium M cpu's are very impressive performers, low power consumption, and all the laptop technology will already be there for their ibook and powerbook lines

Pentium M would be a good choice (i don't know when the M will have 64 bit support but i'm sure it will very soon)

another thing..... I think this has been in the works for years... everything Jobs has done he has made sure it can easily be ported to x86 and now x86_64

You tell me what I should need.
Advice is your specialty.
But could I ever need enough
For you to set me free?
I’m afraid to make decisions,
That’s where you come in.
In the case of chance collisions,
I look at you as my friend.

Where would I be without my pc?
Where would I be without mtv?
Where would I be without cnn?
Where would I be -- without ibm?

Where would I be without all my toys?
Where would I be without sampled noise?
Where would I be without seeing you again?
Where would I be -- without ibm?

"And NOW, NOW that Osx will run natively on x86 you want me
to believe your bullshit that Apple somehow is going to make
it impossible for it to run on every pc in existence ? "

That's pretty much what I was getting at. That it wouldn't make sense for them to tell people they can't run OS X on anything but their machines. They don't have to support all hardware, they just shouldn't try and restrict it. If it's such a big deal, they should have stayed on PPC.

http://img292.echo.cx/img292/6458/p4364qx.jpg

Apple's market share was small, but growing for the first time in years. Apple on power, made Power popular, and made Linux on Power viable. Last time I looked the G5 was the cheapest way into the Power line.

The Will to Win seems to be gone at IBM.
So they won a game contract on a stripped PoserPc.
Microsoft will be sure to re-negotiate that contract to rip the profit out of it soon enough.

So, I guess I'm Mourning the passing of a once great company.

2 gig of ram.
Nice.

"15 years as a Mac user, today marks the end of my happiness and support of Apple " where will you go now? M$? MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA <Gasp> <cough> <cough> <cough>

Anybody working with either the xBSD's or Linux knows how open the x86 architecture can be in the current incarnation. So how, exactly, can Schiller state that, "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," when the platform is generally open?

Given that Apple under Steve has ALWAYS maintained as much control over its hardware as possible, it is easy to deduce that this move to Intel substantially involves Intel DRM: a synergy between OS X and hardware DRM to keep non-Apple hardware from hosting OS X.

Given how Steve has guided Apple along a media-oriented course recently, plus how demanding the media corporations are about DRM, it is easy to deduce that this move to Intel substantially involves Intel DRM: access to hardware DRM provided by OS X to media-related applications that will keep the media concerns content.

Whether or not Apple directly supports Windows is immaterial. If these new Apple on Intel computers can also host Windows (which has never supported Apple hardware) then a standard BIOS is part of the motherboard. If so, then it is easy to deduce that this move to Intel substantially involves Intel DRM: something both Apple's and Microsoft's operating systems can use as a common denominator.

As Microsoft does not directly control the hardware on which Windows will run in the same fashion as Apple has always controlled the hardware on which OS X will run, it now seems possible that it will be Apple which realizes the sort of overarching DRM that Microsoft is routinely criticized about developing.

Apple customers will have to trust Apple's DRM implementation absolutely to stick with the brand as the Intel platform becomes their only purchasing option.

Despite that how the DRM is used will be discovered and hacks to circumvent it will be programmed, it causes one to pause and reflect on the decision to purchase one the new Apple computers. Certainly, they may be faster, but at what point does DRM-enabled lock-in become a reason NOT to purchase? Looks like Apple will be the first to find out.

I go way back with Apple (early Macintosh) so the thought of Apple products becoming a DRM-laced nightmare is very disheartening. My hope was that Steve would be announcing the rebirth of Newton running on XScale.

An Athlon FX (Dual core)/Athlon X2 and Opteron (dual core) would be even nicer - it would run rings around any Intel based machine with all other things being equal.

Tomshardware:

"Here Comes The King: Athlon 64 X2 Reviewed"

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/index.html

Anandtech : http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2419&p=5

"AMD’s current dual core architecture is vastly superior to Intel’s. The more than twice as fast cache-to-cache communication does not pay off in all multithreaded applications, but it should give AMD a scaling advantage in OLTP and some rendering and HPC applications. It will be very easy for AMD to make communications between the cores even faster, by attaching a shared L2-cache to the SRQ. AMD can also leverage their knowledge and experiences with the on die northbridge to lower the latency and increase the bandwidth of the memory subsystem. "

I'd buy a desktop straight away if it was a dual core AMD but an Intel machine unless within the next year they (Intel) introduce a CPU that is better.

On another note, I wasn't too suprised that Apple had developed an x86 version of OSX only the timing to dump PPC. It would have been silly not too develop OSXx86 esp. as NextStep/OpenStep was ported from x86 to PPC for OSX.

Anon

Conclusion from Tomshardware review on Single or Dual core Intel or AMD:

"Here's the bottom line. If we had to recommend a single core processor, the choice would depend greatly on the type of applications in use. But in the dual core arena, though, there is not much that speaks for Intel: go with the Athlon 64 X2."

Now that says it all.

Anon

I might buy a Mac now. I hope they will discount the price of the OS since I wont be needing it. I'll just go and install Windows XP.

I think any chance linux might have had to gain a significant number of users on the desktop just got flushed by this surprise announcement. it will be much easier to port linux applications to osx now that apple is running on intel x86, so why would the average joe use linux, which, as good as it is, is still complicated, when he can use osx, an os that is based on unix yet super easy to use?

Since the transition from 68000 to powerPC was the birth of the PowerMac, one wonders what they'll call these new Intel macs.

Oh, and by the by. From a business standpoint it's always good to have *two* companies that make your CPUs. Apple can switch from Intel to AMD if there's a compelling business reason to do so essentially painlessly. This, if memory serves, is how AMD got licensed to make 8088s and 8086s in the first place - because IBM wasn't willing to go with a single source microprocessor. There's a certain irony in Apple making the same decision.

As for me, I'm a little annoyed that my G5 won't have it's full 8-10 year life-span (support will erode sooner, probably) but come on. They're not introducing these new machines (in theory) until 2006, and won't finish transitioning the whole product line until 2007. It also puts on hold any thought of me buying a laptop until after they transition (I expect them to be the first to go, they use fewer applications and will benefit from the lower heat/power consumption and greater performance more). More concerning is my parents' first gen imacs are getting very old and poorly supported, and I really can't recommend buying a new mac until after the transition.

I'm concerned for Apple, though, I think they've Osborned themselves. (For those too young to remember, the Osborne computer company killed itself by announcing its new machine long before it was available. People stopped buying the old machine, and Osborne didn't have the capital to MAKE the new machines. In this, Apple's other products (ipod) and their large cash reserves should help them greatly.

Something I've learned about the world of computing. Don't fall in love with anything, because *everything* in computing is awfully ephemeral. Learned that the hard way. I was a BeOS user before I bought my first mac.

Because an average joe can't hack his version to run on his existing computer? "Average Joe" is in the same situation he always was --- buy an expensive Apple computer or a cheap Wintel computer. That situation hasn't really changed.

As for Linux adoption, remember, it's not "average Joes" using Linux on the desktop. "Average Joes" are completely irrelevent to the Linux desktop market, now and for the forseeable future. Where Linux is getting is in the enterprise desktop (office workers, etc). I don't see any particular reason to believe that OS X on Intel will be any more palatable to these folks than OS X on PPC was, especially if Apple retains its existing pricing structure.

At this point, an aside: There is this impression on OSNews that "home users" somehow matter. They don't, not in the least. They are a huge market, but have almost no market clout. The industry is driven by the enterprise market, because people buy for their home what they are used to at work. That's why how we got to the Wintel situation in the first place. Apple machines were quite popular in the home market, because Apple was one of the first companies to target the home market. However, the reason IBM machines won out was because businesses bought them, and people eventually just bought what they used at work. This is the same reason Microsoft Office won out. Eventually, big businesses standardized on Office, and home users switched accordingly.

They will call them McIntel of course...

I think this is a defining moment in Apple's history, I will be a switcher, not just a switcher but also a developer...

I think any chance linux might have had to gain a significant number of users on the desktop just got flushed by this surprise announcement. it will be much easier to port linux applications to osx now that apple is running on intel x86, so why would the average joe use linux, which, as good as it is, is still complicated, when he can use osx, an os that is based on unix yet super easy to use?


It is not significantly easier to port a large majority of Linux applications to OSX.

An average Joe does not even know or care what GNU/Linux is and thinks Macs are for girls and queers.

what is wrong with you people?!

"Now Apple is just another Alienware or Falcon Northwest-style boutique PC builder"

your an idiot. that alienware and falcon operating system is nothing compared to OSX. i repeat, you are an idiot.

do you like OSX?
-yes? this is good, cheaper macs, hacks to run OSX on commodity hardware.
-no? shut up, this doesn't involve you, your just trying to agrivate fans.

for me, this is a good move. PowerPC G5 are good chips, but they don't scale, and eat up a lot of juice for a PC. Intel has their act together. They continually push their performance up and they have a genuine competitor to keep them in check(AMD), if Intel ever stumbles, Apple can go to AMD, in part or full. PC hardware also gets new tech faster than PowerPC lines. New memory and storage system come to PC first. Now Apple can leverage that without reingineering anything.

Anybody have that demonstration recorded and torrented?
Really would like to see this.

Thanks,

-Fish

works for me

I agree with jjbianchine, this smells of a DRM nightmare scenarios to me. We should all know by now, how DRM-anal Apple have become through our iPod/iTunes experience, so much so even Hilary Rosen (of RIAA fame) blogged about the insanity of not even being able to "share" her music with herself!

This is a step closer to audio/video lock-down, which is what's to be expected - giving a movie exec charge of a technology company, who's dumb idea was that?

iPod has proven it can be done, next step is to apply the same kind of technology to the computer industry. Enjoy your freedom whilst you have it, I know I will.

I happen to like the PPC, for me it WAS part of the "experience" and "thinking different" appealed to my love of innovation and technology. Call me a zealot if you will though, a "zealot" is simply a "fanatically committed person", so I really don't mind. Much like my fellow zealots, it strikes me as odd to say the least, that Apple are willing to throw away years of investment and marketing in favour of simply becoming another x86 also-ran.

This decision goes beyond architecture, in my opinion, into realms of something far more insideous and shady.

As for the comments about why not AMD's? Well, AMD haven't invested heavily in Apple, AMD don't have the same level of interests in the movie industries and AMD aren't quite so DRM entangled, yet.

The next computing revolution will not be about speed, architecture and the amount of RAM we buy - it'll be about DRM, what we're allowed to watch and hear, and how far we're willing to rebel, to claw back our once-granted freedoms.

I agree 100% that the AMD X2 series of chips is right now, at this very moment, superior to Intel's offering. However, if you think this will be the case a year from now then you are either forgetful, short-sighted, or very young. Remember when the Athlon XP first came out? Wow, what a chip... and it would absolutely murder the P4 at 1.8 GHz or so. Then the Northwood core came, and AMD was sucking Intel's dust for a year or so until Clawhammer. Remember, these two are always one-upping each other, and if you think Intel's upcoming Pentium-M inspired, dual-core low-power using 64-bit monster is going to be 2nd best to AMD, you are wrong. Just my $.02...

Assuming Apple in the long run will open up to accept all X86, then this is a great move. They will never support all X86 hardware, but I think they would let third party hardware to incorporate drivers to mac in the long run. If they can produce the same quality of OS, they would certainly give MS a big blow in the OS market. I see a bright future for the computer industry as a whole with this move. Competition always brings quality. This will make all OS company to deliver safe and quality OS.

people are going to have a choice of OS's not just stupid windows (if everything works out right)

Okay, here is the deal

I have couple of OSX apps.

So. AMD 64+ Linux + MacOnLinux + wine is done deal.

Go Linux. Wins forever.

The keynote shows the Tiger running on a Pentium 4 3.4Ghz maybe it's a Xeon but a x86 for sure no unique type.

Virtualization PearPC hear we go .

Im in shock.

However this move will be more positive than it will be negative on Apple and OSX.

One thing is for sure - I'll still be a Mac user

I t is not worth the change because they are going to loose a lot of money and the reason are:
1) the apple store will loose a lot of money not selling any MAC hardware
2) what if IBM reduces the allocation of chips for Apple and/or asking for higher price per chip + Apple has to lower the prices of the Power Mac to try to sell something
3) no more money from big corporation buing G5 server because they proved to be unreliable
4) forget about Mac oS server for th epoint number 3 + the Mac OS server is inferior to Linux according to ArsTechnica
5) Apple is losing the advantage with Microsoft just loosing time in the transition
6) Jobs just showed how bad is a close architecture because you depend on theur crazy decisions + MAc hardware on Intel won't be more pen than it is now
Let's bet how much they are loosing in the next quarters: 0.2 $ per share?

...well I've seen a lot of posts about people thinking the hardware will be much cheaper now. I think you are all crazy. Apple's hardware is going to continue to be elegant and "different" and costly. Just because they are adopting an intel cpu does not mean they are buying entry level boards and components from Asus in mass quantities or something... No, their pricing will not change. They will just be able to offer computers whose ghz clock speeds will exceed 3.0.

Anyway, I am very excited about this and cannot WAIT for next June to get my hands on one! I don't know what I'll do waiting the whole year. It will drive me crazy.

For those worried about Mac OS X performance, don't. Apple is not foolhardy. They are no doubt working their rear ends off optimizing the OS, which includes (as they ARE aware of it) the resource/thread issues between the BSD-like layer and the Mach microkernel. It's not like they are standing still and hoping that using a new CPU is going to garner them another 7% of the PC market.

@marcoc: they can weather some loss before the next fiscal year (2007, that is). I agree that this announcement could be risky for sales, but I think they will pull out of it just fine. And when the new, snazzy looking powerbooks come out with a pentium M chip inside, no one is going to give a rats potato about the CPU, just the fact that their super sleek and shiny powerbook is running at 3ghz with some new ati graphics chip that kicks but as well.

think you are all crazy. Apple's hardware is going to continue to be elegant and "different" and costly.

You can say "different" until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that the parts are the exact same things you'll find in your Dell.

Just because they are adopting an intel cpu does not mean they are buying entry level boards and components from Asus in mass quantities or something... No, their pricing will not change.[/i]

They'd be stupid not to. The only reason they bother making their own chipsets/motherboards is because they have no choice. Moving to Intel would mean they could use Intel's motherboards, which are ungodly stable. At that point, there is really nothing differentiating them from the Dell? Same cheapo commodity hard drive, same NVIDIA/ATI graphics cards, same everything. Just nicer plastic around it all.

Absolutely no matter what anyone says, the computing industry just got dealt a terrible blow.
The past 7 years in processors has been similar to what happened in the American auto consolidation of the 50's and 60's, where GM and Ford kill everyone else.
Casualties:
Alpha
PA-RISC
MIPS
Crusoe and Efficeon.
Sun moving its focus from Spark to x86-64
and now desktop PPC.
We are now really seeing the era of choice come to an end.

Even if the choices where small we still had choice.

I knew that Jobs (whom unlike most ardent Mac fans I have always taken with a grain of salt) would someday do something like this, but I hoped it would be later in my 50s when I accepted that corporations are totally crap and most executive no matter how exalted are generally imbeciles.

Sure many of you feel this is great because "x86" is ubiquitous therefore "better"; the problem is that this statement is false and will always be false.
This is one of biggest dilemmas of capitalism and most modern industry generally reflects this.

The most popular/ubiquitous products/designs are almost never the most efficient, intelligent or powerful, but generally the most marketed and F.U.D ed.

They are usually good enough. But that is it.(until the next big thing, VHS vs Betamax, now Cable Broadband vs DSL vs Satellite vs vs vs).


(Man I need to get rid of my iPod now, there are probably dozens of better DAPs out there.)

There is almost invariably a more efficient, more effective design to any product which is killed because some egomaniacal executive with no real attachment to what they are selling making the decisions. (Scully from Pepsi selling Apple, wtf)

Once these executives make 'their' decision they use aggressive Alpha male dumb ass tactics to destroy anything that gets in their way or competes with them. (isn't it amazing how many of them AH's seem to float between competitors, saying horrible thing about competing products and then moving over and saying horrible things about their old products.)

The thing is all you x86 lovers should be very upset right now, because your engine designers really don't have to be challenged to do anything better anymore.

I mean look at what happened with American Car design in the 70's and 80's.
Almost 25 years of super crap.
Legendarily gas guzzling inefficient, designed by committee, really really horrible crap.
Man
Oh man we are sooooooooo in trouble.


I love how everyone is so excited about the cost savings.
WTF

What costs savings.
Intel chips and AMD chips are generally in the same ball park as each other, and PPC chips are generally cheaper.
(Why the hell do you think MS, Nintendo, and Sony are using them --and no you can't find IBM to Apple prices online, DMCA will get you if you expose them)

Further more as far as economy of scales most of the expensive components of computers are shared between Macs and PCs.

RAM, same for pc and mac.
HD, same
Optical, same
Graphics, same
Audio,USB, Firewire, wi-fi, Gig NIC, SAME chips or similar by the same exact Taiwanese manufacturers.
IO chips (PCI-X, AGP) SAME or similar from the same manufacturers who make pc parts. (why do you think we had to replace iBook mobo's in 2003, at the same time as a bunch of PC makers replacing their mobos for the exact same reasons?)
Furthermore Apple uses Hypertransport tech too.

So what do you actually pay for on an Apple product, much much better design and components integration; and further integration with the OS and that is not going to change.
(According to Phil Schiller)

So why do you all keep insisting the price is going to change????

Man this sucks.
So now we are getting a Ford engine for our BMW.
Man this sucks.

Sure Ford engines in mustangs are faster then the ones in BMWs.
Yup you are right they are.

But they are also lesser designs, with a focus on mass production, and brute force.
Not efficiency, fuel economy/performance ratio, and that elusive ELEGANCE in engineering.

Man this sucks.

I think I will become a Chef now and give computing a rest until true competition returns.

Ironically Mr. Jobs now refers to Macs as "personal computers." I remember it was a big deal that Macs were not considered "Personal Computers", which usually implied IBM compatibility and now Mr. Jobs even says it.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

If I were CEO of Apple I would try and keep the rebel spirit and any uniqueness it may retain by going with the currently superior, elegent, and efficient AMD processors. Then they can argue their performance superiority.

Part of the reasons for using a Mac was enviromental issues, this is hard to argue since top of the line pentium4s require a lot of power and disipate much of heat.

Apple won't allow the OS X to run on anything but Apple PCs (sounds like an oxymoron, eh?) so what about the homegrown systems. Or systems already purchased. When Intel OS X finally comes out, what about the huge market of people already with a PC that wanna switch?

Aldo Ferro...

should jobs bring back the clones? power computing anyone remember?

yeah I know, but it had to be said.

I just bought my iMac G5 about 5 months ago and now when I look at it I think: "You just have 2 more years of existance."

Who's going to write new software for the G5s????? Nobody. Now everything is about Intel. My G5 is already dead.

I am keeping my cellphone.

-2501

Buried in an overlooked paragraph of this announcement is news that George Steinbrenner will become a Red Sox fan at the end of second quarter 2006.

I think you missed the point of the Universal Binaries. Developers will not forget about the already installed base of the PowerPC users.

Now we'll never have to have a pointless debate about whether Macs are faster than PCs ever again. Imagine all the free time that fills up. Now for instance, we can turn to the much more important topic of which system has prettier icons!

As one banal argument ends, another can begin. :-D

Linux is now just a server OS

I get the impression that a lot of people don't live in the real world: the average Apple user hardly knows, even less cares, what processor it runs on. So long as it looks sleek, it runs Photoshop and looks good in the living room, they'll buy it. Hell, knowing that it might run Windows (which I need to run CAD and engineering software) even I'll buy one! Techies (0.01% of Mac buyers) will use it as dual boot, all the other customers will look at things the more technically minded don't give a damn about, and Macs still have a definite edge there.

Well, I'm with 2501, what a bloody waste it was to by this Mac - I should have purchased those Opteron components and built my own machine rather than giving those hard earned dollars to Steves ego. Put it this way, Apples profits will nose dive. Customers now know there is no future for the PowerPC Macs, and now there will be a mass exodus. Why the hell should I or any new customer go out and purchase a Mac, now that we know our investment will be useless in a year?

The move to Intel is completely and utter pointless to the n-th degree. The WHOLE point of moving to Intel would be to allow users to purchase their hardware from a cheap vendor and simply install MacOS X - thats what there is a big bitchfeast from Windows fanboys - not because its a better processor, its because then they can be a Johnny Cheapskate, buy a Dell then install MacOS X on it.

We'll have the same problem yet again, and why aren't I surprised. Again, this was an absolute waste :-(

"Linux is now just a server OS" Who says LINUX can even survive in thee server room now?

IBM is screwed. Sure, AAPL was a small part of their business but: 1) PPC was the ONLY exciting thing this big, lumbering company had going 2) this will greatly raise thee cost of doing the XBOX, so they will try to pass along the cost to MSFT, and there will be one BIG catfight-- ending with lower margins for IBM.

AAPL will either swipe MSFT across the floor over the next ten years, or will stay a niche. There will always be a market for computers that are relatively pain-free, because "creatives" and technical people like to push their machines to the limits and need to be sure of their gear. Windows is not an optimal choice for anyone doing anything harder than Email, unless you have a big support staff, or a lot of fix-it-yourself time available.

I don't understand all this fuss about computers becoming obsolete: they all do, and quickly too, regardless of any change of platform. A computer is normally obsolete after 2 years. A savvy user can squeeze out another year of useful life before dumping it in the bin. All those 10 year old Macs out there have lived so long because their users are only concerned about reading email and wordprocessing with a nicely coloured user interface. Seriously: how many Apple users ever did any software upgrade? How many of them would have without a marketing push?

Now that he's done this, why not OSX on white boxes????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Does wanna take on MS? Are they secret lovers? Is MS paying him not to do it?
Doesnt make sense...
With the iPod and such how many people would buy an OSX PC????
You're just plain sttuborn Mr Stevie Wonder.... And plain stupid too....

I don't like the kludgy powerPC architecture.

Are you insane? Compared to what? An x86 design? My sides are splitting!

All the mac fanboys who say theyre ditching macs now because of this will be drooling over the new (x86) mac, and line up to buy it.

And all the idiots who say they will definitely be buying one now will bitch and moan about the cost of apples shiny new machine, cos it costs more than some piece of shit they can whack together themselves with parts from the corner computer store.

In short, nothing will change

You can be damn sure Jobs didn't decide this after a night OD'ing on Peach juice from his ex's orchard.

If he decides to switch it is because there were compelling reasons to. These people are in the business of making money.
All the promises of chip makers in the past notwithstanding, none has ever truly delivered as promised.
Motorola couldn't get past the 500 MHz limit in the G4s for what, 18 months?
IBM was supposed to deliver the 3 GHz chip a year ago or more, it didn't happen.

What would you have Apple do? Sit on its ass and watch the walls come down? It is not realistic.

I've been driving a Mac for over 10 years and this news frankly makes me more than a little queasy, but is there really any other way? We've all known that OS X would run on Intel but I thought that was just a theoretical possibility. I didn't know Apple had been working on this for the last 5 years and can in fact run the system on an Intel machine today.
Since it's there already, they might as well make the most of it. Imagine if Apple increased its marketshare threefold, that would definitely put them back on the map. Good for all users, good for Apple.

As for putting OS X on your cardboard box with custom chips: good luck. None of it supported, the lack of drivers and the weird behavior of the thing is going to make you cry like a baby, or you're going to be spending so much money and time to get it right, you might as well have bought a Mac from the start. If you go ahead, you're in for the kind of life in pain that is usually preferred by people who appreciate the finer qualities of leather, whips and chains and tight, tight bondage. And don't whine about lack of support and don't ask Apple to help you out because they will be flipping you the bird in 3-D, sugar.

This will either be a very good thing for Apple or it will break it. Any way you slice it, the fact that they're doing it means they had no choice. They need to look down the road and see that there is development in the processor roadmap to go ahead with development. If there is no roadmap, do you stop and whine about how bad the world is, or do you find a different solution?

I think Apple is making another insanely bold move and I very much hope they're going to make it.

The alternative is driving a cow. Linux... it's a nice try fellas, and you deserve all the kudos for working very hard and making extremely clever software, but it's not there yet by a few years and I seriously need to get my work done.

Christ, who'da thunk...

This pretty much kills hardware sales for the next 18 months and should that the stuff in the channel is going to be extremely cheap. I -can- be tempted to get myself the last real Mac [and of course, that's not so, but it certainly does feel like it].

Just changing 20 lines of code for Mathematica ? Just 2 hours to switch over ?
These myths can be told to people that know nothing about OSes and programming languages but they are just myths and nothing more than that.

It can be true IF AND ONLY IF the UML C/C++ project (or any other OOP based project) already contains all the objects code for OS X or Win32 or any other platform you have to switch over.

Casualties:
Alpha
PA-RISC
MIPS
Crusoe and Efficeon.
Sun moving its focus from Spark to x86-64
and now desktop PPC.
We are now really seeing the era of choice come to an end.


That list is missing the one architecture that could have put up a decent fight: the good old 68000. It had a much cleaner and more powerful instruction set than x86. Because it was designed as a 32-bit processor from the start it didn't have to support legacy crap like "Real Mode" or 286-style segmenting. It had a big and diverse install base. It could have been extended to 64 bit much more easily and cleanly than AMD64.

Yet Motorola and Apple killed it off for the RISC hype.

"Let's have less powerful instructions, so that we need more of them, and oh yeah, let's give them a bigger encoding as well, so that we're really wasting some expensive memory bandwidth."

Why did anyone ever think that was a good idea?

Even worse: how could anyone consider a "Very Large Instruction Word" architecture as in the Itanium a selling point? It may make some sense as an internal representation like in the Transmeta, but it's cache-busting performance-killing lunacy for program binaries.

My suport for Apple finishes today.
I will intall linux ppc and in the future i will buy a generic x86 box.

RIP Apple.

That list is missing the one architecture that could have put up a decent fight: the good old 68000. It had a much cleaner and more powerful instruction set than x86.

That list is missing another architecture that could really put up the decent fight: Motorola 88000 - now that was an elegant pure breed RISC. Cool features too, like using a pair of its 32 32-bit registers as one 64-bit on (but they must be consequent, like R2-R3) enabling 64bit arithmetics without wasting upper bits on zeros most of the time. Allegedly Motorola used some of the low-level 88K stuff in its PPC designs, though...

oops, consequent = consecutive, adjacent, whatever...

And Mac OSX on Cell processor ? A dream also ? This one reach 3.2 GHz :/

Kochise

And Mac OSX on Cell processor ? A dream also ? This one reach 3.2 GHz :/

The cell processor's central "PowerPC processing element" is an in-order design with around 20 pipeline stages and not much in the way of branch prediction.

This means that specially scheduled, linear code will perform very well, due to the high clock frequency that a long pipeline facilitates.

Your usual desktop programs on the other hand, which haven't been compiled for the Cell's in-order pipeline and contain lots of branches and indirect jumps (virtual method calls), will perform much worse than on a G5, because they're gonna cause lots of costly pipeline stalls.

And the Cell's slave processors wouldn't be used at all unless applications were expensively rewritten.

So no, you wouldn't really want of those in your Mac.

That list is missing another architecture that could really put up the decent fight: Motorola 88000 - now that was an elegant pure breed RISC.

The 88000 may have been particularly elegant, but basically it wasn't much different from PowerPC or most other RISC designs in that it had a load/store architecture and a fixed 32-bit instruction format, which turned out to be disadvantages. And of course it would have had to emulate 68000 code too.

Come to think of it, there really was no technical reason not to push the 68K further, just like it was done with x86 - it would have probably caused less headaches as it is quite "normal" compared to x86. Too bad Motorola could not keep up - I guess they were never much of a "CPU company". Well what can you do ...

Come to think of it, there really was no technical reason not to push the 68K further, just like it was done with x86 - it would have probably caused less headaches as it is quite "normal" compared to x86.

So true.

Too bad Motorola could not keep up - I guess they were never much of a "CPU company".

Actually the 68060 was easily as good as the Pentium, in spite of the PowerPC distraction.

Motorola had great and far-sighted processor designers, but obviously their executives didn't understand what a jewel the 68k was compared to both x86 and RISC.

So they killed the 68k and started competing with IBM on IBM's Power territory. It would have made much more sense for Motorola (and Apple) to license out the 68k instruction set like Intel did with x86 and get a bit of second-source competition going.

linux_baby wrote:

"But when are we gonna get an Apple OS you can install on any whitebox, just like windows?"

Never. Apple will not allow it. You'll be able to load Windows on an Intel-based Apple box, but you won't be able to to buy OS X for Intel and load it on your "el-cheap-o" Dell box.

Now sales are going to drop and they wont have the money to act on it!!! I was going to buy a Mac soon, but now with the architecture change I will wait a year. After that, if Apple is still around I will buy one...

Both Intel and AMD have assimilated RISC principles for their X86 cores (since K5 and Pentium Pro).

>The thing is all you x86 lovers should be very upset >right now, because your engine designers really don't >have to be challenged to do anything better anymore.

American auto manufactures doesn't have a mindset similar to Moore's Law(Intel) (setting the minimum technology pace) and "Only the Paranoid Survives"(Intel).

http://theinquirer.net/?article=23747

Another reason for at least having AMD as an option. Quad core Athlons/Opterons.

After announcement of Cell the future of PowerPC line was not clear.
I think IBM is interested in Power and Cell as high-performance and PowerPC as low-performance solution. So they doesn't waste resources for extra high-perf 970 line just for such a limited market.
Perhaps custom Xbox/Nintendo cpu cores are similar to the PPE in Cell.

OS X is a chameleon in tiger clothing (pun intended). Secretive orgies of humping the cows at knight. Okay, that is enough double talk....

I, personally would use OS X over any other OS, even if it ran on a tin of beans, BUT one thing is for sure. I from switched from Windows to Mac two years because of the following (And I will not accept):

1. Daily virus, spy-ware and pop-up crap that impedes my productivity.
2. hookah diddle diddle zillion GHz hype evolution, at the expense of lava hot, liquid cooled, built in beer fridge on top of frying pan designs.
3. A mobile laptop with a hydrogen bomb battery that lasts 2 hours.

Quite frankly my iBook G4 14" running panther does the job fine.

IBM, Freescale and Intel, amongst the list, are having the same natural problem. More GHz = More heat. I think it is time to look at a whole new design altogether! The current "evolution" is going nowhere "fast"!

Peace Out.

Well, we can disagree. I think you are wrong on both counts. They already ARE similar... but Apple does not use some commonly built mobo now (I do say this understanding that there are not very many PPC based machines out there now so I guess you have to take that with a grain of salt). I truly believe they will design their own, or have one designed for them, and that yes, it will use common components (for heaven's sake, chips are chips - they all do the same things) but it will be THEIRS and they will NOT buy cheap boards. If you think that, well, let us wait and see this time next year. I believe I will be correct.

Second, a cpu is a cpu (another big, fat chip that takes input and provides modified output). Different types of CPUs simply require different connections and feeds, but what they heck? They all do the same things.

I dunno. Too much is being made of all this. Next June Apple will release their first intel-based computer. It will be at 3 levels of performance and the prices will begin at $1400, $1800 and $2200 (or something to that effect) and they will have different disks, and different graphic cards.

That's it. I don't know what all you people are expecting out of this???? THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE. Apple will continue to do what they are doing today, but now they will be able to say "Well, Dell's PCs are running at 4.0 ghz running Windows... ours also run at 4.0ghz but OUR computers run MAC OS X!!"

I admit it is fun to speculate, but in the end the faster we go, the behinder we get.

It's going to hit market sales a lot of Apple thinks that many users will pay a PC more just to install OS X without the ability to just assemble the PC they like.
They should just sell their software and forget about selling hardware unless they want to enter the console market like Microsoft did (although Microsoft and Apple are the same thing whatever you might think about it).

We could all flame & argue till we're blue in the face about sales predictions & marketing strategies...but in the end we're speculating.

What I'm curious about is the performance. First of all, an emulator obviously adds some system overhead. Given OSX's already RAM-greedy nature....the idea of adding yet another resource layer to the core of the operating system makes me nervous about system requirements & performance levels...

Secondly, there are certain architecture optimizations in place that will need to be re-configured/written/evaluated.
What are your thoughts? How many new iterations of the OS will it take until the PPC optimizations are removed and x86 optimization instructions added?

Finally, I think [read:opinion] that the overall move to the x86 architecture is a good one, albeit a larger one than Apple wants to make it. Apple is relishing in the increased publicity of this announcement, no doubt about that. People are talking-just look at this comments thread!

Also, it shows a boldness that I haven't seen from Apple in some time. The switch to OSX was ballsy, but it was more out of necessity than anything (OS9 was just too antiquated). Apple could stay with IBM, but they claim the performance and production levels weren't high enough...I am inclined to believe they are exaggerating things a bit. My guess is that Apple got a better price quote from Intel and realized that IBM was headed for the server market, not the desktop market - where Intel is still thriving (despite the awesome efforts by AMD). The transition shows the "forward thinking" mantra which has always been one of Apple's strongest points.

I would love it if OSX ran on my home-grown vanilla box, but if it doesn't....it won't be the end of the world. I've had a pretty fair feeling for some time (with more than a little confirmation from undisclosed sources) that this announcement has been a possibility for several years...I say 'Go For It, Apple!' and let them see where this ride will take them.

When people say MacOSX won't run on beige boxes, I just laugh. Look at the Mac on Linux project. It enabled you to run MacOSX on NON apple PPC hardware. Now do you think it would be hard not to do the same? Even if Apple uses some kind of special motherboard, it won't be long before a hacker in Norway or wherever will create a patch to install OSX on beige boxes. Besides, it's running a unix core, it couldn't be that hard to work around.

It wasn't a port from Win32 to OS X. It was a port of OS X/PPC Mathematica to OS X/Intel Mathematica. It was essentially a recompile + whatever differences were needed to account for the different CPU.

So Apple is moving over to an x86/x86_64 architecture... who cares?

Apple does what Apple does best. It changes nothing what processor Apple runs on, Their OS is a variant of FreeBSD, which has been running on PPC and x86 processors for years? The core functionality of Mac OS won't change, nor will the ability to run legacy PPC apps!

The change is primarily to do with iBooks... Intel processors handle more MIPS/watt than the PPC. Plain and simple... Faster processor with less power consumption. Apple tried to get IBM to increase the MIPS, but IBM has been too busy with its CELL processor project with Sony/Toshiba.

Oh, and don't feel sorry for IBM ... PPC sales to Apple amount to only 1.8% of IBM's PPC business.

To me, the plan makes sense. To have MacOS only run on genuine Apple computers makes perfect sense as well... and to do it with a hardware copyright protection scheme on the main board of their genuine Apple equipment is a good way of ensuring that.

I'd buy a Mac for what it does, not for what architecture it runs on. MacOS is classy, elegant and just plain easy to use.

Go Apple! Oh, and when the time is right and MacOS matures, don't think that Jobs will ignore the idea of selling MacOS for your average clone ... it'll always run better on a genuine Mac platform

i think superh is elegant as it is very compact 16-bit ISA with RISC principles. worked well on the dreamcast

it's too bad apple didn't consider a multi-core superH processor design.

I just saw on "The Washington Times" site that the mini will be the first convert (according to Jobs). Looks like that Intel mini we saw last week just might be the prototype for the real thing!

Both Intel and AMD have assimilated RISC principles for their X86 cores (since K5 and Pentium Pro).

Depends what you actually mean by RISC principles.

The original RISC idea was to have an easily decoded wide instruction format and a simple and stupid pipeline that could be run at high clock rates. It was left to the compiler to schedule code for correct results and good performance.

Trouble was, the idea didn't scale. As soon as you wanted to make any changes to the pipeline, like add more stages or parallel execution units, you had to recompile your software to schedule it for the new design, almost as if you'd switched architecture.

To deal with that, lots of ideas were added to the hardware: e.g. hazard detection, register renaming, out-of-order execution, branch prediction, ... .

And suddenly the original principle of moving complexity into the compiler had been more or less forgotten. Furthermore, all these ideas were just as applicable to CISC instruction sets, they just needed more decoding to break up more complex instructions into simpler parts.

So what's left of RISC? Well, the Reduced Instruction Set, which boils down to load/store architecture and fixed, mostly 32-bit instruction formats. Saves a bit of decoding hardware, costs a lot of memory bandwidth.

Quote from apple: (www.apple.com -> PowerMac g5)

" The dual 2.7GHz model packs so much power into tight quarters that Apple designed a liquid cooling system for it, resulting in a cool tower that runs Photoshop nearly two times faster than a Pentium 4-based system. In fact, for most creative endeavors, the Power Mac G5 simply has no competition in its class."

:D

read this article....i think Apple is in the right track.

http://www.avrev.com/news/0605/7.apple.html

-2501

I like the idea of a change