OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21609/OSNews_History_June_4_2005 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:20:24 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367184 http://osnews.com/thread?367184 The best part of this is reading the comments on that thread. Here are some highlights:

Please, for the love of all that is holy, make apple stay on PPC! x86 platform is crap in comparison. They wouldn't do that to us, would they?


Why? Did IBM tried to screw them or something? Honestly, I don't see _any_ advantage in doing this.


PPC is soooo superior to x86! And Mac OS X keeps getting better and better! How could this be true?! I think I gonna go kill myself


BIG Mistake. If they are going to go with anyone in the x86 arena, it should be AMD.


"This the beginning of June, not April"


i mean if anything Apple should switch to the cell. Otherwise I believe we may be screwed forever with x86 an unvirtualisable scatterbrained eccentric cpu isa.


Wow. The SWITCH campaign really works. Even Steve Job bought into his own bullsh!t.


Hahaha!! Squirm fanboys, squirm!


Now CNet and Stephen Shankland has made my list of stupid journalists who like to sensationalise everything. There is no logical reason for Apple to switch to x86 on their desktops. The x86 architecture is aging and lives only on life support now from AMD and Intel who are desperate to keep it going. MS is planning their escape route with .Net (if they get their act together), or by modifying Virtual PC.


And props to Eugenia for this bit of foresight:

No, it won't. Apple would NEVER go for a generic-PC route. It will be a proprietary-style x86 machine, where Win/Linux CAN run on it, but OSX won't run on other PCs. It will require special BIOS tricks in order to only run on Apple PCs. It is suicide to try to support all this hardware out there, Apple will only add support for the proprietary Apple PCs.


Not 100% dead on, but very very close. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (galvanash) Comments RE: Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367192 http://osnews.com/thread?367192 I think it's understandable why people reacted the way they reacted. After all, Apple itself had to eat its own words, too. They more or less successfully camouflaged it by trying to spin it into a positive light marketing wise by showing some pretty graphs. But they definitely did a 180 degree turnaround.

P.S why am i unable to see more than a handful of comments when there are 336? Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (LB06) Comments Correct me if I am wrong but... http://osnews.com/thread?367193 http://osnews.com/thread?367193 ...Apple announced the switch in 2005. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thomas2005) Comments RE: Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367197 http://osnews.com/thread?367197 What I recall from the whole switchover was Jobs' adamant denial a few weeks beforehand that Apple would never, ever, not in million years support the x86 platform. I think the news had been broken on the Apple secrets site that was shut down a couple of years ago. I can only speculate as to his reasons for the denial (contract negotiations I suppose), but the way it came off after Apple made it public was that he was just lying outright. And this about face didn't gather as much attention as I'd hoped. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (richmassena) Comments RE: Correct me if I am wrong but... http://osnews.com/thread?367199 http://osnews.com/thread?367199 You are so right... It was WWDC 2005... Therefore, it means that someone did an epic failure! Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shadow_x99) Comments RE[2]: Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367205 http://osnews.com/thread?367205 That's when I really started to detest Apple. I'd been a Mac advocate for a while, and I fully bought the whole, "the RISC PPC is really much faster, in terms of operations dispatched, despite it's lower clock-speed." When they switched to x86, the message was, "look how much faster these x86 chips are! THEIR CLOCK SPEEDS ARE SO MUCH HIGHER!" They switched messages without missing a beat. Their blatant display of self-righteous, unashamed self-contradiction and hypocrisy lost them one hard-core Mac advocate. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (boldingd) Comments One of the smartest decisions ever http://osnews.com/thread?367207 http://osnews.com/thread?367207 I remember I was shocked when I heard about this. But as soon as it was announced I realized it was actually a brilliant.

My instant reaction was "NOOO!" then it was "waaaait a minute, you mean I can now run any OS supported by X86?, wicked!"

After I got my first Intel based Mac, I had multiple instances of Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and Mac OS. All of sudden you wonder " why the heck didn't they do this sooner"

By switching to intel Apple instantly removed a barrier to adoption that stood in the way of the old architecture. Namely, you can run whatever OS you want on your mac now. THAT i believe made a huge difference to allot of buyers. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siraf72) Comments 5 Yeats Ago! http://osnews.com/thread?367213 http://osnews.com/thread?367213 Holey. Does anyone else think that it's unbelievable that this was 5 years ago!Edited 2009-06-05 20:10 UTC Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (amacdonald) Comments Lol http://osnews.com/thread?367216 http://osnews.com/thread?367216 Try 4 years ago today. All the articles are from 2005. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anon9) Comments RE[3]: Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367219 http://osnews.com/thread?367219 This was exactly my point, but you stated it much more clearly than I.

I bought into the PPC being faster argument too, and maybe it was true at some point. But when the PPC speeds started to stall, and IBM was unable/unwilling to deliver the G5 in a laptop package, moving to x86 made great sense. I just didn't like the spooky switch in messages, and everyone's complacency about it. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (richmassena) Comments RE: One of the smartest decisions ever http://osnews.com/thread?367221 http://osnews.com/thread?367221 It was definitely a great move for Apple.

When anyone inquires as to which platform I think is better now, I tell them, with a bit of a wicked grin, that a Mac is a PC.

It's certainly brought down the barriers to adoption in the organization where I work. I'm glad the Mac people get to use their preferred platform, and if necessary, we can just use Windows only on the computer. Now if only vendors would offer dual-licensing agreements, or support OSX at all. I'm looking you Adobe and AutoDesk. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (richmassena) Comments RE[2]: Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367222 http://osnews.com/thread?367222 Select Flat view/per page ALL. It was from before the forums were threaded - nested view doesn't work right. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (galvanash) Comments RE[3]: Dropping of PPC - Funny http://osnews.com/thread?367223 http://osnews.com/thread?367223
When they switched to x86, the message was, "look how much faster these x86 chips are! THEIR CLOCK SPEEDS ARE SO MUCH HIGHER!"


they didn't. the message was "intel chips are more power efficient", which was true as apple didn't switch to the p4 but to the core architecture. the clock speed of the last imac g5 was a bit higher than that of the first intel imac. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (puenktchen) Comments Comment by Eddyspeeder http://osnews.com/thread?367226 http://osnews.com/thread?367226 Apart from the PPC>x86 switch, David points out another article concerning "responsive computers" and asks the question at what point it is today.

To take one example, eye movement registering has made great advancements but still requires a dimly lit room and very specific (i.e., individualised) calibration to measure eye movement, gaze and other such factors well. The equipment is quite expensive still.

Three-dimensional haptic tools (that is, not tablets or force feedback) still are "scientists' toys" and only extend to some specific tasks at the time. Exceptions to this, naturally, are the multi-million dollar research projects.

Nevertheless, we did see an impressive increase in the use of touch screens; from navigation to printing, from smartphones to image browsing. For now, embedded systems are the way to go. It seems over the past few years we have become realistic in the daily usage of such systems. We don't want our fridge to tell us to get more milk, we do want our car to tell us how to get to the supermarket in order to get the milk. It seems we'll be following this path for the years to come. But just maybe, in a few years, my computer will say "Welcome home!" and wag its tail. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eddyspeeder) Comments It never made sense to me... http://osnews.com/thread?367330 http://osnews.com/thread?367330 ...why Apple moved their Xserve away from Power. The Power6+ is the fastest CPU on the planet, x86-servers trail waaaay behind.

Sure, you wouldn't want a Power6+ burning a hole in your desk and there is not even a hint of getting it in a "portable" version so I can see the desktop side of things moving x86 as smart. Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dlundh) Comments RE: It never made sense to me... http://osnews.com/thread?367365 http://osnews.com/thread?367365 Apple doesn't like supporting more than one type of processor at a time? I don't think they sell that many Xserves, so they wouldn't get any sweet discounts from IBM even if they did switch to POWER. Apple's marketing department would have to make OS X Server a must-have in the enterprise before it'd make sense. Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Johann Chua) Comments RE[2]: It never made sense to me... http://osnews.com/thread?367369 http://osnews.com/thread?367369 Next supported 4 architectures and Apple currently supports 3 (when you include the iPhone/iPod Touch).

But I guess you're right, I don't think Xserves are that big a size of Apples sales. Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dlundh) Comments