Remember PA Semi? The company has just released, as promised, its first chipset. "They are full 64-bit PPC, support virtualisation, and would do Alitvec but that name is copyrighted by Freescale. Instead they do 'VMA'. The three parts run at a max wattage of 25, 15 and 10W for the 2.0, 1.5 and 1.0GHz parts respectively, with typical wattage listed at 13, 8 and 6W. The individual cores are said to have a 7W max and 4W typical power consumption at 2.0GHz." PA Semi was one of the prime reasons why Ars's John 'Hannibal' Stokes doubted Apple's reasoning for the switch to Intel.
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Member since:2005-10-12
There is a real logical difficulty with the argument, and its why there is such nostalgia for PPC. Fact is, you cannot at the same time describe a supplier as "running standard hardware for close to a decade" AND as designing its own hardware. The two are incompatible.
What Apple did with the move to Intel was stop designing hardware, and instead did totally what it had been doing partially for some time: start packaging off the shelf stuff. The result was a real loss of difference, and this is something some Apple customers found very hard to accept. But it was right. The market has voted on the question of unique hardware tied to an OS, and the verdict has been, too expensive for too little if any gain. It turned into difference for its own sake. There really was nothing to be gained from designing your own graphics cards or desktop peripheral interfaces. Or even, latterly, your own main board. You just end up being different for its own sake, at vast expense.
You could see the Intel decision was right as soon as the new towers came out. Where before the interior had been filled with humongous loud cooling, now there was space for extra drives.
Now, do OS and hardware run smoothest when designed by the same people? Don't know of any evidence to that effect on modern hardware, because no-one is doing it any more. On the possibly related point, is there any evidence that OSX runs more smoothly than XP or major flavors of Linux? Don't know of any.
And even if there were, its not clear what it would show. How would you separate out the two possible contributors of OS quality, and quantity of hardware supported, to assign blame or praise properly?
The one thing such evidence could not prove however is that designing the hardware and the OS is better. Because Apple is not doing that, and hasn't for years.
Member since:2005-07-06
On the possibly related point, is there any evidence that OSX runs more smoothly than XP or major flavors of Linux? Don't know of any.
As somebody who has used Linux for five or six years now, I can definitely say that the hardware/software integration is a major plus for OS X that linux does not have. The benefit is not so much that the hardware can be designed for the software, but rather by shipping the hardware and the software as a unit, the software can be customized well to the hardware. When the same company that designs the OS specifies every chip that goes into the machine, they have a tremendous amount of flexibility in making sure the two sets of decisions are compatible.
Poor support of the hardware in any given machine is the single biggest thing that makes Linux complicated to use. It is also a major thing making Windows complicated to use, but at least Microsoft has the benefit of being the 800lb gorilla that everyone designs their hardware for. Consider something simple like putting a laptop to sleep. It's a complete crap-shot whether it'll work on any given machine with Linux, and not a whole lot more reliable in Windows. In contrast, suspend always works on Apple's laptops, for the simple reason that Apple has enormously fewer combinations of hardware and software to test and support.
Apple could easily do the same with Linux, btw. There is no reason OS X is any more suitable for such a purpose than Linux, and Linux certainly has more overall hardware support. The difference isn't the OS: it's the fact that the software is developed with the hardware in mind, and the whole thing is shipped, sold, and supported as a unit.
Member since:2005-11-14
rayiner stated what I was trying to get across much more coherently. If Microsoft were allowed to make computers, they'd be a hell of a lot more stable.
Show me a man who thinks off-the-shelf should be the rule for boxes and I'll show you a man who's never written a driver.
Member since:2005-11-14
Fact is, you cannot at the same time describe a supplier as "running standard hardware for close to a decade" AND as designing its own hardware. The two are incompatible.
There's a far cry between Apple restricting the specs for their computers and Microsoft hoping an unknown Taiwanese mobo plant builds an integrated board that doesn't fry itself or defy a hardware standard. Soyo makes tons of mobos with inexpensive, commodity integrated ethernet chips which are notorious for overheating and self-destructing.
If either of us had a nickel for the number of mobos that duplicate video, audio and/or ethernet between the onboard chipset and their replacements, we'd be rich.
There is a difference, and it isn't semantic.
Member since:
2005-11-14
Your post is very beautifully written, but devoid of substance.
Classic wasn't a tragedy in any sense. When its legacy cruft became too much to bear, Apple moved to a completely new OS (compared to Vista) which still managed to bridge backwards compatibility.
The "new variations on PPC" you mention are largely Cell processors which no one has tried to pass off as being suitable for general-purpose CPUs, or more powerful PPCs which still consume too much power to be laptop-feasible. Laptop sales outpace desktop sales, and vendors ignore this at their peril.
I'm disappointed that IBM refused to invest their own money in Apple's corporate future, too, but realistically PPC entered Apple when Intel had no comparable offerings. Intel caught up, fast, but IBM saw no incentive to compete with Intel and even sabotaged Intel emulation in the G5s without telling Apple.
As far as the 'can't tell them apart' argument is concerned, Macs have been running standard hardware for close to a decade. ADB, NuBus, RS422 serial ports and nonstandard analog video all died back in the Clinton administration. The silent argument from Apple on hardware is the same: OS and hardware run smoothest when designed by the same people. It's the model that used to rule the industry, and until IBM and Microsoft it was unquestioned. Thanks to cloners and Windows, compatibility and driver BSODs are a real issue. Linux has to work twice as hard to resolve this problem because of the amount of blackboxing. Yeah, I'll pay more for a system that doesn't fight or guess to work.
This is about performance, not gut feelings.