Stop the presses: Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it’s scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel’s microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.
Apple to drop PPC for x86?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Transitive Technologies not only offers QuickTransit software for PPC-on-x86
emulation, but for x86-on-PPC emulation as well:
http://www.quicktransit.com/products.htm
So if Apple does switch to x86, I would think it would incorporate
QuickTransit in both the PPC and x86 versions of Mac OS X.
The x86 Mac OS X apps could run unmodified on PPC Macs, and the PPC
Mac OS X apps could run unmodified on x86 Macs. And Apple wouldn’t
totally cannibalize its existing PPC Mac hardware sales.
Everyone is happy – consumers, developers, third-party vendors, etc.
Of course, it’s still possible that Apple simply enlisted Intel to supply PPC
processors. We’ll just have to wait and see.
If Apple switch to Intel.. do they automatically becomes members of the trusted computing alliance ?
@ goldstein
Kill PowerPC? What processor arch do you think all the next gen game console manufacturers use?
IBM is still in the supercomputer business, those don’t run on P4s.
Geeez…
Metrowerks recently sold all their x86 compiler technology to Nokia. Really sold it: they stopped selling CodeWarrior 9 until they could ensure all traces were removed from the CD (thank goodness I sprang for the license a while back!!!)
Metrowerks is a major Apple partner: they are the single biggest (possibly the only) reason the PowerPC transition succeeded. All the noise about wonderful Apple management is just that: there would have been *ZERO* PPC software for a year at least if Metrowerks hadn’t appeared and saved them -> curtains to the PowerMac AND Apple in ’94 or ’95.
Does it make sense that MW would not have known that Apple was about to adopt x86? Would they have chosen to dump their x86 compiler (which is far, far better than MS’s) if they did? Possibly, if MW is planning to exit the desktop software business anyway: their recent behavior has caused rumors to fly on that topic. And why did Nokia want it, for that matter? They could have had unlimited rights to use the technology for much less than buying it outright.
Why on Earth would Apple use Intel chips? Not only are AMD’s better and cheaper, but AMD would have an interest in Apple other than killing off the PowerPC permanently (about the only reason Intel would even return Jobs’ calls.)
Also bear in mind that there will be NO software for the new machines, and no drivers AT ALL for a long, long time to come. Without MW, there are no commercial quality development tools (gcc can do x86 code generation, but it isn’t especially good at it; XCode has a long way to go yet.) No company in its right mind would spend the money to recompile and reoptimize programs for OSX86: it’s hard enough to get them to release PPC versions that all Mac owners can use.
Bottom line: if Apple does try switching to x86, they’ll be gone in a year or two at most. I buy Apple hardware to use MacOS, but a crippled, doomed port of iLife to x86 doesn’t interest me. Linux (and possibly XP) will be running on the new boxes in no time, but will people pay extra to get nice hardware for that? Experience so far suggests that they won’t: except for laptops, people run Windows because they don’t know any better and only want the cheapest upfront price they can find.
If it happens (and I truly don’t believe it will), I expect Apple’s stock price to spike up as all the Wall Street idiots swoon with glee: I’ll dump mine at the peak in a week or two, and figure I still have the best hardware/OS currently available (G5, TiBook) to use for a few more years while I move to Linux for good.
Is Safari already a x86 app?
i mean isn’t it at it’s roots(safari) X86?
No, Safari is only PPC native. You can’t get it from Darwin or anything along those lines. It’d be neat to see it on other arch’s, but that’s not the case (at this point.)
Serveral hours (4:30 EST) and we’ll hopefully see what the real deal is here. It’ll be neat to see.
konqueror is essentially the x86 port of safari…. some things are different, but much of the code in konqueror comes directly from safari
“Serveral hours (4:30 EST) and we’ll hopefully see what the real deal is here.”
Yeah. It’ll only be about 12 hours away now. Shame nobody just waited until Monday since this has been an on-going debate on the ‘Net now for years. Yes, I commented on the story earlier on too.
I’ve read speculation on Slashdot, that Apple owns all the IP to the G5 as part of their contract with IBM. If Apple isn’t happy they can cancel the contract with IBM and source another vendor to make the G5 chip for them. The speculation is that Apple with source the G5 chip to Intel. This seems to make the most sense out of all the wild speculation of switching to x86. I don’t think the Itanium makes sense since its doubtful it will run on a laptop.
If customers even see ‘with an Intel’ processor on an Apple computer, regardless of architecture, they’ll probably buy a PC instead. I don’t think a lot of people can apprecaite the niceties of OS X until they actually ‘use’ it. The general public are too used to using Windows.
I just bought a iMac G5 on Thursday (this week before the news broke) from Apple. If I’m not happy with the news, as a first time Mac buyer, I’m not sure what I’ll do. There’s a chance I’ll keep my PC. I haven’t yet sold my Athlon 64 system. I’m torn apart as I don’t want to go back to Windows or use Linux on the desktop. The Apple made productivity programs and OS, are I feel, the best in the industry.
If they switch to x86 they could purchase sun micro and double their size. apple’s employees work a lot harder than sun employees so they will be able to cut costs greatly.
they could offer both sparc and x86 systems easily as PPC will be out of the picture…..
the opportunity will be great. it would be cool if they bought out blackberry too.
apple + blackberry + sun = computing powerhouse.
sun is so cheap right now that they could EASILY capture a HUGE server market precentage. Storage is getting better and better, more profitable that the storagetek addition would be awsome.
sadly, i dont think apple has done many acquisitions at all and they may be too arrogant to do it
doubtful.. IBM already has manufacturing facilities designed for this as intel does not. Although it’s possible… It would cost intel more money to do this than IBM which makes no sense on ibm’s part.
Once you take PPC out of a huge market segment of PC’s that hurts ppc greatly–it will be reduced to the server and embedded market.. and as history shows that’s when they slowly die…..
I think IBM is completely retarded. they sell their PC business which kills alot of the marketing power that they have and now their sales are dipping… their CEO needs to be fired immediately. It looks like sun is poised for better growth than ibm is.
How are those page hits doing for you osnews.com and the rest of the teh lame Wintel world? There is only one!
And you where wrong B.Gates– Quality does matter. They’ve been lusting after, talking about and wanting Apple’s OS since forever…
Does anyone know if gcc 4 has features that will facilitate a transition to x86? I kind of remember hearing things about auto vectorization, will that make transitioining for altivec to sse3 more feasible?
konqueror is essentially the x86 port of safari…. some things are different, but much of the code in konqueror comes directly from safari
And a KHTML developer WEEPS. First off, Konquerer is VERY different from Safari. It’s not just a web browser even! Secondly, the Safari developers ported their work FROM x86. Third, what they have in common are KHTML and WebCore, the rendering engines! Even then both have evolved separately since Safari’s birth and semi-fork.
“And you where wrong B.Gates– Quality does matter. They’ve been lusting after, talking about and wanting Apple’s OS since forever…”
I don’t think so. Its OS X that people have been lusting after due to the BSD core and shiny desktop interface.
“I guess Apple will move to Intel, and they’re relying on a fast, seamless emulator to do it.
But it’s really about Hollywood: Apple’s looking to transform the movie industry the same way the iPod and iTunes changed the music business.”
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html?tw=rss.TOP
Perhaps if Apple hadn’t shut down Exponential as a PPC maker, they’d have faster, cooler, more affordable CPU chips…
This was one of the stupid moves Apple has ever made…
Where do I pre-order?
My better old (Windows) PC’s are going to be Mac OS X, if it supports it.
I am sure Apple is not going to throw away its image of *polish* and *quality*. I am not worried. When it moved from 68k to PPC, quality got even better, IMHO.
Look, the bottom line is this: Two years ago, a Mac OS X notebook sells for about $3000, which is about the same as similarly configured Wintel notebook. Intel dropped its prices, and now I can get the Wintel notebook for about half price, but Powerbook stayed around the same price. “Half price” is significant to business budgets, obviously.
If it is compatible enough, maybe it could even run on VIA Mini-ITX for embedded applications, but that’s probably getting ahead of the game right now.
Sorry if this is a dupe but this is specific to legacy intel.
Don’t confuse the i386 architecture with the i386 processor. Darwin makes use of instructions specific to the i486 and Pentium processors, and will not run on an i386 processor.
Move on. Nothing to see here.
I think they will launch a tablet/media player with a Centrino hybrid cpu, running a modified GUI for OSX.
Wait and see.
Oh, the betrayal. I’ve always felt PPC on the desktop was immensly helpful in promoting the biodiversity. I am sure Apple an IBM will urge not to panic, that there’s n still servers, embedded devices, consoles… but I am afraid it is the beginning of the end.
And — snap! — (lost it), and, and the kids of nowadays don’t even care!!! They understand CPUs in terms of clock frequency, of framerates in spirit crushingly uninspiring games, absurd cooling rigs and silly product names! They’ve never known the dark claustrophobic feelings when carefully piecing together 8086 code, they’ve never known the feeling of elation when programming MC68K and the sour taste after coming back to 486 just to laugh mad at erratic nature of its ISA, after finally managing to squeeze out that last optimized cycle… while dreaming of a machine having a “real processor”. Double snap!! (totally lost it)
It’s hard to imagine Apple going after the power hungry P4’s. But maybe Apple is going to be Centrino-only. First starting with Sonoma, then the dual-core “Napa” rumored for 2006.
Between this news items, and the editorial we have over 500 posts on the topic!
This is a really momentus occasion!
Do all the fanboys believe it now? Leopard will run on Intel chips. Good news!
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/06/06/intel.transition/
1. Steve announced it at AWWDC, so it’s true
2. OS X has been “cross-platform by design” for years now
3. Conversion between the platforms isn’t too difficult
4. Microsoft will continue to create future versions of Office for Mac.
Cheers.