eWeek and ThinkSecret claim that Apple (since the begining of OSX) is developing in parallel to the PPC version of MacOSX, an x86 version called ‘Marklar’ as a fallback option, in case the Motorola CPUs could not deliver. The article also claims that this version is assigned only to a few dozen engineers so far, for maintanance purposes-only, and Apple most probably would switch to the desktop Power4 CPU that IBM is preparing instead. We recently wrote an editorial about the probable switch of Apple to x86.
Apple Keeps Options Open with MacOSX Marklar
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I know Apple is a niche player serving a niche market. That’s all fine and dandy if they are content. I don’t believe they are nearly as content as you think they are. I think they would like to grab a much larger share of the desktop market. I don’t think they will. Maybe my own selfishness, wanting OS X running on my PC, is clouding my judgement. Who knows. I just think that OS X is the first OS that can truly be considered serious, direct competition to Windows on the desktop. If that is the case, I would think Apple ought to be able to turn that into a money making situation. I could be wrong.
“I don’t see you bashing SGI because they don’t have open hardware to run IRIX….”
That could probably be explained by the fact that this thread is about Apple, Macs, OS X and X86.
🙂
Satori.
>>”They’ll just keep selling those at the Apple Stores :-)”
If all goes well, Apple would have 50 stores?
How would that compete with Gateway?
I doubt Apple would want Amiga to overthrow the Mac.<<
rajan r, I was actually being sarcastic and humorous on that post, so don’t take it seriously 🙂
>>But why would Apple want to stay a niche player? To avoid being a commodity. Look at the PC market, the only people making money are Microsoft, Dell and Intel. The rest are NOT making money.<<
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Apple can release OS X for x86. They won’t, of course, but they want to let Microsoft know that they can do this at a moment’s notice.
Microsoft can cancel the next version of Office for Macintosh. They won’t, of course, but they want to let Apple know that they can do this at a moment’s notice.
It’s called “maintaining a balance of power”.
The disadvantages of the OS X on x86 based Macs are:
– the need for third party developers to recompile and redistribute their apps in fat-binary format (this is primarily an ‘organize’ effort, not a development effort !)
– the loss of good power-efficient processors for use in laptops
The advantage:
– HUGE increaase in price/performance ratio
That’s really it … oh, and be sure that OS X on x86 or AMD’s Hammer will only run on Macs and not generic PC’s.
CattBeMac: Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Thanks. It is not often I hear that 🙂
Ilan Volow: Apple can release OS X for x86. They won’t, of course, but they want to let Microsoft know that they can do this at a moment’s notice.
I bet all their major third party developers, INCLUDING Microsoft would have already known about Marklar, IF it existed in the first place. Apple doesn’t want to blow its trumpets, otherwise sales of G4s would go flop.
anon: – the need for third party developers to recompile and redistribute their apps in fat-binary format (this is primarily an ‘organize’ effort, not a development effort !)
There would obviously be hardware emulation of PPC (like the 68k to PPC transition), meaning recompiling old apps is not that needed. The major part is that how long would it take third party developers to optimize their apps for x86, replacing AltiVec code with SSE, SSE2 and 3DNow code, taking advantage of HyperTransport etc.
anon: – the loss of good power-efficient processors for use in laptops
http://www.transmeta.com
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_12…
http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/c3.jsp
http://www.intel.com/products/desk_lap/processors/laptop/pentium4-m…
Happy? (and guess what? With Hammer and Prescott, they get even more energy efficient!)
CattBeMac: rajan r, I was actually being sarcastic and humorous on that post, so don’t take it seriously 🙂
I figured that out :-). In no way you are supporter of Amiga nor Gateway (Your nick isn’t CattBeMacAmiGate…)
ROFL! What a discussion! To get back to Apple’s “problem” (the processor), I do not think it is in Steve Job’s nature to be content. I do think he is a realist though and not a starry eyed dreamer. I would imagine this processor business is driving him to distraction – he has Apple set up the way he wants it, but can’t get the new OS to run fast because of the processor. He has Apple putting out products on all fronts, but is crippled by this one thing.
It is interesting to me that they use the fast RAM in the new Power Macs, but the old bus. In one sense it seems like doing that and the dual processors across the board on Power Macs is to buy time, squeeze every ounce out of what they have. But, buy time until when or for what? Apple is going to have to make a decision – and not in the distant future – about this probem. Not even making a big change to the bus this time around, it makes me wonder if Apple is focusing on something completely new in the planning.
The reason they did that is the current G4 processor doesn’t support DDR directly. Which is why everyone is curious to see if the dual 1.25 G4 will be a newer G4 or an over clocked 1 GHz one. Time will tell
BTW, damn good points you made there. Had to toot your horn there. LOL
Everything in this thread is wishful thinking that doesn’t consider economic realities. Don’t you think that if it were economically possible for Apple to lower their prices, they would? Don’t you think that if Apple could realistically switch to selling PC operating systems and successfully compete against Microsoft, they would have already done it? Apple can’t afford to have low profit margins. The minute Apple has a bad quarter, people start screaming that Apple is about to go out of business, which scares away potential customers, which drives Apple into the death spiral it was in circa 1996. And Apple can’t enter the x86 market either. The PC desktop user market isn’t looking for alternatives to Windows — if it were, Linux would be making greater inroads. What handed Microsoft its monopoly, and maintains it, is the average user’s fear of incompatibility. If OS X were offered for PCs, users would ask if it could run Windows software — the same question they ask about Linux — and if the answer is no, then it’s no sale.
I don’t think the people who write on these boards realize the extent to which the availability and cheapness of PC hardware is dependent on the Microsoft monopoly. Windows is what creates this vast market for PC hardware manufacturers. Without the symbiotic relationship between Microsoft and the PC manufacturers, you Linux users couldn’t have your dirt-cheap hardware and free operating system. Your expectations about how much machine you should get for how much money is anomalous, and it’s ridiculous to expect that Apple can or should be able to compete on the same terms. Under the circumstances, Apple is doing a heroic job, creating exciting products and remaining profitable.
To Satori, I’d like to suggest, as respectfully as possible, that you’re simply being cheap, and kind of foolish. If you really want to use OS X, buy a Mac. You say you paid $3000 to upgrade your PC. For the same amount of money you could have bought a G4. Maybe it’s not the right computer for you, but it’s certainly not economically impossible for you to get a Mac.
I have two questions for the more technically knowledgeable people here. 1) Other than speed, is there any technical feature of PCs that is superior to Macs? 2) Is it technically impossible to develop a PowerPC chip that offers the same performance as x86 hardware? If the answer to those two question is no and no, it would not make sense for Apple to switch to x86.
Those are questions Motorola must answer Joe, not Apple.
What some are saying is that there are other options that Apple has, that might work as well. IBM being the first to come to mind, as they already have a relationship with them and IBM is developing a new process that fits their time window for it to be a realistic possibility.
Ok I know this has already gone into the usual pc vs mac stuff, but I am getting sick of constantly reading about the supposed “speed gap”. I have recently just bought one of the new 1GHz powermacs and have been comparing it with my single Athlon xp 1800+. Yes the OS X interface feels slower and some apps take longer to load. But we are only talking a few seconds here, for all practical purposes the speed difference is irrelevant. Now for the things that matter:
Encoding a 5 minute video clip into MPEG4, MPEG2, and VCD:
Mac: mpeg4=8:28 mpeg2=4:38 vcd=4:47
PC: mpeg4=23:47 mpeg2=13:22 vcd=7:46
I have no doubt this powermac can hold its own against a dual P4 2.5GHz, and probably still cost lots less. Alienware sells a similarily equipped dual xeon 1.8GHz for $3100. Now maybe the pc just has crappily written encoders, but who cares, it’s the end result that matters and the powermac gets there way ahead.
“To Satori, I’d like to suggest, as respectfully as possible, that you’re simply being cheap, and kind of foolish. If you really want to use OS X, buy a Mac. You say you paid $3000 to upgrade your PC. For the same amount of money you could have bought a G4. Maybe it’s not the right computer for you, but it’s certainly not economically impossible for you to get a Mac.”
I could have bought “a” G4 but it would not have been as fast or as well configured as the PC for the same price. I have been through this so many times. At similar price points a PC will offer a faster cpu, double the ram and hard drive space, a better video card and more. If you don’t believe me, come up with a Mac configuration and a realistic price and I will configure a better (forgetting the OS debate – just a spec for spec better desktop) PC for less. That doesn’t mean alot if you simply like Macs better. But that is how things stand right now. Apple’s laptops are much more in line with PC laptop prices though. Don’t know why, but they are. Who knows. I certainly don’t.
Anyhow, I know OS X will never run on my PC. And I know Apple will always sell their hardware at a premium. So, it looks like Windows (and maybe Linux in the near future) is what I will be running for some time to come. Unless Apple does something to change my mind about buying a Mac. I doubt that will happen though.
Satori.
“the powermac gets there way ahead”
You are going to take ONE test and use that to decide which system is faster? Are you in denial? Have you missed all of the recent articles with benchmarks showing that PC’s have the speed advantage overall? I mean, Mac users have been bitching constantly about the fact that Macs are lagging behind PC’s performance-wise for some time now (of course not in every single benchmark, but in the majority). All you have to do is read this site and it’s forums, Slashdot and a million other sites, forums and usenet groups to know this is the case. If the current G4’s were so fast, as fast as their PC counterparts, nobody would be complaining at all. But they are. You don’t see PC users complaining that Intel and AMD are slow to release faster CPU’s do you? But if Apple was releasing kick ass Dual 3 or 4Ghz G4’s you sure would here PC users bitching.
Satori.
I have to agree with Satori on that one. I’m a Mac user and I know for a fact Macs aren’t the fastest on the block. The great Motorola freeze of 1999, killed that a while ago. As long as your system works well for you, who cares. Everyone has to use what works for them so don’t let things get to heated.
The voice of reason. 😉
What speed advantage? Do tell me where to find these benchmarks. All the benchmarks I have seen are meaningless junk showing pcs being a few seconds at opening apps or something. All I know is I own a powermac and a amd 1800, and use a p4 1.7G at work and for what I do the powermac romps all over them. And most of the people complaining about the mac being slow don’t seem to actually own one.
CUPERTINO, California:
A bombshell hit the computing world yesterday when Apple Computer, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs announced that its flagship operating system, Mac OS X, would be converted to run on processors made by Intel Corp. and AMD Corp.; and in tandem with the release of the new version of this operating system, the Macintosh computer – which uses processors from IBM Corp. and Motorola, Inc. – would be discontinued.
“We were tired of selling expensive, slow computers to customers who were more than willing to pay high premiums for them,” Jobs was quoted as saying. “We want to be a real force in the PC industry, and that means slashing our margins to next to nothing and selling what little valuable intellectual property we have – our operating system – to customers who, by and large, are too cheap to pay for it.”
When asked about the motivation for his decision to abandon Apple’s lucrative niche in the computing industry, Jobs replied, “It has always been a personal goal to get revenge on Microsoft for all the evils they have been responsible for over the years. Mac OS X gives us that opportunity. Now that we’ve abandoned the dead weight of the Macintosh, we will have the ability to saturate what we estimate will be as much as two and a half percent of the PC market – a market full of stingy geeks who can barely afford deodorant, much less a 129 dollar boxed copy of our OS – within a year’s time. As I said earlier, opening our OS may not be profitable, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Apple’s move parallels similar courses of action taken in the past by Be, Inc. and Jobs’ own NeXT, Inc., both of which began by selling both hardware and software but were forced to eventually discontinue their hardware lines and port their operating systems to the “x86” family of processors, leaving their technically advanced operating systems to linger and die in the marketplace.
Apple (AAPL) stock closed down 92 percent yesterday at 69 cents per share. Executives were not available for comment.
“What speed advantage? Do tell me where to find these benchmarks. All the benchmarks I have seen are meaningless junk showing pcs being a few seconds at opening apps or something. All I know is I own a powermac and a amd 1800, and use a p4 1.7G at work and for what I do the powermac romps all over them. And most of the people complaining about the mac being slow don’t seem to actually own one.
”
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/05_may/features/cw_aeshowdo…
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2…
http://www.postforum.com/forums/read.php?f=6&i=49528&t=49528
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html
Among many. The Mac’s hold up well (and sometimes are faster, I admit) considering their handicap, but overall, PC’s are faster and cheaper. And if you are not seriously into things like rendering and so on, then you probably don’t care about the speed differences that much. But, when I am rendering a print resolution image or compositing multiple print res. layers, I most definitely am concerned with performance differences like that.
I don’t own a Mac, true. I use a G4 several times a week though.
And it’s not only the speed. It’s the price. Even if the Macs were as fast as PC’s overall, they are still more expensive.
Satori.
hey now that was funny 🙂
Better than the drinking game!
we should just consider you as Comedy Central for OSNews!
I agree. Great tension breaker. 🙂
we should just consider you as Comedy Central for OSNews!
Wow, that would be great… You get Comedy Central in Europe?
One thing Apple _could_ do with Marklar that would benefit them would be to produce “evaluation” cds of Marklar, for x86 users to “try out” OSX before buying a Mac. Like SuSE’s “live eval” or Demolinux’s cds.
This has already been thought of by someone probably, but I think it bears some reapeating… That yes there is a hardware element to this whole question. And the arguement against it, as far as I have heard is always that porting is a huge and insurmountable task.
But that usually takes into consideration of porting existing Mac software products.
What is wrong with porting unix products to intel, in the same fashion as they are ported to ppc? What we are looking at is a CORE of unix. And not so much a difference in hardware. Yes the difference in hardware is there. But I think the common base of unix keeps the differences much more minimized than many are currently mentioning. Why not say that concentrating on unix makes it easier?
Well for the detractors of the idea, it gives them an out for shooting down the proposition. For adherents, it may well prove to be the ace in the hole. The option that buys influence by not playing it, but rather only holding on to it.
Will Apple make the Intel jump?
Being in Bed with Intel is half as bad as being in bed with Microsoft. But Intel would lose no sleep and have no hesitations to bypass MS for its own agenda. A stable of Unixes, from BSD to Apple to Linux to Solaris, to APX, UPX or IBM’s various flavors covering the gamet of server, backend, frontend and desktop might be enough, finally, by virtue of commonality to usurp MS.
Maybe.
But those are only thoughts…. and opinions.
But to summarize, I don’t think MacOS committing to Intel is as large a jump as some believe.
Sincerely,
MacFan
>>You get Comedy Central in Europe?
<<
I haven’t seen it on TV here, but then again I don’t have cable here!
Thanks for the links. The truth is once you get above 700MHz or so there is no such thing as a slow computer, for every $1500 pc that’s faster than a $2500 mac on application x, I can show you a $3500 pc that’s slower than that mac on application y. From reading these comments one would think a mac is still at 486 levels. We are past the point where raw cpu speed matters, pick your application and get what works best. In my case it’s dvd encoding and I like OS X. Of course I’m keeping my pc for games, I do recognize they are much better than macs for that. I guess I have the best of both worlds.
“Thanks for the links. The truth is once you get above 700MHz or so there is no such thing as a slow computer”
Well, I guess it’s all relative. But I still find an 800Mhz system is a slug when I am doing heavy graphics work.
“for every $1500 pc that’s faster than a $2500 mac on application x, I can show you a $3500 pc that’s slower than that mac on application y.”
Possibly.
“From reading these comments one would think a mac is still at 486 levels.”
I would never suggest that. We are speaking in relative terms here, not absolute terms.
“We are past the point where raw cpu speed matters”
I can’t agree with that. Yes, for “joe user” it matters not one bit anymore. I’m not “joe user” though.
“pick your application and get what works best. In my case it’s dvd encoding and I like OS X.”
That’s cool. If a Mac is the best tool for that job, I can’t blame you.
“Of course I’m keeping my pc for games, I do recognize they are much better than macs for that.”
Ya, Macs are not the greatest gaming machines at this point.
“I guess I have the best of both worlds.
”
My wallet simply cannot facilitate such a scenerio.
Satori.
i don’t think macs are terribly overpriced. with every rev of apple’s product line i run some comparisons between it and dell, agateway, compaq, etc. usually the mac comes out about $100 more spec for spec (of course, comparing a G4 to a P4 is very difficult, one does a ton with few mhz, one does very little with a ton of mhz), regardless of chip issues, the apple’s usually come out about $100-200 more than the name-brand PC’s with comparable specs. this has been consistent over the last 5 years. i consider the case design (both aesthets and convenience for upgrades, etc.), the quietness, and the increased resale value to be worth at least that extra $100. so in my mind it’s a wash when it comes to comparing apples to pc’s aound purchase time. and don’t get me started on IT costs supporting those PC’s 😉
Please. Your claim that a Mac of similar config would cost little more than a PC is simply false. Your Mhz/performance ratio comparsion between the G4 and P4 is also completely overblown. Is the G4 a more efficient design? Maybe. But it doesn’t make up enough to compete with the X86 offering at the same price point. I can buy a sweet Dual Athlon MP system (or a Dual Xeon) for the same price or less than a Dual 1.25Ghz G4 and the G4 wouldn’t stand a chance in most benchmarks (not meaningless ones, ones that have actual value like rendering in Lightwave or C4D for example or After Effects benchmarks – and please don’t tell me Photoshop is faster on a G4. “Some” Photoshop filters are, most aren’t), which is why Apple is never specific when they make that claim). Case design? Ok, Macs are pretty. So what? I can get some damn nice cases for a PC. Lian Li, Antec and so on. Convenience for upgrades? You aren’t likely to find too many cases better in that respect than my Antec SX-1030. Huge removable/screwless/lockable side panel, 4 snap in fan mounts, removable internal drive cage, removable dual floppy drive cage, all external 5.25″ bays employ drive rails for easy install and removal (and I have 4 external bays, not 2 like a Mac). There is no removable motherboard tray as in some cases, but as any review of the Antec will tell you (and any user – there are tons, this case is the most popular modders case), you simply don’t need one. The case is cavernous.
Satori.
To what Joe User was saying…I think the majority of people that post here know that Apple would have done something about their processor situation by now, if they could. We have been speculating about what they should do.
To go back to the beginning, it would not surprise me if Apple has a an Intel version of OS X (or at least the major parts of it) going. Motorola is a huge company and they stay afloat no matter what happens, but they have laid off thousands and thousands of people and Apple is not their number one concern.
Quite a bit of what we’ve been talking about is relative and proportional, even subjective. If I was like I was years ago and used only Macs and nothing else, I would probably not even be that aware of the whole processor stuff – I would only know that my new Mac is faster than my old one. If you are an end user and live in the Apple-only world, it is a very nice world, it always has been. When Apple had their online service, eWorld, that was paradise! And it’s a nice world again with all the iApps, OS X being so colorful and having online services like .Mac (once the grumbling dies down <g>).
But, it is a small world when viewed in the much larger computing scheme of things. Yet, a healthy Apple is vital to computing and Linux is vital to computing in the large sense. We must always, I believe, do whatever we can to leave the door open for new OSes and new companies and the OSS movement must continue, no matter what. Even if a monopoly is benign, it is not a good thing, even though perfectly legal. And it isn’t that I’m trying to trash Microsoft here, it’s just that it’s good, it’s healthy when there are other players. So, I still support Apple, I support OSS and I supported Be. And I will support anything that adds to healthy competition and to the advancement of computing in a way that is good in the larger sense.
Joe User: Don’t you think that if it were economically possible for Apple to lower their prices, they would?
When RAM and HDD prices when crashing, ALL PC makers lower their prices by a few hundred dollars. What did Apple do? Sustain the price. When the RAM prices shoot up again, htey increase the price, even though economically it doesn’t make sense.
Joe User: The PC desktop user market isn’t looking for alternatives to Windows — if it were, Linux would be making greater inroads.
With 30% growth, Linux isn’t converting Windows users to Linux, but creating new computers users, ultimately.
Joe User: Under the circumstances, Apple is doing a heroic job, creating exciting products and remaining profitable.
Apple is NOT making a profit by creating exciting products. It does by creating exciting hype. Steve Jobs is a great businessman, he knows how to create hype, he knows how to make his target market go out and buy his latest creations even though they don’t need it.
I salute him for that.
Joe User: 1) Other than speed, is there any technical feature of PCs that is superior to Macs?
– Faster bus speeds. P4s have quad-pumped 133mhz FSB (533mhz), while Athlon has dual-pumped 133mhz FSB (266mhz).
– Professional GPU cards, like Quaddro4 and ATI Fire.
– AGP 8x
– An OS that can take advantage of current consumer graphics cards like ATI 9000 Pro, ATI 9700, GeForce 4 Ti etc.
– The list goes on and on.
Joe User: 2) Is it technically impossible to develop a PowerPC chip that offers the same performance as x86 hardware?
No, it is economically impossible. Unless Apple manages to double or triple its sales, that is.
Jim S: Now for the things that matter:
Encoding a 5 minute video clip into MPEG4, MPEG2, and VCD:
Mac: mpeg4=8:28 mpeg2=4:38 vcd=4:47
PC: mpeg4=23:47 mpeg2=13:22 vcd=7:46
You are using a uniprocessor computer, running Athlon XP 1800+. MPEG2 and MPEG4 encoding and decoding speeds can be increased a lot if you have a dual-processor computer, or a quad-processor computer. 🙂
Satori: I could have bought “a” G4 but it would not have been as fast or as well configured as the PC for the same price. I have been through this so many times
Yes you have been through this again and again. Guess what, Satori? You aren’t in Apple’s target market. Live with that. Like OS X but hate Macs? Live with that too.
Like I said earlier, Apple bought OS X to SELL Hardware, they couldn’t care less about retail box sales
What speed advantage? Do tell me where to find these benchmarks. All the benchmarks I have seen are meaningless junk showing pcs being a few seconds at opening apps or something.
ALL the benchmarks i have seen DON’T compare start up time of apps. they show stuff like AfterEffects rendering, etc.
alexd: Wow, that would be great… You get Comedy Central in Europe?
Oh come on, if we have it in Malaysia, I’m sure the Dutches would have it on cable 😉
Jim S: for every $1500 pc that’s faster than a $2500 mac on application x, I can show you a $3500 pc that’s slower than that mac on application y.
What Application Y? Heck, Photoshop would be faster on a $3500 PC to a $2500 Mac. Notice Apple in its benchmarks (and all their press minions) always use a PC $1000 cheaper for comparisons 🙂
Tell me what apps are faster on macs..
Jodin: I don’t think macs are terribly overpriced. with every rev of apple’s product line i run some comparisons between it and dell, agateway, compaq, etc. usually the mac comes out about $100 more spec for spec
Really? I could get a dual Xeon 2.4GHz with 0.5GB of RDRAM, using Quaddro4 with 128mb of memory, and a DVD-RW drive etc. for the same price as the highest end Mac (notice all the components I have used are consistently better than the one used in the Ultimate Custom Built model)
The only model they have which is relatively value for money is the iBook, and to some extend, the PowerBook.
With 30% growth, Linux isn’t converting Windows users to Linux, but creating new computers users, ultimately.
But the PC market isn’t growing so the 30% must be coming from somewhere else and they can’t all be ex-BeOS users 🙂 (Actually I’d imagine BeOS is actually growing these days…)
Besides, how can anyone actuly measure the growth of a system (Linux) which can’t by it’s very nature be measured by sales?
When RAM and HDD prices when crashing, ALL PC makers lower their prices by a few hundred dollars. What did Apple do? Sustain the price. When the RAM prices shoot up again, htey increase the price, even though economically it doesn’t make sense.
Economically itmay not make sense but it’s probably why Apple is still in profit and everyone else isn’t (except Dell who have massive quantities).
Steve Jobs is a great businessman, he knows how to create hype, he knows how to make his target market go out and buy his latest creations even though they don’t need it.
You could say *exactly* the same about Bill Gates.
Hold on a moment… if you are saying they don’t need it are you saying Macs don’t need to be faster?
Joe User: 1) Other than speed, is there any technical feature of PCs that is superior to Macs?
– Faster bus speeds. P4s have quad-pumped 133mhz FSB (533mhz), while Athlon has dual-pumped 133mhz FSB (266mhz).
– Professional GPU cards, like Quaddro4 and ATI Fire.
– AGP 8x
– An OS that can take advantage of current consumer graphics cards like ATI 9000 Pro, ATI 9700, GeForce 4 Ti etc.
– The list goes on and on.
Theres no hardware there that cannot be changed, The GPU cards only need drivers and as for ATI 9000 Pro – Apple are shipping them in the new poerMacs.
Joe User: 2) Is it technically impossible to develop a PowerPC chip that offers the same performance as x86 hardware?
No, it is economically impossible. Unless Apple manages to double or triple its sales, that is.
Ehe? IBM have done exactly that and Apple didn’t need to sell anything more,
and yes it’s Altivec compatible. Apple themselves could devlop a chip if they wanted to, they do have 4 billion in the bank and developing the chip itself (without a fab) wouldn’t cost that much.
I suppose some people may have said the same about AMD developing an x86 as fast as Intel a few years back but they did exactly that.
Like I said earlier, Apple bought OS X to SELL Hardware, they couldn’t care less about retail box sales
Oh dear, looks like I’m going to have to agree 100% on that 🙂
What Application Y? Heck, Photoshop would be faster on a $3500 PC to a $2500 Mac. Notice Apple in its benchmarks (and all their press minions) always use a PC $1000 cheaper for comparisons 🙂
Sure, but thats marketing.
Like the time Intel compared the Itanium to an UltraSparc – except the UltraSparc was so old it wasn’t even in production anymore.
and as for Speeding up the internet…
But the PC market isn’t growing so the 30% must be coming from somewhere else and they can’t all be ex-BeOS users 🙂
LOL, the amount of BeOS refugees coming to Linux wouldn’t cause a 30% growth :-).
Besides, how can anyone actuly measure the growth of a system (Linux) which can’t by it’s very nature be measured by sales?
I wonder myself, IDC rarely tells it out in English :-). The growth was calculated by numbers of computers sold with Linux preinstalled, sales of retail boxes, government and businesses official records.
Economically itmay not make sense but it’s probably why Apple is still in profit and everyone else isn’t (except Dell who have massive quantities).
I made this wild discovery: Dell isn’t the only one. Acer and a bunch of other Asia-only OEMs are making profits :-). (But anyway, Apple did made a loss the second quarter, I’m not sure about the third).
Hold on a moment… if you are saying they don’t need it are you saying Macs don’t need to be faster?
Ahh, putting words in my mouth. I’m talking abou stuff like DDR SDRAM, 17″ iMacs etc. Most of the people who bought the new iMacs that I know didn’t actually need it 🙂
Theres no hardware there that cannot be changed, The GPU cards only need drivers and as for ATI 9000 Pro – Apple are shipping them in the new poerMacs.
OS X doesn’t have any 3D APIs that takes advantage of things like vectex shaders, etc. It pushes OpenGL, which is great if you are making movies or want some eye candy…. but games?
As for the rest of the cards, they require more than just “drivers”. PCs uses BIOS, in which these cards are designed for. Mac uses OpenFirmware, in which changes (sometimes very minor) need to be made in order for a GPU to work with Macs (or any OpenFirmware computers like AmigaOnes and Suns).
Ehe? IBM have done exactly that and Apple didn’t need to sell anything more, and yes it’s Altivec compatible.
Note, firstly, there isn’t proof that October chip is compatible with AltiVec. Secondly, it doesn’t proof that PPCs can increase the speeds as fast as x86 processors.
I suppose some people may have said the same about AMD developing an x86 as fast as Intel a few years back but they did exactly that.
AMD makes the same amount of money in a year as Apple have in its banks :-). Plus, if you remembered correctly, only until Athlons (K7) and to some extend, K6s, AMD was always in the shadow of Intel, always slower, hotter, less stable etc.
Like the time Intel compared the Itanium to an UltraSparc – except the UltraSparc was so old it wasn’t even in production anymore.
Yeah, that was funny. but there is a lot of UltraSparc servers out there that could use a replacement, prolly Intel wanted them to switch to Intel 🙂
– An OS that can take advantage of current consumer graphics cards like ATI 9000 Pro, ATI 9700, GeForce 4 Ti etc.
Umm, perhaps you should do your research a bit before you say things like this. The ATI Radeon 9000 Pro and NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti are two of the chipsets the new G4 towers are currently shipping with.
rajan r: “What Application Y? Heck, Photoshop would be faster on a $3500 PC to a $2500 Mac. Notice Apple in its benchmarks (and all their press minions) always use a PC $1000 cheaper for comparisons 🙂
Tell me what apps are faster on macs..”
I just did, mpeg-2 encoding. My powermac is nearly 3 times faster than my amd 1800. Doing some rough estimating I’d say it’d take a dual amd 2300 to equal that. Alienware sells a comparably equipped dual P4 2.2G for $3700. Of course an amd box would be cheaper but they don’t have any 2300 athlon mp’s yet…
Note, firstly, there isn’t proof that October chip is compatible with AltiVec.
There was a patch submitted for gcc for PPC64 to allow Altivec commands, this patch came from IBM.
Besides Altivec was a joint project – the cheif architect was an Apple guy and both Motorola and IBM were involved. IBM hasn’t used it before because it woudl have held back the clock on the G3.
Secondly, it doesn’t proof that PPCs can increase the speeds as fast as x86 processors.
They increase in speed by changing process technology, process (0.18um -> 0.13um etc) and tweaking their cores. The also add bits here and there (MMX, SSE) and change bus speeds. Totally new core acrhitectures happen ever so often but are quite rare – i.e. apart from being 64 bit Hammer, has a similar architecture to existing Athlons. Pentium 4 was new but the previous architecture was the Pentium Pro.
IBM and Motorola can and do do all of the above. If anything they have more room to add things (i.e. G4 cant issue as much per cycle as Athlon). Also The Power4 was designed using automated tools and these don’t always produce the fastest output, it appears there may be a lot of room to improve the performance of Power4 and thus PPC64.
>>I made this wild discovery: Dell isn’t the only one. Acer and a bunch of other Asia-only OEMs are making profits :-). (But anyway, Apple did made a loss the second quarter, I’m not sure about the third).<<
Actually Apple made a profit from that quarte (about 32 million), but yes they did take a hit from the iMac shortage situation which if they didn’t spend some extra money getting those shipped by air and other expenses, they would have made more! They have went about 6 quarters without a loss from what I remember. At the beginning of this year their profit margins were at 38% with Dell at about 33%! Gateway might as well kiss their butt goodbye, they have been losing money for almost 2 years now!