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Whether or not Microsoft wants Windows XP or Windows Vista to run on Intel-based Macs, it will.

Also, I never said that Mac OS X would run on commodity hardware. I'm saying the exact opposite: that Windows will run on Apple's Intel-based hardware. But on this topic, if you're arguing that the only way Apple can keep Mac OS X on its own hardware is via DRM, you'd be wrong. Apple currently specifies that Mac OS X can only run on Apple-branded hardware in the EULA. The legality aspect alone would relegate running Mac OS X (or hacking it to run) on commodity hardware to a comparatively negligible subset of slashdot-types, hackers, people content to pirate the OS, people content to run without any support from Apple on completely unsupported configurations, etc. In other words, on the grand scale, just about no one.[1] Sure, Apple *might* use DRM to do this, but it doesn't have to. Mac OS X currently has no product activation of any kind; it doesn't even have a serial number.

Whether it is in a direct-boot capacity or in a virtual machine, or both, remains to be seen, but you can be sure Windows WILL run on the Intel-based Macs, period. (And if you're arguing that Apple will somehow specifically disallow it, that flies in the face of both Phil Schiller, the number 2 man at Apple, specifically saying that Apple will not do anything to preclude people from installing Windows on Intel-based Macs, and the fact that multiple solutions for running Windows on PowerPC hardware, albeit in emulation, exist today. Are you honestly saying that we'll have less options to run Windows in actual x86 hardware? Hardly.)

Further, the last thing Apple wants is people Mac OS X applications getting killed because of the reasoning that people can just run them in Windows, so why even make it any more? Apple developers, including Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, understand that Mac OS X users want to run software in the Mac OS X interface and environment. Running software at full speed in Windows under, say, a virtual machine environment will be a convenience, not the default. Yes, you can make arguments that developers will kill their Mac products, but that makes the assumption that a very large percentage of the Mac userbase will fork out for a VM plus a license of Windows (whether or not these are ultimately bundled together in some product is beside the point - the point is, it will be costly). Further, there is no value in Mac OS X if there is no software. And since Mac OS X growth and Apple growth in general is at the highest in the company's history, Mac OS X developers will not be leaving the platform. There are compelling reasons to choose Mac OS X over Windows, and people, business, and academia are making that decision daily.

[1] From http://www.macworld.com/2005/06/features/intelfaq/ :

Will any PC be able to run Mac OS X for Intel?

Apple says no. Our guess is that some enterprising hacker may be able to get it to work, but we'd expect that if anyone can get OS X to run on PC hardware, it will be a laborious process, and the end result may not be a particularly stable system. You certainly won't be able to go out, buy OS X, stick the install DVD in a Dell PC, and have it just work. Apple intends Mac OS X to only run on Apple hardware.

From http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050607.ar s/3

Q: Will I be able to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple PC?

A: No.

Q: Try and stop me!

A: Apple most assuredly will--try, that is. And they'll fail, just like Microsoft failed to stop people from installing Linux and MAME on the Xbox. But like MS, all Apple has to do is make sure that only Slashdot-reading, VoIP-using, PC-assembling, DMCA-breaking geeks hack their way to an "unapproved" configuration of hardware and software. If it's illegal (th

You're not thinking big enough.

The dev boxes are for making sure your software runs on intel. There's a lot of work for some of the developers out there, and they need machines now. P4s are cheap and powerful enough to do the job (without giving away all the fun secrets that Steve will undoubtedly use to fuel his RDF ;)) The actual Intel Apple machines you'll start to see won't even be Pentium M - they'll be the next gen chips that aren't on the market yet: Yonah, Sossaman, Merom, and Conroe :)

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050608.ar s

Where Apple does falter in my opinion is in the video cards.

Hear hear - especially considering how awesome Quartz 2D Extreme is.

Personally, I always thought that the arstechnica skinny on RAID was the definitive RAID article.

http://arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html

Forget all that. This is an excellent article on RAID.
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html

I'll agree with you on Dashboard Widgets. It's a neat little gimick, but not really all that impressive, and I'm not as impressed as I'd hoped to be....

But...Spotlight is something that I've grown to love. I don't think I could do without it now. And here's the thing: The code that enables spotlight is actually a big deal, OS wise. Spotlight uses some new OS X funtionality related to file metadata.

The big news on 10.4, from a technical "OS X guts" perspective, isn't spotlight itself, but the new features that spotlight uses.

And beyond that, there are other "guts level" enhancements that are pretty cool. Here's some of the more technical "guts" features in 10.4:

* Kernel level file change notification -- This is why the finder now instantly reflects changed files in 10.4
* Metadata -- The new metadata features in OS X are, more than anything, a first step for very cool things to come, and applications will increasingly use these features
* Access Control Lists -- these greatly improve upon the limited unix file system security.
* Core Image -- This is very cool, and already applications like the wonderful Comic Life use this to good effect
* Quartz Composer -- I've played with this, and damn, it's cool.

Much of this information was cribbed from the excellent review on Ars Technica. It's long(20+ pages!), but skim the fluff and there's good stuff there: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/

Oh, and the new Mail.app (including a spotlight search) kicks ass.

So, I don't feel cheated by the latest version of OS X. It's got an impressive amount of new features.

--Casey

That completely misses the point. Currently city-wide WiFi *doesn't* exist in many places, so the point is what you do in the meantime? Also note the use for a traveller - in a hotel, placing a local call to an AOL number (those free discs are good for something) is probably free, while the place might not have WiFi.

Unfortunately, in lieu of Florida recently prosecuting a man for unauthorized WiFi access http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/07/wi.fi.theft.ap/ until we find an alternative - this product is necessary.

sorry bout the subject, had to jump at the opportunity to tag one of my fav movies :)

How about if we all just relax, take a stress pill, and buy the computer we personally prefer?

Even the guys who sit around the TV and argue the superiority of their favorite pro wrestlers admit that it's just a pastime. How many of us are willing to admit the same about our computer advocacy?

You probably have figured it out, but always
like that.

On promoting broadband and oligopolies:

He (and "the industry") claim that the incentive for building out infrastructure is not there if they are forced to share access for marginal profits.

That is only because "the industry" is conflating physical access (actual cables, etc) with logical access (tcp/ip, etc). If these public utilities were prevented from selling logical access, and instead saw their customers as the logical access providers - the ISPs - then they would not have to worry about competing with the ISPs and the ISPs would all competing within their own market. It is almost as if they are saying, "because we have a monopoly on the physical plant, we have to use it to enter the ISP market, to do otherwise would be unmonopoly-like!" - kind of the Bill Gates school on monopoly business practices.

On indeceny:

He talks about receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints. As if that legitimizes the content of the complaints. It might, if they were meaningfully distinct, but over 99% are astro-turf complaints and not charactertistic of the public at large.

At least he is being consistent - he favors monopolies - both business wanting to monopolize public utilities and idealogies like the "christain" Parents Television Council wanting to monopolize the content of enterntainment, be it over-the-air, over-the-wire or direct, encrypted satellite.

From Ars Technica:

See, there's often a difference between what a company sells and what consumers actually get when they purchase the product. Apple Computer, Inc. has "sold" slightly exotic, "technically superior," performance-oriented hardware for years, regardless of where the company's products have actually stood vis-à-vis the PC on the performance ladder. Or, to put it differently, the "RISC" PowerPC architecture has been a core part of the Apple brand and the overall "mythology" of the Mac platform since the 68K transition, even if that architecture rarely delivered on company's promises with benchmark numbers. So what Apple fans are mourning right now isn't the loss of some actual technical superiority of the Mac hardware, but rather the loss of the perception of that hardware's "technical superiority." Even more importantly, Mac enthusiasts are also mourning the loss of that perception's role in the ongoing maintenance of the myth of Apple and of the Apple brand in the form in which these two have coexisted in the PowerPC era.

Look beyond the mythos and marketing, man...

Too late Ars technica intel conspiracy theory

Already happened: http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050710.ar s

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2005 /6/3/447

that looks quite good to me

G5s cannot go into laptops ...
... IBM's announcement of the low power G5 eliminates this as a viable rant...

G4 development stalled ...
... check out Freescale's e600 line of single-core/dual-core G4s -- G4 development doesn't seem to be stalled to me, in fact, it looks to be possibly better tha IBM's notebook-capable G5 ...

A Steve Jobs control issue meltdown is hardly a conspiracy theory, it's more of an established pattern of behavior (I know, that's not what the referenced article was about, but it seems to be the most rational explanation for the switch).

Any good conspiracy theory has got to include Microsoft, as they have such a marvelous track record of success through conspiring to take away the oxygen of everyone else in the room. If you want a conspiracy theory, how about Microsoft soaking up IBM's fab capacity or engineering resource, leaving Apple to twist in the wind? That's lame too, but still better than your "better theory".

"When better conspiracy theories are needed, they will be found on Slashdot".

I don't know if anyone read the article on arstechnica, so far it's been the most logical article i've read about this entire mac+intel saga, here's a short resume, and the url follows below:

" I've worked with Apple
Authored by: overshoot on Sunday, June 12 2005 @ 08:56 PM EDT

and I can tell you, there's a very good chance that they outsmarted themselves into a "no bid" response from IBM.

Part of Apple's longstanding complaint against IBM was that Apple would announce a new computer with a new IBM processor, sales would skyrocket, and IBM wouldn't have adequate supply. We've all heard the story. Here's my take:

Apple negitiate for a new processor chip. Being Apple, they want "most favored customer" treatment, with fab-fill margins for the vendor. What's more, they want this for what amounts to a custom processor chip, so any oversupply will just sit on the shelf until Apple decides they want them, and sometimes Apple will let them sit a while to see if they can get a price break -- it always pays to remind the world that one is, after all, the Steve Jobs.

With terms like that, custom chip vendors only start as many lots as the customer contracts to accept right off the line. Apple, not exactly rolling in cash, isn't going to highball that estimate. In fact, they play it conservative and only order a small startup batch. The rest follows, of course: the product sells, Apple orders more to cover the demand, and IBM tells them that processors have a 6-month lead time.

Apple complains publicly about IBM (does this sound like anyone we know?) IBM, being grown-ups, doesn't say anything that might be perceived as negative about a customer.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, time goes by and IBM has other customers who actually pay up front for custom designs and who don't insist on having IBM tailor their product roadmap around a few million units a year. Apple again demands that IBM dedicate their CPU design teams to making an Apple special that will never generate much revenue. If IBM won't play, Apple will go to Intel.

IBM does a Rhett Butler, and the rest is history. Note that you aren't hearing one way or the other from IBM on this story.

Class bunch, IBM.

Apple has been pulling these stunts for a long time, as anyone who followed the company's relationship with Motorola knows. Compare the quote above to the following selection from a five-year-old Paul DeMone article describing Apple's dysfunctional relationship with Motorola and the reasons for Motorola's long clockspeed stagnation:

In many ways Apple is the author of its own misfortune. Years of work and billions of dollars of investments are required to design, manufacture and maintain the competitiveness of a family of microprocessors for the desktop computer market. Time and time again Apple has changed business strategies abruptly, only to reverse itself again a short while later in ineffective attempts to stem its gradual but consistent losses in market share. The PowerPC semiconductor partners, Motorola in particular, has written off hundreds of millions of dollars in losses caused directly by the erratic actions of Apple Computer, such as encouraging and later crushing a nascent market for Macintosh clones. The mercurial nature of its primary customer, combined with its minuscule and generally diminishing share of the desktop computer market, have meant that at least the last two generations of PowerPC processors have been designed primarily with embedded control, and more recently, digital signal processing applications in mind. This has left Apple in the position of only being able to differentiate itself on the basis of curved system form factors and translucent plastic. "

Full article at http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050710.ar s/

Of course, if slashdot posted somehting more reasonable, it would hurt their ad revenues and click-thrus as it would generate the flamewars and trolling than the typical slashdot articles nowadays.

I don't know how to breal it to you but those are one and the same processors.

No they are not... bloody hell, stop asserting things that are blatantly false and get it through your thick skull, networkBoy. I've seen you state that P4-M == Pentium M several times in this thread, and it is not the case.

The Pentium-M is the notebook processor family that forms part of the Centrino platform. It is primarily based upon the P3, and is a really nice architecture. The P4-M is a mobile version of the P4. It has nowhere near the performance per watt of the P-M, and is totally different.

And the PS3, btw, may even boot Linux by default when you buy the hard drive, turning it into a full PC with six USB ports, a powerful graphics card, a decent processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, and three gigabit ethernet ports.

There won't be a gigabit router in the PS3 anymore

Hasty generalization, Appeal to the 'knowledge of large populations'. I have a hard time believing it was "insignificant". However, we will certainly see over the next few years whether it is a drag on IBM's finances.

However, what it clearly shows is that any one customer's needs is also insignificant to IBM - no matter how large the customer.

Assumption (Fallacy of interrogation): Your statement presumes facts which are not in evidence: You are assuming that IBM had a hand in Apple's decision. The truth is that there has been a LOT of speculation in the press - and very few facts - regarding why Apple switched to Intel. I certainly don't know the truth, and without further evidence, will doubt you do either... but keep in mind Apple has the most control, since they are the customer.

It also shows that IBM does not honor commitments they make to their "partners".

Non-sequitur; speculation without basis. Even ignoring the fallacy of interrogation above, that does not necessarily lead to failure to meet commitments. More importantly, there is no evidence of failure to honor commitments. If you're referring to the "3GHz" issue, part of the speculation in the press has been that IBM never made the 3GHz commitment to Apple (that Jobs made it up to push IBM into it). Note the treatment of the issue in this article (and subsequent discussion on the Ars dicussion boards). If you have evidence to tip the balance, by all means present it... otherwise it seems you're just out to find a way to tarnish IBM's image.

While the same thing can be potentially said for any large company, if you're a company who is a partner or looking at partnering with IBM for some reason, Apple-IBM should be a case study to consider when making your decision

Sweeping Generalization, shifting the burden of proof, potentially Post-Hoc argument: Your argument is based on what material facts? The problem is, you apply culture of "any large company" to IBM, claim IBM must defend against the claim without you providing any evidence (shifting the burden of proof to the defense) and make an argument based on a result (the proper term isn't post-hoc, but I forget the actual name at the moment). Importantly, in order to use it, you need data to be both measurable and actionable. In this case, there is a lot of speculation, which leads me to conclude that you can't meet the first criteria - you can't measure it. You have an output (relationship ended) without understanding the root cause. Making decisions based on such data is risky, at best.

I suspect this will be discussed in b-schools for years (they'll say IBM did the right thing in screwing their customer Apple).

Speculation, Appeal to the virtuous poor: Any of my professors who said that would have been called on it on the spot. One of the things you learn in business school is the cost of acquiring a new customer. Another is the (intangible) cost of dealing with a public relations issue (which could lead to morale/productivity issues, etc. in your employees). I highly doubt this is fun for IBM. IBM's finances over the next few years may tell us it worked out okay, but even then, I suspect that IBM's general silence on the issue (like many other issues) would make it hard for any professor to get enough data to know the decision was conscious. If any improvement was an accident, it's not very insteresting for a b-school to talk about it, since it's pretty hard to learn how to act from accidents (not impossible, just rarely hit on in b-school).

Hasty generalization, Appeal to the 'knowledge of large populations'. I have a hard time believing it was "insignificant". However, we will certainly see over the next few years whether it is a drag on IBM's finances.

However, what it clearly shows is that any one customer's needs is also insignificant to IBM - no matter how large the customer.

Assumption (Fallacy of interrogation): Your statement presumes facts which are not in evidence: You are assuming that IBM had a hand in Apple's decision. The truth is that there has been a LOT of speculation in the press - and very few facts - regarding why Apple switched to Intel. I certainly don't know the truth, and without further evidence, will doubt you do either... but keep in mind Apple has the most control, since they are the customer.

It also shows that IBM does not honor commitments they make to their "partners".

Non-sequitur; speculation without basis. Even ignoring the fallacy of interrogation above, that does not necessarily lead to failure to meet commitments. More importantly, there is no evidence of failure to honor commitments. If you're referring to the "3GHz" issue, part of the speculation in the press has been that IBM never made the 3GHz commitment to Apple (that Jobs made it up to push IBM into it). Note the treatment of the issue in this article (and subsequent discussion on the Ars dicussion boards). If you have evidence to tip the balance, by all means present it... otherwise it seems you're just out to find a way to tarnish IBM's image.

While the same thing can be potentially said for any large company, if you're a company who is a partner or looking at partnering with IBM for some reason, Apple-IBM should be a case study to consider when making your decision

Sweeping Generalization, shifting the burden of proof, potentially Post-Hoc argument: Your argument is based on what material facts? The problem is, you apply culture of "any large company" to IBM, claim IBM must defend against the claim without you providing any evidence (shifting the burden of proof to the defense) and make an argument based on a result (the proper term isn't post-hoc, but I forget the actual name at the moment). Importantly, in order to use it, you need data to be both measurable and actionable. In this case, there is a lot of speculation, which leads me to conclude that you can't meet the first criteria - you can't measure it. You have an output (relationship ended) without understanding the root cause. Making decisions based on such data is risky, at best.

I suspect this will be discussed in b-schools for years (they'll say IBM did the right thing in screwing their customer Apple).

Speculation, Appeal to the virtuous poor: Any of my professors who said that would have been called on it on the spot. One of the things you learn in business school is the cost of acquiring a new customer. Another is the (intangible) cost of dealing with a public relations issue (which could lead to morale/productivity issues, etc. in your employees). I highly doubt this is fun for IBM. IBM's finances over the next few years may tell us it worked out okay, but even then, I suspect that IBM's general silence on the issue (like many other issues) would make it hard for any professor to get enough data to know the decision was conscious. If any improvement was an accident, it's not very insteresting for a b-school to talk about it, since it's pretty hard to learn how to act from accidents (not impossible, just rarely hit on in b-school).

Missing PS2 "features"/hype:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/14/ps2.idg/
- Type III PC slot
- "new distribution system for music and video"; internet music service

http://www.stp.uh.edu/vol65/47/features/features-i ndex.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/09/13/sony_puts_ playstation/
- PS2 will have an ethernet port
- download games online
- online delivery of music and movies
- ability to connect digital cameras and other media devices

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/1q99/playstation2-io.ht ml
- claims 100% backwards compatible

Do I really have to go back and find you quotes on the number of systems they claimed would be available on launch, the library of titles they claimed they would have, how they repeatedly said it would be 6 times faster than the fastest Pentium III, how they claimed it was capable of rendering movie quality graphics in realtime, etc, etc, etc.

They threw out much more crap than this, but it is difficult to hunt down content from 1999 and 2000 that still exists...

Well they do decrease productivity because they eat up ram and chew CPU cycles.

Despite its NeXTSTEP roots, Mac OS X is still a very young operating system. Most of the technologies that make it interesting and unique are actually brand new: Quartz, Core Audio, IOKit, Core Foundation. The hold-overs from NeXT and classic Mac OS have also evolved substantially: QuickTime, Carbon, Cocoa.

Did you notice how the OS underlying Apple's Tiger looks just like FreeBSD?

Yeah, except for the totally different kernel, and lack of an "init" process, among other things.

Yup, sure seems that crApple has been copying Free Software recently. Not that that's bad, of course.

Copying, or integrating? Apple hasn't copied any Free Software, they've integrated it into their OS.

Want to see one area where Apple is innovating? Take a look at launchd.

That's because they got it from Apple: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q2/macos-x-final/ images/go-menu.jpg

One of the things we do at the company I work for is tell people the G4 is better than the G5.

You must never do floating point. The G5 crushes the G4 on 64 bit floating point operations. I work on a cross-platform app, and spent quite a while trying to improve Mac performance; the only real solution was to encourage Mac customers using our FP-heavy features to get a G5. Fortunately most wanted one anyway.

Here's an article about NASA's evaluation:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20030707-106. html

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

g5 is to g4 as p4 was to p3 better overall IPC, less picky about memory latency, less power, basically a great thing to quad core if you're looking for perf/watt

I refuse to believe that the 28- and 31-stage Pentium 4 pipelines are a better thing than the 10-stage pipeline in the Pentium III, particularly when we're talking about IPC. Do you remember the fuss made about P4 being slower at the same clock speed than the PIII? That's proof it has worse IPC rate.

Neither the P4 or the G5 are lower-power than their predecessors and they fail to provide better performance/watt, in any configuration. This is why the P3 architecture has been adopted into the Pentium M line for low power use and the G4 processors remain the chips used at the core of Apple's iBooks and PowerBooks.

The great thing to do with the Pentium 4 architecture would be to put in on good Strained Silicon and SoI processes to push it above the 4.0GHz clockrate at which it is believed to be a very strong chip.

The differences between the G4 and G5 chips are what happens when you move from a desktop computer chip to a cut-down Big Iron chip (IBM's POWER4, IIRC). The G5's are inherently 64-bit capable in a way that the first three generations (Willamette, Northwood and Prescott) of the Pentium 4 are not, although there exist Prescott-based Pentium 4 processors with Intel's EM64T implementation.

BTW: http://arstechnica.com/ is your friend. Hannibal has done a good job of talking through the history of the Pentium chip family (1 & 2) and the PowerPC family (1 & 2, part 3 hasn't yet arrived) up to the G4's. There's discussion of the IBM POWER5 architecture too, and some commentary on pipelines in processor design (1 & 2). I learned a lot from these, and value their information. But I'm going to stop telling Granny to suck eggs now.

I think you meant to say the Pentium D + LaGrande (DRM in silicon), not Pentium M. The Pentium D (with not-yet-released updates and fixes), does exactly what Apple is after - controlled access to media with an architecture that provides lower-power (iPod-like devices and battery-powered Powerbooks).

Not sure. I'm basing that off of this article from The Register. I don't know if they plan on keeping hte Pentium D in the lineup (or even moving to the Pentium E if it ever comes about), but it still (as another poster has mentioned) consumes too much power. Apple wants lower power processors, probably under 50W per core (just a guess).

Here is a link on the Pentium M roadmap.
As listed below (and speculated for the Macs):
4Q 06-1Q 07:
Merom: A dual-core Pentium M (Banias) successor
Conroe: A 64-bit desktop version of Merom (see comments above about Conroe).

A 64-Bit dual core Merom is just what apple needs to be the successor to the 64-bit dual core G5s. And, surprise suprise, it is due out just when Jobs said the transition would occur/finish. It is also more than likely going to be fairly low power as it is in the Pentium M lineup. We won't know till it comes out if it is as low power as these G5s, but it should be lower power than the current high end P4s. The guy also speculates on why Intel over AMD on the next page of the article.

I used to read Ars Technica, until it became apparent that "Caesar" Ken Fisher is a racist. He typically comes off like your typical smug armchair intellectual, but once he gets fired up, he's got quite a mouth on him. I've seen him get pretty worked up on IRC over basically nothing.

It's too bad, too, since the other guys on the site like Hannibal are actually pretty smart.

I used to read Ars Technica, until it became apparent that "Caesar" Ken Fisher is a racist. He typically comes off like your typical smug armchair intellectual, but once he gets fired up, he's got quite a mouth on him. I've seen him get pretty worked up on IRC over basically nothing.

It's too bad, too, since the other guys on the site like Hannibal are actually pretty smart.

Yes, once again its another dupe - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.

To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.

As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.

You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.

To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters: Infoshop

Yes, once again its another dupe - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.

To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.

As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.

You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.

To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica] or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters: Infoshop

Yes, once again its another dupe - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.

To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.

As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.

You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.

To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica] or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters: Infoshop

Yes, once again its another dupe - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.

To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.

As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.

You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.

To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters, the BBC are hard to beat.

Heh, after all the hubbub lately caused by Anandtech's article I thought for a sec that these new devkits might drop the IBM processor ... sigh.

Quartz does use "Display PDF", just take a look at the following Ars Technica article:

Mac OS X Update: Quartz & Aqua

I was actually looking to get a Commodore 64 like everyone else in the neighborhood when my family and I walked into a random computer store in December of '84. It turned out to be an Apple store (thank God). I was 12, our family didn't have a computer yet (although I had taken some computer classes and shown strong interest), I hadn't heard too much about Macs at the time. So the young sales guy does the "completely blew me away" Mac demo, I was smitten. When we wondered what time it was and he pulled out the Alarm Clock desk accessory, I went from "smitten" to "sheer desperate hardware-lust mania". I have never before, or since (sadly), had an experience like that for a man-made object, and I feel bad for people who were not a part of that, it was so amazing. It was way more expensive than a C64, but my parents luckily didn't know any better (and luckily had the money) because when I said "Mom! Dad! WE HAVE TO GET THIS MACHINE", they bought the whole shebang, mac, imagewriter, even a 300 baud modem (the latter for $300!). I proceeded to kill most of the next summer (such a nerd...) learning Microsoft BASIC and playing various early Mac games, and dialing up various BBS'es. This is a kid who used to spend his summers on the beach...

I think it's why I stuck with Apple through the dark years of the mid-90's, and use OS X to this day (although, alas, my job currently is coding on Windows, and has been for some time). I just had a high opinion of Apple's whole point, and I figured they'd eventually pull through. I suppose it must be some crazy sort of love, why else would you stick around "through thick and thin"? Why else would I wait for the Mac version of a game instead of just caving and buying a PC? Stubborn loyalty with lots of feeling behind it... which all started with that initial rush. Sounds strangely like a good relationship.

The irony is, I am currently getting multiple emails from Microsoft requesting an interview for their AppDev group. I guess I've been doing development using Microsoft tools for long enough now that it's worth something to the Borg ;) Thing is, my heart is not in it (literally) and I'm at a point where I'd like to work with some non-Microsoft tech for a change, even at reduced pay. I frequent non-Microsoft sites (like this one) all the time, I'm always a closeted Apple (and to a slightly lesser extent, *nix) fanboy. I'd love an Apple dev job (or at least any job where I could use Macs for work) but the only opportunity I had so far (besides striking out on my own- thank you for your inspiring presentation PDF, Wil Shipley!) was working in the dungeon of some office building for Nikon, having no design input whatsoever. No thanks...

Idealism is costly ;) Not to mention, I'm only achieving mediocre "performance" in my jobs, and I wonder if my "Apple affair" has anything to do with it!

Microsoft's codec is in the HD-DVD spec

Since it shares manufacturing/fabrication capability with IBM, it has run into many of the same manufacturing and supply problems as IBM.

In my mind, Ars Technica has mainly written articles on two subjects that have had some influence. Spatial browsing and the PS2.

I have heard that the Nautilus developers where inspired by this article when implementing the new spatial scheme in Nautilus. While I'm not sure John Siracusa is very impressed with Nautilus, it is still a testament to the articles importance.

This set of articles describing the design of the PS2 is one of the few overviews of the PS2 architecture available for free on the web, and thus an important resource for people hacking on their PS2 Linux kits.

Ars may not be the most important site on the net, but in my opinion they have _more_ than their fair share of original content.

In my mind, Ars Technica has mainly written articles on two subjects that have had some influence. Spatial browsing and the PS2.

I have heard that the Nautilus developers where inspired by this article when implementing the new spatial scheme in Nautilus. While I'm not sure John Siracusa is very impressed with Nautilus, it is still a testament to the articles importance.

This set of articles describing the design of the PS2 is one of the few overviews of the PS2 architecture available for free on the web, and thus an important resource for people hacking on their PS2 Linux kits.

Ars may not be the most important site on the net, but in my opinion they have _more_ than their fair share of original content.