Dvorak Thinks Apple Will Switch to Intel

SeanTobin was among several users who noted that Dvorak's latest column discusses the possibility of Apple going to Intel for future macs. Yeah, this rumor pops up pretty often, but I wonder how long before we'd get binary compatibility between other x86 unix OSs.

Comments

Dvorak: MORON

[Anonymous Coward]

people, this is the same idiot who claimed the mouse would never catch on... the same pin-headed moron who said Apple would never last and he predicted Apple's death for about a decade or so...

Apple will go with Intel when Osama bin Laden converts to Judaism.

Inquirer

[heli0]

Here is how the Inquirer reported the story on friday: April fools day comes early?

Why Apple won't switch to Intel

[Uller-RM]

1) Jobs' ego. Jobs has said on the record that he'll resign before he builds an Apple box with an Intel chip. (I honestly don't remember where that rivalry originates.)

2) Developer opinion. Dvorak is primarly a PC man -- I think he missed much of the outcry that occurred when we switched from 68K to PPC. For that matter, there's still bits of Carbon that date back to 68K, such as setting and unsetting the A5 world register for callback routines. Also consider that the killer apps of the Mac world (Adobe products, Quark, etc) are just now becoming native to OS X. The outcry if we had to switch to a new OS would be massive. There's also the fact that the PPC ISA is backwards compatible with the 68K -- all existing apps for Apple would have to be emulated. Can you say "fuck no," children?

3) Architecture differences. True, you can recompile the Darwin microkernel for Intel. There's a lot of differences though in the hardware -- for example, Macs directly work with the INT# lines on the PCI bus, they don't have IRQs. It would be incredibly costly for Apple to eschew the current standards in PC motherboard design and make their own chipset.

4) IBM. The PowerPC architecture is not slow in and of itself -- it's just a spec for a RISC instruction set. The problem lies in Motorola, who no longer relies on Apple for business now that their wireless division supports the company, and who has been dragging their heels on their PPC line. IBM's new PowerPC 970 is a desktop version of their Power5 server processor (including its unusual pipeline design) planned to debut at 1.8GHz on a 0.13 micron process. Yum.

There's also the point that Dvorak is known as a rumor-spouting gasbag... and one who has a chip on his shoulder for Apple. The guy used to write for MacWorld until he had a falling out with Apple management, and has become notorious for his anti-Apple bias ever since.

a market for the z80...

[Sophrosyne]

There are millions upon millions of gameboys worldwide that have used the z80 processor. Nintendo used them up until 1998 (with an 8MHz z80-esque processor made by sharp). There was still a market for them, possibly a larger market then the 8080 processors. The z80 passed test of time, while the 8080 just disappeared into oblivion.
heres a website with a lot of info on the z80

Re:x86?

[squiggleslash]

I think it'd be interesting to see the effect if Apple did release a version of OS X for x86, but did it, not as an ongoing "Let's convert over to an Intel platform" but as a one-off, never to be updated, "This is what a modern Mac is like" project.

Over time, users would face the choice between going back to Windows, or buying a Mac, if they wanted to continue to get support. The Intel OS X itself would become steadily outdated and users reliant on third party hacks to support more modern hardware, so just users just sticking to it wouldn't necessarily be an option.

It would be a massive jump for Apple and they'd have to consider it a long term project. Perhaps they'd even, to make the thing profitable, have to sell each copy at a margin approaching their low end hardware margins, or alternatively ship the OS as a "Demo version" which would expire after a period of time.

I wonder if they could get the concept to work?

April Fools?

[lpret]

Actually, you may be right, I remember several of his April Fool jokes -- one of them he was ranting about how everyone will be going lower in terms of x-bit processing -- saying that a 4-bit processor would actually be faster because it allows more calculations per second. Obviously on crack, and the last line was "April Fools" in hexadecimal.

So don't be surprised if there's a follow-up to this saying as such.

Not anytime soon

[stefanb]

The article is obviously nonsense, baed on Apple's need for faster processors. Here's why I think Apple will stay with the Power architecture for at least another two years, and probably after:

• Although native Cocoa apps probably can be ported over to a different CPU/arch by just recompiling, and the OS foundations are designed to support multiple architectures simultateously, there is a lot of legacy code even with those native apps, not to speak of Carbon ones. The legacy code would need to be emulated, and would severly limit the possible performance gains from a different architecture.
• Likewise, vendors need at least a year to get their toolchains, testing, etc. adapted to a new architecture. Also, getting all the little oddities and outright bugs out of the toolchain will take at least a year, if not longer (cf. transition from GCC 2.x to 3.x, which for most systems, has taken more than a year, or isn't fully finished yet).
• Apple will need to maintain two product lines for at least two years. I'm not sure this additional expenditure will be offset by potential additional sales.
• If indeed Apple's going to switch (he!) from Power to something else, they might as well consider Sparc or whatever Sony's into for the PS3; I'm sure Sun's offerings complement Apple's just as much as IBM's. Intel, on the other hand, is more or less a direct competitor.
• IBM's 970 seems to be the perfect match, and right now, I don't see why Apple wouldn't choose it, short of IBM refusing to give it to Apple.

Re:x86?

[anthonyrcalgary]

I think we can make a few assumptions...

-Apple will NOT switch to a chip that's not 64-bit. That's simply not an option. The costs of switching to a new platform will not be justifiable if they have to switch again in a few years.

-Apple will not abandon PowerPC until IBM's PowerPC 970 sinks or swims. It's a very mutually beneficial relationship, and while it may not keep up with x86's power, it won't be that far behind, and it *will* fit in the form factors that Apple needs. The really fast x86's put out way too much heat.

It'll be 5 or more years before they switch processor architechtures, maybe even longer, maybe never. x86 does not offer sufficient advantages to put up with the heat of the fast x86 processors. Apple is very strong with laptops, and they're only going to get stronger there. Even their desktop offerings are compact. Small is important, quiet is important, batteries are important, and x86 can not beat PPC in with these.

Re:Why does anyone listen to Dvorak?

[monsterzero2003]

He is truly an idiot. The move towards Intel is the move towards commodity pricing. No future there for Apple....or Sun for that matter. Apple should merge with Sun and Sparc. Sun would rise to the occasion and produce a cheap Sparc chip to power Mac's. It's the only hope for Sun and maybe the only hope for Apple. Despite Apple's client side glitz their server story is weak in the extreme. But the two companies' synergies are enormous. Apple would add immense value to Sun since they understand the client side so well and Sun has repeatedly demonstrated it is clueless in this regard. Sun would add immense value to Apple since Sun's whole business is the server. Neither Sun nor Apple have a future without proprietary hardware, because you can't download hardware. but you certainly can download software...