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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.
He's an idiot!
Takes something with a shred of truth (the people being at said conferences) and blowing it into something "newsworthy".
For one thing, Dvorak thinks Apple will use Itanium. Not exactly binary compatible with other x86 unices...
Between this article, and this article; I expect to wake up monday and find out this weekend never happened!
There's no mention of Apple's most likely upgrade path in the next 12-18 months, the IBM PPC 970. Uh... hello?
Next month, Dvorak will have exclusive information on the release date for Duke Nukem: Forever!
I say we combine the standard rumors. Apple is being bought by Intel! Apple will go out of business shortly after using Intel chips! Or, perhaps, for maximum efficiency of rumor: Apple will go bankrupt, be bought by Intel, which will then be bought by Microsoft! Excuse me, my tinfoil hat needs adjusting.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
You can tell high-level languages are the standard when someone proposes to switch a whole architecture to the x86 platform.
Remember the times the x86 was pointed at because of its lack of registers ? Recently read an pentium to-the-metal optimization guide, and discovered you had to recode your optimizations backwards to port them from p3 to p4 ?
I can't possibly understand how a switch to intel processors can possibly benefit Apple...
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
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.
Dvorak is suggesting that Apple will switch to Itanium, which according to the roadmaps is nowhere near being ready for the desktop. At present, Intel is jamming larger and larger caches into Itanic until it will float against other processors in the server space, giving it an otherworldly transistor count not ready for the desktop in THIS decade -- the fabrication is simply too complex (read: $$$$), the power requirements are through the roof, and the compiler technology for IA-64 is many years from maturity. The Merced core for Itanic is absolutely useless, and I won't even get into the questions about whether even future generations will be viable.
A better 64 bit choice, particularly for Apple, will be IBM's upcoming PPC 970, which doesn't require massive retooling.
This wouldn't be the first time that the Mac has changed processors. (680x0 -> PPC) It's unlikely that Apple would keep the crappy PC style architechture though. Take a look at the base 1 MB and the terrible interrupt controller cascade. Apple wouldn't want to inherit this, plus if they stay far enough outside the PC, they can maintain their individuality.
I can picture geeks buying x86Mac hardware to run Linux on as it should be more stable than current x86 hardware. I can also picture x86 virtualization software (VirtualPC) being useful. Apple no longer has to deal with the low clock speed stigma.
This sounds like it would be a good thing.
Here is how the Inquirer reported the story on friday: April fools day comes early?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
And I smoke crack.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
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.
He makes a point that they could release a dual CPU machine with an Itanium and a PPC chip, but this would be slower than a single CPU model for most things (dual CPU where each CPU is a different architecture is tricky and leads to performance hits). Since all Apple's current top of the line models have 2 PPCs, the new machine would be slower than the old ones.
On the other hand, the PPC 970 is comming into production, a 64-bit PPC with 2GHz+ clock speeds. 64 is twice as big as 32, so marketing can claim it's as fast as a 4GHz Pentium 4 (actually it might be almost that fast, since the P4 is famous for high clock rates and low performance per clock). Being a PPC, this chip is also backwards comaptible. Oh, and it has 2 AltiVec units, so all that AltiVec code Apple has been pushing for the last couple of years should really sing. A 900MHz FSB reduces the old memory bottleneck present in current PPCs. I'm not sure how much the PPC970 will cost, but I doubt it will be much more than Itanium, and it's far more attractive from Apple's point of view. This Dvorak guy seems to have forgotten that the Apple IBM Motorola alliance had 3 members...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In a development that will shock both the PC and pharmaceutical industries, PC pundit John Dvorkak will be "switching platforms."
Long known for his schizophrenic pronouncements concerning the Macintosh platform, sources close to him have confirmed Dvorak's musings have been caused by an adverse, though subtle reaction, to his psychotropic drug regimen.
"Yeah, he's said some crazy things in the past," quotes Dr. Sanghar Mumji, Dvorak's long-time psychiatrist. "You've got to cut him some slack though. Psychiatry isn't an exact science."
Industry analysts predict the dawn of a new day for Dvorak. One analyst, wishing to remain anonymous, remarks, "John has got a long road back, but I've got faith in him. I hear he's working on a Newton story."
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
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
I have a book here called "Dvorak predicts" from 1994 which states inter alia 'Apple will die if it merges', 'Apple needs to make a run-time Mac', 'the real Unix operating system is an archaic command line', 'Unix has no advantage except it's easy to program', 'Unix is old fashioned in its design and OS/2 or Windows NT architectures are the wave of the future'.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Apple merged and did not die, there is no rt mac archiecture available (excepting some good hacks that no one would use for business critical processes), unix based servers dominate the internet and MS are scared stiff that an old fashioned unix-like os is going to fillet their business.
Mr Dvorak is as entitled as anyone else to make his predictions, but that doesn't mean he is any good at it.
Somebody ought to ask Dvorak if he is running a Chang modification on his PC.
For those who don't know the story, back in the days of the 286, a Taiwanese company claimed to be able to run 286's much faster than anyone else, it was called a "Chang modification". Dvorak touted it as a breakthrough technology. Of course anyone who understood technology realized the claim was ridiculous. It turned out all Chang was doing was reprogramming the timer chip so that it didn't keep time correctly - thus making benchmarks look more impressive.
In other words Dvorak's technical knowledge level is absurdly low. The man has great contempt for anyone who does have technical knowledge; he thinks we are inferior 'droids' to be ruled by assholes like him. He truly is the prototype of Dilbert's abysmally ignorant Pointy Haired Boss.
Dvorak really is dumb enough to think that Apple would change to Intel; the change from the 68000 to the Power PC almost destroyed Apple. Switching processor architecture destroys your software base - you have to run in place for years just to get back to where you were. That is the reason that Apple was in so much trouble after the processor change. Another change would be suicide.
And yes, I know that things are written in C these days, and we all know C is 'portable' so the change over 'running in place' period might only be 6 months to a year today. But 6 months to a year of additional progress lost by Apple would pretty much be the last nail in the coffin. Such a change would expose them to the ruthless pricing levels of the PC industry which Apple could never survive.
This is the most ridiculous thing in the whole article. Obviously he has forgotten the 68k emulator after the PowerPC changeover, as well as the Classic environment on OS X, both of which have worked perfectly in my experience.
Furthermore, I think there is a higher proportion of old Apple machines still running than equivalent old PC's. I saw an SE/30 doing a fine job as a mail server not that long ago. How many people are still using 286/386 vintage stuff?
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
So don't be surprised if there's a follow-up to this saying as such.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Has no read MacWhispers post title New PowerMac Motherboards To Use PPC 970???
Apple has bids out for PPC 970 mobos. Doesn't sound like they're switching to x86.
I'm not even going to bother reading the comments below. Apple's system is based on the PPC. Switching to x86 chips would be stupid. They're still trying to get developers and consumers switched to OS X, and to ask people to move to a completely different architecture so soon after a major OS change would be suicide.
Please, once and for all, Apple is not moving to the x86. It's a stupid rumor and only flames those idiots who say "I'd use OS X when it comes out for x86" and "I'll buy a Mac as soon as they use the faster x86 chip."
How about a post saying BSD's dead? Vi's better then emacs? RMS say something great/stupid?