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Xbox 2 SDK Released On Mac G5?
Espectr0 writes "The Inquirer reports rumors, courtesy anonymous sources, that Microsoft has released the Xbox 2 SDK to select videogame developers, and they are using 'dual Apple Power Mac G5 systems running a custom Windows NT Kernel.' This ties up with earlier rumors which mention that the XBox 2 will be powered by the IBM chip, and ATI will be providing the video chip." The report also notes: "Interestingly, the SDK apparently also features an Apple logo on a side bar within the application."
hmmm wounder how long before the mac zelots turn the xbox 2 into a OS X compatible computer ;P
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
Blue screens faster than ever.
the SDK apparently also features an Apple logo on a side bar within the application
Does anyone have a screenshot? I would like to see what size M$ put the logo.
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
I think the use of the Apple G5 systems with a funny NT kernel running indicate that the XBox2 is going to have a lot more in common with the Apple G5 than the common PC. Afterall, there just aren't a lot of PC motherboards in circulation built for the IBM PowerPC chips.
Clearly, the final specs for the XBox2 aren't set in stone. So, since they can't deliver any XBox2 motherboards because they're not exactly fully designed yet, Apple's a reasonable place to turn for successful implementation of the IBM processor chips. It's likely that the Apple logo within the software was part of the price Microsoft had to pay for Apple's assitance in supplying a little help in writing that NT-on-PowerPC kernel...
Why would it mean anything. It seems its just a development environment for the Xbox, and considering that it seems the Xbox 2 will have no backwards compatibility why would this environment help in porting, when they have turned their back on intel architecture for the platform. Just because it has a NT kernel doesn't mean anything, remember NT ran on PPC as well as Alpha and Intel when NT was actually called NT.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Interesting. I wonder if we'll ever see an Xbox2 emu for the Macintosh? If memory serves, wasnt the first commercial Playstation emulator for the Mac? The other good thing about this, is that the more chips business IBM gets the more incentive they have to make (more/better/faster) PPC chips - which bodes well for us Mac users. This is good news, but I'm curious if anyone knows what Intel did to piss microsoft off so much that they turn to IBM?
-_-
I guess that answers the question of the X-Box 2's processer. I wonder why Microsoft made this move though, considering the classic WinTel alliance. It doesn't seem like a normal thing from them. Wether or not one companies top chip is faster than the other, does it really matter which one you use? It seems like by the time games start maxing out the processer, a new console has already come out. I mean look at all the other consoles. The Play Station used a relatively slow processer for the time. Same with the X-Box (733 mhz). Possibly price, but then wouldn't they go with AMD? I mean, why break compatibilty and go non x86 when x86 chips are farely cheap?
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Not surprising since Microsoft owns part of Apple.
I'm really not surprised. I mean, Apple has no stake in the videogame market, so why not help out someone (even Microsoft) and get a little bit of extra money? Microsoft would find a way to do it eventually, so its not like if Apple didn't help it would be any sort of blow against MS.
I think we should wait for an official release from any of the companies involved.
Until then the SDK is just Vaporware.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Good way to make sure people won't be able to run Xbox2 games on PCs.
...that will never be ported to the computer you're running them on.
I would say probably nothing - comparing running XBox SDK on G5's to porting windows apps to OSX is an apples to oranges kind of deal. If you're talking linux x86... shouldn't be too hard to port to OSX anyway.
[Z?]
This is right out of a stereotypical episode of the Twilight Zone. I can hear the music already.
This may be why all those new G5s where being rolled into the microsoft offices some months ago. The guy who took photo's of it and posted it on his web site got fired for taking the photo's because of what microsoft management called "security concerns". I can't seem to find the original story.
I'd say the most interesting result of this is that it appears microsoft made windows run on a mac. If their custom NT kernal is siimilar to what is on the X-box then it is quite a feat. The x-box ran a slightly modified directX which is the part of the windows OS that Wine is having a really hard time emulating. If microsoft could port that over to a G5 mac then i they could easily port a full Windows operating system over. Not that they would. It doesn't make a lot of sense for them to do it economically, but its still interesting that they could. ~Ian
Where's the .torrent?!
Perhaps with this experience under their belt, Apple may take a shot at the game console market? I doubt it, but it would be interesting if they did...
Does the NT kernal run "under" the base OSX or is it an operating system unto itself?
I'd be willing to bet the NT kernel runs as an OS X application, much like OS 9 does in the Classic environment. Back when OS X was just a gleam in the eyes of Mac users, there was talk of Apple doing a Windows compatibility environment so people could run Windows apps right alongside their Mac apps. I believe it was called the "blue box," and back then Classic was known as the "yellow box," but don't quote me.
As for why that never made its way into OS X, Apple probably feared that cheap, lazy developers wouldn't bother to port their apps to the Mac and would tell people "just use the Windows version."
On a more practical note this doesn't hold out much hope for XBOX-1 game compatibility, does it?
...film at 11.
Seriously, how much is this thing gonna *cost*? The rumor I'm hearing everywhere is that the box will have three G5's and video superior to the current Radeon 9800. Dual G5's with a Radeon 9600 in an Apple wrapper costs nearly three grand! I mean, even if you drop the hard drive, you're knocking maybe $50 off of the cost to MS of this thing. Since Apple's hardware margins (once you take into account marketing, R&D, etc. - gross margins are higher) run about 4%, we're still talking about MS having north of $2500 in each of these units, unless component prices really drop by launch date.
I don't care how many launch titles it has, I'm not going to pay much more than $300 for a videogame system. I can't imagine anyone else will either. I don't see Microsoft being willing to lose $2200 on a console, then wait for me to buy 44 $50 games to make their money back.
What gives?
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Holy Jesus, you people are misinformed.
August 6, 1997- Microsoft agreed to purchase $150 million in non-voting Apple preferred stock. Note that it was NON-VOTING stock-- so essentially this was just a goodwill investment in Apple. Microsoft was required to hold the stock for at least 3 years before selling. Another clause of this investment was that Microsoft was to continue to produce Macintosh products, including all new versions of the Microsoft Office product, for a period of five years. In exchange, Apple would make Internet Explorer the default web browser on Macs, and not sue the living hell out of Microsoft.* Microsoft has since sold all of this stock, at a nice profit, I might add. This agreement expired in August 2002, and since then MS has occasionally made noise about discontinuing Mac Office. Apple is also no longer bound to the terms of this agreement, so expect to see IE vanish from new Macs as soon as Apple's Safari browser goes 1.0.
* Strong rumors from several sources indicate that the 1997 deal was the public portion of a settlement made after Apple discovered substantial patent and/or copyright infringment by MS in Windows. Word is that there was a meeting between senior Apple and MS officials where Apple laid out the evidence and an ultimatum. Personally, I think there is some credibility to this, as Microsoft rarely if ever does anything that could be deemed 'nice,' especially to a competitor. There is, however, another school of thought that says Microsoft was only acting in their own self-interest, propping up Apple so they would have a competitor to point to when the antitrust thing really built up some steam. I question the use of the term 'propping up,' as Apple had a few billion in the bank at the time and did not need the $150M, and the government would have realized that.
About six or seven years ago, MS bought a small amount of Apple preferred stock (which means non-voting shares). It was intended as a public show of confidence in Apple's future. Apple's stock price went up quite a bit in the time after that, so MS sold the stock for a nice profit. MS never had ANY control over Apple, contrary to what people mistakenly repeat.
Blue box was/is Classic, I think the Windows part was rumored to be the red box. Note: it was just a rumor though, I don't think there's any evidence that it actually existed.
Now there actually is a project that combines Wine with X86 emulation for OS X.
Reason for Atari 5200's failure - lack of backward compatibility for Atari 2600
Reason for Sega Saturn's failure - lack of backward compatibility for Sega CD
Reason for Playstation 2's overwhelming success - presence of backward compatiblity for Playstation 1
Reason for X-Box 2's eventual failure - do I need to spell it out for you?
Well, I'm sure everyone is going to be happy to throw away their X-Box's, with its DX8 graphics, and resolution higher than most TV sets, and huge software library to buy a new X-Box 2, with its only slightly better graphics, at the same resolution without the ubergeek hacking potential.
Bill's short list of utter failures:
1990: MS-DOS 4
1995: Microsoft Bob
1999: Windows ME
2005: X-Box 2
But, hey, Microsoft is so big, that a huge failure can only mean one thing: Government Bailout!
I'd guess they made the choice for heat production reasons. The XBox is quite large for a game console and it still has heat problems. Using a smaller, cooler chip would help make this more of a real console. Intel is still having problems with its Prescott processor and is also currently trying to reposition itself with respect to the 64-bit transition. AMD doesn't have a low-heat CPU available either, though they're otherwise better positioned in the marketplace.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, though. Getting Windows to run on a new architecture will likely take more than a new kernel.
Get off the crack, moderators. This doesn't deserve any +1 - it's a troll trolling.
I dont give this argument much thought normally, as I dont have any desire at the moment beyond x86-64 to learn the nuances of a new proccesing architecture, even though I am a sparc fan, should say was before they started laggin behind,
BUT What I thought was interesting want the article iself but rather a link to this article Xbox2 is Microsoft's attempt to replace PC
I have looked at, or should I say drooled at some of the IBM big iron running the PPC architecture but never gave it much more thought, With IBM now cranking out some nice PPC silicon and MS Jumping on the PPC bandwagon albeit limited, I think I might have to look a little more
Any reccomendations on cheap, well reasonable used IBM PPC systems that are still of the same basic architecture of what is being sold now, like what will run RHEL 3 AS ?
Be interesting to get some more SDK details. I'm betting XBOX2 games are going to be running net bytecodes with managed directx.
One of the reasons that the Xbox was so easily turned into an amazing home entertainment center/emulation station, was that it was basically a PC. Everyone in the world uses PCs, and the software was easily ported, and the hardware easily understood. Microsoft will _not_ make the same mistake again.
You have to remember that the PPC only has about 1% of the global computing marketshare. It is a platform that is always the _last_ to get any homebrew apps, like ports of utilities to transfer or unpack xbox isos for instance. There just arent enough people on Mac. If you take the 1-2% of the global computer base, then take the fraction of a percent of that which are people capable of writing programs, and then the fraction of them who have time to make a mac app to interface a game console etc.. I think you're left with 3 people, and from what I'm told, they live in Sweden.
As if switching to a virtually unknown hardware platform wasn't enough, flash memory maker M-Systems announced on Wednesday that it has signed a contract to provide storage products for future versions of the Xbox.. It looks like they are contemplating ditching hard drives altogether. I mean it was Microsofts using common components that allowed people to simply unplug the Seagate 9GB and plug in a 120GB to store games, video.. anything.
I think we will all be surprised by what M$ is cooking. Why in the world would they forsake things like backwards game compatibility, take time to tweak and make an NT kernel on PPC, apparently ditch the HD.. They are hatching a plan, and it involves linux and homebrew *NOT* running on xbox2.
Apple doesn't have a presence in the video game market, and if Microsoft uses something resembling the PPC 970 in the X2, that can only serve to [a] pay back IBM's investment in the 970 and [b] subsidize further development without Apple having to pick up the tab. Volume goes up, prices go down.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
But unless they make some changes from the X-box 1 it won't be trivial. People have been working on X-box 1 emus for the PC. Should be easy right? I mean an X-box has a slow P3 and a graphics chip that is the equivalant of a GeForce 4 4400. Well thing is, the system is different. A major difference is that the CPU and GPU share one memory space, where they are totally seperate in a PC (and Mac). Also programs have pretty much free run over all the memory on an X-box, where they are restricted on a PC (and Mac).
So instead of just being a matter of emulating BIOS and then running the game, you have to emulate the environment, and translate things that can't be executed directly.
It's akin to DOS emulators like DOSBox on NT. You can't just run DOS programs straight, they try and do things that aren't allowed by NT security. So you have to emulate an environment. Some things you pass straight through, and just execute natively, like most Ring 3 code. Some things, you have to go and emulate or fake or translate.
Now on a Mac it gets even harder since the X-box speaks DirectX and so probably will the X-box 2. I mean it's an MS system, they are going to use their API. Well that means that whereas on a PC you could at least pass some of that on as is, or with minor translations, you have to translate the whole thing to an API the Mac speaks.
So it certianly is possible, and something we'll probably see in time, but not something that will be trivially easy.
Hmmm.. lets do some math:
We have:
let x=Power Mac G5
let y=custom Windows NT kernel
let z=Xbox 2
failure=`expr ( 2 * x ) + y`
total_sales=`expr $failure * Xbox2 * 0`
Blue Screens=`expr $failure / 0`
MSFT reply:
Blue Screens? What blue Scr-
That'd make a little more sense... typically in simulation environments the "blue team" are the friendlies, and the "red team" represents the people playing the side of enemies.
Blue screen different.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Consoles are a cutthroat market. The margins on hardware aren't razor thin, they are actually negative at least in the beginning and almost non existant after that. Also, it matters to be the biggest baddest, best looking, etc. So it is to the advantage of console makers to go with whoever will give them the cheapest stuff with the best performance.
I would bet that IBM is probably going to sell the 970s for X-box 2s at close to cost. For them it's not a money making move, it's a publicity move. As of late IBM's chip division has kind been seen only as a high-end server/supercomputer thing. Thier midrange market is almost non existant and their embedded market has been shrinking. Well the 970 is a serious midrange contender and I'm sure they want people to know it. Being the chip in one of the big 3 consoles certianly goes a long way for that.
This news is especially interesting in light of the conspiracy theories around the Xbox. Basically the idea is that the Xbox is a testbed/honeypot for palladium.
.NET gaining ground, Windows apps will become cross-platform easily. It makes sense that MS would want its APIs to dominate on all hardware platforms. They don't really need an alliance with Intel anymore.
What if instead of choosing PPC for the Xbox2 and porting Windows, they first chose to port Windows. Perhaps Xbox2 is a testbed for Windows-on-PPC, subsidizing the cost for writing the port through console licensing and mitigating the risk that PPC won't achieve wide adoption. The payoff is being able to continue to market Windows as a standard platform for both the desktop and server if PPC gains wider adoption.
With
For great justice.
And as far as I can remember, the yellow box referred to Cocoa.
Now, in a battle/simulation environment, I'm guessing that yellow might not be the best color to represent oneself.
Will Darwin or Linux be ported to Xbox first?
parent is NOTHING but anti-Apple bullshit.
Damn it, it's a new millennium so spell it right: Xelots
WE'VE JUST got word that the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Microsoft's forthcoming Xbox 2 has now been released to Developers.
Who told them about it? Also does Microsoft have anything to say?
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
NT ran on PPC and Alpha back when everything went through an emulation layer. Now that graphics and sound are straight to hardware they're likely going to have some fun restructuring their low-level architecture.
And technically, it's possible the XBox2 SDK could be backwards-compatible with the XBox1 SDK, requiring only a recompile to get a game working on the new platform. But while this is possible I also think it will never happen. It makes no economic sense to do so.
Yeah, those Intel Xenon hard drives I heard were really fast. I think you can store up to 5Ghz of mp3's on them.
Great, now no software will be available for the Xbox either. :)
It's called a rumor. You need to temper what you hear in the wind with what you actually know for sure. The XBox2 will be a game console and will be released at a similar price-point as the original XBox. Thus, we can safely assume that the cost of its components will be appreciable to the costs of the components in the current XBox.
Whatever you read on the internet more than a year before a product's release is most likely baloney.
How about this rumor. Every XBox2 will have a miniaturized human inside. This will give the X2 far superior natural language handling capabilities. As an even greater benefit, thousands of lonely dorks all over the country will finally be able to strike up friendships with their game console.
I place the previous paragraph in the public domain. Please feel free to spread that rumor wherever.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Michael Hanscom almost blew the XBox2 story wide open back in October.
Remember when Microsoft fired that guy because he mentioned that they bought G5s. Too bad he didn't know anything about why they bought them.
You have to remember that OS9/Classic is a pretty simple system (dating back to the original MacOS...yes, they did quite an overhaul for OS8, but it's still basically a simple OS compared to NT or OSX...), running just as a mach task. Classic under OSX is basically just like any other subsystem..cocoa, carbon, java, aqua, etc.
And the fact that that the NT kernel already runs natively on PowerPC -- why screw with mach and the BSD layer, then getting the NT kernel to talk to that?
Also consider MS's NIH (and we can't own it) complex....why use crufty CMU and BSD code when you can use your own that you know?
Ok, folks, this has nothing to do with apple as it is an ibm chip.
intel and amd are not your friends...they're your bitches.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
So will that matter? It SAVED the PS2 early on, but who knows if it will be needed for the X-Box 2. I would REALLY love it to have the compatability (which they could still do through emulation, I suppose) but if they don't have it they could really shoot themselves in the foot. Videogamers have had that abaility for years on the GameBoy, and the PS2 has it now. This could be a real big deal, depending on what they decide. It's not like the X-Box has a huge library of major titles though (the PS1 did), so it might not be worth the effort.
As for some of the other decisions they have made, I'm not suprised. Intel was dumped both because they didn't have a 64 bit CPU (which doing all the stuff in games could be handy) and I'm guessing because of the heat problems (which have only gotten worse, and would make for one LOUD console). As for nVidia, many people believe that they lost the lead in the 3D race with this last generation (although new rumors over the next GeForce look amazing!), and if you combine that with when they asked for more money publicly and had a little tiff with MS over that, I'm not suprised that they're gone.
All and all, it should be very interesting to see this next generation. Between the X-Box 2, the PS3 (will it run PS1/2 games? What's up with cell?), and the Game Cube's successor (should also be interesting) we should be in for some interesting developments (not to say anything about Nintendo's DS, the GBA's eventual successor, the PSP, and the persistant rumors of MS looking at portables). Video game fans, get ready for some cool stuff!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Just a tidbit of info. My version of Safari seems to be v1.2. IE is still included with the freshest build of Panther, but it is no longer the default browser.
Let's not forget that the speculation is that this will be a dual processor console.
The Sega Saturn was a console with multiple processors, and to this day there is no decent Saturn emulator. The hardware set-up of the Saturn made it one of the most difficult to emulate systems thus far, this has long been known/commented on/talked about.
Just because something runs on X processor, does not mean that even a computer with the same processor, or even 2-3 times the processing power can emulate it. The N64 had a 93.75MHz processor, and 3d hardware archaic by todays standards, but most PC N64 emulators list 1ghz+ processors in their requirements.
Tell Glenn Reynolds, that whore loves to hype nanotechnology and is incapable of not linking to a rumour....
Yellow for Cocoa makes sense... they're the new guys.
There's only been one console with backwards compatibility. It was a fluke.
As for handhelds, on the other hand, Game Boy Color plays 99+ percent of Game Boy games. Game Boy Advance plays 99 percent of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Nintendo has also sold a Game Boy adapter for Super NES and a GBA adapter for GameCube.
You wouldn't pay much more than $300 for a videogame system, but... how much would you pay for a box that:
- plays next generation videogames
- plays DVDs (HD-DVD maybe?)
- acts as a PVR
- plays MP3/WMA music, with a nice on-screen browser
- acts as a server or client to distribute media
to all the TVs/stereos in your house (they are already doing this with XBOX and Windows MCE)
This is the goal of the XBox2. It is not just another videogame system. It is Microsoft's next attempt at becoming a real player in the consumer electronics market.
MS went from giving out cheap commodity PCs to cheap Apples.
I don't see how! The G5 itself is a very powerful computing system... two of those!? Highly doubtful! That's like a supercomputer! Besides, even if it was true, there is no reason for one console to wheld that much power. I doubt we'll be seeing any games that can actually live up to the spectations of the console anytime soon... it's usually the other way around. Ha, and despite the sheer power of that console, it's running a Windows kernal. That power means nothing if it stand its ground.
Maybe it's all true. Maybe I'm being too hard on Microsoft... but to me, it's like religion. Without proof, I won't believe anything. Not even if I can "feel" it coming. I try to trust my sense of feeling a lot though, but it usually turns out to be just gas.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
They said Xbox made it easy to port from PC. Now comes the interesting point, Xbox 2 may make it easy to port to Mac, maybe it'll help the Mac gaming scene out
Let's see here:
For Nintendo:
SNES: Success, not backward compatible with NES.
N64: Success, not backward compatible with SNES or NES.
Gamecube: Success, not backward compatible with N64, SNES, or NES.
For Sega:
Genesis: Success, not backward compatible with SMS.
Saturn: Failure, because of lack of 3d. The Saturn was designed to be the ultimate 2d console, which it was. 3d was an afterthought, and never worked well.
For Sony:
Playstation: Success, not compatible with ANY other system, being their first.
So it looks to me like backwards compatibility is a nice feature, nothing more. Nintendo, being the oldest company, is the most shining example. NONE of their consoles have been compatible. They thought about it with the SNES, hence the use of the 65C816 (which has a compatibility mode for 6502 code) but didn't end up doing it. The rest of the consoles aren't even remotely compatible. None the less, each has been a success.
What makes a console succede? Two main things:
1) Having flashy graphics to attract people, and the marketing to let people know about them. You may not, but most people gravitate towards pretty graphics.
2) More importantly: Good games. This is REALLY what makes or breaks a console. If your system has the games people want to play, they'll buy it. If it doesn't they won't. This is also a positive feedback loop since the more good games you have the more you sell and the more consolse you sell the more developers that will want to release for your console.
That's why Sony succeded, despite being new to the market. They released the games people wanted to play, and had stunning graphics for the time. Combine that with good marketing, you've got a winner.
I just wanna know if a hard drive is going to be part of Xbox2. If they rumors are true that there will be no HD, it will be the death knell of the Xbox.
well it will probably lack some of the chips and stuff to run OS X, but maybe Yellow Dog Linux will have a jump on turning these new Xboxs into something for more than games. They already have it running well on G5 Macs and their own hardware that uses 970 Chips (as well as G3 and G4 chips).
everyone knows Xbox and PS2 and all those game systems are sold at a loss, and they make up for it when users by software and maybe accessories. So the fact that someone will be selling hardware with a G5 for $600 won't matter too much. By the time the Xbox ships they may have 970/G5 chips in eMacs and they run about $1000 anyway.
Nahhh.
They'll have those perdy Apple kernel panic screens that have been professionally designed by typographers.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You're probably wrong.
Because most Slashdot prophets are raving lunatics trying to bludgeon naysayers with their agenda.
The PPC build of Windows NT 4.0 wasn't for the Macintosh platform. It was for IBM's, and possibly other company's, small and seemingly unpopular PPC based "PC"s (for lack of a better term) for the workgroup / business markets. You can find them on ebay.
but they have turned the gamecube into a linux machine.
Uh, wrong, everything in NT, 2k, and XP talk to the hardware through the HAL -- NOT directly, dildo.
If the rumors are true, it makes me wonder if IBM is funding support of the development. Traditionally, Microsoft has only supported non x86 Windows where the chip vendor was willing to pay for development. As each of the non-x86 chip vendors stopped funding development, Microsoft has canned support.
This reminds me of when the Apple IIgs was used as a development platform for the Super Nintendo, since they both used Motorola's 65C816 chip.
:-)
If the Inquirer's report is true, maybe Apple should take a hint and revive the Pippin program. Others seem to think Apples are good for game programming.
While g5s are technically superior chips, I suspect that their reasons are at least partly along the social engineering lines. They've had a lot of "trouble" (as they perceive it) with X-Box hackers. By moving to the G5, they're all starting nearly from scratch. Yes, that means having to write/re-engineer lots of tech to run on the G5 - but it also means that the average hacker isn't going to already have that tech running on the G5 when they start cracking into the X-Box. Also, the various Unixes already run on the X-Box's new chip, but M$ may hope it is more difficult to hack them onto the X-Box G5 architecture. The X-Box will almost certainly have a much more proprietary architecture than the original cheap PC in a fancy box.
I'd be willing to shell out another USD 100 for a lifetime subscription for PVR scheduling information. Unless MS can hit this price, I've no interest in an XBOX2.
We all know that the XBox2 runs Java!
That IBMs specs for the successor to the parent of G5 PPC chips are that it consumes MAJORLY less power for a given clockspeed. (er, I dunno, from memory something like 30% of the power)
So as a long-term plan, this is A Smart Move.
The x86 crew are producing ever more power-hungry CPUs with each generation, on the other hand IBM is busily rolling out technology which goes in the opposite direction while still beating x86 architecture CPUs even with both hands tied behind its back.
Think in terms of them bringing out the xBox3, same basic platform (PPC) 30% of the power needs, significantly faster CPU overall. The time to migrate architectures is *now*, before all the *new features* (ie PC replacement type functionality) have been developed.
Who knows, perhaps one day we'll see the return of MS Supported OS and Apps on PPC?
IBM scores being the reborn center of The PC. MS scores as they have multiple architecture support. Apple might even score, and sell you a Mac you could load Windows on (yeah, there are all kinds of kinky people out there with some of the weirdest fetishes).
Intel and AMD? Well they'll need to pickup their CPU design skills and put out a quality processor instead of beating each other around the head and shoulders with market-speak.
Sounds to me like this sux for nobody.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
MS is trying to make the best game system all around. They learned a lot about it from the first try. Of course we will try to mod it but they will do there best to prevent it. What really bugs me is what happen to the days when they really pushed the hardware to do better. Like the NES it came a long way from SMB 1 to SMB 3. I would love to see them do that with the XBox and PS2. I feel like I just bought my systems, and now its time for new ones...
April 1st isn't for another month guys....
Macs Running windows!?
That's just obscene!
(btw, have some pr0n)
Seriously though, everyone always speculated about PCs running Mac OS or OSX, but the idea of windows running on a Mac (and I mean in native mode, rather then through emulation) seems really weird.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
my experience has been that most game emulators only work really well with some software (i.e. the popular games) not all. my question is: would a possible scenario be that microsoft would only extend backwards compatability to some software, not their entire catalog?
I really would only feel gipped if I couldn't play games like Halo, KOTOR, or Sega's hockey and football games, which happen to be some of their most popular games. I really wouldn't care if I couldn't play Robotech or Jet Set Radio.
Wouldn't XP be Windows NT 6.0? I though Win2k was 5.0
Windows 2K is NT 5.0 and Windows XP is NT 5.1. Server 2003 is NT 5.2. These are the official version strings from Microsoft.
There is very little under-the-hood change between Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) and Windows XP (NT 5.1) aside from GUI modifications. From an application's point of view (or even a power user who makes all of his settings via the registry) there is not much different between the two. A lot of little things have been refined and updated, yes, but nothing huge.
And really... Win2K (NT 5.0) isn't a whole lot more than NT 4.0 SP4/SP5 + modern version of Direct X + modern drivers + light GUI polish. When NT 4 first shipped it did not come with Internet Explorer... later versions included a standalone version of IE... and still later versions included the deeply-rooted IE that we know and hate today.
NT 3.x was pretty archaic *looking* (Windows 3.x GUI, ugh!!) but still had most of the guts that NT 4 later used....
Call it what you will, but NT was the best thing Microsoft has ever done. We could all be using a heavily patched version of Win95 running atop DOS 7. "Win98 Seventh Edition!"
This kinda reminds of halfhandsome.com
...and a voice said "Come and see," and the four horsemen of the apocalypse were unleashed upon the earth, and Microsoft released Windows NT for Macintosh, and verily the end times had come.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Just drop the backwards compatibility. It's not going to be in the next system. It doesn't need to be in it and it also hinders developement. Get over it.
It's leap day, not April Fools. Now what am I supposed to think? This can't be serious....
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Well, at lease we now know what those G5's were for!
The guy got fired for taking a photo!
Now we know where those G5s were bound for.
I for one welcome our new Microsoft Overlords.
Good point.
0 4/01-07eHomeCES2004PR.asp
If that is the case (no HD in Xbox2), I bet a Windows MCE computer will be required, to act as the server for your house. You can then have various Xbox2 systems as "clients" in each room in your house. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Jan
OR
Your data is stored on MS servers. You pay a monthly fee, like Xbox Live, and can stream your data for playback when needed.
...as it's been previously stated, Microsoft already makes programs for the Mac. They own Connectix, for crying out loud. Therefore, G5s at Microsoft isn't really that shocking or out of the ordinary. They probably got mad at the guy because they were afraid the pictures would start to fuel conspiracy theories...like this one.
...Pig:"Weeeeeee!!! Everything looks so small from up here."
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Actually, the new G5 tower has a completely different system architecture which uses HyperTransport technology co-designed with AMD. Each processor has it's own point to point bus to the system controller.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html
I believe that only AMD Opteron systems have a similar architecture.
While both PCs and Macs support the PCI, USB and Firewire standards, the connections between the chips that implement these standards is quite different.
Microsoft is choosing to use apple hardware for thier SDK -- but it still runs a Microsoft OS and Microsoft software. There's no conflict of interests here, Microsoft doesn't make hardware (except mice and keyboards) so why shouldn't they use a G5?
Now if the SDK was running on MacOS, then that would be an interesting story. . .
There is still the DirectX API and all... but with PPC Wine working or just even winelib that may not be a big problem after all.
I wonder if Transgaming will be getting even more OSX game porting business.
Could this be the REAL purpose of the VirtualPC aquisition? That was my first thought after reading the MS is considering basing xbox around a PPC CPU. They could have possibly decided to switch to PPC when the IBM 970 was anounced but needed to consider backward compatibility and figured buying outside technology (and maybe developers??? i don't know if the deal included transfer of VirtualPC developers/engineers) instead of rolling their own x86 emulation software would be a safer bet, give them a head start, and possibly be easier and cheaper as well.
I use a powerbook with Mac OS X. I've played with VirtualPC and it's not too bad for most things. It's definately not a substitute for a physical x86 machine for any really hairy apps like Oracle or say Pro/Engineer or heavy Photoshop usage(it's just for the sake of argument. I know, why use Windows Photoshop when there is a native mac version) Terminal Services/Remote Desktop is much better for that purpose. If the release of Xbox 2 is still a year or two off. I'm sure IBM will have ramped up the speed even more. possibly by that time a G5 would easily be able to emulate a PIII 500 or 733 or what ever lower end PIII the xbox was using thus solving the possible backward compatiblity problem
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
I just don't see why we here even care what the hardware is in these boxes. In general, the user experience between all 3 of the current consoles is nearly identical. The Xbox is more geared toward online gaming than the others, but that's about it. I first played this one game on PS2 a couple months ago, and even though I am new to owning a console, I knew that I most likely would be able to get the exact same game for my GameCube and it would look and feel the same. Sure enough, I picked it up for the same price and it was essentially the same game. Considering the GameCube media has maybe a third of the storage capacity of the full DVD media found in the other 2 consoles, this is kind of surprising, but shows that games still aren't that huge on the most part.
What I am really trying to get at here is we can admire and debate the specs of these consoles, but these specs have little to do with the fact that there hasn't really been any innovation since the first game console, unless you consider 3D and vibrating controllers amazing innovations (no, I'm not discrediting these ideas, but little has been done to make games more enjoyable to play, they're only more enjoyable to look at).
I am feeling fat and sassy
XBox campus is quite far away from Microsoft campus in Redmond. While theoretically they could be using the same loading docks for both, it's more likely stuff ordered by XBox people gets shipped to XBox offices, not Microsoft.
Microsoft has released the Xbox 2 SDK to select videogame developers, and they are using 'dual Apple Power Mac G5 systems
...and people discredit Macs if you're into gaming. Now they're a reference platform for Microsoft - wtf!?!
To prvent confusion, and complaints from customers who can't run their old games on their new console, MS and Apple is going out together, launching the iBox.
New platform, and from Apple. Yet MS will get their share of money, and Apple will take the risk on the sales of the iBox.
The PPC970/G5 is *not* a cool running chip. Just look at the facts:
Apple 2Ghz G5:
-- requires expensive case made of perforated aluminum
-- has NINE fans
-- only supports 2 relatively low power drives
-- has GIANT heatsinks for the processors
-- has a 600 WATT power supply!
You can run a dual 3.2Ghz Xeon with 3-4 SCSI drives (not just the two low power drives the Apple G5 supports) on 450W-500W.
It is a great myth that the G5 is low power / low heat. If there were any truth to Apple/IBM's claims about the PPC970/PPC970FX, laptops and iMacs would have been running PPC970 a long time ago...
So far for all the hype and hoopla, the G5 has made a rather pathetic showing. Apple shipped it months late and then even when introducing the new 90nm PPC970FX, didn't offer any more speed, still just 2Ghz.
I wonder if IBM hates working with Apple as much as Motorola did.
I doubt we'll be seeing any games that can actually live up to the spectations of the console anytime soon
Then why are all my 3d friends dumbing down their polygon counts?
you guys are getting it mixed up, this was the strategy behind NeXT which was later bought out by apple and engineered to become OS X.
IF someone leaks that "custom Win NT kernel" AND IF this kernel is complete enough to run legacy Windows apps (or at least the XBox games created on it), THEN the mac will be the most polyvalent platform ever. Imagine triple-booting MacOS X, Linux, and Windows NT.
(No, I didn't RTFA, I just woke up. Flame on.)
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Apple may be giving MS some cuts on the cost of their processors but it'd be really silly to actually pay MS to take their processors.
Apple has nothing to lose by "entering" the console market this way. Companies pay them for the hardware and they just put the money in the bank. If the console their processor was in fails, they still got paid.
Unless something drastic happens there's also no way that bad press about the console would make it's way into Apple's PR department. When's the last time you heard that a system's processor was the cause of the demise of the system?
It's free advertising, free money and zero risk.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Blue Box became Classic.
Yellow Box became Cocoa.
I believe Red Box was the Windows(/x86?) emulation.
And maybe, just maybe, my Karma may improve http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=106764573 1
Apparently, every XBox 2 will have a tiny human inside. This will give the X2 far superior natural language handling capabilities. As an even greater benefit, millions of lonely dorks all over the country will finally be able to strike up friendships with their game console!
I know I can hardly wait!
Mr. Spleen
Just drop the backwards compatibility. It's not going to be in the next system. It doesn't need to be in it and it also hinders developement. Get over it.
I'd venture to say, and I believe many would agree, that the success of the PS2 greatly depended on the fact that it was able to play PS1 games. The games for the PS2 during the first year of its release were abysmal; the only reason that many could use to justify a PS2 purchase was "well, it will run my PS1 games and the stuff thats coming out in the future". How successful would the PS2 have been in that first year if it didn't play PS1 games?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
The emulation of VPC is ok for sheer number crunching apps like Photoshop or whatever, especially if your running a nice pair of G5s. But it doesn't play well with your video hardware, which you may realise is a big factor in frames-per-secong when your playing games. If you messs around with your VPC set up you can see that a 2d graphics card is also being emulated, your own hardware isn't listed.
Well there is even an earlier example... The Amiga. While an original amiga only runs at 7.14Mhz (PAL) it takes a PC with at least 300-400Mhz to emulate it to a point that most stuff work.
Ofcourse the earlier game systems were programmed more directly, ie hardware hitting & making use of strict timing tricks.. with the newer systems XBox, XBox2 that isn't the case anymore. They use the API that is present, never hit the hardware direct.
That's why making a next gen console compatible with it's earlier gen is 'easier' than in the past.
when you have money?
You'd have to think Apple was called-upon for its hardware expertise. Those G5s need efficient cooling, and Apple has done a great job with its nearly silent, muti-fan Powermac towers.
I'm betting that if there's an Apple logo on the splash screen, they'll also be one on the case. This might end up being a cobranded box.
Hmm: wonder if it'll support iTunes. This might be Apple's first honest foray into the world of non-PC entertainment hubbing. What an interesting move that would be.
Guess we'll see.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
IIRC, it's actually going to be three PowerPC 976 CPUs at 65nm, which will be dual core making it effectively six. See here. I imagine it will be quite a female dog programming to take full advantage of all of them.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Wow, that many? They must have used a Beowulf cluster of lawyers for that case!
OK, what's my penance for that joke...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yellow Box is the NeXTSTEP (Cocoa) environment, Blue Box is the Classic (Mac OS 9.x) environment. I never heard of a Windows environment within OS X, but it may have been mooted at one point. I have, however, seen and used OS X in an early version running on an x86 platform. Maybe that's what you were talking about?
Interesting point, he has made assumptions about the price based upon the specs why don't we try and calculate the specs based on the price.
He went way off on prices (Mac people always think the sky is falling price wise, might do to have some competition methinks.
But assuming they are trying to break even, assuming dual processors on the ppc970 ATI chips no HD and a 2-6 gig Flash mem. Well the ATI chipset will be the followup to the ATI9100 (integrated) running on an ATI mobo so costs should be approx $50-75(massive bulk 2k6) at about 9800 pro speeds (integration makes it faster/ dropped support of all unneeded extensions makes it faster and cheaper). 2-6 gigs of flash mem will probably run you about $35, that still leaves dual CPU's which I assume will be produced off whatever surplus silicone IBM has lying around at the end of their processor fab 3 generations from now, prolly in the order of 3800+ x 2. Approx CPU price $55 each. 1 controller $12. You can calculate total price but these are based on current pricing models other than assuming a couple very modest increases over the scheduled release period.
Will microsoft be the only one to build motherboards with this chipset?
Nvidia was smart and put in a layer between the cpu and the x-box northbridge alowing them to replace the layer and sell the same chipset for another CPU, the Athlon. Have a look at all those features in the original nVidia nforce chipset, its a very impressive chipset. Actually I think its sad nvidia stripped it to a budget chipset. Ofcourse this new chipset will have most of the nforce features onboard, afterall microsoft would not want the x-box 2 to have *less* features.
Ofcourse running linux on microsoft subsidised hardware is cool, and it will run on the x-box 2 but OS X wont in any commercial viable way. (Darwin might get drivers for this stuff though). But imagene if somehow cheap mac clones become available. The cpu will cost you, but the chipset will be designed to be cheap again just like crush/nforce. It will have plenty of multimedia feature build in. Maybe the xbox board is designed by ATI and they can turn it into a reference design ready for mass production in taiwan by anyone who wants a licence (Let them work on agp,pci biosses and memory busses/slots). Now if *these* ever get cappable of running OS X microsoft can kiss their business goodbye. And only becouse they became pissed at nvidia and intel for not dropping the nforce/crush and pentium/celeron3 prices when they asked/ordered them to. If mac`s ever became cheapers then pc`s, what would happon?
Hey, I can have dreams right?
What is the world coming to? A Microsoft OS running on Apple hardware to develope games? Isn't that the equivalent of mixing matter and anti-matter together or something? Maybe I just need to sleep.
if apple, are helping mircosoft (their main rival) get a kernel running on what is their flagship hardware they are commiting the most blatant, stupid, idiotic form of coporate suicide.
dms0
You should feel guilty if your just watching - ATR
Looks like AMD and Intel have got to take the back seat now.
Another, more accurate way to put it is: Everyone knows Xbox and PS2 are sold for near-cost, making a little money (more in Sony's case), and games are sold for a profit.
(apologies to simpsons)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Yup, in multiple languages. Check it (scroll down - it wasn't pretty before 10.1).
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
One 1.8 PPC970 will consume 42 watts
One 2.8 GHz Xeon with a 2MB L3 Cache will consume 83 watts
I can't find specs on a 2GHz PPC970 or a 3.2GHz Xeon, but it won't look pretty.
A 2GHz 970FX on the other hand will only consume 24 watts.
If you count adaptors, the Megadrive / Genesis could run Master System cartridges and cards with an adaptor. The MD had most of the hardware in it already, and was designed to allow this, the adaptor didn't contain any extra processors AFAIK. Although i think it did have a copy of the Master System BIOS ROM. In Japan the original Phantasy Star (a Mark III / Master System game) was released in a Megadrive cartridge, which used the original Master System code. Some pritate multicarts of MS games also apparently exist for the MD. The Genesis 3 didn't support the special mode however.
The Neo Geo Pocket Colour is backwardly compatible with the original B&W Neo Geo Pocket.
And didn't Atari have a backwards compatible console in the 1980's? I'm sure on of their later consoles could also use 2600 / VCS cartridges.
Backwards compatibility isn't fluke, it's just good design.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
There is no such thing as a "PAL" CPU.
At that, it takes a PC with 200-300 MHz to emulate an SNES 3 MHz CPU.
Emulation naturally requires a LOT of power.
That's a standard point-to-point controller chip. Nothing in Apples design is either innovative or revolutionary. Hell, even the HyperTransport bus used on the Mac is run off an AMD chip. Frankly, I was surprised Apple did not use IBMs controller chip, it is extremely good (but targeted at servers and workstations...not high performance desktops).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
And there was nothing to run, so the complex instructions are impossible to find nowadays.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
And then you can attempt to get Mac On Linux running on it, but I haven't heard of any successes.
Keep in mind the early XDK1 releases were literally spray-painted Win2k boxes. The paint-job was so bad that a few of them had painted over power buttons that would stick or just plain not work at all. The early stuff is definitely just a 'general idea' kind of thing.
I'll tell you what, if Apple contributes anything to the Xbox 2 lets hope it's their industrial design team. Jesus the xbox is ass ugly.
Now if Xbox2 looked like a toaster-sized G5, iPod, iMac, or somesuch then I'll be first in line to buy it.
Every Mac OS X GUI application includes a global menu bar that spans the screen. The first, system, menu on this bar is titled with an Apple logo. Someone who is not familiar with Mac OS may think think this is something specific to the application and not a standard part of the UI.
The reason that the X-Box was so easy to develop was because it was basically a PC in a box - Celery 733, Nvidia chipset, standard logic.
But with this approach, developers won't be porting PC games to the console, they'll be written by stratch. Gaming on a Mac
Windows NT
Win NT
WNT
Shift each letter back one:
W - 1 = V
N - 1 = M
T - 1 = S
WNT = VMS
Same thing works with HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey
H + 1 = I
A + 1 = B
L + 1 = M
HAL = 9000
-AC
PS: The black helicopters are real
While on the other hand, the Microsoft Windows Enabled PC can run Office (tm) applications and other programs more suitable for running your business and for serious school work!
Either that or they know they are going to terribly fail in the Videogames market and have decided to drag Apple's flagship down along with it.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Re the "PAL" chip... I think the poster meant Amiga's that output a PAL TV signal. US Amiga's would output NTSC and *might* run at a slightly different clock-speed!
As for requiring a lot of processing power, unless you can make short-cuts, e.g. VMWare "emulates" a PC without too much of a performance hit because it can run most of the code natively, but in a sand-box. So XBox2 emulation on IA-32 or IA-64 based processors probably ain't going to happen soon. XBox2 emulation on a Mac is more of a possibility I guess?
I think part of the problem with emulating hardware this specialised chips is also that its hard to reverse engineer this. The information is unlikely to be freely available, so for an individual to write an emulator you're talking about a lot of work.
There is no way MS is going to force all their developers onto Macs. This is just a first gen SDK and I bet the Mac is the target, not the dev platform. Next SDK will also run on the PC and the target will be an Xbox2 dev kit just like it was with the Xbox. This is not an Apple thing, it's a PPC thing.
Obviously you are new here.
Also you seem unaware that Apple has been a leader in port standardization.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The underlying structure of the NT microkernel and hardware abstraction layer was not changed. They just moved parts of User and GDI into kernel space.
NT remains largely architecture independant.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
I'd be really dubious that Microsofts new X-Box SDK only runs on its competitors operating system without some additional M$ hardware. I also find it hard to beleive that the X-Box 2, is sufficiently far into stages of development for them to release an SDK, christ, they havent even decided whether the thing is going to have a hard disk yet or not.
While use of (todays spec) G5's is probably a good thing, do people really think that by the time X-Box2 comes out its spec will be unchanged? A lot is going to happen in the next couple of years technology wise, its far too early for a next gen SDK to be released, expecially before any real hardware has been seen / or developed.
I think this article is pure rumour.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Actually the many Xbox games still make use of hardware specific timing tricks. You might have remember an article about an Xbox that ran on a 1.48Ghz P3 and 128MB's of RAM. Well, many games ran too fast on it because they were made to make use of Xbox's hardware limits. Things like timers in racing games would go at incredibly fast speeds. So tricks like building a game around a consoles specifications are still in use, although you might think otherwise.
Informative my ass.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I can't wait for watermelon-sized controllers with only one button!
They won't have to with that kind of power! There would be no reason to.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
"I wonder if IBM hates working with Apple as much as Motorola did."
Wrong way around - Apple hated working with Motorolla, because they couldn't get chips out with reliable quality, reliable quantity, or in time to meet production deadlines. If I were them, I would've dumped Motorola too.
[Z?]
People always scream for Apple to switch to Intel or AMD and the main reason behind that is the long term committement of Motorola and IBM on PowerPC. Now, with XBox 2 moving to PowerPC, the chip can finally move to a niche to a main stream. It helps to drive down the cost of hte CPU as well as secure long term committement of IBM and Motorola to continue on improving the PowerPC family. Also, IBM itself has also been showing off several PowerPC based products like G5 based blade servers. All of these serve to create a commaditize the PowerPC family and makes it easier to Mac to compete with PC.
Also, it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to use PowerMac G5 for XBox 2 SDK. XBox 2, according to the spec, is going to be about 2 or 3 times as powerful as the current PowerMac G5 but XBox 2 isn't going to ship until 2005 (2006?). PowerMac G5 is close enough to XBox 2 in architecture and it's a commodity PC. If you were Microsoft, what else would you do? Building a customized box similar to PowerMac which may costs 10 times to your developers? Emulate XBox 2 under current generation of PC doesn't even make sense.
PS2's development system is based on PC and Linux. In some sense, PC is a competiting platform to PS2. Has anyone thought of Sony is endorsing PC as a game platform?
Pentiums are still clock-for-clock faster
Don't think so. If this was the true, the G5s would be 30% slower than a 3GHz Pentium, which simply isn't the case.
There's probably some space to discuss if the current G5 or current Pentium is faster, but the G5 at the same clock rate is unquestionably faster.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I hope the Xbox2 has the same form-factor as the cube. That thing rocked (until it burned to the ground).
Read the specs Luke. (http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html)
ps2 not sold at lost xbox is
stupid fuc ks
what can't read the text on your tv?
must be cause your to poor to afford an hdtv
"next generation"
rumored name of osx builds for x86 machines
sketchy rumors that this is kept relatively upto date if they ever decide to play this card on a very rainy day.